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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • You couldn’t buy a Pixel in Russia even before the sanctions.

    Google did pause most of their Russian business. They don’t pay YouTube creators, don’t allow Google Play purchases, and while Google Workspace is available, it’s only with a non-Russian payment method. All the free online stuff is available same as before. They don’t comply with Roskomnadzor’s requests for content takedowns as far as I know (I might be wrong since I moved out of Russia and stopped paying close attention to it).

    But in the end, it all comes down to business. Apple sells their devices through “unofficial retailers” that were pretty official before sanctions. They have a much stronger business presence there. Google doesn’t, and they don’t have as much to lose so they can afford this PR stunt. I’m certain that if Google’s Russian business was stronger, they wouldn’t be so uncompromising.


  • If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming.

    Good for those people. Unfortunately, Windows has other use cases outside of gaming, and I’m not planning to switch to Linux because it won’t be able to cover those for me.

    I just don’t want to see something like “Half-Life 3, built first for Steam Hardware” in an announcement five years later, and ending up having some issues on Windows because that was not a priority. So far, Valve only keeps improving their platform to hook everyone on the Steam ecosystem, but we can’t be sure of their next steps. No one is immune to increasing profit margins, even Valve.