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Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

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Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Anti-Drone strategy in Nagorno Karabakh would have been airstrikes. But the rules of engagement were such that this was not doable. Beyond that, actual Russia support was very limited as punishment for Armenia's reorientation. If this was a full-scale war then the skies would have been full of Su-35s swatting out the TB2s and killing drone operators.

The key to small drone efficiency is that they don't need big airfields which can be bombed. Instead the attacking force will be hard pressed finding hundred separate drone teams hiding in bushes, and forests on the frontline, while flying over enemy AA themselves.

There will be no enemy AA. There will be no enemy air force. You do not understand the dynamics of this conflict. Ukrainian AA is entirely inadequate and it's airforce is a joke to Russia.

Beyond that, these drones are satellite-guided. You can't control them from bushes and forests. The Bayraktar TB2 that did the vast majority of the damage in Azerbaijan needs to take-off from an actual airfield, too.

What you might be referring to are loitering munitions. Their issue is that they have pretty dumb guidance, so all they are good at is going to predetermined GPS coordinate or homing on radar. The solution is to overrun their positions and use your airforce to shoot them down if they do take-off. They are very slow. It can be expensive to shoot them down but you only have to do so until you overrun their 60km or so range, and for the things in the danger zone you only have to use mobile assets that cannot be targeted via GPS.

In small numbers and without actual drones to help with jamming these loitering munitions are also quite vulnerable to AAA.

There are some long-range loitering munitions, like the IAI Harop. However they can only do radar-seeking missions without a base station and actually do need a base. Additionally munitions like the Harop have a very large radar cross section from anything but the frontal aspect and are thus very vulnerable to detection by modern aircraft radar.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how every time Ukraine is mentioned in a thread, a poster (from Mukhosransk or some such place) suddenly appears to tell everyone about the virtues of living in an authoritarian petrostate.

Well, to be fair, @caskstrength has had his account for 12 months already (karma: 150). Yours has only been created for 8 months (karma: 16).

Hey @andonceagain (created 1 hour ago, karma: 5), you didn't answer to my reply

'Thanks @andonceagain (created 29mins ago, karma: 2). I always wondered is the view of the Laptev Sea as depressing as they say?'

Don't be rude - I'm fascinated to know more about the subarctic regions of a wannabe superpower. You can reply from your real account: no shame in it.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#193
post #61
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See EPAM with 2,500 employees in Belarus. Do you know of any other non-government entity with that amount of workers?

Epam has far few workers left in Belarus now. This past summer they temporarily expatriated a significant percentage of the company. I manage about 40 engineers from EPAM. Before the troubles, 5 were in ukraine and one in Russia (but he was supposed to move to Minsk). Now most of my team is working from Ukraine or Russia. A few choose to take on-site gigs in Netherlands and were replaced with more Belarussians in Ukr…

What is a TAM, in this context ? It's clear this is some administrative person, but not whether this is law enforcement or a representative.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key to small drone efficiency is that they don't need big airfields which can be bombed. Instead the attacking force will be hard pressed finding hundred separate drone teams hiding in bushes, and forests on the frontline, while flying over enemy AA themselves.

There will be no enemy AA. There will be no enemy air force. You do not understand the dynamics of this conflict. Ukrainian AA is entirely inadequate and it's airforce is a joke to Russia. Beyond that, these drones are satellite-guided. You can't control them from bushes and forests. The Bayraktar TB2 that did the vast majority of the damage in Azerbaijan needs to take-off from an actual airfield, too. What you might…

TB2 on sale has no satellite link.

TB2 Video is line of sight gigahertz link. Control, and telemetry UHF which can get to 100km.

TB2 can launch from improvised strips with substantial payloads.

A mobile catapult launch adapter was once advertised

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#195
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the history in those places, new Belarus will immediately try to join EU and NATO. That is an option which Russia will try to prevent. As history shows there are some windows of opportunity for the things to go either way. It seems that the major escalation is coming in Donbass - Ukraine has beefed up the forces, and in particular brought in the Turkish drones which (being very successful against Russian m…

The important thing about drone warfare campaigns is that they are only successful if the enemy is unwilling to challenge your air supremacy over your own territory. This is the case in Ukraine right now and in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Russia is unwilling, right now, to challenge all of Ukrainian airspace, and Armenia/Russia was unwilling to challenge Azerbaijani airspace. The moment this change is when the dro…

It's strange that any of this is up for discussion. If Russia wants Ukraine, they're going to take it. Ukraine has no ability to fight with Russia. NATO isn't going to do anything directly (they'll push some weapons into Ukraine, that's it).

What's going to happen is that Russia will slice Ukraine at the Dnieper River and also take all of Ukraine's Black Sea territory. That will include taking Odsesa and Kharkiv. By taking the territory south of Odesa, they'll get a large border with Moldova, and then they'll annex Moldova at some point or otherwise entirely control it as a puppet.

There is no scenario where this doesn't happen. When Putin took Crimea, taking the rest of Ukraine's coastal waters was an obvious and inevitable step. The only thing left is timing, whenever Putin decides an ideal time to do it is.

There's nothing the West can do to Russia at this point to stop any of this and Putin knows that. No nation in the West is going to war with Russia over these lands.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List of countries where "the West" organized a coup against a "corrupt murderer dictator" to establish "democratic elected government": - Ukraine - Syria - Libya - Georgia - Iraq - Iran - Afghanistan - Yugoslavia - Venezuela - Cuba - ex-Yugoslavia - Chile - ... All those countries were devastated by the "democratization". I would like to see one example where that went good for the local population in general and whe…

What about Poland, the Baltic States, Czechia and Slovakia, Hungary? Also devastated? I’m sure we’d do much better with our friends in Moscow calling the shots.

Poland is currently circling the drain in toilet. The regime that gained power in 2015 did so with the help of Russia* and is covertly pro-Russian (watch their actions, not their words). It's no longer a democracy but an informational autocracy - like Venezuela, Russia, Ecuador, Peru, Malaysia, Hungary.

* Marek Falenta imported coal from Russia and owes A LOT of money to Russian raw resource companies. The restaurants where the illegal wiretapping took place were set up by Russian raw resource companies.

  * "Obcym Alfabetem - Jak ludzie Kremla i PiS zagrali podsłuchami" (Grzegorz Rzeczkowski)
  * "Macierewicz i jego tajemnice" (Tomasz Piątek)
  * "Rydzyk i Przyjaciele" (Tomasz Piątek)
  * https://oko.press/pis-wciaz-rzadzi-bo-zyjemy-w-informacyjnej-autokracji/ (Anna Mierzyńska)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFydXPLCpL8

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#197
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not while their nukes still work. We had all this discussion in the 1960s, and the underlying reality of that potential war has not changed. The "border area" has got a lot more chaotic - Vienna is definitely the West, and Minsk definitely not, but it's less clear how aligned everywhere in the middle is. But an actual war would obliterate both sides.

> But an actual war would obliterate both sides. No, it wouldn't. Europe 560M people, and the world's biggest economy as a EU bloc. Russia 139M people with only 20M of military age, of which 1/3 fares from Caucasus, and other less than loyal ethnic republics. A Russian first strike on NATO block will take down 40M-50M at maximum even if Russia will only target large population centres. The retaliation busts Moscow —…

> Europe 560M people, and the world's biggest economy as a EU bloc

The US has a far larger economy than the EU, there is now roughly a $7 trillion gap there (IMF estimates for 2021 is the US economy at $22.6 trillion; the EU will be around $15 trillion). The US economy is almost 50% larger than the EU economy.

China in 2021 will formally surpass the EU in nominal GDP size. It's fair to say it already has. IMF estimates peg it at over $16.6 trillion for 2021 and that's probably an undercount given how much economic market share they've taken from the rest of the world during Covid (eg in manufacturing and exports).

The US and China will continue to put economic distance between themselves and the EU; the EU will fall further and further behind. This trend has been underway for near 15 years now. Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Netherlands etc have all suffered intense net economic stagnation since roughly 2007-2008, and that was prior to Covid.

Did you know that even prior to Covid, Sweden's economy was smaller inflation adjusted for 2019 than it was in 2008? The same is true of Germany and the others as well.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#198
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-More likely, rules will toughen up. The prime purpose of NATO is deterrence; no-one wants to be forced into a shooting war - hence I expect NATO to be very wary of accepting a member which may invoke article 5 pretty much the moment the accession ceremony is over. The Ukraine would have a much easier time getting into NATO if relations with Russia were cordial; however, as the mere act of exercising their sovereignt…

> The prime purpose of NATO is deterrence There is no point of deterrence when if Ukraine is gone, and you have Russian tanks in Vienna in one week, Munich the other, and the rest of Europe in a month.

You have no concept of what it takes to project power

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#199
post #176
post #17

Shake that boat, provoke Kremlin, arm the populace, make Kremlin bleed, and go broke. The longer the Russia will be dragged into this war, the deeper Putinisms' grave will be, and the less is the chance of Russia ever growing big enough to threaten Europe. I am totally for dragging Russia into a bloody war.

> I am totally for dragging Russia into a bloody war. What? Even in the hellish flamewar of this thread, that stands out as beyond the pale. I appreciate your substantive comments but you can't keep breaking the site guidelines like this. Please stop it so we don't have to ban you again. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892864 . https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthrea…

Yep, Have to admit. I totally lost my nerve here.

Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub

#200
post #193
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epam has far few workers left in Belarus now. This past summer they temporarily expatriated a significant percentage of the company. I manage about 40 engineers from EPAM. Before the troubles, 5 were in ukraine and one in Russia (but he was supposed to move to Minsk). Now most of my team is working from Ukraine or Russia. A few choose to take on-site gigs in Netherlands and were replaced with more Belarussians in Ukr…

What is a TAM, in this context ? It's clear this is some administrative person, but not whether this is law enforcement or a representative.

"Technical Account Manager". An official point of contact for a customer with a vendor, often responsible for some amount of tech support as well as customer-relation management.
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