The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data • Hacker News Board

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#21

Post by malaya_zemlya » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

gumballindie wrote: post #2

Funny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.

It's all relative. By western standards, Yandex is a mid-cap company, but whereas US has FAANG+, Russia has just Yandex and maybe VK/Mail.ru

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#22

Post by martinsnow » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:42 AM UTC

Many of the images seems to be broken in the article for me.

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#23

Post by bigbacaloa » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:47 AM UTC

doubelstandard wrote: post #10

Russia: tight control of user data US and EU: guaranteeing user privacy

[flagged]

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#24

Post by Alifatisk » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:47 AM UTC

GaggiX wrote: post #18

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #13

>Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works. If you don’t want me to use the Russia…

The thing I found ridiculous about Google today is the image reverse search, unusable, but I have an extension to use the previous one before Google Lens was a thing.

What’s the name of the extension? Didn’t know you could use the old Google images.

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#25

Post by malaya_zemlya » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:48 AM UTC

kkfdkerpoe wrote: post #3

gumballindie wrote: post #2

Funny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.

Yes, lots of giants for a country with GDP lower than that of Italy. Perhaps they refer to the bellies of the oligarchy that owns the companies.

Is that surprising for a resource oriented economy? Aramco (Saudi Oil) is the second biggest company in the world, yet GDP of Saudi Arabia is about that of Poland

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#26

Post by KoftaBob » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:48 AM UTC

tenpies wrote: post #11

gumballindie wrote: post #2

Funny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.

Also Western billionaire versus Russian oligarch - even if the source of wealth is virtually identical and their political power probably higher in the West.

I've wondered that too, and from what I can understand, the distinction is that the Russian Oligarchs don't just have political influence, their wealth itself was a result of political connections with the ruling elites from the start.

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#27

Post by DoItToMe81 » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

A tech company has ties to its native government and uses user data for its own corrupt ends? Shock of the century.

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#28

Post by tasogare » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #7

gumballindie wrote: post #2

Funny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.

They are giants in the local market, one where making it big practically requires support from the highest level of government. So “Russian [x] giant” really means “Putin’s favored [x] company”.

So quite similar to the US where oligarchs (oups, billionaires) are invited at the White House and companies provide algorithmic censorship favoring a particular political camp (obvious with Twitter before its recent purchase, YouTube actions against public free discourse on covid, Google removing pages related to a certain laptop, etc.)

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#29

Post by Dah00n » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

boeingUH60 wrote: post #20

tenpies wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Western billionaire versus Russian oligarch - even if the source of wealth is virtually identical and their political power probably higher in the West.

"Oligarchs" refer to underground Russian businessmen that cheaply bought up state assets after the USSR collapsed and sold it for exceedingly higher sums later. It's a blasphemy to capitalism to conflate those bandits with Western entrepreneurs that founded and built their own companies from scratch, even though they have their own set of issues.

Is it really? I'm positive most would very likely do the same if (when) they get a chance at a collapse.

Re: The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data

#30

Post by sgt » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

kkfdkerpoe wrote: post #3

gumballindie wrote: post #2

Funny how news loves to refer to russian companies as "giants". Russian oil "giant", search "giant", etc. Just an amusing fact.

Yes, lots of giants for a country with GDP lower than that of Italy. Perhaps they refer to the bellies of the oligarchy that owns the companies.

I think the frequent comparisons of GDP leads the West to heavily underestimate Russia.

While GDP may be lower than Italy and per capita is weak, a nation like Russia can probably accomplish an order of magnitude more large scale projects, and also sustain a certain economy climate for much much longer than we think.

So don't underestimate Russia, even though we'd like to think they're soon running out of steam to continue the war in Ukraine.