“To access the update, please overthrow your government”
“have you tried restarting your government?”
Now do israel.
I thought of that too, but then realized they need the latest graphic card updates to run Google, Amazon and Microsoft mass-surveillance applications!
We are entering the era of cyber-warfare, nation-state counter hacking, software and hardware sabotage, underground black and grey markets for both hardware and software.
Sanctions now include software and access to networks, not just hardware imports and generic VPN region locks.
Nations are taking more control over their national network infrastructure, China has shown it’s possible to almost completely isolate a modern technological nation of a billion people in their own intra-net with near full visibility and control into everything their citizens say and do.
Other nations are following, and big tech will always play into whatever is the most profitable, which is why companies like Google and Apple will turn a blind eye to the authoritarian governments and comply with their controls in order to gain more market share.
Now let me be clear; fuck the Russian war machine, fuck it hard and fast, and fuck Putin and his pathetic removed bois that support him. But I feel for the Russian people who are oppressed, there is a deep hacker and FOSS culture that has been there since the 80’s, shame that they are getting screwed by their shitty regime, much like the citizens of China, especially gen-Z having terms like “lying down” banned because it opposes their oppressive and abusive work culture.
Open software and hardware is under attack more and more lately. From the capitalist corpos who hate anything they can’t generate insane profits from and that gives workers and end users control over their data and privacy. It’s also under attack from the government neo-liberals and right-wingers because it allows people to be private and safely express their opposition, and also allows easy organizing of mass protests against their abuses of power.
What a precious thing we have in the world of FOSS. The spirit of human collaboration and free expression, across cultures, races, genders, and ages is so incredible, but we must defend and support it.
Fuck Capitalism, fuck copyright, and FUCK war.
We are entering the era of cyber-warfare, nation-state counter hacking, software and hardware sabotage, underground black and grey markets for both hardware and software.
We have entered that territory at least 10 years ago.
The rest I agree with. But I also think this is in fact the right move: you need to create pressure that hurts both the leadership and the people.
What would you personally do with that pressure if you lived in Moscow? At best get beaten in a protest.
Believe it or not, even the thugs beating down protests enjoy western luxuries… Or not having 20% inflation.
Plus, enforcing your government’s policies becomes a whole lot less attractive if all your neighbors dislike your employer. It all trickles down eventually.
Hell yea brother
Amen
I wish Free/Libre movement (as not to be limited only to FOSS and OSHW) to stay away from getting too political. Sure perhaps because their contributors mostly coming from westerner but lately things get piggybacked by nonsense stuffs (Debian wtf?). For truly Free/Libre there should be no border and everyone welcome to contribute instead of artificial reasoning because someone above them have to comply with this-that or whatever the heck the agenda are.
“Does nobody think of the people?” they asked while putin sends his citizens into a certain death.
And for the crime of being send to death they should be punished by not having the newest divers. That’ll show them.
Exactly. Those russian CS gamers are the worst scum in the world and deserve to be (cybernetically) wacked.
Everyone has a VPN or can use proxies extremely easily nowadays, especially in Russia. Literally all this does is creating a precedent of a parts manufacturer (““manufacturer”” in the case of nvidia), and y’all are cheering because “fuck russians”.
All this does is creating this bad precedent while accomplishing exactly nothing
And now some Russians get mad a the corrupt Putinlord because his actions have consequences and they have to go trough all kinds of hoops to get it.
Sometimes the annoyance is important too.
Putin only exists because Russians resent the west after having been sidelined despite foregoing communism (which Gorbachev did in the hope that Russia would be able to join, and benefit from trade with, the liberal bloc)
If you think they’ll resent Putin and not the west for every minor (and some major) annoyance brought by sanctions, you are ignoring decades of policies done in the same spirit and resulting in the exact opposite of the intended effect. All this does is demonstrate to the Russians that the west is indeed their enemy, and thereby reinforce Putin and the likes of him.
All sanctions do is target innocents and reinforce whatever government the US is supposedly targeting. See literally every single country sanctioned by the US.
Can I blame Trump on 9/11 or something?
I blame Trump every day, but sure.
Why now? Does it actually do something?
Some tech scantions from when the war started went into effect. Allowing access to Russians is now a complicated legal risk. Even Linux was forced to block devs.
Must prevent them from training drone operators on PC’s with Nvidia. Of course there’s no other way they can get those drivers. The program is operated by 10yo sim players. They won’t be able to use Tor or VPNs or proxies. This is a very smart plan to optimize manpower, but Nvidia is smarter. Smarrrrt!
If, I have learned anything from YouTube it’s that if a multi trillion dollar international mega conglomerate doesn’t want you to have it, no matter how impossible it may seem they can stop you from getting it they just need enough market incentives.
This could just be one small step in a much larger plan or it could be placating the United States government whose to say.
My heart goes out to those Russians who have been patiently waiting for S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 to release and now they face the very real scenario that S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 just won’t run. After years of delays this will hit hard. Putin himself has been posting regularly about S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, begrudged by so many delays and his mother bought him the version with all future DLC’s included.
I hope Nvidia feel real fucking good about them selves knowing they’ve taken away a dictators dream.
Putin belongs in Yantar like the swamp-fuck he is.
Lol too true. What faction would Putin pick?
I’d say Bandits, but he’s only worthy of the Renegades.
How to do nothing while appearing to.
Am I going crazy or is that the framework ceo in that stock photo?
Nirav Patel
He used to work at nVidia, so this is very possible it’s him. They do look very similar.
That sounds good and all, but the ones aho are really affected are the powerless people.
Most sanctions, aside from ones aimed at individuals, are going to have indirect effect. That is, they will produce pressure on Russia in aggregate, and that means that they’ll impact the typical citizen.
But that being said, there have been a lot of sanctions applied, and…the impact on Nvidia drivers isn’t, I think, really a huge one relative to those. Like, things like cutting off access to all kinds of electronics parts and payment system access and stuff are going to be, I’d say, a lot more impactful to a typical person in Russia, even if the impact is secondary.
That’s the objective or they learn to overthrow their shit leader of they don’t get western tech
Oh nyoo, they’ll have to use the open source ones!!
Haven’t the common folk been through enough?/s
(And the open sauce nVidia drivers got actually completely viable, great effort & results)They could still just download the official drivers straight from the NVIDIA website with a VPN. Or from a mirror without one.
Did NVIDIA stop selling videocards in Russia? The article doesn’t mention it.
Did NVIDIA stop selling videocards in Russia?
kagis
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-to-stop-all-product-sales-to-russia
Nvidia Stops All Product Sales to Russia
March 5, 2022
So, yes, though I don’t think that it matters a huge amount, since companies are just gonna re-export them out of China or Kazakhstan or wherever. I mean, it’s not like the hardware has some kind of region-locking. It’s a piece of consumer hardware, sold and resold anonymously all over the place. It’s not some kind of specialized military hardware with four end customers and tight control over the movement of the product.
kagis
https://hardwaretimes.com/nvidia-loses-just-2-of-its-revenue-as-offices-are-shut-down-in-russia/
In October [2022], NVIDIA officially shut down all its operations in Russia as sales of both data center and consumer graphics cards were wrapped up. At the time, around 240 employees worked for the Santa Clara-based company. These folks were given the option to either relocate abroad or look for other jobs.
Furthermore, NVIDIA hardware has been banned from sale via official channels.
Fortunately for Team Green, the Russian Federation represented a minor market for its wide portfolio. Disclosures from the Q3 2022 earnings report indicate that the Federation accounted for just 2% of its revenue and 4% for the gaming business.
Although channel partners are forbidden to sell the latest GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, Russian gamers can still procure them from the grey market.
It’ll probably add cost and some risk of getting ripped off and no manufacturer’s warranty, but I would be surprised if someone who wanted a new GPU couldn’t continue to get ahold of one in Russia, given enough funds.
EDIT: Does make me wonder about Windows-side driver updates. Like, people here are talking about Linux. Windows requires driver signing, and I don’t know if those signatures are region-specific.
but I would be surprised if someone who wanted a new GPU couldn’t continue to get ahold of one in Russia, given enough funds.
From what I saw recently it’s actually cheaper there than in non-sanctioned nearby countries.
The smart ones will be unaffected as nouveau, as distributed through package managers, remains unaffected.
And the really smart ones don’t even have nvidia hardware to begin with.
UPD: as of right now, the access isn’t blocked in any way.
It is still unclear whether or not the block was intentional, Nvidia gave no comments.
Some of you may rejoice in unison because of this but this creates a dangerous precedence for other countries. At any time Nvidia can just brick computers at whichever country they decide to. This situation shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Just buy an AMD card and use linux.
I do lol.
But now you’re forcing an entire country to use AMD and Linux, while ignoring the main issue. Pretty much one of the biggest computer companies who have their fists on a good chunk of our nation’s balls, and can choose to squeeze them at any time.
The average Lemmy user operates with „USA good, Russia bad, Democrats good, Republicans ban, especially Trump TERRIBLE BAD“ so you‘ll be downvoted
But 2020-2024 showed us that United States of North America have no moral compass. And any North American company will do whatever it needs to in order to support the military industrial complex and the interests of North America.
Then North America will claim that they “care about human rights”.
That’s probably why I’m getting downvoted. Users who are downvoting, feel free to elaborate. The way I see it Nvidia can just brick all the computers in [insert some of your favorite countries] and nobody will really stop them.
Some of the downvotes could be because you saying they can brick them is sensationalized when they only disabled updates.
they gonna stop the mirror operators that reside outside those areas yet serve them?
