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

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

#51

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Xelbair wrote: post #44
davikr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like capitalism to me.

Kinda, it's basically capitalism with a lot of insider trading, where your connections mattered more than what you did. t. someone from country which underwent that.

Luxe Lifestyle was a recently-formed company with no staff. It was awarded £25 to buy protective equipment for Covid.

The very next day, on April 29, DHSC bought another 200 million face masks, this time contracting to pay £252.5 million to Ayanda Capital, a Tory party-linked firm also bumped into the VIP lane despite having no previous PPE experience. It is an investment company specialising in currency trading, offshore property and private equity.

To this day, no-one has been charged with any crime.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ppe-procurement-scandal-u...

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

#52

Post by skilled »

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…

I challenge you to spend a day searching with Bing or DDG and then come back with the same opinion.

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

#53

Post by sva_ »

kypro wrote: post #31
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…

I wrote a comment a few years back how I was using Yandex quite a bit at the time because there are things I'm simply unable to find on Google – sites like sci-hub for example. Today though I find myself using it daily. The results are far from perfect, but I've never suspected them to be randomly hiding or suppressing search results like many of the popular Western alternatives. I don't use image search much, but ye…

> sites like sci-hub for example

To be fair, that is not Google's fault.

It always cracks me up that when you see the DMCA note on the bottom and you click on it, you get to see the hosts anyways:

https://lumendatabase.org/notices/26024315

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

#54

Post by azangru »

londons_explore wrote: post #42
throw-ru-938 wrote: post #17

Context: Yandex is in the news right now because a couple of days ago its cofounder and former CEO Arkady Volozh was caught trying to hide his Russian past [0], and today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war [1], almost 1.5 years after the full-scale invasion began. [0] https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-e... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh..…

> today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war Would you issue such a statement in his position? Think carefully. If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. If you do, your family back home might be at risk, and you will probably never be able to visit them again. Personally, I cannot in good faith demand anyone condemn the war, if to do so, they are putting fami…

> If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name.

Do Twitter crowds actually do that? Do they keep track of anyone more or less prominent, and write in their comments "Have you spoken out against the war yet?" "I haven't seen you denounce the war"?

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

#55

Post by denton-scratch »

> but they’re still going to be very unique and therefore uniquely identifying (likely more so than before because of the entropy the hashing algorithm adds).

Surely hashing something can't add entropy? Assuming the hash output is smaller than its input, in the general case I'd expect the hash to have less entropy than its input.

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

#56

Post by gumballindie »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #8
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 as far as Russia is concerned...Yandex is the biggest tech company there. Gazprom is a Russian gas giant, Rosneft is an oil giant, etc..

Yeah but that term is just you know comical. “Giants”. As if meant to inflate one’s ego, cover insecurity, and project power, like those tom and jerry cartoon episodes where they’d call in their giant friends to save the day. It amuses me every time.

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

#58

Post by helge9210 »

londons_explore wrote: post #42
throw-ru-938 wrote: post #17

Context: Yandex is in the news right now because a couple of days ago its cofounder and former CEO Arkady Volozh was caught trying to hide his Russian past [0], and today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war [1], almost 1.5 years after the full-scale invasion began. [0] https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-e... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh..…

> today he finally issued a public statement condemning the war Would you issue such a statement in his position? Think carefully. If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. If you do, your family back home might be at risk, and you will probably never be able to visit them again. Personally, I cannot in good faith demand anyone condemn the war, if to do so, they are putting fami…

> I cannot in good faith demand

While some people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Makukh ) sacrificed their lives in protest of Soviet Russia invasion into Czechoslovakia, timely public statement is the least he could do.

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

#59

Post by 37074177throw »

hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #47
KoftaBob wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct. The "America bad" crowd is so eager to say they're all the same that they intentionally look away from any nuance.

American (immigrant) here who happens to think this is still the very best country all things considered. Disappointed in how things have declined over the past 40 years I’ve been here but still thank God for America as far I am concerned.

Not all American super wealthy are oligarch but some are very close to the mark. Borderline cases that are concerning: Elon Musk is an American oligarch. Bill Gates is an American oligarch.

Also can someone dump 4Gs of Google’s codebase somewhere?

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

#60

Post by VincentEvans »

doubelstandard wrote: post #9

[flagged]

As russian, when I encounter people comparing the state of media in Russia to the worst excesses of government influence in media in US like they are comparable - I think to myself “what a bunch of fucking idiots”.

It’s the same ignorant halfwit crowd that compares minor inconvenience to Holocaust, having to follow an HOA rule to Stalin’s repressions, and anyone telling them what they don’t like to Hitler.

I live in US now and I complain periodically about various imperfect, unfair, annoying things that are associated with any society. Humans suck. They are selfish and dishonest in large proportions, some of the time. But what is happening right now in Russia has brought back into focus for me and reminded me just how much better the West is. Fucking treasure it while you have it.

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