“The people of Ukraine didn’t choose that path, the oligarchs did.”

It’s true Ukraine has a history of oligarchic influence, but the 2014 Maidan protests were a massive, popular uprising. Ukrainians were fed up with Yanukovych’s corruption and his decision to abandon the EU agreement for closer ties with Russia. This wasn’t just oligarchs pulling strings; millions of Ukrainians demonstrated for a future that aligned with Europe, seeking more autonomy from Russia.

“Russia would be imperialist, but isn’t right now.”

I would argue that Russia is acting imperialistically. The annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and now the invasion of Ukraine are clear examples of Russia asserting control over its neighbors. Even if it’s not globally imperialist like the U.S., these actions align with a regional imperialism that Marxists should still oppose.

Ultimately, this isn’t about picking sides between oligarchies, but supporting the principle of self-determination for Ukraine, including resisting imperialist aggression from any direction.

Yes, Ukraine has ties with the U.S., but sovereign nations have the right to choose their alliances. Ukraine’s Western integration stems from its desire for self-determination, not just U.S. influence. Russia’s aggression isn’t justified merely because Ukraine sought NATO’s support.

Bias exists everywhere, but dismissing “Western” sources wholesale, while elevating openly ideological ones, doesn’t strengthen the argument. Marxist critique should apply equally to all capitalist states, including Russia, which operates under an oligarchic system that exploits its own people. 1 2

While far-right elements in Ukraine are real, they’re a small part of the picture. Reducing Ukraine to these groups oversimplifies the conflict. Most Ukrainians are fighting for sovereignty, not fascism.

Russia’s actions are imperialist too, and as a Marxist, you should critique imperialism wherever it emerges, not just from the West.

Removed by mod

“propaganda”? Oh. You mean like Russia started a full blown unprovoked war with a peaceful nation? That “propaganda”?

Sucks others got caught in the crosshairs, but that’s just what happens when your authoritarian government launches unprovoked wars and gets sanctioned.

Looks at the entire networking stack

Yup (unfortunately)

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Straw Man Fallacy: A straw man fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of addressing the actual issue, the person creates a distorted version of the argument that is easier to discredit.

This is what you have done in every single reply you made when I have made it quite clear that this is about the migration being an urgent security issue that the cyber security community at large has been calling attention to.

You avoid all the core points I make and distort them into trivial things that you can easily argue, like the fact that you “Don’t code C much and use Rust occasionally”. It’s irrelevant to the actual arguments and you use it to dismiss the real core issues AKA a Straw Man fallacy

You have failed to argue in good faith and are actually a part of the problem. Good job!

Ah I see your default is to sprinkle in a bit of argumentum ad logicam and add a dash of straw man at the end

Your statement comes across as the migration from C/C++ is more of an upgrade for new features and increased “ease of use” rather than an urgent security issue when it definitely is. It’s more than just a case of a couple of experts and some articles, you’ve got multiple governmental and NGOs like The NSA, The Whitehouse, CISA, DARPA all calling for the migration away from C/C++ to memory safe languages

https://devops.com/darpa-turns-to-ai-to-help-turn-c-and-c-code-into-rust/

“DARPA, the Defense Department’s (DOD) R&D agency, will lean on emerging AI capabilities in a new program to deal with the costly and time-consuming challenge of rewriting C and C++ code to Rust in a move designed to meet the push for federal agencies and private organizations to adopt memory-safe programming languages.”

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/07/memory_correction_five_eyes/

"CISA, in conjunction with the National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, and the cyber security authorities of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, said its call for better memory safety follows from its Secure By Design recommendations – endorsed by all of these cyber authorities.

“With this guidance, the authoring agencies urge senior executives at every software manufacturer to reduce customer risk by prioritizing design and development practices that implement MSLs [memory safe languages],” the report argues."

~

"CISA suggests that developers look to C#, Go, Java, Python, Rust, and Swift for memory safe code.

“The most promising path towards eliminating memory safety vulnerabilities is for software manufacturers to find ways to standardize on memory safe programming languages, and to migrate security critical software components to a memory safe programming language for existing codebases,” the CISA paper concludes."

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Lol kinda related, but Uconnect sent me an email a few months ago about the GPS maps in my car (11 years old at this point) being way out of date…they wanted $300 (or something like that) for a flash drive with the map update.

Lmao, like it wasn’t 2024 and Google Maps on my phone does a far better job than their proprietary crap they want 300$/update for

Removed by mod

Better go the safe route.

Yea but that’s boring, it’s more fun to YOLO it! Shrink the windows partition from Linux, create the new Linux partition and install, then move everything over from the NTFS partition to Linux, delete it then expand the Linux partition.

Ez-Pz and the added pressure makes it more fun! Lol

Removed by mod

Removed by mod

Removed by mod