Unfortunately (for me), "USD and EUR transfer options open to use" does not equal "you can send or receive USD or EUR to your account in a Russian bank".

In the past week I myself and many people I know were not able to receive a USD wire from US to their accounts in different Russian banks, none of which are even in the list of sanctioned entities (Tinkoff and Avangard banks are the most common example). In all these cases the transfer was declined by a US bank, probably due to compliance considerations. Sending USD or EUR outside doesn't work either, and in some cases you cannot even exchange the remaining USD on your account to RUB. The options are indeed available in the bank's web or mobile application, but clicking 'Send' just gives you a 'something went wrong' error and that's it.

It is true that Putin might be not noticing any inconvenience, just as most employees of state-owned companies (who happen to be the core Putin supporters), but people who rely on international payments for living (who happen to be the least loyal to Putin part of the population) are being severely hit by the sanctions and have spent the last week in the state of permanent panic trying to figure out what are the remaining options they have and how they'll pay their expenses in a month from now.

Can you use a stablecoin like USDC?

Yes, that's what we ended up with. It required a lot of hassle on the side of the sender because it wasn't clear what tax and liability risks this involves for a US company to send a crypto payment. But it worked and I really appreciate they were willing to help me. Not sure if a lot of companies are willing to go great lengths to get their Russian employees paid in this situation...

Also, got bless crypto currencies! It would be not that easy to shut down P2P withdrawals until the internet is working at all. I have to admit, I was a big crypto sceptic right until the moment it became the only way to get paid. Now I'm a believer!

I had a similar moment :) If you have a good on/off-ramp it's quicker, cheaper, and just as easy for international payments that go through different banking systems. I wish all the hype around speculative trading of NFTs and 'Web3' would die for a while so we can finish building the actually awesome parts like financial accessibility.

Exactly, and not just the police. Some 20-30% of the population are actively supporting the current regime and will stand for it. Even if all state propaganda magically disappears and gets instantly replaced by the West propaganda, it'll take months and months for them to change their stance. People hate being wrong, and even more they hate admitting being wrong.

It is a civil war kind of situation we're talking about.

From my first-hand experience of being under sanctions, they do the opposite.

In 2015 Visa and MasterCard banned all transactions in Crimea. It hit hardest the people who were naturally the least loyal to Putin - the upper middle class, IT professionals, and everyone who relied on receiving international payments. I don't know anyone who has changed their opinion about Putin to worse as the result, but a lot of people, myself included, changed their attitude towards West to worse. And even if sanctions will result in the fall of the regime eventually, you can be sure they will be remembered as a hostile action.

I live in Crimea. People are sad, angry, and disappointed. And fatigued. Nobody wants war, but a lot of people feel like we're screwed either way. We avoided a war in 2014, and we can probably avoid it today, but that just means it will come tomorrow. And because people don't see a good way out of the situation, it feels like, whatever happens, just let it happen fast. "A horrible end is better than endless horror".

I don't know how to explain all this to my kids. And how to keep them safe. I feel really sorry for everyone involved on all sides.

In the practical sense, the "NATO problem" is that Ukraine is not going to give up on Crimea, and once it becomes a member of NATO that will lead to direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

But that's exactly what happens, for example, in Russia or Belarus. The opposition claims the election was rigged, the court dismisses these claims, and the government uses the law against inciting violence to silence and or jail the opposition. And it is nearly impossible to prove that the elections in the whole were rigged - in the best case they have a proof on a number of episodes that total in, let's say, 100k of votes, but that still doesn't prove the overall result is falsified.

Right, but in russian elections you can look for indicators of election fraud and find them by the dozen, and in the US you cannot. In russia, all of the party's officials are complicit stooges going along with the narrative that threy totally won by 92%, where as im the US even the VP is acknowledging his loss.

There are no markers or evidence of any kind. Nobody can even come up with plausible stories nevermind facts.

So should we really be making the comparison to two of the most obviously corrupt states on earth? Does that help the conversation or just muddy the waters?

The waters are already muddy. Remember that we are discussing this in the context of censoring speech, "are there plausible stories" can't be the deciding factor in that.

Right, but what I'm saying is that the grey areas in life can be resolved through examination of indicators, and "is there a plausible story" is one of them. It's stronger in some scenarios than others. For example, it's pretty much the only indicator you need to dismiss more outragerous claims like flat-earthers.

The simple question of "what would be the point" is enough to dismiss nearly all of that spectrum of conspiracy theory - wherein no reason that makes a modicum of sense can be given. "Hur dur, because control the populous" or something is generally the best that can be mustered, and asking how or why leads only to more dead ends.

Likewise, trying to come up with a story about why both his own party and the opposing party and a large number of his own base and the entirety of the opposition's base will lead to no plausible story.

I think using Russia or Belarus as examples is completely incorrect. And all this questioning has only solidified how secure elections in the US are.

Take GA for example. A large percentage of the election officials are Trump supporters. I don't know about post coup attempt, but leading up they said they would still vote for Trump again even after he started putting them in danger with his fraud nonsense.

Finally, if someone wants to 'rig' an election, the path is not directly through changing votes, it's through social engineering. That's what the Russia investigation was about in 2016, and what Trump attempted here through all the lies both leading up to and post election.

Uh, the Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions. It turned up multiple cases of collusion with russian operatives. They did not, however find enough evidence that there was an overall conspiracy to collude or that Trump had any clue what was going on in the larger scope.

I think you're replying to what you assumed matwood was going to say about the Russia investigation, rather than what matwood actually said.

> Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions

The comment I responded to mentioned elections in Russia, unrelated to Russian election interference in 2016.

And ... who knows, maybe Putin really won maybe not. After all he systematically crushes any real opposition.

The problem in Russia, the problem in all of these questions is the huge imbalance of power. Russia an Belarus is an autocracy. (Yes, it's again context, but using the word context is uselessly too broad, doesn't have explanatory power.)

So Trump claims they are persecuted, we can look at the balance of power. Oh, he's the sitting president. Well, then it's very-very-very unlikely that he's silenced, and it's more likely that he's trying to overextend his power, and he's simply facing pushback from various other social/democratic/other institutions.

When Twitter banned the SciHub account because it broke their Counterfeit policy people noted that in this case it was likely Twitter using its power too much to please Elsevier/India.

The termination of processing in Crimea by Visa and MasterCard was actually a big deal. It came out of nowhere. One morning ATMs and terminals in shops just stopped working and everybody was left with maybe some cash and a bunch of useless cards. It was not a joke. I was making trips to the nearest working ATM in Russia with like 15 credit cads of our friends and relatives with scribbled pin-codes - a 6-7 hour drive one way, often only to find that we need to drive further to find a not yet emptied ATM. And then returning with a bag of cash.

And then the same winter Ukraine cut electricity and water supply. I remember doing homework with kids by a candle light, wearing warm jackets inside because heating didn't work. Fun times. I don't know how this all was supposed to turn people of Crimea back to Ukraine and who thought it was a good idea. I think it worked the opposite way and turned a lot of locals into supporters of the annexation.

Anyway, I'd say the most upsetting result of the sanctions is almost total absence of large international and Russian business in Crimea. It makes everything very expensive. It's like an additional tax on everything. For example, no large Russian bank has a local branch. There are only few small local banks and as a result it is really hard to get a business loan or mortgage, and the rates are bad. There are almost no stores of big food chains, and it means the food is more expensive than in mainland Russia; there are no McDonalds, no Burger King or Starbucks; you cannot receive an international delivery and you have to pay to one of the many proxy services that re-send packages if you want to receive a package from Amazon; no international flights which means you always need to buy a flight to Moscow first; etc.

Looks like your real problem is that the new overlords actually give a shit about the people. They don't invest in anything unless it is strategically valuable infrastructure.

Well, almost. The problem is that _nobody_ gives a shit about the people. The old overlords demonstrated how much they care by cutting off the power and water supply. The new overlords are not interested in taking more risks to continue what they started. The international community has a very little clue about anything, a strong opinion about everything, and not enough time and attention to give shit about the people.

But this GitHub announcement gives a hope that someone somewhere gives a shit about the problems of real people and that the sanctions will eventually end one way or another.

Why no Russian businesses? I can understand blaming the West and Ukraine for their boycotts, but how come Russia gets a pass for screwing you over as well?

Yeah, Russia is getting a lot of criticism for this from locals, but nothing changes. The reason is that any large russian business is an international business. They are either a publicly trading company, or have a headquarter in Europe, or partially owned by an international company. For them getting sanctioned would mean multi-millions losses, losing investors, suppliers, and much more. Even the largest state-owned Russian bank cannot afford to open a branch in Crimea because (as they have publicly commented) this will result in mass loss of their investors and will crash their stock price.

VPN with kill switch on all devices and an address in mainland Russia in github profile. I know quite a few people who live in Crimea and do contract work for US companies, who are not disclosing their actual location to their employers.

For most of us this is not option for personal reasons. Old parents who will not move, kids going to school here, etc. Not to mention that I don't have any relatives or friends in Ukraine and moving there would require to cut all personal and business relationships.

I wonder if it is possible to mount a noise-cancelling device directly on the source of noise, for example, on a circular saw? The frequency of sound waves from a particular tool is pretty predictable and I can imagine a device with a mic or a vibrometer and speakers that clips directly to a tool and suppresses most of noise from this particular source.

I've been using ANC headphones since I started woodworking in the garage and it works for me but not for my neighbours. Soundproofing the garage is difficult and not always possible (not when the door is open anyway), so I would pay top dollar for something like this.

It's a soundfield problem. This only works for wavelengths that are larger than the size of the emitters and the distance between them. And even then it only works well if you can get the emission pattern of your cancelling speaker exactly the same as the source.

So, assuming you had a magical beamforming speaker array around your circular saw, you'd still only be able to cancel frequencies around under 1kHz, because there's no way to get the thing in phase above that.

This is why noise-canceling earphones have much better active cancellation at high frequencies than headphones, which rely more on passive isolation until lower frequencies. They're smaller.

theoretically, if the saw has constant RPM then just playing back inverted recording loudly would do it. You just need to match them in phase :)

Yes I've had a similar idea with a condo neighbor with loud bass, it must be possible to have some attachment you put on the wall to cancel it out. That would sell well