Hey, that’s not arcane knowledge.

Arcane knowledge is memorising the server’s IP address.

To translate from one language to another, you need to know both languages very well, including puns, idioms, etc., and have a deep understanding of both cultures involved. A word for word translation will rarely do; you may even have to come up with new jokes / references to replace ones that don’t work in the target language.

If you have read translations of manga by, say, Rumiko Takahashi, you might have seen footnotes explaining all the puns and references. And even this is not ideal, since it breaks the reader’s flow.

What exactly is the point of rolling release?

Newer features. At the cost of a higher risk of stuff breaking.

Or is it for security?

No, point release OSs do have security updates. It’s feature updates that they avoid.

If you lose enough money, you trigger an integer overflow and end up with a profit!

Nobel prizes cannot be given to the dead.

As far as we know we have not found the colonialism gene, and there is no evidence that Europeans are somehow genetically different at this locus. So we can, at least for now, ignore the possibility that Europeans are inherently evil, or predisposed towards colonialism. Rather, the actions of any people must be understood as a consequence of their circumstances and culture.

due to all that’s happened in history, white people today are, while not intrinsically or genetically evil, tainted by the colonialism that has already happened and are therefore more likely to be the exploiters than the exploited due to their historical advantage.

White people are not only the beneficiaries of the colonialism that has already happened, they are often also the beneficiaries of colonialism that is currently happening. The CIA didn’t coup random Central American countries because they were bored. The IMF and World Bank don’t give loans to African countries for humanitarian reasons.

But human societies are not species and human-human interactions are not strictly ecological. For one, human societies have overarching coordination and collective will that species don’t have, and human societies as a whole often show more characteristics akin to a single organism than a species (though even that is apples to oranges)

I feel that the same principles that govern other animals should apply, more or less, to humans too. Although it might be more appropriate to compare human societies to populations of social animals (such as ant colonies or beehives) than to different species.

Does that imply that Imperial China was less evil than Imperial Europe? Or are they just as evil but in a different way (land-based conquest instead of sea based)? Or did they just not have the resources to do what Europe did but absolutely would have if they did? I don’t know hence why I’m asking.

I think the difference is that historically China had excellent agricultural land, a relatively modern and stable economy, and was surrounded by poorer and less advanced countries. So people had all the resources they wanted, and had little incentive to go far away. In contrast, Europe was fragmented, with Scotland, the Netherlands and Portugal actually having poor / too little land, and so there was a push for both raw materials and markets.

As far as I know, no one was forced to change their religion (Uyghurs aren’t even the biggest Muslim group in China, that’s the Hui) and there was no mass murder. I believe some innocent people who were wrongly suspected of being terrorists were strip-searched, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

Yogthos, Cowbee etc. have given very detailed answers below. From what I know, the things they said are mostly correct. However, one point to note is that a very small minority of Uyghur people, who were influenced by fundamentalist Wahhabi teachings, carried out terrorist attacks against non-Uyghur people in the 2010s. So there was an atmosphere of fear and suspicion against all the Uyghurs, and many innocent people were subjected to searches, arrests, and so on. This has been documented by the UN. Of course, this is not dissimilar to the way Muslims were treated in France or the US after terrorist attacks. In fact, representatives from Muslim countries who visited Xinjiang praised the government’s response, as it included a lot of job creation and infrastructure projects to turn people away from extremism.

Every country is ‘authoritarian’. That’s pretty much the practical definition of a country - that they, and they alone, can use force within their borders.

If you travel to another country, you should of course consider your own safety, as well as whether that country crosses something you see as a red line. To give an example, I oppose state restrictions on religion (unless they are dangerous to the public), am a republican, and support Palestinian independence. But I would visit France, the UAE or Germany if I got the chance, and I would try to understand why they have those policies (restrictions on Muslims’ clothes, monarchy, and ban on criticising Israel). But I would not go to the US, since getting shot by a random madman is not good for health.

The Radxa Rock 5 series use RK3588s and have USB, ethernet and 4-32 GB RAM.

Materialism is the ultimate means of oppression.

Materialism was historically just one way of understanding the world. Over time, it got accepted more and more because it could make testable (and useful) predictions, and they turned out to be right.

And it’s something you’ve been conditioned to believe in since birth.

Because it works.

Socialists, communists etc. still rely on materialism to drive their ideology

Because it works.

If someone is sick, and gets certified as such by a licenced medical doctor, they get leave. Why is this so complicated?

Didn’t they get a lot of computer hardware from Russia recently?

The article says he worked from China, for US and European companies. Which explains both the pay difference and the concern about the sanctions.

‘President’ is mostly a ceremonial office, so they should be able to smile and wave, entertain any visiting dignitaries, and read out whatever speeches Parliament writes for them in a pleasant voice. A feel-good origin story would be a nice bonus.

1. There’s an uptick in ‘Unknown’ (currently at 26%).

2. Linux adoption might have slowed down because India - US relations have improved since then, because Trump can be distracted by promising him trade deals. Of course the deal he wants (giving US agri companies access to the Indian market) will face opposition from farmers’ unions, so I’m not sure what the govt’s long-term plan is.

One good thing is that when a govt dept switches to Linux, it sort of sticks. And govt contracts are very profitable, so we’ll likely see greater interest from both hardware and software companies.

9% in India. But this is down from a peak of ~15% late last year when the govt was worried about US sanctions and was pushing for Linux adoption.

I think it would be more correct to say that quality control in Chinese science is very poor. I have seen top quality research, and I have also seen crap that should not have been published at all. But the sheer quantity of output means that the next big discovery in <insert field> will be from China.

OSTP is focused on removing regulations to science and tech bc they argue they are slowing us down in the AI race against China.

I don’t work on AI, but in my field I have seen the insane speed and scale of Chinese research. Now I’m from a developing country; the US can probably give better funding than we can, but I am inclined to agree that Chinese science does benefit from easier and better funding and a faster administrative process.

AI data in China is very poor likely bc of the lack of regulations

The big problem for AI research in China seems to be a shortage of high-end GPUs due to the trade wars. China is very strong in maths and comp sci, and they are finding workarounds, but it is still a pretty hard barrier.

Amazon/Bezos is probably getting some sweet federal kick backs

I think it’s more a threat against employees. The robots can be used as scabs.

which, until Jan. 2025, was one area that the U.S. had unquestionably dominated China

China had more scientists and papers well before this year. And China dominates particularly in fields like maths, computer science and manufacturing.

they are indeed going to try to replace scientists with robots

I can actually think of a lot of uses for robots in research. And, of course, there are a lot of robots in labs already; they just don’t look like humans.

but 6nm without EUV?

I read elsewhere that 5nm was already done (in the lab, not on industrial levels), and they’re planning on 3nm by 2026.

The workaround seems to be to use particle accelerators instead of EUV machines. More expensive and with lower yield, but it’ll do the job.