cyd

@cyd@lemmy.world

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cyd,

US worded its statements carefully. They’ll still provide support for all the other parts of Israel’s military operations, just not for the Rafah invasion. Israel is free to shuffle things around so that it won’t make a difference.

Israel launches Rafah offensive it says is start of mission to ‘eliminate’ Hamas (www.theguardian.com)

Israel has launched a major military offensive against Hamas forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, seizing control of a key border crossing and cutting off most aid into the territory a day before indirect talks on a ceasefire deal are due to restart....

cyd,

They know they can cuck the US without repercussions. Biden administration looking real impotent right now.

cyd,

I feel like the US “center-right” is more dangerous than the European “far-right”.

cyd,

If you pay $1 for Gmail, and Google pays you $1 for your data, isn’t that equivalent to where we are today?

cyd, (edited )

I’m pretty skeptical about how much fundamental change is possible on this issue. So long as we give consumers a choice, the overwhelming evidence is that most people dgaf about their data, and are willing to trade it away.

This is a totally free exchange. Even when you plant the choice in front of users as an obnoxious and intrusive accept-cookies prompt, they’ll happily click Accept All even for sketchy websites (let alone something like Gmail). So you end up wasting everyone’s time for little benefit.

A common response to this is to mull heavy-handed centralized government controls, like how China regulates its internet giants. But this would be a decisive move away from the entire idea of a decentralized internet. People pushing such legislation often retort that it’s possible to pick off the internet giants while leaving smaller operators alone, but this seems like a forlorn hope. Google and Meta already signalled that they are not concerned about EU data laws, because they have so much internal data, and the regulations could even entrench their dominance by preventing other players from catching up.

cyd,

Check out this one weird trick for winning a war! NATO hates it!

cyd,

This is an absurd abuse of government power, which “small government” Republicans are going along with because the AM radio listening audience skews right. By the same logic, I suppose the next step is to force homeowners to subscribe to a landline and cable TV.

cyd,

Then people living in rural areas, who need AM radio, can spend a bit more to get it as an optional package. Or like 5 bucks to get a stand-alone radio. Why force everyone else to get it?

cyd,

Source? Or is it just a matter of “it has the same shape as a western car, and a steering wheel = omfg IP theft”?

cyd,

So you’re just talking about the look of the car? Because BYD has been doing EVs far longer than Porsche, so if anyone is doing a rip-off of the tech, it would be Porsche.

As far as design goes, BYD’s aesthetics in recent years has a lot to do with them hiring big-shot European designers like Wolfgang Egger. If they’re pulling from the same talent pool as other top carmakers, it’s not so obvious why you’d accuse BYD of copying others, and not vice versa.

cyd,

If you’re referring to the BYD U7 vs the Porsche Taycan, they both look like car. Beyond that, eh.

cyd,

Funny thing is, those Chinese drones are being heavily used by Ukraine, because they’re more reliable than US-made drones. In 2023, Ukraine bought about 60% of the global supply of DJI’s Mavic quadcopters.

cyd,

It’s gonna get pulled from app stores for “promoting antisemitism”. You don’t need to be the Kwisatz Haderach to foresee this.

cyd,

There are valid commercial reasons not to go through a forced sale with a ticking time limit, which will inevitably carry a steeply discounted price. Rather than getting robbed, it makes sense to hang on to the company and take profits from the rest of the world.

cyd,

I wonder how much of the aid to Ukraine shows up as money that Ukraine can decide for itself how to spend, as opposed to money that U-turns straight back into pre-determined US defence contracts.

cyd,

As I understand, using VPNs to access will be illegal in principle, and the VPNs can be on the hook for stiff penalties.

In practice, it will depend on how zealously the government plays the cat and mouse game. Kind of the same situation as with China and VPNs that bypass the Great Firewall (ironic!).

cyd,

I mean, you can use that approach to denigrate pretty much any activity people spend time on.

cyd,

Vietnam is a pretty darn poor example for them to be bringing up. A much poorer country fights for its independence against bigger countries with seemingly insurmountable advantages (first France, and then the USA). And by dint of sheer national sacrifice, sustained over 20+ years of fighting, manages to outlast the enemy. Don’t forget also that the Vietnamese started from a vastly poorer and more backward position compared to the Ukrainians.

cyd,

How much of the coal in a blast furnace is actually necessary for the carbon impregnation, as opposed to supplying the heat via combustion? Steel contains only a few percent carbon by weight, so it doesn’t seem like much carbon is needed (not to mention that the carbon in steel is essentially sequestered).

cyd, (edited )

In a normal economy, balancing growth versus inflation is certainly an important issue. But when an economy is undergoing hyperinflation, getting that under control has to be priority number one.

Keynes, for example, wrote eloquently about this a century ago. Some of his passages apply quite eerily to the case of Argentina:

The preservation of a spurious value for the currency, by the force of law expressed in the regulation of prices, contains in itself, however, the seeds of final economic decay, and soon dries up the sources of ultimate supply. If a man is compelled to exchange the fruits of his labors for paper which, as experience soon teaches him, he cannot use to purchase what he requires at a price comparable to that which he has received for his own products, he will keep his produce for himself, dispose of it to his friends and neighbors as a favor, or relax his efforts in producing it…

The effect on foreign trade of price-regulation and profiteer-hunting as cures for inflation is even worse. Whatever may be the case at home, the currency must soon reach its real level abroad, with the result that prices inside and outside the country lose their normal adjustment. The price of imported commodities, when converted at the current rate of exchange, is far in excess of the local price, so that many essential goods will not be imported at all by private agency, and must be provided by the government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency.

cyd,

For countries in the global South, Zelensky’s pro-Israel stance looks totally cynical, and justifies a neutral stance in the Ukraine-Russia war.

cyd, (edited )

This is a really neat technology that Noda (the author of the article) has been plugging away at for decades. The main problem, from my understanding, is that people haven’t been able to find applications.

We already have conventional laser diodes that work extremely well, they’re not that bright but bright enough to make laser pointers, disc read/write heads, etc., which are applications where miniaturization is important.

On the other hand, in industrial applications like cutting steel, we have fiber lasers. Those are about the size of a briefcase, compared to the photonic crystal lasers in this article which about a centimeter. But they can reach incredible brightness, about 1000x the output power of the photonic crystal lasers (and about 1,000,000 times that of ordinary laser diodes). And in industrial applications you don’t really need the laser to be miniaturized (especially since the power source itself will be a chonky piece of equipment).

So somehow, right now this neat tech is falling into the cracks. One day, I’m sure someone will find the perfect application for it, though.

Edit: the potential application that people are most hopeful about is lidar; if, in the future, lidar gets integrated into consumer electronic devices like cellphones, then photonic crystal lasers will probably prove their usefulness.

cyd,

I think those use normal VCSELs. To justify using PCSELs, maybe it would be lidars for long range sensing, like range finding over dozens of meters or something.

cyd,

Shouldn’t be assassinating people in other countries, whether it’s a consulate or embassy…

cyd,

Chinese companies do business with whoever pays them. Ukraine, for example, is heavily reliant on Chinese drones and has been buying over half the global supply of DJI’s Mavic quadcopters.

And Chinese companies aren’t alone in this. Lots of developing economies don’t feel they gave a stake in the conflict and have continued to do business. Most of Russia’s oil exports have been going through India. The fact that the US has been so muted in its response to this, because they feel like India is “on-side” in the confrontation against China, makes the singling out of China seem hypocritical.

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