throwaway9524

The linked article disproves your claim. It seems you're mistaking the naval drone incident, which did not cause casualties, with the Russian drone strike.

> The country's defence ministry said the drone had self-detonated near an oil terminal without causing any casualties, although authorities have said it caused considerable damage to a ship and warehouses.

> Ukraine later confirmed one of its naval drones had been involved, saying it had been knocked off course by Russian electronic interference. Moscow has yet to comment.

> It also comes a week after two people were injured when a drone hit a Romanian apartment block in the eastern city of Galati - close to the border with Ukraine.

> Romanian officials said they had confirmed it was a Russian drone but Moscow said "accusations" of its involvement were "unsubstantiated".

Russian weapons are nowhere near state of the art. More like hopelessly outdated Cold War designs which makes sense because the USSR unlike Russia was actually capable of innovation though often narrow in scope.

And just like every other Russian industry its MIC is heavily reliant on western components. Even dumb Shahed drones are assembled with American FPGAs and microcontrollers. https://hackaday.com/2024/06/08/how-many-western-ics-are-the...

> hypersonics

If you are talking about Kinzhal then it is hypersonic in the same way ATACMS is hypersonic. It is not maneuverable at hypersonic speeds and can be intercepted by modern air defense systems as proven by Ukraine.

> These so called "human wave" attacks never happened

How ironic to read this just a few weeks after the "Goodwin" and "Ernest" scandal. What does your metodichka say about them?

You are right regarding China being a considerable opponent due to its manufacturing power but you are wrong about Russia. First it is a petrostate but one that is dependent on western equipment for continued extraction. Especially with natural gas it had to scale back a lot of projects due to sanctions. Second its military complex is only good at dumb ammunitions and outdated equipment fit for human wave attacks. Those may be working in Ukraine thanks to population advantage but they are not fit for a fight against NATO. And Russia is already experiencing worker shortage in manufacturing. I wonder how that "giant military complex" will fare after another mobilization drive.

I get the reasoning from your other replies. If Microsoft extends Win32 with some new API that cannot be reimplemented in Proton then Valve is screwed. Thus you want them to require a native Linux version from every game published on Steam.

However I really do not think Valve is in a position to dictate such terms. They have multiple competitors both in distribution and console space. Big names are already publishing on their own stores. Small indies can move to itch.io. Everyone else can switch to Epic. Steam Deck is already underpowered compared to recent Windows based handhelds. If it stops supporting Windows games via Proton then it is as good as dead.

I understand your idealism. But a step like this would bring the death to gaming on Linux much quicker than anything Microsoft could do. Because Valve is the only big distributor even remotely interested in it. In contrast Epic is absolutely hostile to Linux. And they're the ones to gain the most users in case Steam fails.

Seems this sentiment is coming up in every recent Proton related thread. Despite all the counterarguments offered each time.

The simple reality is that there are decades worth of Windows games that will never have a Linux version. Because of the studios being gone. Because of the source code being lost. Because of the licensing issues for dependencies, assets, music. If not for the Valve efforts people would always need a copy of Windows to play a good chunk of their libraries. At which point why bother with Linux? But with Proton the calculus changes. Most of those Windows-only games are now fully playable on Linux. Many people no longer need Windows and that's a huge win for desktop Linux adoption.

By this logic Apple should not have developed x86 translation for its latest Macs because it showed they are not serious about the platform and disincentivized devs from providing native Arm ports. Except we know that's not what happened.

You should travel to parts of the Eastern Europe that used to be under Soviet occupation someday. Share your views on Russia with the locals over beer and you'll find out rather quckly why "blithely trusting the state department" is a hell of a lot better than dealing with the Russians. Not to say that people are wholly uncritical of the US. But having experienced Russia up close it's clear as day what's worse.

Also as a reminder Russia could end the war today by withdrawing its armed forces from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.

Agreed in general. Though the points on character design may be a bit too reductionist. Concord didn't really need characters with clear sex appeal. Or even characters people immediately want to be like. The original characters aren't that bad! At least judging from the concept art. They just suffer from extremely poor and downright unprofessional execution.

Take this redesign for example https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterDesigns/comments/1fdz1m.... The results are pretty close to originals and do not pander to any specific demographic. But there are just enough interesting and unusual details in the new designs that make you want to learn more about those characters. That's what the released game is missing entirely.

My pet theory is this had to be nepotism in hiring. I struggle to find another explanation for how they botched the execution so badly that the characters can be legitimately seen as "designed to make people squirm". Which I don't believe could be any executive's intention.

Agreed that exiting the country was much easier for JetBrains who are more internationally focused. But my belief is that Yandex leadership made a strategic mistake in not spinning off their core businesses to Europe. They had a chance at establishing themselves as an EU-first search engine, mail provider and cloud that can compete at the equal footing with Google. Yet they blew it and now they are FSB owned in everything but name.

As far as companies with a Russian origin go JetBrains and Yandex are at complete odds with each other. JetBrains condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and suspended sales and R&D there shortly after the war broke out then left the country entirely as soon as they relocated the employees. Whereas Yandex stayed and as a result their home page today is chock-full of Russian propaganda. JetBrains may have originated in Russia but they have nothing to do with that country anymore so counting them in with Yandex is wrong.