Whilst fear seems to be used to induce hate in many (just listen to the fables of “we need to protect ourselves” coming from the politicians there), I’m pretty sure others just directly hate without the need to be led there through fear.

I think you misspelled the word “hate”.

So substance is the position that MAGAs adopt towards Trump.

Me too.

Curiously, I’m not at all tired of websites that make me create an account to use them, probably because they’re the fastest to get through of all websites.

As a side note, I’ve worked in B2C Smartphone Apps at one point, and in the customer acquisition pipeline forcing people to create an account in order for them to use your app (and should be the same for websites) is one of the best ways to lose a huge percentage of potential customers (depending on the situation, we’re taking over 80% of people dropping at that point).

It’s a “Don’t make yourself the low hanging fruit” thing not a “If they’re trying to eavesdrop on you they won’t be able to” one and even then only if you’re not using an American OS with built-in automatic surveillance or in fact any network connected product from any large US/UK/Israel (at least) Tech company.

Even if the US Authorities don’t give a shit about you, if you’re running Windows, Android or iOS or using other products of those companies such as Chrome or their Clouds, you’re automatically caught in the bulk dragnet surveillance.

This, by the way, applies not just to in the name of the country explicitly including an ideal, but also to harping on, and on, and on about how the country is such a great beacon of an ideal (like they do in the US and UK about being Democratic all the while having First Past The Post voting systems).

I would say that the general rule (applied to people in all situations, not just in politics) is that if you feel the need to constantly state or imply that you or your group have some great quality, you don’t have it.

And by all indications LLMs will never be there - its speed of progression towards that has already pretty much ground to halt.

Mind you, you’re totally right that they will replace everyone if they can (i.e. if they get their hands on actual AGI), it’s just that this tech direction is a dead end and won’t get there.

7" table, 5" phone please, pretty please, pretty please with cherries on top!!!

Generally, good open world games have a lot more emergent content - situations that emerge from the interaction of agents and simple mechanics (in the style of how simple rules create complex outcomes in the “Game of Life”) - whilst good linear games have highly curated set-pieces scenarios which were created by level designers directly.

For an example of the former, imagine you’re running around the Game World looking for a special kind of plant to create a potion that you need. You come across a battle between bears and a bandit group. When they die their drops are free for the taking and both groups are too high level for you to take on your own. None of this was setup to happen when you crossed some trigger line, it literally just happened because those the entities in those groups are part of enemy “factions” and the patrol route of one group (a route which might itself be procedural rather than fixed) passed near enough the position of the encampment of the other.

This kind of thing randomly happen is just not something you get in linear games which are generally just set-pieces and even the ability to pull on group of high level enemies to another group has to be designed in (mainly by making the restricted game area big enough for it in that section and placing the groups in the right places).

This is also why in a linear game if you die and restart you get the same fights in the same places you had before up to the place were you died unless that section of the game was designed with enough alternate paths of mechanics (say, hide mechanics) that you can go around and avoid certain fights.

Emergent content is also why Multiplayer can be a lot of fun, though in this case the “agent” whose interactions can give rise to all sorts of situations are other players.

Well, now we’re down to “pragmatic responses”.

By which point we’re not “punishing” anybody for being bad boys, we’re doing things for geo-strategical value - basically to change behavior or reduce the possibility of future behaviors which are bad for us.

What the poster that originated this thread wanted - that Europe stops sending any tech to China because in his or her view China “supports” (unclear how much is too much) Russia - is not an appropriate response in pragmatic terms because it is a hostile movement towards a massive and increasingly influential nation - China - to try and change unclear behavior (just how much does China really “support” Russia compared to, say, India?) which supposedly indirectly would change somebody else’s (Russia) behavior. Specifically for the EU, said somebody else is bad for it because they basically bark a lot towards it (whilst not actually biting it, though they do bit others) and have committed crimes in the EU at the level of a small organized crime organization.

How exactly is it pragmatic to go down a route of trade aggression towards a giant nation which is friendish towards a different nation to somehow (magic?) try and deter said other nation from further committing in the EU the level of crime of a small criminal organization?!

The retribution from China would cost the EU vastly more than the problem that action by the EU might (but it’s not at all guaranteed) ameliorate.

That’s not pragmatic in any way form or shape.

If we’re going for punishing them, then that’s not “pragmatic” anymore, that’s at the level of principles, at which point what I wrote about punishing all imperialists, genociders and their supports applies.

If you think denying technology to China because they work with Russia is a proportional response to Russia murdering people in Europe, I have some news for you about CIA activities all over the World including in Europe …

It’s a lot more simple to just follow the logic of Principles and pushing back on those commiting wars of aggression and genocide and those who support them as a rule and without trying to treat some of those one way and others differently for *reasons*, than try and come up with the perfect red-line of actions in Europe which decides between “do nothing at all” and “block anybody in any away associated with them”, that puts Russia on the bad side of the line and the likes of America on the good side so that we can keep on treating one set of murderous imperialists better than the other.

Ah, I see, you’re driven by “what’s in it for me”, not by principles.

Well, by that logic, I as an EU citizen shouldn’t give a shit, since Russia hasn’t attacked the EU (at most they should get a proportional talkie-talkie response when they engage in talkie-talkie “aggression”) and meanwhile it’s more profitable for the EU to engage with China than it is to cut them of, and as for the rest of Europe (most notably Ukraine), well screw them same as the “screw Palestinians” of your position.

Even better, as a Portuguese and thus as far from Russia as possible whilst still being in Europe, by your “self interest” motivation I shouldn’t give a shit about Russia even if they invaded Eastern European EU countries.

Of course, me being a person of principles, I support Palestine against the Israeli Genocide same as I support Ukraine against Russia aggression (no need to feel personally endangered by either aggressor) and what I think the EU should do in the international plane follows from that, but that’s not at all your reason to wanting that Europe behaves towards China in a certain way.

That’s actually an excellent summary of the whole situation.

As an European, I very much prefer that we apply to those who support Israel the same standards we do for those who support Russia.

So I’m absolutelly fine that we do not give BOTH Israel’s and Russia’s allies important technology.

Doing otherwise would show our “European values” to in practice be nothing more than sociopathic hypocrisy.

Of course, then ASML wouldn’t be able to sell its machines to America and at least half of Europe as well as quite number of other countries.

Saying you “invalidate” content that is “properly researched and legitimately correct” = what?

I read it as meaning the definition of the person producing the content of “properly researched and legitimately correct” rather than one’s own.

Content produced by somebody who claims it has been “properly researched and legitimately correct” and that person thinks Claude is a proper research and validation tool, should be treated as invalid until proven otherwise.

It’s like when a Junior level professional comes to you with something and says “I made sure this is all correct” - one can’t really trust that the thing is indeed “all correct”.

I think that at least when it comes to America it’s more than widely proven that they have an insanely large digital spying infrastructure (not just the 4-eyes stuff but also all that the NSA does, a lot of which having been revealed by Snowden) and even very openly laws such as the Patriot Act and the Cloud Act that let them force American companies to spy for them.

No “hysteria” necessary to conclude that America will do whatever it takes to spy on everybody (both internally and internationally).

If you’re good at your job, you don’t need to be sociable. You usually do need to be capable of working with others - which means interact with them - as work done in teams is the most common situation and hence team-working skills are seen as valuable and will help you progress in your career.

That said, I’ve worked in a couple of places were some of my colleagues didn’t at all socialize with the rest and spent most of their time “in their little corner doing their thing” and only interacting with the rest for work purposes.

Again, the work culture in The Netherlands helps with this - unlike in other countries were for example there are expectations of going out for drinks with work colleagues after work hours (in Portugal sometimes, in Britain more frequently so, apparently in Japan even more so), in The Netherlands the way of thinking is that “Work is work, personal life is personal life and they’re separate things”, so work colleagues are just that and friends are different people not from work: there are no expectations there that you befriend work colleagues and/or socialize with them.

Beyond that, it’s my impression that it’s easier to be the kind of person that doesn’t care to socialize in domains were high levels of expertise are required and with niches were the work can be done individuals (such as some areas in IT and in Science).

That said, outside ultra-niche ultra-expert, one’s career growth will eventually take a person to a point beyond which socializing skills are required to progress (mainly because, as I hinted at earlier, the biggest and most important stuff tends to require teams and teamwork, hence being able to deal with people opens the door to the bigger leagues in most areas), though that can be quite far into the career progression track and at a level that most people don’t reach.

Yeah, well, when was the last time common people and business paid attention to IT Security experts BEFORE their systems were broken into?!

Also, who would pay the people with the necessary expertise to decompile all BIOS of all motherboard shipments (if at all possible, in this day and age when a lot of shit is encrypted with the keys inside a TPM module)?

I mean, just go at it another way - notice how thousands of pager sent to Lebanon were altered by the Israelis and nobody were aware of it until the Israelis made them explode.

In this day and age it’s pretty straightforward to just alter the software for some shipments and not others or add a weakness (like both Intel and AMD CPUs have) that can be used as a backdoor by software that’s installed remotely (for example, pushed as a Windows update, something which certain American 3 letter agencies can most certainly do since the have the power to demand the signing keys from MS).

There are huge numbers of vectors for spyware to end up in certain computers that start with subtly backdooring the hardware itself.

In The Netherlands it means it’s a great way to NOT get promoted because managers don’t like it and especially when other people see it being done they will be weary of promoting that person as it will look like the manager is promoting somebody for butt-kissing. This kinda links to how expectations on managers in The Netherlands are quite different from those in Anglo-Saxon countries: for example, people working long hours there reflects badly on the manager because it’s seen as the manager being incompetent at planning and/or resourcing hence the work is late, whilst in Britain people working long hours is see as “hard work”, considered a good thing and manager whose people do that are seen as good as making their people work hard, so the very opposite of The Netherlands.

In Portugal it kinda depends on the manager (some like it, some dislike it) whilst there one’s colleagues will almost certainly start badmouthing to others the person doing it and might even passively (by not helping them) or even actively start undermining the work of the person doing it.

It’s about complex products which contain RAM rather than other component.

Anything made in China which has RAM in it will have its price affected by the price of RAM so if Chinese brands of such products have access to cheaper RAM than non-Chinese brands, they can outcompete the latter on price whilst delivering similar quality products.

Personally I tend to assemble my own desktop PCs, but for example in the past when buying a Mini-PC I would pick a Chinese brand one if cheaper since the quality is the same. Now imagine if the Chinese brand is now 1/2 the price of the non-Chinese one because the former uses RAM from China whose price is nowhere as high as the hyper-inflated South Korean RAM - in this kind of device were the quality is the same, the Chinese product will always be the better option if it’s half the price because of using way cheaper RAM.