Why the strong focus on Russian/Ex-Soviet cities in the article, though? It seems odd that there is a detailed list of present-day closed cities in Russia but only passing mention of other countries.
Really depends on the country. And in a country could friend on the city. For example, in the Soviet Union, Moscow was off limits to the people who did not have a permanent place to live (as registered in the internal passport). They were forced out but not necessarily imprisoned, just moved to "the 101st kilometer" (outside the 100 kilometer zone, that is). I think Leningrad was like that too. Even in the USSR it was uneven: Russian and I think Ukraine were like that, the Baltic republics were not, not sure about Central Asia.
These are all historical anecdotes, nothing more. No claim about it being or not being intrinsic to the socialist society etc.
During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. <- that’s not true. The newcomers in moscow got job and then went to moscow. And got an apartment from the institution that offered the job. Going to moscow without a job would make you ???? (lowest caste of homeless) there.
I found the same thing - in the chezh republic, it was a far more free for all than any other urbanized country I had been to, however things ran way smoother because you counted on everyone else following no rules.
I'm from New Zealand (and live there again now), but I've traveled in Ukraine a little, including Dnipropetrovsk (as it was still called at the time in 2014), previously I believe the largest "closed city" in the USSR and the place a lot of aerospace technology was made. The other previously closed city I've been to is Chernogolovka, not far (20km) from "Starry City". My ex-gf (1996-2004) grew up in Chernogolovka before moving to NZ in 1994, her parents were chemical engineers there. Now the town is perhaps best known for a line of soft drinks.
I worked on compilers & JITs for Samsung R&D in Moscow from July 2014 to March 2018, living there from April 2015. I visited old friends/colleagues there at New Year 2020.
I don't intend to visit Russia again any time soon, for obvious reasons, but I'm thinking about spending some time in Odesa (and spending my remote-working salary there) as soon as it is practical.
I've been following democracy in Ukraine, and the fight against the left-over USSR culture of corruption, for a long time. Here's a video I captured (at home in NZ) from a webcam in Ukraine showing my friend Natalia voting in Kryvyi Rih (where I spent a week in 2014) in the October 2012 elections.
Ok, that's a very long diversion from the topic. Just want to show I didn't suddenly become an expert on Ukraine or Russia or UA/RU relations on February 24 2022 )))
> Systems, you mentioned, are from my view, something in best case 2017 year desktop technology on steroids for West
The SG2042 is very much like the Graviton 1 that went into production (A1 instances) at AWS in November 2018, just over five years ago. The biggest difference is the SG2042 has 64 cores while the Graviton has 16. The C910 and A72 cores are very similar designs.
Note that the RISC-V instruction set did not yet officially exist until July 2019, and it takes around five years to design a CPU core and get it into a chip in a system, you can buy.
MUCH faster RISC-V SBCs using the SG2380 are coming out late this year, at Arm A78 level. That doesn't exist yet in Arm SBCs. The first A76 RK3588 boards were in around May 2022, and the Raspberry Pi 5 arrived at customers in bulk only around 2-3 months ago.
When the SG2380 arrives later in the year RISC-V will be less than 2.5 years behind ARM.
Sure, both are behind Intel and AMD at present. That's going to change by about 2026. There are multiple companies in the USA with Apple M* level RISC-V chips under development, several of them employing senior ex-Apple designers, and all of them with a lot of people with recent Intel and AMD experience.
Btw, I also have access to an Elbrus, which I've experimented with, so I've got some idea about them too. I also had many colleagues at Samsung who previously worked on Elbrus compilers at MCST.
Mac-mini:~ bruce$ ssh elbrus
brucehoult@sumireko:~$ uname -a
Linux sumireko 5.4.0-6.9-e8c2 #1 SMP Mon Mar 6 23:32:47 MSK 2023 e2k E8C2 Elbrus-MCST GNU/Linux
brucehoult@sumireko:~$ head /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : Elbrus-MCST
cpu family : 5
model : 9
model name : E8C2
revision : 2
cpu MHz : 1200
bogomips : 2400.00
processor : 1
brucehoult@sumireko:~$ date
?? ??? 7 08:10:41 MSK 2024
I've also seen Mt Elbrus with my own eyes (but haven't climbed it!), from Pyatigorsk (and the top of Beshtau, 95km), from the top of Dombay ski lifts (60km), and from somewhere on A157 (50km)
Having spent time in both cities, I don't think the residential urban areas of Moscow have the same problem as Barcelona does. If you look closely between all of those Brezhnev era apartment blocks, you'll find that the soviets packed them with green space, playgrounds, etc. If anything, Moscow is short on parking lots. (edit: Not advocating tearing up the playgrounds for parking lots.)
This city looks awful in this photo but this is probably ideal living for urbanized people.
This was built as a public trans city so the narrow streets are for buses and trams. The apartment complexes aren't big blocky buildings like in say Manhattan, but L shaped to allow a large shady green area and to maximize natural light for all residents. Its full of green between the buildings and quite charming looking and walkable, especially considering some of those buildings are mixed use and allow for business as well:
The Soviets got so much right, its such a shame the car-centric suburban sprawl model won out in the West and percolated its way to Russia and parts of the East after the fall of the SU.
I live in Moscow, Russia, and there was a brief time when I was stripped of rights to enter a restaurant, cafe, gym, theater, concert or sports venue. There was talking about requirement of vaccination to use public transit and even a taxi.
Fortunately, those restrictions were cancelled after 3 weeks, because you know, voting day is coming and we don't need angry citizens to vote against ruling party. But the infrastructure is there and it may be used again any time now.
First, you don't always get an alternative place, lately local authorities started just denying the permission. Second, even if they propose an alternative, it's somewhere on the outskirts and/or at extremely inconvenient time. You can find a big bunch of examples of both at [1] (in Russian).
Even in Soviet times, people, if they could would migrate to the city, internal passport withstanding. People may despise the tedium of modern work, but the toil of pre-agriculture and subsistence living is somewhat worse --it does not provide marginal benefit. It's subsistence. Weather, plagues and general unpredictability is not usually sought, if you have alternatives.
I'd traveled to St Petersburg, Moscow and Tashkent last year precisely to satiate this fascination. Stayed in an Airbnb in central Moscow in an old soviet-style apartment (most of which are now luxury apartments with BMWs parked out front).
The biggest difference was their approach to public infrastructure. The metro stations in all three cities are absolutely gorgeous. The trains are old and creaky, but the stations look like palaces (which is exactly what they wanted to create - "palaces for the people").
I was in Odessa for holiday in July. Very cheap airbnb, but there was night lockdown and pubs were closing early. Also beaches were closed (mines) but nobody cared.
It's a bit surprising that this omits the fact that the Moscow Metro is a nuclear bomb shelter. There are huge blast doors everywhere and at many stations it's significantly deeper than Paris of New York. It's also got some of the longest escalators I've ever used in my life. Naturally since you need several minute to descend into the depths you'd want wider spaces and plazas. I can't imagine the claustrophobia if they'd made it to a western scale.. I also imagine there are huge challenges with ventilation and whatnot...
To the other points raise, I never quite understood the multi-decade Moscow housing shortages. The USSR (and now Russia) had internal travel passports, and at least back then you couldn't just pick up your bags and move to a different city. Why were more people than houses allowed to immigrate to Moscow? Maybe someone has some historical insight into this?
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