SecureBoot is a funny one. It should be signed with the deployer's keys (Slovak), not the manufacturer's. Trusted boot probably wasn't a consideration here, really.

Ironically, a custom firmware can now be used thanks to the lack of a digital lock... if you still trust the hardware.

PS: Props to NBU for doing their job.

You reap what you sow, MFs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_opposition_to_sanctions...

slovakia also doesnt support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. you made that up.

its crazy that such a lie is a top comment.

Tell me how it’s not advantageous for Russia to enable trade with them.

well technically, existence of some private messaging network can help predators. i dont know if there is a way around that.

but saying that the actions of the activist are "pro CP" is not fair IMO. its often a manipulative labeling. it might be what it motivates the activist or it might not be. they might have completely different reasons to advocate for digital privacy.

but it still doesnt imply that slovakia is therefore politically pro-russian.

they might care about pro-slovak advantages it brings. or they might think that sanction dont work as intendet. or they might think that sanction paradoxically cause too many problems in EU. or that it is not the right approach to resolve the conflict.

That makes you "pro Russian" apparently

- Hungary: November of 1956

- Slovakia: "spring" of 1968

- Serbia: the Stalin's betrayal at the end of WW2

So maybe natural gas imports aren't the thing that determine the outcome.

Sometimes those people are a plurality that organically endorses that decision and votes some representative in. Sometimes those people are a plurality that has been brainwashed by compromised media to do it. Sometimes those people are just a small ruling elite that get voted in by people who didn't think very hard about those particular geopolitical decisions and just want, I don't know, their political and cultural enemies brutalized and $1.99 gas.

I don't think you understand how bad globalization fucked up these countries, people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.

Sure, we can blame politicians which were mostly bad to worse and stole everything that was previously state-owned (meaning everything). But folks kept voting for them in similar fashion you describe so this is the result, its trivial to 'buy' votes with relatively low budget. I mean current PM has very tight and visible connections to Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia, he or people around him did a contract murder of reporter looking into that. He didn't ever faced jail and is back being PM like there is no tomorrow. There is only so much blame one can point outwards, you can't be dumb / do dumb shit and expect long term marvels of prosperity on Switzerland's level.

Lived in both of those countries, and they look exactly as they should given overall population efforts towards hard work, honesty, rule of law and so on. If US would be a nation of slackers and thieves it would also look very differently to how it is.

Those countries who were fresh from behind the iron curtain were really dealt a bad hand. They had lived in a "protective bubble", albeit a very unsustainable one and suddenly were thrown in the ocean surrounded by sharks looking for an easy meal. Almost every one of those people found themselves desperate but "inexperienced" and unprepared for the new world, every politician was absolutely blown away by the fortune they could make, and every other country jumped on the opportunity to make money. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

For every politician who took a bribe, someone who already had money paid it. That money didn't come from inside those poor countries. This leveraging of poorer countries never stopped. That's how some countries get a better deal than others when the EU adopted the Euro, for example. But it's never been so bad as back then because it's incredibly rare that entire countries find themselves exiting a time capsule, just ready to be exploited by people who already know how the game is played.

This reminds me of two things. The people who always think others are poor because they're lazy, and the people with perfect hindsight and no pressure judging that Captain Sully could have landed the plane back on the runway instead of the Hudson.

A lot of people in the US feel the same way right now.

Goes to show that 1984-style conditioning really does work, decades later.

Remarkably, it can even be passed through generations, as it gets ingrained into the mentality of how parents raise children: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Don't rock the boat."

Which was a survival trait in those times.

The current incarnation of Russian propaganda is different, but is even more virally poisonous:

> I'm not political. Politics is dirty. There's nothing you can change anyway. "Two sides" is an illusion. Everybody is lying and has an ulterior motive. Only naive fools believe otherwise, only naive fools ever trust. You can't know anything for sure. What you think is true is actually a lie. The only thing that's real is who you're with. That's the only truth. That's the only thing to look for in anything anyone says, that's the only thing one really says. That's what makes something true or false. The words uttered don't matter at all.

You might have seen this kind of mentality spouted by your friends on either side of the political spectrum.

Remarkably, whatever the political persuasion of people who have it is, the end result is the likes of Orban/Fico coming to power.

Sadly, this thing not only spreads, it also sticks.

If you know of an antidote, please tell me what it is.

As far as Hungary goes, I asked my friend who studied Hungarian history. He explained to me that while the Soviet invasion was very traumatic, the subsequent Kádár "goulash socialism" was a lot more lenient on the people than all the other Soviet Bloc regimes, and that the Hungarians made an incorrectly confident conclusion that losing a small war to the Russians is not catastrophic.

Of course, this is NOT the experience of basically anyone else who happened to be in a similar situation. A potential puppet regime of Russia in Ukraine wouldn't look like Kádárs by any means, it would rather look like the Kadyrovian microstate in Chechnya, minus the Islam of course.

That's why they're doomed to repeat it. Again and again.

Also in these countries there's a lot of old people who have never been able to adapt to living in a free, capitalist society, so for them, there's some nostalgia for communism.

edit: ah you mean the old people? not really, no, it's just pure propaganda, it doesn't have to make sense.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-communism-comes-bible-co...

It doesn't matter what Russia actually is. They play both sides with their propaganda. Old people who thought positively about communism still support Russia.

Fico and Babiš for example were both communist party members and both pro-Russia politicians today.

Everyone knows who the attacker is - just some people root for Russia for their own reasons. Usually tied to the internal politics of their countries - like hating for unrelated reasons the political actors from their states that happen to support Ukraine.

There are concepts like wars of necessity or just wars (e.g. of liberation), but that depends on how cynical you're feeling.

Propaganda always tries to convince people that the current war is the just war and everyone else is wrong.

It's mainly the older people that are influenced by this, and a lot of young people either left the country already, or have concrete plans to leave.

It's really sad, how these old people are ruining the future of their children and grandchildren, really crazy.

You can say a lot about Russia, but they are very good with misinformation, it's a real threat for Europe.

My wife is from Slovakia, so I have front row seats on the whole situation. The kinds of misinformation these older people are willing to believe is really nuts.

The majority of school teachers grew up under the Soviet side of cold war propaganda.

And in history education in particular, we are told that "we" have always looked towards Russia as a role model, to fight Hungarian nationalism (since the country was just part of Hungary for most of its history).

When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end. That is of course because of all the horrible things that are happening in EU, like gay and trans people, and vaccinations. Terrible! Let's bring those good old Soviet days back!

The world is not simple black/white.

> When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end.

We are here talking about different things. You refer to these people praising the Soviet Union for e. g. healthcare and what not. This has absolutely nothing to do with Putin's genocide against Ukrainians though. Putin represents the aggressive russian empire that wants to conquer more land. It is really simple to see. It has nothing to do with healthcare.

I'm quite glad that we're not a part of Russia, where even queer people are considered extremists and critiques of the illegal war will either carry a prison sentence or being conscripted to sent to the meat grinder. The human rights situation doesn't seem perfect ofc, but that's mostly cause of right leaning views being prevalent.

I also believe that we'd probably benefit from more militarization, not less - investment into drone technology so borders and such could also be patrolled more easily to prevent or limit things like this https://www-lsm-lv.translate.goog/raksts/zinas/latvija/11.08... as well as just having a stronger NATO as a deterrent.

The push for things like Chat Control sucks and it's very easy to imagine how it will get misused, should our governing structures be compromised by a sufficiently totalitarian regime or ideology.

At least over here people still carry the memory of the Soviet deportations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Latvi...

Being pro-russia is being anti-Slovakian though. You get zero upside for teaming with terrorist state and all the downsides.

Is he? I don't see that in his comment at all. Can you point out that part to us?

Perhaps your handlers never taught you that two things can be bad at the same time.

The Belarusians aren't too thrilled that Russian troops are operating in their country either, but Lukashenko needs Russian support to stay in power, so he walks a tightrope. Notice how noncommittal he is about pretty much everything...

How are any of those false flag? They're state sponsored, by different state actors.

Given the level of incompetence that Russia has demonstrated on both the political and military front, I highly doubt it could've turned anything around in Ukraine even if knew everything about 2014.

Good they investigated this before using them, but this sounds like a big fu...

> multiple reports in Slovak media that linked the purchase to a Cyprus shell company with fake certifications.

We're talking about this as if it's some precursor to a James Bond plot, but it really fizzles after learning Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork. James Bond doesn't need to leave the bed!

Trojan exploits aside, I just assume that it'd be easier for someone in SVR/GRU to bribe an admin.

This wasn't some oversight of the proverbial Nina in any way. They just did sloppy job from both sides covering tracks, not uncommon with current government. They are loud (and racist, xenophobic, and often dumb), not competent smart people.

Well the interior ministry didn't really demand one (yes really) but the opposition people have read the documentation for the cameras and the hash of the supplied software was exactly the same as the hash for the russian simicon camera.

That's exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would do.

still buy the cameras, still buy the natural gas

just dont go on the public record saying its not backdoored knowing the supply chain

but assuming there was some introspection you were hoping to reveal, which culture were you considering to be racist?

Are these cameras in use in Russia? Can people outside of Russia look in at Russian traffic in this way?

[1] https://gidcam.ru/camera/moskva-panorama-centra-stolicy-s-ma...

[2] https://gidcam.ru/camera/moskva-volgogradskij-prospekt-i-plo...

[3] https://camguide.net/ru/europe/russia/saint-petersburg/nevsk...

https://simicon.ru/rus/product/gun/cordon_pro.html

But maybe rapidly switching residential solar on and off in a coordinated way can also do funny things to grid equipment

The problem is that a few minutes is still too slow when a large power source suddenly drops out. The grid needs an immediate response, which can come from fast reserves such as batteries, hydro, pumped storage and other generators that can react automatically.

Pumped storage is basically gravitational energy storage: you pump water uphill when electricity is plentiful, then release it through turbines when power is needed.

I quite fancy electrical grid.

same issue with large loads like boilers, this stuff should never be connected to the internet, but it is

if you can control enough load on the grid you can do real damage

Hopefully mutually assured annoyance keeps everyone at bay.

In the end it's all about trust. Right now I don't see why China would like to burn down their market.

If that goal sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. I would expect some countries that are not China to act with such a capricious lack of foresight.

That's a pretty good demonstration of why "it's not exposed to the internet" isn't a security boundary if the device itself has an out-of-band communications path.

Add Secure Boot being disabled and unauthenticated live streams and this seems less like one unfortunate backdoor and more like nobody established what the trust boundary was supposed to be in the first place.

Would that remark be on topic? Would it be noise?

They don't even know how to pronounce Fico properly... Give me a break lmao