141–150 of 222 posts
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No, I think you're conflating when I'm specifically talking about just getting better service. See there's another slight disconnect with service in Russia versus service in the US. You ever have someone go out of their way to make something easier or better for you as part of their job? Go the extra mile? That's not really the status quo in Russia. You goof up your registration form at the post office (one mistake o…
> You goof up your registration form at the post office (one mistake on the 4th page of a 10 page document)? Guess who's filling it out again, even if the office worker has white out handy. That's pretty much my experience in most government offices in the US, too. > When people are talking about greasing the wheel, it's getting access to systems they otherwise don't have. Paying privately to the official for access…
To use a restaurant analogy, tipping the bartender to get quicker service is "greasing the wheels" but tipping the bartender to get drinks "on the house" or to get an exclusive event without paying the bar owner - that would be bribery.
Yandex is doing quite some interesting things, I think they don't get enough love from HN.
Never seen any non-russian yandex user myself.
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I don't think you can lump Russia and China together. China is truly "on lower moral/ethical grounds". I can't trust any country that has such pervasive censorship policy and such blatantly protectionist policies as China. Frankly I trust the Russian government as much as I trust the US government or as much as I trust my government (the Mexican government). I don't think I would feel safe living in China! I wouldn't…
What about a country which has one forth of the China population which has institutional rules about the police being able to seize the money you carry, your money on cards you carry and your car without even charging you with an offense, where 6% of the black population is in jail, and 1% of the total population, and where you can be routinely shot dead if you are mentally disabled or if you play poker at home or ac…
Not related with the migration itself but I tried to use yandex and its mailing service a couple of years ago when attempting to become google independent but it didn´t work well with spanish queries so I eventually went back to google. But I recall that yandex mail was really nice.
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For starters it's not very crowded on usernames, so I got to use my 'namelastname' as username, also I don't think I've seen any ads so far. Another aspect of the service I really like, is that it has less magic than Gmail. I always get email labeled wrong in Gmail. At first I tried to label them properly and expected Google to get them right over time, now I don't bother. I would definitely pay for this service if t…
> Another aspect of the service I really like, is that it has less magic than Gmail. I always get email labeled wrong in Gmail. At first I tried to label them properly and expected Google to get them right over time, now I don't bother. While I never tried yandex's email, I do share the impression that gmail is too magical and shouldn't be labelling my emails outside of the explicitly rules that i have set. > To be f…
Like invading and annexing their neighbours?
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zoho offers free custom domain email hosting. It's also surprisingly good, the UI/integration between the pieces is very well done.
Yandex offers unlimited users (up to 1000, then you have to contact them and I guess they will allow more) and claims unlimited storage, zoho free tier is 25 users and 5 GB storage/user.
I tried Zoho last year after hearing multiple recommendations and it was nothing but problems with spam coming in and my outbound emails being incorrectly marked as spam. I even had SPF + DKIM tested and working from the start! Not sure I would try them again after that experience.
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> You goof up your registration form at the post office (one mistake on the 4th page of a 10 page document)? Guess who's filling it out again, even if the office worker has white out handy. That's pretty much my experience in most government offices in the US, too. > When people are talking about greasing the wheel, it's getting access to systems they otherwise don't have. Paying privately to the official for access…
The implied difference is that in bribery you're asking the official to do something that they must not do, to have him act against his employer. To use a restaurant analogy, tipping the bartender to get quicker service is "greasing the wheels" but tipping the bartender to get drinks "on the house" or to get an exclusive event without paying the bar owner - that would be bribery.
That's not the usual definition of "bribery" (though generally it is true of all bribery, including the type you are trying to distinguish, since taking extra personal pay for service is usually formally prohibited, even in places where it isn't effectively enforced, so even what you try to distinguish as "greasing the wheels" as distinct from "bribery" is asking the official to do something that they must not do, and acting against the employer.)
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Well, it's kind of safe for their citizens too, if they don't get involved in the things that get them killed, as those are not random things. But civil rights aside, online surveillance there is not yet at the level of reading everyone's emails and while they really want to do that they have a hard time implementing something like this for various reasons. It's definitely safer to use those online services, than the…
How do you know that? Russia doesnt publish what Russian intelligence is doing. They also don't have a Snowden who leaked almost all their secrets. That we did is only reason you can make thag comparison. I'd love to see an equivalent dunp for Russia to do the comparison. ;)