Whoever comes in after Putin will probably be of the same mind and possibly be even more extreme.

Unfortunately most “Westerners” don’t understand this at all. And I am not talking “average joe”, just look at Merkel or Steinmeier.

Some of it is of course corruption and hypocrisy, but there is strong undercurrent of ignorance of both history and nature of russian “culture” in the west.

There’s precisely one person in Russia who actually thinks it’s a good idea, and he’s 71.

That’s not true. There is a decent minority of hyper nationalists (even more so than the average russian - who is basically genocidal if you know how to read them) who support this. They may not know what “LoongArch 64” or Linux is, but they definitely support “independence от пиндосов”.

The “it’s only putin” pitch is a ruse used by alleged russian liberals.

And then you have the vast majority who in principle might like the idea of having an iPhone, but when it comes to actions (or lack of thereof) they will always choose the path that leads to imperialism, authoritarianism and razing their neighbour’s cities to rubble.

They had a unique opportunity in the late 80s and look what kind of society they built in the last 30 years.

Where did you get the stat on most HDDs lasting 5 years on average?

This seems totally off. I have an HDD from 2012 that works just fine even though it gets a lot of I/O action (torrenting). I had older HDDs from the 90s and 2000s that also still worked after 7-10 before they were retired.

The HDD in my current has been in (heavy) use for just 3 years, but I don’t thin it’s unreasonable to assume that it will last another 5 years before it is replaced.