Miscellaneous News

FriedButter

Colonel
Registered Member

To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast​

Several breakfast staples saw sharp price increases due to a perfect storm of bad weather and disease outbreaks—and continued effects from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Another amazing money saving tip from the WSJ. I personally recommend sleeping on the sidewalk to save $100s that would have gone to rent.

————

EU carbon price hits record high nearing 100 euros/tonne​

LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The benchmark European carbon contract hit a record high approaching 100 euros a tonne on Monday, with cooler weather forecasts and expectations of lower wind power output driving up demand.

The benchmark EU Allowance (EUA) December 2023 contract closed at 98.30 euros a tonne, up 2.1% since Friday's close and having earlier touched a record high of 99.99 euros tonne.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Why is EU carbon tax a tradable commodity?
 
Last edited:

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

A fair and as objective article on the recent balloon crisis as one can get from an American historian and recent author of the book: Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China.

Thanks to @Lethe for mentioning this article and book on his post at Book thread.

excerpt from the article:

In some ways, the United States and China have been here before, and it wasn’t pretty. From the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 until then-U.S. President Richard Nixon’s trip to Beijing in 1972, the relationship between the two countries was overwhelmingly hostile and, almost by definition, mostly covert. The two governments refused to recognize each other and rarely allowed their diplomats to meet, and the United States maximized its military and technological advantage to spy on China—if not subvert it.

Yet despite their technical capabilities to keep an eye on China from above, Americans had a very poor understanding of what was actually going on in Mao’s China—from the halls of power to villages across the country. Ignorance of China left the United States vulnerable to colossal intelligence failures, like being blindsided by massive
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
in Korea in 1950 or underestimating the depth of the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(visible by 1960) and its impact on Chinese support for Hanoi during the Vietnam War. American ignorance was made worse by the McCarthyist purges of the government’s best China experts in the early 1950s on unfounded allegations of being communist sympathizers. And the biggest windfall by far in U.S. intelligence on China was when then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger simply started talking to his Chinese counterparts. The same was probably true for then-Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Chinese understanding of the Americans.

Today, covert aspects are once again threatening to become drivers of U.S.-China relations, similar to the period before normalization a half century ago. Room for political dialogue and civic engagement narrows as outrage over espionage and suspicion about “influence operations” intensifies. Paradoxically, strategic intelligence is likely to suffer on both sides in proportion to the increase in mutual surveillance.


One difference between now and the early Cold War is that China’s power and reach have expanded exponentially. Ironically, Beijing now faces the temptation to make use of the kind of global capabilities to spy on others that China has long complained the United States deployed. Americans should know their own history of surveillance and subversion to maintain a degree of humility while calling out Beijing for violations of sovereignty and lack of transparency. Chinese might study the same historical record for cautionary lessons about what happens when superpowers spy more than they ought to.


And then you get one comment coming from the self-righteous and never introspective of their arrogant ways:

BY JIMW:

The difference is that the United States is counted on to be the leading defenders of democracy and freedom by the free world, a costly responsibility that most Americans wish we could be free of. Whereas China is planning on or already is the leader of the autocracies of the world. While I agree that US foreign policy and CIA activities are not always perfect (and even misguided at times), neither is democracy (especially our version) nor mankind. If not for the present-day capabilities and dedication of our military and CIA, we would be at a loss to effectively execute our leadership responsibilities. As a frequent visitor to mainland China and Hong Kong over the last fifteen years, and with all due respect, I take exception to the idea that Americans should “maintain a degree of humility while calling out Beijing for violations of sovereignty and lack of transparency”. If so, how should Americans have reacted to China after they joined the WTO when they violated the spirit, and rules about forced technology transfers and state subsidies which they agreed to? Should we have maintained humility while calling out Beijing about that as well?
They shouldn't worry. These 'friends' will have much to celebrate soon, and we already have a precedent with our party hats. Much fun.

_63441465_li660825a(2).jpg
 

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Full text: The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper​

Source: Xinhua
Editor: huaxia
2023-02-21 09:16:30
BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday released "The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper."

Hmm is this about the peace talk in Ukraine, or is this something separate?
Something separate. AFAIK the peace proposal will be done on Friday
 

Biscuits

Major
Registered Member
Well, this is just lying and trolling rolled together. Could be a parody of Falun Gong accounts. That bad. The good thing is comments are based. These Christian republican conservative political figures are so weird. Wasn't lying a sin in their religion?

When the uncivilized see a self checkout for the first time in their lives
 

solarz

Brigadier
Can you 3D print out new 3D printers?

Just in case you were half-serious about this question, 3D printers print out solid objects of a certain material in a specified shape. So a cube, a sphere, a pipe, etc.

It will not print out fully assembled machinery, but it can print out parts that can then be manually assembled into a working machine. The limitation is on the material. For example, if you wanted to print a light bulb, you would need a printer that could print glass, copper, and tungsten. I'm not sure if it's currently possible to 3D print glass. If, on the other hand, you wanted to 3D print a bicycle, you would need to print out the frame, the wheels, the tires, the chain, the pedals, etc. all separately, and then put them together yourself.


Well, this is just lying and trolling rolled together. Could be a parody of Falun Gong accounts. That bad. The good thing is comments are based. These Christian republican conservative political figures are so weird. Wasn't lying a sin in their religion?


I'm inclined to think this is trolling or parody. This guy is putting up videos of perfectly ordinary scenes and captioning them with sinister sounding phrases.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
America benefits from this war.
It benefits America to throw tens of billions of dollars at Ukraine while watching its European partners in the tech/trade war against China get reduced to irrelevency from economic blood loss? Russia's not going to take America's crown; China is the only country to watch out for. America's only hope against China in the tech war is outside help, and I mean a mountain load of it. If they crash out and America's left to one-on-one China, or even anything somewhat resembling that, it's a country of 330M liberal arts majors against a country of 1.4B with the highest STEM grad production in the world.
Plus, Russia’s own money will be used to finance this war and rebuild Ukraine.
Yeah, when Ukraine belongs to Russia. Short of that, what they've robbed from Russians who trusted Western banks isn't enough to cover the damage from a day's worth of air raids.
 
Last edited:

luminary

Senior Member
Registered Member
The NYT reporter probably has no idea that 3 Chinese chatbots are only a few months away. Also, China and US' AI R&D is engaged in a long-term competition, a few months ahead is only a temporary achievement.
You seem to be operating under a misconception. There is a competition in speed of computing; there is no competition in artificial intelligence.

The fundamental, immutable law of AI is that models get smarter with more data. If you want your AI to spew profanity and peddle bullsh*t, you feed it data from the internet cesspool made up of 90% fake news. But if you want your AI to do something useful in the physical world, you give it data collected from the physical world.

This is why Internet of Things is, in fact, the true measure of AI development. IoT is the giving of physical objects digital footprints so they generate (quantity) and interconnect (quality) data. From that understanding, you can then extrapolate that artificial intelligence is not tied to software development at all, but rather hardware development: whoever can produce and connect the most IoT devices to attain valuable real life data.

When I frame the AI "race" in terms of production and structural implementation, who is leading becomes obvious. Making a neural network that analyzes daily consumption trends to optimize power grid operation for millions of people is useful. Making a chatbot that imitates redditors or used car salesmen is useful... for a nation of bellicose politicians.

This reminds me of 3D printing. Western countries declared it would make regular manufacturing obsolete, then proceeded to forget all about it a few years later. Meanwhile, China is using it to print jet engines.
Truly revolutionary technologies have no place in the West. After all, they do not really produce anything other than meaningless media, legal services and financial loopholes. For those, a 2D printer does just fine.
 
Top