It’s probably mostly a side effect of our ability to feel love for each other.
As a group animal we have an instinct to protect each other that is born from love, that instinct help us survive as a group. The pet is included and can become part of the group maybe even family.
This trait has also helped us build relations with some animals that have historically been beneficial to our survival, like dogs horses and farm animals. For less immediately “useful” pets, the instinct is the same, and although it doesn’t serve the same purpose, it may be helpful psychologically to overcome hardship, and maybe tie the group together more closely.

When Microsoft battled Android to sell their own phones, they demanded a $35 license fee for “Microsoft Patents” on Android!.
AFAIK that was about the same as a Windows OEM license! Just about every Android phone maker folded and agreed to pay!

So IDK Microsoft can be very aggressive in their license pricing. There are also different versions of Windows, and a multi language license is AFAIK more expensive.

Still for me it would be absolutely insane to pay that much, as I would just format it anyway, and install Linux. And with Linux I can use whatever language I want!

Wow $140 USD is a lot for preinstalled windows IMO. 😱

Horrible! They sold out, but not as quick as expected.

Great article, but when comparing to BYD 5 min charging, the CATL system is incomplete.
The new CATL battery can handle faster charging, but they haven’t made chargers that can handle or deliver the needed power, to charge that fast.

BYD has built the the entire infrastructure from charger to battery, the charging system in the car can handle the 1MW charging power required. (1000 volt at 1000 amp). A battery that can handle it from 10-60% And finally they are setting up charging stations that can supply that level of power.

The CATL battery is great because it shows we can go even further, but BYD has their system available NOW!

What may be the biggest benefit IMO though, is that the new CATL battery will allow cars to charge very fast even with smaller batteries. Which may introduce a completely new type of cheap EV with medium range that can charge super fast, so they can still be used reasonably well for occasional longer trips too. This is also helped by the more than twice as high durability of the new battery. Smaller batteries need to be charged more often, and these batteries can handle that too.

What did Trump expect? That Huawei and SMIC would just throw the towel in the ring?

“Huawei is a ferocious competitor,” Mr. Allen said. “It brings a mixture of very high quality talent, psychotically driven work culture and the deep backing of the Chinese government.”

USA basically declared war on Chinese IT industries more than a decade ago, almost forcing Huawei out of the smartphone market when they had become the leader of it! Seeing how Apple became the richest company in the world on the back of the iPhone, Huawei obviously lost enormous amounts of profits being excluded from that market.

USA is still attempting to prevent China from being competitive, and obviously China is determined on every level not to let that continue, all the way from the top of government over major companies to the researchers and workers. It may not be exactly a war, but it definitely is a very serious competition.

Now China is hitting back for real, because they have the power to do it, for instance preventing USA from having certain rare earth minerals. And the loser will be USA, and that will soon be very clear.

American bully tactics have alienated everybody including allies, so USA is alone on this. And alone USA will lose.

If the US tariffs stand, I think the chance of recession during this year already is near 100%.
So my guess is that the financial analysts are betting that there is a good chance like 50% that these tariffs are removed very quickly. And by very quickly I really mean VERY quickly, like in a matter of a couple of weeks.

The economy in many places around the world is already shifting away from USA. The obvious boycott by Canada and also in Europe by consumers, is only the surface.

To run a company you want stability, and companies all over the world are already seeking alternatives to USA, just as American companies are already seeking alternatives to imports, seeking stability at the cost of profitability, making price increases inevitable either way.

This will stall economic progress, it will create jobs and take away jobs in USA, but the jobs created will be lower wage than the ones that are lost. American production will take over low wage jobs from abroad, and despite the tariffs making competition easier on those jobs, it will not make them high wage jobs.

It will make US trading partners poorer, so they can afford less US imports. And companies are already looking towards ways the highest profit US exports can be replaced. Those are all in services, something not even considered in the moronic US trade deficit calculation. But the area where USA actually has huge surplusses, and at profits often nearing 90%!! Those jobs are at risk now!

All in all it will make both USA and trading partners relatively poorer. But probably USA will be hit the hardest, as the outside world has a more than twice as big trading block than USA has with itself. If that scales linearly, USA will be hit twice as hard by their own tariffs than the rest of the world.

Personally we’ve stopped buying everything American that we can. And as the one who does most of the shopping, I was actually surprised by the amount of American things we used.

The failing stock market will make it harder to find venture capital, and investments will go down. This too is guaranteed to slow down economic growth.

On a side note, USA has now forced EU to cooperate with China more on trade, something we held back on for security reasons.
But now that security balance has changed dramatically. USA is no longer a more secure partner than China is.
For instance USA is aligning more with Russia now than even China is!!

I don’t see how this will not end with a recession for USA maybe already for 2nd and 3rd quarters, which I guess is the soonest possible actual recession (2 quarters of negative growth).

If you consider Democrats left wing then yes, by far the most here are left wing, since by most European standards Democrats are clearly right wing.

Republicans are extreme right by most standards. Republican (MAGA) is basically an American version of AfD!
So by that standard I guess about 80% here are left wing, maybe even more?

Is this global or just USA?

it really is just people being xenophobic everywhere isn’t it?

That’s what it looks like to me. Italy too AFAIK.

We had a similar party here in Denmark, that became second largest party of the country with 21% in 2015, When the government introduced tough restrictions on immigration, they almost vanished a few years later, only very narrowly managing the 2% minimum requirement to have seats in parlament.

The popularity of the party was highly based on limiting immigration, much like Brexit, Trump, AfD and AFAIK also RN of France.

Are you talking about remote controlling cars from India or something?
That last sentence makes very little sense to me.

How is that relevant? I’m pretty sure the latency would be too high, so it wouldn’t even work.

Ah OK you are talking about the navigators, that “help” the car when it can’t figure out what to do.
That’s a fair point.

But still 1 navigator can probably handle many cars. So from the perspective of making a self driving taxi, it makes sense.

Because they are driving under near ideal conditions, in areas that are completely mapped out, and guided away from roadworks and avoiding “confusing” crosses, and other traffic situations like unmarked roads, that humans deal with routinely without problem.
And in a situation they can’t handle, they just stop and call and wait for a human driver to get them going again, disregarding if they are blocking traffic.

I’m not blaming Waymo for doing it as safe as they can, that’s great IMO.
But don̈́t make it sound like they drive better than humans yet. There is still some ways to go.

What’s really obnoxious is that Elon Musk claimed this would be 100% ready by 2017. Full self driving, across America, day and night, safer than a human. I have zero expectation that Tesla RoboTaxi will arrive this summer as promised.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice
It seems it’s still legit, but of course Libre Office is the better choice.

For me it was about freedom, and not being locked into the Microsoft sphere.

Past administrations have all had hands toward what we have today.

Absolutely, as I wrote Obama was just unlucky that it was under him that these things were revealed.

It’s disheartening to feel so powerless in the face of such a FUBAR-POTUS clown show in the chainsaw wielding circus.

I am really sorry for all the good Americans that have to suffer the consequences of this administration.
It will probably get worse before it gets better.

No I don’t, Obama was a good president and USA was a strong ally under him.
I hate Trump.
But it’s alarming IMO that a president that we consider moderate and a friend, still think these things are OK.
And Obama was just unfortunate that it was under him that these things were revealed.

As should have been done already 10 years ago. When it became clear American authorities can seize any information even when stored on servers outside USA, by any American service provider.
And Obama claimed it was a “fair balance”.

USA has in many ways acted almost like a totalitarian regime for decades, disregarding their own laws, international laws, and especially the laws of other countries, even allies.

This became very clear when Obama stressed that illegal surveillance/monitoring wasn’t used against American citizens.
Obviously meaning that citizens of other countries have no rights, and there are no laws preventing American intelligence in any way.

As it turned out, what Obama promised wasn’t even true, and Americans stationed in for instance Iraq, were very much monitored.

With regard to information of other countries, USA has CLEARLY demonstrated, that they have no regard for decency or even laws.

This was revealed when Obama was president, and the Republicans are even worse!!

USA and EU has made an agreement on this, claimed to make it legal in EU to use American cloud services.
But as we have seen, no American administration gives a fuck about such agreements or even laws, so that agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Many things like shoes could easily be for both men and women, like for instance sneakers.
But with the different size standards, that can’t work.
The result being identical sneakers have a series for women and another for men! Although usually the colors are different. But what if we would rather have a choice of ALL the colors?
It’s not just stupid it’s moronic.

This is not at all a pot kettle situation, there is no reason to warn about Firefox.