My understanding is that the Congress of Soviets was replaced with the Supreme Soviet, the democratic structure was changed but the Soviets remained, just shifted in form, and could still be used democratically, just not in all cases.

I believe this is true, but I would argue that the fundamental change was that non-Party candidates were almost never allowed to run. As I noted, this is not due to a constitutional change but rather a change in electoral tradition. Anecdotally, as a result of this, all three my grandparents didn’t feel represented by their deputies/delegates, and welcomed that part of the Perestroyka changes, when the rules were relaxed and more alternative candidates appeared.

A good analogy is that most local governments in the US run uncontested.

I believe this to also be a non-ideal situation (especially given the two-party system where neither represents the working class). However, aren’t there at least party primaries, so that one can choose which candidate from the dominant party “runs” for the uncontested election? Whereas in USSR the candidates were chosen by the Party and not the electorate directly. (my understanding of the US electoral system is lacking, so I may be wrong here).

That’s why I stressed reading Blackshirts and Reds, which dispels the mythology and takes a critical, nuances look at the USSR.

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve started to read it a while ago, and mostly agreed with the contents. I’ll have to pick it up again.

Soviets were de-facto abolished after 1936 (not due to the constitution itself, rather “by tradition”). While there technically were elections, in almost all cases there was only one candidate. The three of my grandparents that I grew up with (all proudly working-class - teacher, engineer and doctor, born in 1930s), never participated in elections with more than one candidate until Perestroyka (at which point the communist project was on its deathbed).

Note that I’m not even anti-USSR, it’s still markedly better than the bullshit capitalist systems. There actually was plenty of workspace democracy, and some local democracy, but I don’t think we should glorify it as some bastion of democracy. There still unfortunately was a kind of ruling class - the Party and MGB/KGB (but I should note that it was much easier for a working-class person to join their ranks than it is in capitalist “democracies”). Rather, learn from what it got right, and fix what it got wrong.

Yes, that can happen sometimes, but I find that there are plenty of cheap options with unlocked bootloaders if you look for them.

Nah, cheap phones often have their bootloader unlocked/unlockable. Really happy with my POCO M5 running modified AOSP. Also, unlike every expensive phone nowadays, it has 3.5mm jack, SD card slot, and exceptional battery life for hiking/trekking (it survives 5-6 days as just a camera+map phone with all power saving on, in comparison people with flagships typically only last 2-3 days with the same usage and power-saving techniques).

You can almost always replace the battery, even when the manufacturer doesn’t want you to. As for flashlights, they typically come with easily user-replaceable ones, often even sold separately. Worst-case, you can get a AA or AAA flashlight and use rechargeable AA/AAAs.

I’ve paid quite a lot for my second headlamp for hiking, but I am really happy with the purchase as it’s very light (35 g) compared to my first cheapo one (~120 g), while being the same 200 lm max. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough for me to not even notice it, while the heavy one was getting annoying after a while.

I’d say it depends. For safety-critical stuff maybe, but for a headlamp or something I prefer rechargeable as I can easily recharge it from a power bank or a portable solar panel if needed. If you run out of a disposable battery for whatever reason, you’re screwed.

I’m not sure you should “cheap out” on headphones per se. The really cheap ones are usually horrible, both in terms of sound quality, usability and comfort (well, except for wired Apple ones, allegedly, though they never fit me right). It’s just that it makes no sense to go for really expensive ones, unless you’re really into audio and love hearing the tiny sound reproduction differences between them, or enjoying the different tech etc. The middle ground of $50-$100 for in-ears and $100-300 for over-ears will often offer you good/great/excellent sound quality and the same usability&comfort as more expensive ones.

Problem is not how weak or strong the encryption is

Here it’s definitely part of discussion. The context was

It’s encrypted anonymous communication capabilities.

It’s barely anonymous, and poorly encrypted. The latter is the reason Durov is in custody while Signal devs are scott free. He could easily turn illegal stuff over to French authorities, but doesn’t.

The bigger problem is that people somehow assume this a huge threat, while all previous cases didn’t involve anything like that.

There have absolutely been cases where a backdoor/weakness/lack of encryption used to catch criminals before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennetcom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat . I distinctly remember that there were also arrests of opposition activists in Russia based on personal messages in VKontakte, but can’t find the news right now.

real criminals do their stuff everywhere (especially on telegram) for years, staying safe.

Some are staying safe, others are being caught precisely because of this.

Problem is not how weak or strong the encryption is, but that once you are under oppression and do opposition activities, you’re going to learn by yourself how to deal with it.

Using better encryption schemes is definitely part of that.

Toy may call it TLS but it’s a custom protocol.

Sure, it’s mtproto. The security it provides for non-encrypted chats (which are the absolute majority of chats) is not any different from just having TLS for transport. It’s potentially even worse as it’s not as well-audited.

Data is not kept unencrypted on their servers, according to their docs.

That just means that they store both your data in some encrypted way and the key. They can still read it trivially. You don’t even have to know the protocol to understand why: you can add new devices without having any other device online, and read all non-secret chats. It might also just mean disk encryption, in which case it’s plain-text in RAM while the server is running.

There’s user to server encryption, just not e2e.

That’s exactly what the comment said: The only encryption that applies to most chats on that platform should be transport encryption via TLS. It’s about the same level of encryption as Lemmy PMs.

The fact that Telegram doesn’t cooperate with French authorities doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cooperate with other authorities or sell your data to the highest bidder. They have all the technical means for it.

Don’t use a regular Telegram chat if your life depends on the messages being private. Use XMPP, Matrix with E2EE, or at the very least Signal. Heck, even WhatsApp is (reportedly) better, as it claims to provide E2EE and that’s been checked by some security professionals who have been given access to the source code. If you absolutely must use Telegram for something like that, only use secret chats.

Telegram is categorically less encrypted than Signal for most chats. It’s mostly the same level of security as Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, even Email (SMTP/IMAP over TLS) or SMS: it only encrypts communications between the client and the server. Telegram can read everything you send in regular chats. The only way to get end-to-end encryption (such that Telegram technically can’t access your communication) is by starting a fussy and inconvenient “secret chat”. It can only be done between two people (so no E2E group chats at all), only when both are online at the same time, and it only works on the devices on which the secret chat was initiated and accepted; in other words, as a frequent user I’ve only used it once for some really sensitive personal information. Even then Telegram still has access to a lot of metadata about messages: phone numbers of both parties, when the messages are sent, how big they are, etc.

I’m not saying that cooperating with intelligence/LE agencies is always an ethical, or even a good choice, but Telegram demonstrably had the ability to do so.

Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).

Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.

The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.

What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.

Upon further inspection, it’s almost definitely AI. Look at the better-quality original: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/937874691150982659/

In particular, note the nonsensical reflection in the mirror (which is inexplicably placed on the floor?), weird toilet paper roll, and half-unicorn horn half-third ear thing sticking out from the head.

And if you check out that Pinterest account, it’s full of AI-generated crap too.

Which mostly just demonstrates how good the AI has become, to the point where if you scale down the image somewhat, it fools humans and AI detectors alike.