Russia’s Creepy, Innovative Internet [video]

&gt; <i>But the most stunning—and creepiest—software developed in Russia is something called FindFace. It’s an app that lets you take a picture of a stranger and then almost instantly, using a facial-recognition algorithm, find the person on a social network. If you’re hoping the software doesn’t work that well, you’ll be disappointed: When I tested the app, it found the right faces all the freaking time. Privacy is so 2015.</i><p>Still waiting for social networks to search for you on other social networks, to verify your identify.<p><i>We&#x27;re sorry, this photo doesn&#x27;t match your face in photos on other social media, so we can&#x27;t add it to your profile.</i>

Many of the really good software engineers I know are Russian. As in they grew up and were educated in Russia but they all end up working for U.S. companies. Russia is missing out on a lot of talent right in their back yard. If the government was a little more forward thinking and didn&#x27;t try to stifle and control things so much who knows where they would be right now.

Articles and the comments they spawn are a bit weird, honestly. Let&#x27;s talk about face recognition tech in Russia, and how creepy it makes them.<p>Meanwhile it&#x27;s not creepy at all that &quot;Half of American Adults Are in Police Facial-Recognition Databases&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;half-of-american-adults-are-in-police-facial-recognition-databases&#x2F;504560&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;half-o...</a>

Disclaimer: didn&#x27;t watch the video, read the text.<p>At least in the text the author seemingly misses an important theme: there is a rising gloom in the Russian techscene lately. Talented programmers are mostly open-minded and keen to the western perspective, so the recent (~2012) turn in Russian politics was (and is) morally hard for a lot of them. All hopes for modernization, &quot;westernization&quot;, and brighter future in the next decade were shattered, most startups now look for either government or government-associated funding. Like, the only way the founders of that creepy FindFace startup were going to monetize is to sell it to <i>siloviks</i>. The economic downturn also plays its role.<p>The future isn&#x27;t bright around here.

On Youtube - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tICL-lwI7KM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tICL-lwI7KM</a>

Does anyone know the name of the Russian choir song at minute 16 of the documentary? I want to use it for the background song when individual factions reach the Factory in Scythe (parallel universe board game). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;tICL-lwI7KM?t=930" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;tICL-lwI7KM?t=930</a><p>One piece of software I am very impressed by is Dmitry Shkarin&#x27;s Durilca, a very fast and efficient file compressor, topping the benchmark charts. I wonder what he&#x27;s doing now. And if I&#x27;m not mistaken Eltech&#x27;s Exagear (close to native i386 binary emulation on Arm) was made by Russian programmers too.

Can we have the original article titles (or non-click-bait derivatives) for HN. This one is not entirely disconnected.But just for Informational sanity.

There seems to be so much vaporware around AI currently. It seems like theres a fair bit of it in this episode. Apart from that I thought it was a great doc.

I did see some very solid engineering there. But I didn&#x27;t see any meaningful product or business model innovation. As the documentary shows, most companies there are either replicating western business models, or doing what the government orders or allows them to do. Russian engineers are phenomenal but their entrepreneurs don&#x27;t see either creative of free to create.<p>Compare them to Chinese entrepreneurs. In China they don&#x27;t restrict themselves to copy western businesses. They adapt to very Chinese cultural habits like having chat engines on online shopping such that you can interact with sellers or even haggle and bargain when shopping. It&#x27;s what Jack Ma called being &quot;the crocodile in the Yang-Tse&quot;: being specific to a culture, understand your customers instead of standardizing them.<p>Do Russians do the same? The video didn&#x27;t show that. What it showed is how much Russian capitalism is a pet of the Kremlin.

It seems like Russia&#x27;s tech is having innovation spikes here and there, but it just seems so. I haven&#x27;t seen any original ideas in that documentary. Everything is a copycat of some idea someone else had in Europe or in the Americas. They took it and made it far better, but for a very limited market. They exercise the same principles Steven Jobs had used for his designs: find cheap shit (or get paid by the gov), make it golden, sell it. That&#x27;s also why the Russian nuclear institute looked like a trash dump in the video. You can&#x27;t sell nuclear science to people. Not with a logo on it, you can&#x27;t. But, who knows. Never underestimate the idle mind of a Russian. It&#x27;s dangerous.

Is it supposed to be a video? Because I&#x27;m not seeing it. Is it behind a paywall?