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Summary Mark Bernstein, one of the top 50 editors for Russian Wikipedia, has been detained by the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption of Belarus, (GUBOPiK) after his personal information was shared on GOBUPiK’s public Telegram Channel. Quotes My thoughts I would highly recommend to read the entire article. This is one of the most interesting stories I have ever read. Sources the verge

I've been hosting my own Nextcloud for years now and the only person who ever actually got auto-banned was myself on accident a few times, but I've gotten three of these messages from my server just in the past week. Everything seems to be holding up just fine; no unusual login activity in Nextcloud, no strange activity in any of my logs, etc. I cranked up the bantime to multiple days because I figure if it's an accidental ban, it literally takes me 10 seconds to go remove it, but if it's somebody who needs to be banned, I want them to get tired of waiting and move on. Wonder why they decided to start picking on me all of a sudden.

Gigabyte Intel Arc A310 Windforce, Gigabyte Intel Arc A380 Windforce OC and Gigabyte Intel Arc A380 Gaming OC. From now on, Gigabyte is an official partner of all three global GPU manufacturers: Nvidia, AMD and Intel. Video cards are sold on the DNS network. If someone wanted to actually feel the possibilities of a budget discrete Intel graphics card, then here it is - a chance. The cost of the younger model is 11,000 rubles, the A380 Windforce OC is priced at 14,000 rubles, the Gaming OC version is 1,000 rubles more expensive. Intel Arc A380 and Arc A310 are built on the same GPU - ACM-G11, but only in the case of the older model, the graphics processor is fully functional, with 8 Xe cores. There is 6 GB of memory and a 96-bit bus. Arc A310 has a GPU with 7 Xe cores, 4 GB of video memory and a 64-bit bus. Judging by the images, all three models are built on the same printed circuit board and receive additional power through one six-pin connector. It should be noted how originally the cooling system of the Gigabyte Intel Arc A380 Gaming OC is made. If you look from the side of the fans, then you can’t even find a catch. But if you turn the card over, you can see that the third fan blows over the heat pipe hanging in the air, since the heatsink ends in the area of the second fan. (two fan version is windforce OC and three fan version is gaming OC) source:https://www.ixbt.com/news/2022/12/15/intel-arc-a380-arc-a310-gigabyte.html (translated by me)

Article is short and descriptive, so leave source link at the beginning. https://www.gizchina.com/2023/01/25/russian-game-atomic-heart-can-provide-collected-user-data-with-fsb/ Summary "privacy policy of the studio allows it to collect user data. Then, it can be transferred to FSB. By the way, the privacy policy is Russian. There is no English version of it." Source: 1) https://www.gizchina.com/2023/01/25/russian-game-atomic-heart-can-provide-collected-user-data-with-fsb/ 2) https://ain.ua/2023/01/25/rosijski-rozrobnyky-atomic-heart-na-svoyemu-sajti-zbyrayut-dani-gejmeriv-dlya-fsb/

Russia has recently released statements that raise concern on large US companies operating within Russia The spite of attacks are mainly geared towards tech giants such as Microsoft Putin along with other high ranking officials believe that the companies are collaborating with US spies Russia is looking towards creating their own software, this not only ensures that they have full control but also makes them have the capability to monitor the users The country is known for snooping on citizens and blocking content that is seen as propaganda or against national interest Microsoft issued a statement defending their company and its intentions I personally think that companies like Microsoft do have intentions that aren't popular, but Russia doesn't seem to have any good intentions either As Engadget pointed out, Russia's efforts seem to point towards government control on the software their citizens use Sources: http://www.inquisitr.com/3669773/delete-microsoft-office-applications-russian-government-offices-vladimir-putin-uninstall-microsoft-software-block-web-mobile-platforms/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/02/russia-to-drop-microsoft-software

Article from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/us/politics/obama-russia-hack-election.html?_r=0 Is US going to respond by a state sponsored hack too? That ain't good.

Sources: Mashable, Kaspersky [here and here] This is why it's hard to judge whether which side is telling the truth. All the US media says is that anonymous individuals especially unnamed Israeli hackers have witnessed Russian hackers using Kaspersky AV to data mine the US government. At the same time, Kaspersky only did an internal audit of their databases although they promised next year they will become more transparent and even have their source code inspected. Now, I'm reserving judgement until third parties are able to inspect both the source code and their databases but if what Kaspersky lab is saying is true, it's embarrassing for the NSA. First of all, how stupid would it be for an employee to take home classified files for cyberespionage and later run a pirated Microsoft Office? It makes me wonder how much NSA is paying its employees that they'll cheap out and resort to software piracy which they know is illegal and dangerous. How stupid for the NSA employee to use a pirated software to begin with? If proven true by third parties, it only shows that using counterfeit/pirated software is dangerous even if you have nothing to hide on your computer since it can be used as a remote malware factory and distribution and even in this forum, so many new members are asking questions like "How to get Office for free?" or "How to get a Windows 10 license for free?" I think at the moment there has been a hearing about Kaspersky but no details have been release publicly at the moment. Speaking of transparency, they promised next year that they'll have more third parties inspect their source code and databases and increase their bug bounty rewards up to $100,000 per vulnerability. https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/transparency-initiative/19870/ It makes me question my career choice as being an ethical, white hat hacker seems to be very lucrative. Edit: Here's the full video of the hearing assessing Kaspersky Lab. I haven't watched the video myself at the time I added the video. Here's an interesting debate from Fortune:

Russia has banned VPNs and other software that enables users to gain anonymous access to websites. The new law was signed by President Vladimir Putin on Monday and will come into effect on November 1st (via TechCrunch). Leonid Levin, chairman of the Duma's committee on information policy and technology, was quotedby state-run media as saying that the new law is not targeted at "introducing new bans for law-abiding citizens" but aims to prohibit access to illegal content. However, privacy advocates see the law as another way for the Russian government to restrict access to political content that it disagrees with. In 2015, it became mandatory for all user data from Russian citizens to be stored in Russian-based servers, and last year another law was passed making it necessary for internet service providers to retain traffic data for up to a year. Recently the government also threatened to block access to the Telegram encrypted messaging platform unless the company that runs the app provides more information about itself. Elsewhere, virtual private networks took another blow over the weekend, as reports emerged that Apple has removed the majority of VPN apps from the App Store in China, following regulations passed earlier in the year that require such apps to be authorized by the Chinese government. The action was first revealed by ExpressVPN, a provider based outside of China. The company said in a blog post that "all major VPN apps" including its own had been removed from the App Store. The company shared a note from Apple explaining that its app was removed because "it includes content that is illegal in China". A few hours later, Apple issued a statement to TechCrunch explaining its decision to pull the apps from the App Store: Earlier this month, China reportedly started blocking some features of the WhatsApp messaging service, as authorities continued to tighten controls over the country's internet. Via : https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/31/russia-bans-vpns-apple-pulls-apps-china/ VPN's are illegal in China, and starting on November 1st it'll be illegal to use a VPN in Russia. Apple's hands are tied, they can't do anything about it, it's the law of the land.

Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence Western mainstream news media tends to run coordinated media blackouts on information that isn't favourable to its agendas, such as was done concerning the USA-coalition's campaign for Mosul, Iraq, which was far worse (with more than double the average weekly civilian death toll) and ran far longer than Syria, Russia, and Iran's campaign for Aleppo, Syria. But with this many intelligence veterans backing this appeal, hopefully it will be covered in the MSM, at least somewhere. This isn't the first time that members of this intelligence veterans group have made a public a public appeal against the allegations that there was a hack by Russia. In December 2016, some of them collectively signed a report calling the allegations baseless: US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims - "Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless" William Binney, a co-signatory of this new appeal, is a 36-year veteran of the NSA, and is the architect of the NSA's data-collection systems. He has previously made other comments in rejection of the claim that the DNC emails were the result of a hack: Ray McGovern is a former top-level CIA officer and data-analyst, who advised 7 consecutive USA presidents over 27 years, and whose job at the CIA was to always tell the truth, while it was other people's job to fudge data. Ray is also the former head of the CIA's USSR foreign policy department, and has chaired multiple intelligence estimates. Ray might be the most experienced and knowledgeable Russia expert in the West. It was Ray's friend, former British ambassador Craig Murray, who received the DNC emails from the leaker and personally delivered them to WikiLeaks. Ray has spoken about this publicly many times, while his friend who delivered the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, Craig Murray, has said that no mainstream new media has ever reached out to him for comment. This new appeal makes reference to the recent published analysis of the Guccifer 2.0 files, which discovered that their copy speed of the files recorded in their meta-data seemingly proves that they were not transferred through the internet, but were copied locally to a removable drive: New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally, Not Hacked

I had no choice but to post this, not necessarily because of the Obama Administration's actions, but more out of my curiosity I have with the included FBI report. I've rifled through it multiple times and I'm hoping the community may find or understand something that I'm missing, specifically the part where they can directly attribute either the DNC hacking or some other large scale attack that had a major influence on the Presidential election. Hopefully someone can shed some light on the report, because I'm not seeing the connection. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3248231/Report-on-Russian-Hacking.pdf -FBI report posted by The New York Times The Obama administration struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services, including four top officers of the military intelligence unit the White House believes ordered the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations. - The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanctions.html What do you think? Is there damning evidence that Russia influenced the 2016 US Presidential election within the FBI's report?

Budget (including currency): 90000 RUB (about 1200 USD), future GPU upgrade to RTX 3060 (or similar in RDNA 2) included in the budget. Country: Russia Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Single-threaded applications (yes, Black MIDIs are my thing), 4K video editing in medium complexity, maybe a bit of standard 1440p gaming too. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what I'm upgrading from, when I'm going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate I want to play at, etc): You didn't expected me here? Sure I didn't, but here I am 3 years later with another build suggestion, this time it is birthday special build. Yep, after all of those "considerations" from earlier, I'm now seriously considering to get a new build, after multiple complaints from me that ruined my experience made angry, trying to do something on it. That build consists of i5-3470, 8 GB of single channel DDR3 1600, 960 GiB ADATA SU650 SSD (will be reused for my new PC as well), 1 TiB Western Digital Green HDD, GTX 1050 Ti (also being reused up until more budget Ampere or RDNA 2 wouldn't come out). As I said a bit earlier, I will game at 1440p (when it's time to get a new monitor to use in dual-monitor combination), but not high refresh, since I'm not really into E-Sports gaming. Now before Zen 3 shenanigans would appear, no, I'm not going to get just for higher "single-threaded performance" (although one of the workloads I specified, do heavily relies on it for MIDI stuff), but most importantly, the prices for it I suspect here would be through the roof (basically, even more expensive than 3rd gen at launch). And now, into the parts (for those who can't see the picture, I'll say them here) CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 OEM - 17999 RUB (about 234.46 USD) Motherboard: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus - 13499 RUB (about 175.83 USD) RAM: Neo Forza ENCKE 32 GB (2x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 (16-18-18-36) - 10999 RUB (about 143.27 USD) Cooler: Deepcool GAMMAX 400 V2 - 2150 RUB (about 28 USD) PSU: Cougar GX-F750 [CGR GD-750] - 7399 RUB (about 96.37 USD) New HDD: Western Digital Blue 2 TiB 5400 RPM [WD20EZAZ] - 4499 RUB (about 58.6 USD) Case: AeroCool Sentinel - 4299 RUB (about 56 USD) Total cost - 60844 RUB (about 792.9 USD) I'm open to your suggestions, since I know not everything is perfect, like overkill PSU for my needs (should be at least Rank B with at least 6 ports coming from PSU though), questionable RAM with concerns about overclocking it to 3600 MHz. You can suggest parts through other Russian retail stores (I used DNS for it, make sure to choose Saratov when you're choosing the city, since I'm living in that region), but keep in mind those have to provide some sort of shipping (except maybe for the case, I'll order it from DNS, because 1 RUB shipping)! At best, I'm ready to spend up to 65000 RUB excluding the GPU upgrade. About OEM over BOX variant matter, I'd better invest in a cooler, since the difference is 1600 RUB. Hardware Unboxed's VRM testings proves, that it can indeed perform the same as MAG B550M Mortar, and it costs the same, so I grabbed the Gaming Plus one.

Which football team do you support in this world cup. I support Argentina and Messi. Any football fans here?

Your Wi-fi and NAS Server are not safe. Follow the hyperlink provided below to read about the hack and how to remove the VPN hack from your system Russians Hack Wi-Fi Routers: What to Do Right Now

So Russia is about to lunch a massive cyber attack after the attacks on Syria by the US and its allies by using compromised devices. Russia has been hacking into routers and other network equipment for a few months now and its feared that it will soon use those hacked devices to launch a massive cyber attack to leak tons of data to the world or use it for other nefarious purposes. Depending on the scope of things and what their purpose is this could shape up to be bigger than the DYN attack in 2016. Things like this are the reason that I use pfSense to harden my network security and lessen the amount of ways my network can be exploited by getting rid of crappy off the shelf router security systems and horribly slow security patches. Quote 1 source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/16/us-uk-warn-russia-hacked-routers-worldwide/ Quote 2 source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43788338

Is there a way/service that can help me to buy goods from Russia and export them to Europe? Is there a Russian eBay? And do they allow foreign customers? I am not after questionable merchandise, only mainstream music CDs, Russian movies, and things like that.... Thnx

Probably the most extensive English source: https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-04-18/russia-s-war-on-telegram-expands-to-google-amazon-battlefields [UPDATE 18th of April] source links: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/in-effort-to-shut-down-telegram-russia-blocks-amazon-google-network-addresses/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/telegram-plays-down-russia-block-claiming-no-significant-impact-yet/ Original: Previously The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB in Russian) demanded encryption keys from Telegram messenger so it could monitor private activities. Telegram filed a lawsuit explaining that such demands are unconstitutional by Russian laws that should support Secrecy of correspondence. Telegram lost such lawsuit and was given 15 days to give up their encryption to FSS. Head of Telegram LLC Pavel Durov is saying "Threats to block Telegram unless it gives up private data of its users won't bear fruit. Telegram will stand for freedom and privacy." russian source: https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5ab0e3b99a79477cf2540d32 Thanks @jj9987 for english source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142482/russia-orders-telegram-hand-over-user-encryption-keys This is scary, if FSS demanded encryption keys from Telegram, it should probably asked other popular messengers in Russia as well (whatsapp, viber). And the fact that we are not hearing about them being banned in Russia makes me think that they have already provided all the information Russian government asked. Update from 16th of April from the sinking ship: Telegram is now officially banned in Russia, but this had no effect on users because app pushed an update to activate the inapp setting allowing to bypass blocking: After that Russian government desided to block any affiliated IPs, affecting google services, Amazon Cloud, other messenger app(Viber) and some online games (e.g. Guild Wars 2, Splatoon 2). Number of blocked IPs in russia exceeded 1.8 millions And all this measures haven't affected most of telegram users. Sources: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/privacy-is-not-for-sale-telegram-founder-says-after-being-banned-in-russia/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/russia-bans-18-million-amazon-and-google-ips-in-attempt-to-block-telegram/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/17/russia_blocks_google_aws_ip_addresses_to_get_telegram/ and more importantly, government spent more than 8.5 billion roubles to do this, and still couldn't block Telegram. Russian government also asked Google Play and App Store to remove the telegram app from access. But decided also to restrict access from third party app repositeries, like APK mirror: https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/17/russia-apple-ban-telegram-app-store/ All heil Freedom. Update on 17th of April Number of blocked IPs surpassed 2.5 million. Telegram still working. Some rumors suggests that new batch of IPs affected MasterCard, though it is still not proven. i'll try to find suitable source when it is proven or disproven. Update 16 millions IPs now. How did i get this information? News channel in Telegram: AAAAAND IT HAPPEND Regulatory organisation RosKomNadzor even blocked itself. Telegram still works just fine: Russian internet publishers got access to the letter from RosKomNadzor to ISPs explaining that they added their own IPs to the list of banned IPs and asked ISPs to unblock them. I don't know if you will be satisfied with Russian source: https://geektimes.ru/company/nag/blog/300073/ Pavel Durov(owner of Telegram) said in his official telegram Channel: In order to support so-called Digital Resistance he is willing to spend millions of his own money to donate to proxy and VPN providers. [UPDATE 20 of April] It is now known that real reason behind banning telegram was not the fact that it declined to cooperate with russian government but the fact that Durov is planning to launch his own cryptocurrency (it already gathered more than billion dollars in ICO). Russian government is afraid that it can disrupt the market. Once again i am deeply sorry for providing russian news source, i'll try to post English source as well when i find one: https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2018/5ad8c53a9a7947ec8d8c1ed5?from=main FSB contact says that "Story not about it at all, how can't you understand! It is not about keys or terrorism" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- funny meme: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/394517831364116481/435745104351854592/video.mp4

Hello! I apologize for my English, I use Google translator, and myself from Russia. I'll get down to business. I want to collect nas for the house. Tasks: 1. Download movies by torrent 2. Transfer 4K HDR video over a home network, in particular to a smart LG TV. Actually, from all this I care about the choice of iron on the second question? I ask for help)

[I'm not sure if it's okay to post this here and is it streching the community standards, but if it isn't okay: I'm sorry] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37373244 So, PornHub and YouPorn were banned in Russia and CIS region. People always laugh at Chinas internet censorship, but Russia also has quite wide internet censoring, mostly they censor sites that contain material that is seen as critical to Kremlin, advocating sexual minorities and other material that is seen "flammable" by Russia's censor authority Roskomnadzor. Censorship in Russia isn't anywhere as wide as in China, but it's even more vague and random. In the past Russia has banned Wikipedia for short time over article about cannabis smoking and later over article about Charas (first only the article on Russian Wikipedia was banned, but later it escalated to ban the whole Wikipedia because it uses HTTPS which causes Russian ISPs censor technology cesor the whole site), GitHub over some satiric notes about suicide methods over which Russian software developers lost their minds, the Internet Archive over archiving sites that are " extremism" (also in this case the whole banning of Internet Archive was because using HTTPS) and in January 2016 Russia banned archive.is over material about annexation of Crimea (again whole site was banned because using HTTPS). This is very much right. Here in FInland we have some sort of "blacklist" of websites which most of the ISPs use. It was made for censoring child pornography, later Matti Nikki listed two-thirds of these banned sites (all the sites not containing CP) and with this critization Nikki's site was also banned (because his site had hyperlinks to the sites that were unlawfully banned). This was kind of a big deal in Finnish media and it had a lot of discussion going about internet censorship, but in the end Finnish vice Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the blacklisted sites included CP at the time when Finnish police investigated them, so banning them was legal, he also founded that the system is problematic for free speech and the nature of internet and swifting webdomains make the matter even more problematic and these matters should be taken into consideration when the law is overseen. In the funny side of the news, it's always nice to see, probably, PornHub still being the same PornHub that can make some really good jokes: In this matter I'm very mych with Rita from Status Report (https://ritastatusreport.live/2016/09/15/pornhub-banned-in-russiacis-region/): I also think that any kind of censorship in internet is wrong, because it will always have collateral victims and it will always turn out to be political. With political I don't mean as straight as it is in Russia, China and any other coutries that use real political censorship, but the small things like cutting out 10 minutes out of a documentary because that part isn't in line with political views of teh country (this acctually happened in Finnish nation TV during time when there was a lot of discussion about legalazing weed and YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) displayed BBC documentary about weed which was shorter than the original documentary because "it was too long to be shown at that moment" and somehow "oddly" cutted out part was the part where they discussed about weeds use as medicine). In the cases of CP and other extremely bad and illegal things there should be police organization that would handle the criminals (I belive Interpol already has something like this). National censorship or even continenal censorship isn't solving the problems it is just sweeping the problem under the carpet and putting it out of sight, out of mind.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/moscow-drops-microsoft-outlook-as-putin-urges-self-sufficiency Russia is gradually replacing the western software they are using with locally made software : So... I don't know if this is good news for russian civil servants (it depends if the software is good or not). I wish my own country would use locally made stuff provided it's good, that I understand, but due to the international context, this is definitly a move pointed toward the US and the western EU, since most software used worldwide come from there (especially the US). to WW3 much ?

I checked my email today and I saw there was a message from Steam witch an access code. According to steam, a Russian IP address was trying to access my account. Sneaky bastards! I've changed my password and I'm running an AV scan just in case. So, anyone else here with a similar experience?

Hello, I would like to know if its still safe to activate region locked games on steam. I know it has been possible earlier. Will I able to play the game with VPN off without worrying about getting banned?

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11934411/Russia-tried-to-cut-off-World-Wide-Web.html --- since I live fairly close to Russia USSR and their involvement in Ukraine, this shit scares me Putin is preparing his country to return to Soviet Union era where control over the people was paramount - I have 1st hand experience of what communism and totalitarianism does to a nation and to it's people the number one question is: why aren't the russians reacting ... or, they like to live in ignorance?

Lenovo seeks the possibility to start making products with Russian processors by "Baikal Electronics", says Gleb Mishin, Russian CEO of Lenovo in Russia, CIS and Eastern Europe As Gleb Mishin explained, it comes to Lenovo PCs and mobile devices, but the details and the timing of deliveries he refused to name. According to the Lenovo, use of "Baikal" processors will help Chinese companies to compete in the market of public customers. A pilot batch of "Baikal-T1" processors with 1.2 GHz clock frequency was released in May 2015. Chip includes such interfaces as SoCs include ten-gigabit and two gigabit Ethernet ports, which makes the "Baikal-T1" optimal solution, including for the production of network equipment. Original: https://nplus1.ru/news/2015/09/15/lenovo-baikal (It is in Russian, the text in this post is translated with the most accuracy I could provide)

This week the media agency in Russia announced that it is illegal to post memes that depicts a public figure in a way that has nothing to do with his or her "personality". Some examples would be Sad Keanu and quite a lot of Putin memes. People can report websites who break this law and if the website do not remove the images/videos the entire website will be blocked in Russia. Source: Washington Post

I wanna know what it is meant for also what is it usable for and does it even have a desktop motherboard for it? http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2015/2015052501_Russian_Baikal-T1_processor_announced.html