Just saying... you don't need to activate windows. Been using an unactivated copy for years. You lose virtually nothing.
post
They don't bother activating his PCs anymore. He always gets frustrated and throws out the Windows.
Considering they don't know about massgrave.dev to permanently activate their copy and it's Windows 10, they probably also don't know about extended W10 EOL updates, which means that computer likely hasn't received a security update since October, 2025.
Based on the rumors about putin and his paranoia, I'd assume that computer is not connected to the internet lol
Some photos of him have really awkwardly positioned computers - like no way anyone works like that. Hence why some choose to believe him to be a complete luddite.
How is he online voting then?
It's "voting", that's why he's projected to win with 101.2% votes
The vote goes to himself. No need for an online detour.
Voting doesn't need to be secure in Russia because voting doesn't actually matter in Russia.
Look, if you want to cast one vote then Russian hardware can handle it just fine, but if you have to cast thousands, that needs something faster.
With all the Russian piracy sites, I assume nobody in Russia actually pays for software. I figure they just haven’t gotten around to cracking that machine yet.
I was in Turkey 25 years ago. Their tram system used the Windows warning "BLING" before calling out the station.
I was there last year, and when you go to charge your tram card in the machine, everyone of them has a "This version of Windows is unathorized. Click here to buy a license" message in the bottom left of the screen.
Gotta love the Turks.
This wasn't the case before 2022, but after MS no longer officially selling licenses in Russia, it's everyone again.
But it's different, for things you can't license because of sanctions piracy is seen as normal, for other things nobody cares, but people stopped pirating.
In general, the ex-Soviet culture of not understanding copyright violations as real crime at all, period, is gone. It's a few tech-savvy people, sometimes older, and "pirate party" idealists, and communists (not all of them by far).
Those Russian piracy sites are, as a rule, banned in Russia. They mostly started 20+ years ago.
However, those doing copyright protection in Russia are mostly former pirates who legalized their business via some acquaintances. Oops. I also doubt that Aldebaran (the e-book library), for example, licensed all of the books they give for a buck from authors, and with LitRes it's also highly unlikely. There are plenty of other such Russian paid e-book libraries, movie sites and so on.
It's a common opinion in Russia that there's some western "rule of law" which, if applied to Russia, could fix it, I think it's the other way around, the main problem with Russia's society is the inferiority complexes, the "rule of law" one among them, leading people to overlook brakes and feedbacks existing in the wild to good effect, when deciding what they want "fixed" and "civilized" to be good.
That "rule of law" idea sometimes leads to following laws set by people who just don't understand what "acting in good faith" means.
EDIT: What I meant is that piracy situation in Russia is close to what's it's in the western countries now, except for sanctions. Younger people pirate, but not all of them. Older and middle age people often see piracy as something bad and shameful. In the "nobody in Russia pays for software" times it was the other way around, most people didn't understand the concept, and younger and more fashionable people had some licensed copies to boast and would tell their acquaintances that actually it's very cool to buy official copies, pay for software, give it back to authors, and that otherwise it'd be theft and those people whose names are printed here and here wouldn't really approve, to say the least.
I thought Putin had put a lot of people through windows; why the surprise?
What are the odds this is just a JavaScript button that goes nowhere?
Been a long minute since I looked at pre-built machines. That's a Dell All-in-One. I had to look that up. I'm glad I did, I was about to make a stupid comment that it's a Dell monitor, but no telling what PC it's attached to.
Jeeves: "Will it be 87% again this year, sir?"
Putin: "Maybe 93%. Maybe."
Nah it will be divisible by 5. They don't try very hard to hide the irregularities. There is a long history of oddly round results:

Pulled from here: https://github.com/dkobak/elections/tree/master
Why dont they use Linux so weird.
Putin's a stupid old boomer who can send people to the gulag.
Do you want to teach him a new OS?
p.s. they have multiple nationalised Russian Linuxes i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux
The fact that it's quite easy to activate Windows without money or a valid key makes this even funnier. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and neither do the people around him
Or it's supposed to be an insult? If it was licensed (even thru pirate means) it would look like they paid money to Microsoft.
This way, they have it and are using it without funding an American company.
It's a throw away computer. They went out and got a random shitbox from Andrei Blahblahnov at his corner computer repair shop that no one from any intelligence service would ever think to go to ahead of time.
Use the shit once, literally set it on fire in a field 30 minutes later.
Plot twist: it's not connected to the Internet. He has a button labeled "PRESS TO WIN ELECTION" installed in his dacha.
Does Russia have online voting? Oof
It's easy when you can just make up the results
Note Putin's monitor isn't even plugged in. Just, A+.
At first glance I thought the story was going to be Putin illegally voting in US midterms to give backing to Trump's efforts to undermine them. One autocrat doing a solid for another. Trump could probably get Dell or even Tim Apple to hook up a new 'puter for the Putin'.
Russia has no own processor production. ICL is one of the few Russian PC brands which uses AMD and Intel... So in fact there are no "Russian" pc's...
They need just that vote anyway, it will count for every citizen comrade too.
Stop pretending that Russia is communist. Russia wasn’t even communist when it was the USSR, it sure as shit ain’t communist now
It sure as hell isn't a democracy either
"You can't go wrong." Isn't an observation, it's a threat.
Me using unlicensed windows to jerk off for the 4th time at 3am.

We didn't need to know that but okay!


top 50 comments