David J. Shourabi Porcel

a diplomatic treaty of non-aggression

It was not merely a non-aggression treaty; in fact, it also divided much of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet “spheres of influence” and set the stage for the Soviet invasions of Finland and eastern Poland a mere three months and less than a month after signing the treaty, respectively, with additional provisions for many more countries and regions. In short, aggression was very much part of the treaty, despite its name. As mentioned in the Wikipedia article on it:

[t]here was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany’s defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, so as to influence Lithuania. According to the protocol, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet “spheres of influence”. In the north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its “political rearrangement”: the areas east of the Pisa, Narew, Vistula, and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to the Soviet Union. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius, which was part of Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union’s actions towards Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. As a result, Bessarabia as well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by the Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union.

You write that:

[…] tankies will consider it either ignorant or bad faith to bring up the Ribbentrop Pact to pretend it was anything more than realpolitik compromise resulting from the Western powers wanting the two countries to destroy each other.

First, it is not and was not at the time clear that the entire West wanted the Soviet Union and the Third Reich to wear each other out; instead, it was a Soviet belief, as you quote yourself:

The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes.

That belief was questionable. The fact is that the West allied with the Soviet Union and supported it, through Lend-Lease and other means, after it was betrayed by the Third Reich. Of course, hindsight is hindsight, and Soviet leadership did have reasons to believe the West wanted them to fight against the Third Reich, but their assessment was fatally flawed and led to much suffering, not least amongst their own citizenry.

Second, you ignore Soviet agency and deflect Soviet responsibility to the West when you describe the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as “realpolitik compromise resulting from the Western powers wanting the two countries to destroy each other”. That is akin to saying “look what you made me do”, edition “ally with Hitler”. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact did not “result” from anything; the Soviet Union conceived that treaty, including its infamous Secret Protocol, as much as the Third Reich did.

Finally, you write that:

tankies will probably disagree when someone claims the country that invaded the USSR was a ‘friend’ […]

and that:

[…] the USSR didn’t want to be friends with […]

Strictly speaking, states cannot be friends; only people. Therefore, the comments by @[email protected] and @[email protected] must be understood figuratively.

Figuratively, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich may be described to have been “friends” up until the Nazi betrayal in 1941. After all, the Soviet Union agreed to a treaty that benefited the Third Reich. In fact, even the non-aggression part of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact benefited the Third Reich, because it freed up German resources and enabled the Western Blitz. It could be argued that Soviet leadership intended to let the Third Reich and the West wear each other out.

Your comment has been downvoted three times as I write this even though the pact between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich you refer to did exist. That’s an impressive word-to-tankie-anger ratio you managed there. Good job!

Germany, too, is poised to follow suit at the upcoming elections in February.

Git is overrated.

That’s interesting to read; I wasn’t even aware of the existence of Darcs — or any other alternative to git supposedly worth considering, for that matter. Would you elaborate on it?

On the one hand, one Raspberry Pi would not really suffice. As @[email protected] argued, you would need legitimate email addresses, which would require either circumventing the antibot measures of providers like Google or setting up your own network of domains and email servers. Besides that, GitHub would (hopefully) notice the barrage of API requests from the same network. To avoid that and make your API requests seem legitimate, you would need infrastructure to spread your requests in time and across networks. You would either build and maintain that infrastructure yourself –which would be expensive for a single star-boosting operation– or, well, pay for the service. That’s why these things exist.

On the other hand, although bad programmers might use these services to star-boost their otherwise mediocre code, as you suggest, there are other –at least conceivable, if not yet proven– use cases, such as:

• the promotion of less secure software as part of supply chain attacks, with organizations sticking to vulnerable libraries or frameworks in the erroneous belief that they are more popular and better maintained than alternatives, for example;
• typosquatting; and
• plain malware distribution.

You seem to imply bad programmers use these services to star-boost their otherwise mediocre code. That might be the case, but there are other –at least conceivable, if not yet proven– use cases for these star-boosting services, such as typosquatting, the promotion of less secure software as part of supply chain attacks (with organizations sticking to vulnerable libraries or frameworks in the erroneous belief that they are more popular and better maintained than alternatives, for example) and plain malware distribution.

If I understand them correctly, @[email protected]’s point is not that it is wrong to monetize FOSS, but rather that companies increasingly develop open source projects for some time, benefiting from unpaid work in the form of contributions and, perhaps most importantly, starving other projects from both such contributions and funding, only to cynically change the license once they establish a position in their respective ecosystem and lock in enough customers. The last significant instance that I remember is Redis’ case, but there seem to be ever more.

For reference, there is codeberg.org, operated by a German nonprofit and based on the open source Forgejo, among other open alternatives.

Russia being able to source silicon for their rockets was not enough of confirmation that sanctions are just a PR tactic along with minor inconvenience?

That Russia keeps sourcing Western chips for their rockets does not mean sanctions are “just a PR tactic along with minor inconvenience”. By forcing Russia to buy chips through intermediaries, each of which marks up prices to turn a profit, sanctions (a) drive up their cost, thus limiting what Russia can spend elsewhere, and (b) improve the negotiating power of the states harbouring those sanctions-evading intermediaries at the expense of Russia’s, which further weakens their already shaky international standing.

Intelligent analysis I concur with and thank you for. I sometimes wonder what myths our flawed present may pass down to our uncertain future. Who knows? After two millennia, our descendants might think of Trump the way we conceive of Narcissus while they recall the new flood myths we are delivering them.

For anyone else who, like me, didn’t know: Trump once referred to Tim Cook as “Tim Apple”, as described in the Wikipedia article on Tim Cook:

In a meeting for the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board with President Donald Trump in March 2019, Trump referred to Cook as “Tim Apple”.

He stands to gain more through his political influence than he has lost with Twitter, and the latter arguably helped him get the former. By itself, his acquisition of Twitter is and will remain a loss; in the grand scheme of things, though, it was a sort of investment that is likely to pay off handsomely. If he’s learnt anything, it’s that the United States have devolved into a plutocracy that capital can steer off the common interest of their citizens and the common good.

That 6% is the gross of sales, not revenues as well.

I think you mean “that’s 6% of revenue, not profit”. Revenue is gross income before expenses and other tax deductions. Sales is revenue generated by selling products and services, as opposed to interest and investment proceeds. Profit is revenue minus expenses and tax deductions and is where corporations often cheat.