Assange became a Russian asset *while* in a whistleblowing-related job.
(And he is also the reason why Snowden ended up in Russia. Though it's possible that the flight plan they had was still the best one in that situation.)
So exposing corruption of Western governments is not worthwhile because it 'helps' Russia? Aha, got it.
I am increasingly wondering what there remains of the supposed superiority of the Western system if we're willing to compromise on everything to suit our political ends.
The point was supposed to be that the truth is worth having out there for the purpose of having an informed public, no matter how it was (potentially) obtained.
In the end, we may end up with everything we fear about China but worse infrastructure and still somehow think we're better.
No, exposing Western corruption is all well and good, but the problem is that at some point Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia.
> Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia
What if he simply decided that the information he obtained is worth having out there no matter the source?
It seems to me that you're simply upset that he dared to do so and are trying very hard to come up with a rationalization for why he's a Bad Guy(tm) for daring to turn the tables. It's a transparent and rather lackluster attempt to shift the conversation from what to who.
Obama and Biden chased him into a corner. They actually bragged about chasing him into Russia, because it was a convenient narrative to smear Snowden with after the fact.
It was Russia, or vanish into a black site, never to be seen or heard from again.
In what way did it "turn out to be true"? Because he has russian citizenship and is living in a country that is not allied with his home country that is/was actively trying to kill him (and revoked his US passport)?
On Windows i have used foobar2000 since i had a crt monitor that got too dark for winamp so about 20 years. In 2 years daily using Steam Deck as my main computing device and trying almost every linux music player. I settled on using a spare android phone running Symfonium + Navidrome on Raspberry pi. As nothing on linux comes close.
I know, my point is this doesn’t give you the right to pirate the app. You have legal ways to fight it: request a refund, report it to the store, write a review, advocate for an open source alternative, etc.
People have shared that many of those things didn't work, developers don't care about reviews of an abandoned app, refund process probably costs you more in time than you would get, and Google is not really known for their good support.
You shouldn't go through that much effort for something you already paid and obviously malicious/unethical approach caused you problems. If there are things in favour of piracy, it is in cases like this.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. At the same time piracy in this case feels short sighted to me.
If the community supported the dev, then both might get what they want, i.e. a maintained app and some income. With negative reviews a cheaper competitor might appear due to demand. But with piracy the app is even more likely to get abandoned and no alternative will show up either.
Then again if the ecosystem is indeed that bad, perhaps this is the way to torch it even more. Still, google plans to block sideloading and then I guess we’re at their mercy.
You’re probably referring to the fact that their search results include entries from Yandex. That’s something entirely different from being “backed by Russia.” If anything, they pay Russia, not the other way around.
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