Imaguru was started by United States Agency for International Development.
The Minsk site has some corporate tenants.
Opposition groups held some meetings in the space.
I'm sure this is why Belarus gov shut it down.
Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
211–220 of 256 posts
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You like many is missing Turkey in your picture. There is a lot of points to discuss. I'll just point that the Azerbaijan airspace in the war zone was patrolled by Turkish F-16s, so Armenia couldn't really fly anything there to attack the drones. Given Turkish interest in the Black Sea area happenings, their support for Georgia leading to 2008, direct support for Azerbaijan in 2020, kicking Russian butt in Syria and…
Turkey is not going to fight the Russian airforce in the Donbass which is bolstered by the most advanced IADS and modern jets with F-16s. It would be a horribly bad idea.
Turkey never fought Russia in Syria. They fought Assad's government with some help from Russian irregulars, even then they got stalled and recently had losses. Russia was however unwilling to escalate and there were no air battles, for example.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#213Let's condemn Russia always always always but let's look away from the US trying to create vassal states in Europe to antagonize Russia. It's like hearing the brain-dead old George Bush: United States/West good, Russia bad, very bad. Let's see how many NGOs and US spies have been working to undermine Belarus sovereignty. Even in Syria American politicians accepted the fact that US supported directy terrorists who wan…
> techcrunch is a mouthpiece of the US based interests. I haven't heard this before, where are you getting this claim from?
at the very least, the funders of Imaguru is the US State Department
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> all Russian society is living in a hateful state Slurs like that will get you banned here, regardless of which country you have a problem with. No more of this on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
A slur it is, but I have yet to see a more profound understanding of state of the country. A regime that masterfully plays hate, both from country's own century long social self-immolation, and its own spin. The crux of the issue is very much that Kremlin plays, and direct this bottomless reservoir of insecurity, and anger, but even without it, the country's tragic fate through whole modern history will keep moving i…
>I telling people again, and again that in 1999 it were people in their completely free will, and sane mind who decided to elect a KGB official as a president.
Did you know the 1st George Bush used to run the US Central Intelligence Agency?
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Some TB2 in Azerbaijan were operated by Turkey essentially, but I take your point.
TB2 may be able to launch from improvised positions. But it cannot land and resupply there. The weak point still exists.
The elephant in the room is also that the TB2s will get shot down by the Russian airforce. In Azerbaijan this did not happen because Turkey was willing to protect Azerbaijani airspace and the Armenian airforce is weak. In Ukraine the roles are reversed.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> all Russian society is living in a hateful state Slurs like that will get you banned here, regardless of which country you have a problem with. No more of this on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
A slur it is, but I have yet to see a more profound understanding of state of the country. A regime that masterfully plays hate, both from country's own century long social self-immolation, and its own spin. The crux of the issue is very much that Kremlin plays, and direct this bottomless reservoir of insecurity, and anger, but even without it, the country's tragic fate through whole modern history will keep moving i…
Putin was elected because Yeltsin had ruined the country beforethen and he was the only credible alternative as it was clear the US would never allow the Communists or Socialists to take power. So the only choices left were Yeltsin Yeltsin 2, and Putin. People understandanly chose Putin as Yeltsin's policies were just done ruining millions of lives.
It has nothing to do with hate. It has to do with the fact that Russia was in ruins, and that Putin was the only option that wasn't going to be interfered against again. So people voted for Putin. You probably would have done the same.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Libya didn't work out. And if the West had succeeded in Syria, the groups that would have taken control would have been much worse than Assad (though there's the ever so tiny chance that there could have been an independent Kurdistan, so that would have been a silver lining I guess?)
Look at the list I provided. There are dozens and dozens of successful cases and a handful of failed ones. The failed ones are recent which means the outcome has the potential to change in time. Would an 80% success rate over the last hundred years change your perspective?
>"Would an 80% success rate over the last hundred years change your perspective?"
People who live in those places rightfully do not give a flying fuck about westerner's perspective. They care about being killed, maimed, displaced, robbed of the source of income etc. etc.
I can only imagine what would happen if you stood in front of them and tried to explain your stats.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
You like many is missing Turkey in your picture. There is a lot of points to discuss. I'll just point that the Azerbaijan airspace in the war zone was patrolled by Turkish F-16s, so Armenia couldn't really fly anything there to attack the drones. Given Turkish interest in the Black Sea area happenings, their support for Georgia leading to 2008, direct support for Azerbaijan in 2020, kicking Russian butt in Syria and…
Turkey is not going to fight the Russian airforce in the Donbass which is bolstered by the most advanced IADS and modern jets with F-16s. It would be a horribly bad idea. Turkey never fought Russia in Syria. They fought Assad's government with some help from Russian irregulars, even then they got stalled and recently had losses. Russia was however unwilling to escalate and there were no air battles, for example.
>most advanced IADS
that is the key point. Turkey mastered how to use drones to kill Pantsir-S1 in Syria, and immediately applied that in Libya and Azerbaijan with great success. Pantsir-S1 - the first were brought to Donbass in August 2014 with the tank battalions which hit near Ilovaysk - is what caused Ukraine to stop using air force in Donbass. With Pantsir-S1 advantage removed, the tank-based Russian forces there would become much easy to deal with for Ukrainian air force and especially for the high-precision munition what is used from the Turkish drones.
>modern jets
Russia is really far from sending airforce there, while Ukraine doesn't have much barriers for allowing the F-16 to fight there - as result the F-16s will appear there earlier thus putting Russia in the position of the one escalating conflict if Russia decides to bring the airforce. And if Russia does decide to send the planes in the outcome is far from obvious- while F-16 is older and worse in direct dogfight than the modern Russian planes it isn't that important as for the last 40 years USSR/Russian planes were mostly shot down from stand-off distance where NATO weaponry and situation awareness is better.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like an excellent read. Will definitely get my hands on a copy. I don't know what it is about East European authors' ability to explore the human condition with exacting clarity. Anyway, thanks for sharing.
They have a good command of language in general, and especially when it comes to expression. In Slavic languages, there are often a lot of words that have the exact same meaning (compared to English or romance languages), but you have to learn individually how to use the right one to capture the moment best for your situation. Also, at least for the Slavic language that I speak (not a native speaker), it is clean, di…
There's morphological complexity and then there's semantic one. I grew up speaking one of Turkic and one of Slavic languages. Morphology-wise, both of those are massively more complicated as compared to English. But English is way more analytically powerful/flexible. It allows for constructions and frame of mind that are not quite possible in non-analytic languages. For even more dramatic example, consider math. The latter has barely any morphology to speak of. But its expressive flexibility is legendary if not unbeatable. Math famously allows for generalizations that simply do not exist in nature, just because reason/analysis allows for it.
It's also a matter of culture. For example, writing overly long sentences in passive voice in Russian is encouraged if not considered a mark of sophisticated writing whereas in English it's a massive faux-pas. Reading English I get the sense that meaning takes precedence over syntactic complexity. I can see why English might come off as, uhh, simple if one is used to bloated prose and reading between the lines. In math every word and sentence matters. I sense English strives for that as well.
Besides, English handles morphological complexity by way of syntax and massive semantic overloading of words.
Aside from logically vivid constructions and phrases, as a nonnonative speaker of English, I really like secondary/n-ary meaning to simple/common/"little" words that we are typically not taught as ESL (or EnglishAsNthLanguage). For example, I was delighted to discover "we made it" = "we are successful", "we made here on time" = "we got here on time", "we are making good time" = "we are traveling faster than expected" etc. I also love English constructions like "it's pretty ugly", "it's little too much" etc :) Basically, anything in English that doesn't have 1-1 equivalent in Slavic/Turkic languages immediately perks up my ears/eyes. Thankfully, there's a ton of that in English.
Re: Belarusian regime’s thugs shut down Imaguru, the country’s key startup hub
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Mine has 900 and this is my 3rd or 4th. I'm as western european as possible (literally living in the most western country in europe). My last 5 or so years, most of my social circle has been Ukranian, Belarussian and Russian people. My neighbour here in Portugal is Ukrainian and my family knows her for over 20 or so years. 95%+ of shit I hear about these countries is from US/Western europeans that know little more th…
@odshoifsdhfs: Well, I hate to quibble, but it's actually 'Belarusian' (just one 's', you see). I've lived in Western Europe (UK) nearly all my life and I'm afraid I disagree with you fundamentally: '95%' of the people in 'the West' are quite indifferent to the broader region of Eastern Europe, but never in my life have I encountered the kinds of chauvinistic attitudes even approaching those I encountered from Russians. To give you an example: 'govori po-chelovecheski' (in Russian - literally 'speak like a human being') -- can you believe this s**t? Also 'US/Western Europeans' aren't living in tinpot dictatorships with aspirations to annex territories from their neighbours -- a slight, but important difference, which to my mind excuses any ignorance of the region and its politics.