posted in Technology
Putin casts online vote using unlicensed Windows on an American Dell PC
www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/putin-casts-online-vote-using-unlicensed-windows-on-an-american-dell-pc-activate-windows-watermark-visible-in-official-kremlin-clip-uses-foreign-dell-pc-despite-russian-tech-mandate
Replying to @muelltonne@feddit.org
His Windows being unlicensed makes perfect sense. Why would he give money to Microsoft? In fact, why would you?
As for the PC - there are no Russian PCs, so he has to use something foreign. DELLs are very solid, and great for the price if you get them refurbished.
Not as solid as Lenovo, which also has considerably fewer American companies in its supply chain. But maybe they just got a good deal on a bunch of DELLs.
Replying to @DupaCycki@lemmy.world
there are no Russian PCs
There do exist domestic-built elbrus(custom soviet arch) and baikal(ARM-derived) -based PCs. Technically, all govt employees are required to use them as there is like a 30% limit on foreign parts, but in practice it is circumvented by padding circuits with junk thats never used. And yes, they’re lagging behind cutting edge chips by a decade and a half at this point, but its still more than enough for online voting and whatever other boomer shit putin needs.
Replying to @drath@lemmy.world
Baikal went bankrupt in 2023 because they used TSMC for chip production.
Elbrus is barely hanging on but it’s helplessly far behind, you can’t really run a modern DE and browse modern web on anything but their flagship Elbrus-16C, but that’s made for servers, AFAIK there are no “desktop” form-factor motherboards for it at all, and it’s exceptionally pricy compared to competition.
I think a more likely outcome is that russia starts bulk-purchasing chinese CPUs soon.