I don't buy that as a factor. Given that the OEMs overprice the parts that they have to compete with aftermarket suppliers for, why would they NOT overprice the parts for which they have no such competition?
Note that being unable to profitably replicate the part does not necessarily mean that the part is naturally expensive, or that the OEM already sells it at a reasonable price. The part could just as well be hard to reverse engineer and QA for a third party, or the effort to do that might not be worth it given unknown level of demand, etc. OEM can actually have a natural price advantage over third parties in such complex parts.
Coal and gas sure, but renewables are obviously dependent on weather. Nobody runs their solar panels less than maximally possible "because they can". When there is significant oversupply of energy from solar, it gets sold for pennies on the dollar to neighbouring regions, and when the sun doesn't shine, you're sol.
That's not what this is about. Negative electricity prices are rare, and do not account for the massive difference in utilization between renewables and nuclear. By the way nuclear power output can be ramped up and down by a lot, and in a matter of minutes in case of unplanned problems, even if it can't (really shouldn't) go to dead zero.
The person I responded to claimed that nuclear plants run at close to 100% because they bid low because the marginal cost of their electricity production is low, but the same is true for renewables like wind and solar. Yet these renewables run at much lower utilization rates - because of weather and daylight cycle, not "because they can", except in rare cases of negative prices as you mentioned.
Agree with you on the fact that it was a questionable move.
But there is a big difference between excluding one source (which is directly and formally controlled by the Russian state).. and putting 15 year sentences on "publishing things that are not coming from the state news agency" (TAS)
BTW, and just FYI, if you want you can still read rt.com using 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8
Which totally makes sense. Russia is a dictatorship waging a war of aggression a democratic neighbour. Why should we give their state propaganda outlets any amplification?
I am reading Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>). Right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels, I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.
Typical liberal democracy has 2 modes of work: peace time and war time.
In time of peace, value of human life is infinite, thus fredom of someone ends where freedom of somewhere else starts. Nobody can cut basic freedoms of someone else without court decision.
In time of war, this freedom creates vulnerability, so modern democraties have utalitarian laws designed to maximise survivability of nation as whole instead. It's not so important for behemoths, but it's essential for smaller countries. However, even in large and powerful democraties there are loopholes around basic freedoms for desperate times, such as natural disaster, or assault, or war, etc.
For example, it's not allowed to shut somebody else, except when defending or to save life of someone else. It's not allowed to force somebody else to keep silence, except when it puts lifes of others in danger, such as hate speech, or division by race, color of skin, nationality, religion, income, etc.
Russian outlets are doing just that. They are trying to portrait other nations as evils. They are telling to Ukrainians that Jews are rulling our country (half truth, many politics in Ukraine are Jews), then they tell to Jews that Ukrainians are Nazi, to induce fighting between nationalities, to start civil war.
This creates danger for everybody, so we cried for years to shut down Russian propaganda. Nobody listened to us until today.
I don't think the separation to the time of peace and time of war is even needed.
Ideally, any limitation of freedom is there to actually guarantee freedom, e.g. your freedom is limited in the form of an obligation to come to a police station to submit an explanation, but thanks to that the police can protect people from those that would otherwise limit their freedoms.
In similar vein, freedom of speech has to be limited, when some propaganda could lead to the decrease of the freedom.
It is tricky of course to judge what limitations are justified, but I find the sanctions against russian news sources on the quite safe side.
Freedom of speech is not a vulnerability. The war did not start because too many westerners were able to watch RT. Ukraine is not in danger because of any conflict between jews and nazis.
I work with Russians. I want to know what lies they're being told. Right now it's tough to ask them for daily updates because frankly a lot of them hate this situation very much and are saddened and embarrassed by what their country is doing. I would also find it difficult to ask.
You won't find 100% correctness even in peace time. That doesn't mean you can throw your hands in the air and assume that information from both sides of the conflict is on average equally (un)trustworthy.
There's tons of evidence to show the horrors of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and stuff like the ghost of Kyiv is just a morale boost for Ukrainians and is utterly irrelevant.
So yes, you should of course be sceptical, but no amount of honest and fair scepticism will paint Russia's invasion in a significantly better light.
I don't expect you to watch this full video but will leave it here for anyone who is curious about the broader context for this conflict.
TL;DR: The war didn't start last week. It has been ongoing since 2014 and involves horrible acts from both sides.
No, they don't average out and unfortunately we may never know what the 'truth' is here.
I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will say after watching the video, the situation appears to be much more complicated than it is being depicted on western media.
That is a decent factual YouTube video but it is laser focused on the title - what does Russia get out of invading Ukraine. There is no discussion at all of atrocities or moral controversies... Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?
> Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?
Not that I can find. They seem to be focused on military strategy and geopolitics. Their other videos are about the reasons behind other modern military conflicts.
I mean then we can't really use that video to judge or corroborate the morality / atrocities of the sides. And even for economics and politics, there is no analysis of balance or tradeoffs, just an exposition of what Russia wants. The video is still good information for those unaware, but only in the realpolitik sense, not as a source of moral or value judgements about the situation.
Today I learned. Just so we are clear, do we both agree that supporting Nazi soldiers is a bad thing no matter which side?
Also, it seems we both agree that invading another country and shelling civilians is also wrong, whether it is Russia or the US or others waging wars of aggression.
If I may add my two cents: I disagree that supporting $BADGUY soldiers is always bad.
It's conceivable that in some situations, it seems likely to result in the less-evil outcome.
Case in point, suppose you had a neo-nazi unit offering to take out a Russian artillery battery that was shelling civilians. Do you refuse to truck them to that vicinity because you find them repugnant?
Would it change anything in your eyes to know that the Azov Batallion has been shelling civilian Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas region since 2014?
I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi. I am surprised to find myself in the minority here but based on the downvotes it is clear that my position is not a popular one.
Not really. The example I chose was already hypothetical, and not necessarily apropos to the current situation in Ukraine. The additional context you provided doesn't change my basic point that there's a calculation to be made.
> I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi.
I think we may be discussing two different things. I wasn't talking about the moral standing of individual Nazis. I was talking about the moral calculation of temporarily collaborating with them to possibly achieve a better outcome than not collaborating with them.
Extending the earlier example, suppose there's just one neo-nazi, who's offering to go on a suicide mission that will take out 1000 Russian artillery batteries, saving 500,000 Ukranians. And nobody but you would know, so the neo-nazi's actions couldn't even potentially inspire others.
Would you entertain the possibility that that is a good trade-off? If yes, then you might be agreeing that there's a calculation to be performed. If no, then I'd wonder why you'd find it preferable to let 500,000 Ukranians die.
(I'm not calling you a moral monster. I'm just trying to lay things out that shows there's an actual dilemma.)
I'm with you on all points. Nazis are bad, of course. Invasions are bad. The reason I cared to comment is because Ukrainian Nazis are used as justification for the invasion in Russia.
But nazis exist in many countries, and are given legitimacy in many countries. In Ukraine they're paramilitary, in Russia they're a mercenary force, in Germany they sit in parliament (AFD), in US they have obvious affiliation with the political party that is in power half the time (and have strong legal protections for both their speech and guns).
All of that can be used as excuses to forcefully "denazify" a country, like Russia is doing now, but none of that are actually good reasons to invade those countries or deny any of those countries the right for independence, not even close.
I mentioned it because the AZOV Battallion are official paid members of Ukraine’s National Guard and have been since before 2014. I think that makes it worth mentioning.
How many other countries (that the West defends) can claim to have openly employed neo-Nazis officially by the Government for as long as Ukraine?
I am old enough to remember when an entire Canadian trucker convoy protest movement was smeared as Nazis because 1 protester held 1 nazi flag on the 1st day of a 24 day protest before being asked to leave by other protesters.
Checks notes - That was only a couple weeks ago.
Now it seems that so many are willing to look the other way or even apologize for employing literal Nazis with guns simply because these Nazis are fighting for the ‘right’ side.
For the record, it is OK to support Ukraine’s right to defend itself, while also denouncing the decision to employ Nazis.
A few weeks ago, I would have expected nothing less from HN. Suddenly it seems the rules have changed?
I hope your own country / city / office / home never gets shelled, so that you never have to learn the difference between caring for your home and a "double standard". Nothing easier than armchair demagoguery, until a grad shell lands in your daughter's bedroom.
Don't bullshit me, you were talking about Namecheap's response, not other countries' sanctions.
The sanctioning countries are third parties to this conflict. You can talk about their double standards all you want, I won't disagree.
But Namecheap is not a third party to this conflict. They have full right to care more about what is happening to themselves and their families than what happens to people in other unrelated countries and their families.
Their reasoning in the email is a factual truth: war crimes in Ukraine specifically. They're allowed to care about themselves. You don't have to care about them yourself, being a third party that has the luxury of double standards in this conflict. But don't project your current position in this conflict onto them, and don't hide your envy or indifference behind demagoguery about their email's wording.
Namecheap has decided to suspend service to Russia because it's employees are affected by its actions, which is fine.
This isn't the same as doing it because of warcrimes and human rights violations. It's not okay to pretend that's the reason, because if it was, they'd have denied access to many more countries.
There is no demagoguery. You attempted and failed an appeal to emotion to distract from simple logic twice now.
Yeah right. You keep trying to hairsplit one sentence because you're butthurt that nobody cared about the conflict you cared about, but now people dare to care a "lesser" conflict that you don't care about. And oh here's a story about Namecheap, let's blame them for that too.
I'm not hairsplitting. This is the only justification here.
I care about this conflict just as much as the others. If you only care about conflicts that affect you personally, stop pretending that you are a human rights warrior doing this for higher ideals.
You should email their support. I don't think they actually want to terminate your particular account, I think they only want to target people and companies who are actually in Russia (so they looked for Russian addresses and payment methods on file).
Their communication on this issue was terrible in many ways, but honestly I can't blame a company who's literally being shelled today for missing the mark once.
> so they looked for Russian addresses and payment methods on file
That’s wrong as both statements are false for me. They just simply queried the citizenship field on registration, I assume.
I’ve already contacted to their support, but meanwhile I am looking for the provider who respects my privacy as well as doesn’t give a shit about the nationality, skin color, religion etc.
And even if I lived in Russia, why would the private company would terminate the contract? Just because they wanted to? They just ruined their reputation and I wonder if it is a matter of discrimination and a reason for the lawsuit?
Because they don't want to deal with people who are paying for the bombs falling on them, even if it's not those people's fault. They're a private company so they get to make such decisions. You can always go to some faceless IPO-d megacorp that doesn't care about anything except profits.
You have made three statements and not a single one express any sympathy with their situation. Only your own victimhood and one blanket statement you don't support the government. Their employees are being shelled with cluster bombs by your government as we speak.
I think it is time you face reality that the world is going to start to hold the Russian people accountable for their governments actions. I feel sympathy with the Russian people since many don't support this war or even their government but at some point they are going to have to get uncomfortable and take risks and stand up to the government.
From the day 1 I publicly made a statement on my Fb and LinkedIn and offered relocation help for Russian and Ukrainian people.
And as I’ve said earlier, I don’t live in Russia, I don’t support “my” government and their actions.
There are thousands of Russians who got into jail for the protests.
How dare you blame people just because of the place they were born?
This whole situation is a tragedy. I don't know your life story and base my comments on the tone of your replies in this thread.
The world is going to hold the Russian population accountable to some degree for the war their government have started whether you think this is fair or not. And I think your attitude of aggression, victimhood and being wronged is not going to help you in the coming years. You would probably be better served with some humility, empathy and feel of responsibility even if you think it is unjust. The real victims are the Ukrainian civilians being bombed by your government at the moment. Not inconvenienced Russians who feel they are unjustly punished.
You don't know my life story but you accused me for supporting the war; you don't know all Russians, but labelled all the people just by nationality. How different are you from nazis blaming Jewish for being Jewish?
Just simple test: I have 3-5 reachouts every day for relocation help from Ukraine and Russia. I will say them: "Hey, danols from HN told me that I'm russian therefore I should support the war. please contact to him". Are you ready to take responsibility for them and help them all?
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UPD: I wrote this in emotions, I'm sorry. But I'm truly offended by your accusation
This will be my last reply. I am not accusing you personally for what is happening. I empathies with your situation and feel sorry for you. You are obviously doing what you can at the moment. What I was trying to convey was that the tone of your replies came of as pretty aggressive with a sense of injustice and victimhood. Which considering the situation didn't sit well with me.
My replies also comes from emotions and anger. It is probably unfair but being Russian I think you are going to have to find ways of dealing with these emotions from other people even if you feel it is unjust. Expressing empathy and humility would probably be helpful. Especially during the current time when bombs are still falling. I didn't get that feeling from you and therefore reacted the way I did, which was probably unnecessary. I wish you the best in dealing with this situation and hope that you are able to help Russia become a free & open society.
> seizing Ukraine for it’s strategic importance to Russia - food, energy, year round port, buffer against a land invasion to Moscow.
Wow, that's literally the worst take I've heard on this.
- Russia has food to spare, exports tons of wheat, and has declining population
- Russia produces tons of energy and exports tons of oil and gas
- Russia already has several year round ports in the Black Sea. You think upgrading one of them to whatever they wanted is more expensive than waging fucking war?
- How much of a speed bump do you think a "demilitarized and neutral" Ukraine would be to forces that are doing a land invasion on the largest nuclear power? Also, Baltics are already in NATO, and the drive from there to Moscow is same distance on similarly flat terrain. Also, Finland and Sweden might join NATO too now thanks to this war. Also, nobody is ever doing a land invasion on a nuclear Russia. If the nukes didn't even assure that, nobody would keep spending billions on maintaining them.
It is not only about what you have, but also about what you don't want your foe/customer to have. Lots of natural gas was discovered in Ukraine around 2011-2016. Donbass is famous for its coal mining too and you should also consider the numerous NPPs that provide about half of Ukraine's electricity. Imagine all these assets in the hands of US/EU companies. Now that sounds like becoming less energy dependent from Russia. You should inquire about some of the reasons for Syrian war too. It all looks like a big blatant chess game and you will be very lucky if you are just a spectator. Btw current mainstream media reporting from both sides is mostly useless.
Note that being unable to profitably replicate the part does not necessarily mean that the part is naturally expensive, or that the OEM already sells it at a reasonable price. The part could just as well be hard to reverse engineer and QA for a third party, or the effort to do that might not be worth it given unknown level of demand, etc. OEM can actually have a natural price advantage over third parties in such complex parts.