Europe will just end up doing whatever is cheapest. It's the same story as always. They'll say some stuff publicly but they'll quietly come back to American tech once they see the price tag difference. They're very cost sensitive and their investors are extremely risk-averse.
Would (gently) note that we’re commenting on an article re: American tech risk. :)
Not sure it’s really sunk in for my fellow Americans what’s going on, we’re not exactly used to consequences and it’s still considered, a best, impolite to treat a holistic evaluation of policies as something beyond debate.
But look at solar adoption across Europe since 2022. It’s going gang busters and now with sodium batteries coming online next year, cheap home energy storage is about to boom as well.
Europe doesn’t want to buy Russian gas, but there is also the very real political reality of what happens if your citizens freeze to death. I will be very surprised if any EU state is reliant on Russian gas by 2035.
When people start talking about battery technology that has not even reached scale as any kind of political solution, you know people have lost the plot.
Taking one look at just the cost required for the network, even outside of the cost of any generation at all, you realize this is an insane and slapping a few solar panels down is far from a solution.
And also lets not ignore that places that have done a lot of the 'lets just build renewable and hope for the best' have very high energy prices. And maybe possible maybe sodium batteries might show up will not solve these issues.
I calculated the costs of covering the needs of Germany for a 2 days low production event (as it happened between 6-9 december) and you would need about a trillion dollar.
That's for something that cannot even garantee you more than 48h of runtime for half the country's needs.
You would need at least 4 times that to be safe.
Even if batteries price are divided by 2 (very unlikely, there are large fixed costs) you would need trillions of dollar for a single country.
That's just not happening any time soon and even in 30 years time, I doubt it will be that prevalent of a solution.
I did a conservative calculation if you started around 2000 in Germany and went full nuclear like France did. Not using any fancy new nuclear or anything. Literally just mass production of standard nuclear plants. Plus all the updates of the grid, including domestic fuel enrichment and 'waste' storage. Plus all the investment necessary to great a fully modern grid to electrify the economy.
We are talking in the order of 500 billion Euro and this is very conservative assumption on nuclear construction cost. Much worse cost then what France actually achieved in their build-out. Also much of that is actually the grid, grids are really expensive it turns out. But building nuclear in central location next to places where there used to be coal plants, makes grid cost much cheaper because most of the grid is already there perfectly positioned to feed the population clusters. And that accounts for actually increasing overall production of energy, not decreasing as Germany is actually doing.
On the other-hand for the renewable path that Germany is going since 2000, just the grid alone is going to cost more then 500 billion euro, some estimation suggest that 2000-2045 total gird investment requirement is above significantly above that. Sadly today where everything is in this different private organization, this information is all over the place and 'semi'-private organization doing different parts of the infrastructure.
In total, between all the renewables, the grid and the storage, we are talking 1.5 trillion euro and that still includes gas peakers. If you want to go beyond and really go all in, it would be even more then that, as you suggest.
Turns out, if you plan includes trying to gather solar energy in Greece and Spain (or even Egypt), transporting it to Germany and then storing it into batteries there, well yeah, that's going to be expensive. And the solar panels you import from China aren't the expensive part.
France did the exact right think in the 70/80s build reliable long term energy generation, sadly since the 90s the newer generation of French politicians done literally anything they can to handle the situation as a badly and as incompetently as possible but that's a different story.
One thing that is really important to understand is that power is not something that is uniformely needed everywhere at the same level.
Traditionally, power plants were created close to where industries needed them. Renewables require specific conditions to be viable and those factors are not necesseraly what allows industries to thrive, so you need a lot of additional infrastructure to make it possible.
Turns out this infrastructure is extremely coslty and very hard to make reliable. So, even if you have infinite money, that's a massive challenge in itself. But now Europe does not have that much money, the massive debt burdens being a large evidence of this. Yet we are asked to pay more for this future, in the name of climate change, even though most of the factors contributing to this is already happening overseas, largely out of the control of European regulations. So what is the point exactly ?
In the long run, it just ends up making everyone more dependent on external powers while weakening the position of the countries that believe in that "solution".
Nuclear constructions costs are largely overblown, because of the massive bureaucracy/over-regulation, thanks to Germany in no small part. If China can manage to build twice as fast at half the cost, we are doing something wrong for sure.
But the conversation is dominated by ideologues, that have an sadist like fetish. As if weakening your position will ever make your competition/enemies take pity on you and allows you to dictate the terms of the converstion, because people are supposed to be nice, right ?
Even with perfect implementation, there is no way to make renewables work to allow industries to thrive, and now we are going to pay the price of those poor political choices.
With all the money in the world, it was already a discutable choice, but now it is just replacing depence on fossil fuel with depence on overseas manufacturing (most of it in China). Funny thing is that China is not that stupid, and we are selling them the knowledge/skillset to become dominant on the cheap.
I just can't fathom what was going on in the mind of the decision makers 20 years ago, but now it seems they are just insane. There is no way it will work in 15 years, yet we needed that power generation yesterday.
In the process of trying to make climate change better, we have done the reverse. Now people are burning more wood, and I feel like we might go back to coal if electricity doesn't become cheaper (for residential heat). Gas is hopeless, even if the depency on Russia wasn't that strong.
Electric cars are very nice but if it turns out to be more expensive to run them than just using foreign oil it's not going to happen.
I'm just rambling at this point but it feels like there was a large anti-nuclear sentiment by people who are dominated by irrational fears and they have dominated our politics for the worse. It's really not usefull to fear a nuclear meltdown if you end up making your people poorer overtime. Why would you fear something with such a low probability of problems if you end up having to become dependent on foreing power that has no such quaslm.
France had the right path but then leftist ideologues took power and Germany's sabotaging did the rest. In theory we are not at war but in practice, there is very much an economical/ideological battleground going on and we are losing it.
US says that Europe is their number one enemy. Using American tech is the most risky thing you can do since Trump declared that they are now a hostile enemy with intents of overthrowing European democracies.
Without getting hung up on the exact phrase “number 1”. It’s very literally one of the biggest things in official US national security strategy right now and some leaks of the non-public version talk about explicit plans to try and destroy the EU. So semantics aside, the overall point stands on solid ground.
That whole thing is just incoherent. There's lots about forming a trading alliance against China, and then loads about destroying the EU. You can't have both of those at the same time.
I think there is a lot of broad support, but they're just kind of hamstrung by EU regulation on AI development at this stage. I think the end game will ultimately be getting acquired by an American company, and then relocating.
It's ironic that USA lost 60-some thousand troops in Vietnam trying to prevent a communist takeover, only for American companies just to enslave them all anyway. I wonder how different the dynamic with Vietnam would have turned out if it had been more of a Korea situation. USA certainly never enslaved South Korea.
Huh? What do you mean by 'enslave'? If you mean that people work for low wages in the export sector, well then I have news for you on South Korea.
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
I feel like those laws are different because they specifically target pornography, which is seen as an evangelical moral sin. They would prefer to ban it completely, but that most likely runs afoul of the Constitution. So their next best bet is just to try to limit it to over-18s.
Obviously the end result is the same, but I think the motivation is different.
> They would prefer to ban it completely, but that most likely runs afoul of the Constitution. So their next best bet is just to try to limit it to over-18s.
They dont care about constitution. And they are in position to reinterpret it however they want to, regardless of its text and meaning.
If that was actually true then states would have banned or blocked already. This is not a new issue and it has been challenged unsuccessfully many times.
Maybe. Most of the debate that I hear feels similar to social media commentary -- teen boys getting their brains fried by constant access to stimulus. I don't hear anything about onanism or sinning.
Mind you, I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but just that most of the arguments I hear are saying "we think this is an identifiable and secular harm."
It will definitely go down as one of the biggest failures of mankind. Especially since it was so easily preventable if MacArthur was permitted to just take the whole peninsula.
China was already sending troops and material to the front lines when MacArthur was ordered to stand down. Pushing further would have meant a hot war with China.
There is no way we could match them in numbers on the ground. Such a conflict would have inevitably led to us nuking them as a result. Which is probably the reason decision makers chose not to.
And maybe that's really the humanitarian failure. That USA didn't nuke China in 1950 or 1951. Would have solved a lot of problems for generations of people.
Nukes usually don't wipe out entire countries, especially tactical nukes.
I'm far from convinced that using nukes in the Korean War would've been a good move, but equating it with "kill[ing] them all" is completely dishonest. What's your goal in this debate, and is it served by dishonest rhetoric?
USA dropping nukes would have prevented the convention against using nukes in wars from being started. I think there's a pretty good chance we wouldn't have any civilization left by now if we went down that fork in history.
How is nuking Japan different from nuking Korea? Everybody agrees that forcing Japan to surrender with nukes was much better for everyone involved than a ground invasion.
When Japan was bombed, nobody else in the world had nuclear weapons, the US only had 2, and there were only a handful of people outside of the US seriously researching nuclear weapons and were still years away from a test. By 1950 the USSR had working nuclear bombs, had proven so with a nuclear test, and a dozen other countries had started their own nuclear weapons programs.
Maybe the real humanitarian failure is that the US didn't nuke everybody and start over from the stone age. Can't any societal problems if no societies exist, right?
Does any serious historian believe that fully defeating the Soviet Union after WWII would have been possible? Even with the advantage of nuclear weapons, I doubt the US would have made it very far.
Grow an "ender" first. And when you do try - keep in mind that many tried before you. The Swedes. The French. The Germans. They all got their comeuppance, and so will you.
Or how about us not blowing them to bits in the first place? South Korea was on the very edge of capitulation before the US came in full force and even most South Korean citizens were in support of Korean unification at that time. The current state of North Korea would have never come to reality if they hadn't been blown to bits by the US because of big ol' scary "communism".
What makes 1950s Korea evil? You are equating North Korea today with Korea of 75 years ago, they aren't even remotely similar. You don't think your nation getting bombed to literal fields of rubble wouldn't change views and political stances afterwards?
Unification was supported by both sides among the people, most South Koreans supported communism and 70% of them supported unification with the North. South Koreans didn't even support their own government, they were dealing with internal insurrection from their own people. The North was an industrialized nation and the South was a poor farming country and their unification would of been hugely beneficial to both. The war would have been over in another 2 weeks without intervention and a minimal amount of casualties, and it had only been 3 months from the start of the invasion. The only people not in support of it at the time was the political leaders of SK at the time because it meant they personally as individuals would lose power and wealth, and the US who was on a crusade to crush and kill anybody who dared support communism. Korea never should have been split in the first place, but the US and USSR had to be little bitches and force their will upon these people.
Killing 5 million people, most of which were innocent civilians, in the name of "fighting communism" is evil, not the idea of a unified nation of people supported by those same people.
Soviet occupation. Korea was supposed to be unified and elect a government back in 1950, Soviets made sure it didn't happen because they had no chance of winning.
So it was evil because the soviets supported the North? Because communism?
Pretty sure the soviets were perfectly fine with the North taking the South considering the South was US aligned which gave the US a foothold right on their doorstep. And again, the vast majority of Korean people on both sides supported Korean unification. The South Korean leadership, which was basically appointed by the US for their pro-US and anti-communism stance, was so unpopular among South Koreans that there was civilian insurrectionists trying to topple it. The South Korean military upon invasion couldn't even keep its own troops from deserting in significant numbers, and they even blew up a bridge full of refuges to try and stop the advance which it failed to do.
Yes the North invaded which is generally bad, but they did do it with popular sentiment among the people, and they weren't attacking and killing civilians along the way.
And regardless of all that, none of that justifies the US response of bombing and killing millions of civilians and leveling entire cities. The Korean War is considered the most deadly war in Asia ever, and had far higher percentage of civilian casualties than WWII and Vietnam.
Funny you should ask, but yes, communism is evil. Whenever somebody promises a classless society you can be sure they're about to enslave, kill and torture people in great numbers.
I guess if I have to explain it I might as well not bother.
A key feature of liberal democracy over the pre-existing aristocratic oligarchies was providing a classless society (which, superficially, as classes were defined under aristocratic systems, it does.)
The entire analysis of capitalism which articulated the class system with which it replaced that of the pre-existing aristocracy and revealed the elimination of class to actually just be a switch in its structure and elevation of a new ruling class was by Communists.
Liberalism means no state-enforced classes but doesn't promise forcing everyone into the same class. Commies promise the latter, but in fact enforce a class structure of their own.
This is such a weird sentiment and I see it often when talking about EU politics. Is this just how the European constituency feels? Just like beatdown citizens in a government they have no passion about and no control over?
But going off what I said, I acknowledged this sort of legislation is bad and that a right to privacy is needed. How do you arrive at "beatdown citizens in a government they have no passion about"?
All I did was point out the reality right now, even without this legislation.
4chan is an American company with no presence whatsoever in the UK. 4chan doesn't even use normal payment processors, relying on crypto instead, so the UK can't even block payments made by UK subjects to 4chan.
In light of this, why would 4chan comply? Contrary to the claim above, 4chan has not actually blocked UK users, and has no reason to do so. They did however get a lawyer to write up a letter telling the redcoats to go fuck themselves.
because 4chan's services are available to people residing in the UK
the OSA is ridiculous and I hope it goes the same way as the last time they tried it, but this idea that US companies should be immune to domestic regulation in countries their services are available to is silly. even if that domestic regulation is silly. because otherwise the utterly encaptured regulatory environment of the US (plus Visa and MC) solely dictates the internet
> because 4chan's services are available to people residing in the UK
I don't understand why 4chan is obligated to be the one to ensure that UK citizens don't access the site when this should be entirely within the UK government's power, no? At the very least, the infrastructure which allows their citizens to access 4chan is on UK soil so it stands to reason that they actually have authority over that.
I feel like making the case that any site which serves an international audience on the Internet has to observe the laws of every single country represented in that audience is bad precedent and has the potential to be incredibly stifling to anyone but the type of multinational corporation which has the sort of legal apparatus that's required to operate in that sort of environment.
Before you answer, substitute the UK with Iran and whatever distasteful content 4chan is hosting this week with "the dictatorship of Iran is harmful to its people, and they should rise up to remove it from power".
The term "slave" encompasses a lot of wildly different kinds of unfree labor. The racialized system most people think of from transatlantic slavery is a very recent thing.
Nothing resembling that was widespread in precolumbian North America. The earliest similar systems I'm aware of took root in the 17th and 18th centuries, well into the early colonial period.
What I said was a much more precise statement than "there was no violence". Nothing you've mentioned is a counterexample.
The slaves of early 17th century Iroquois were not dehumanized property like colonial era natives and Africans. This is what I meant by pointing out that the term "slavery" encompasses a vast number of radically different types of unfree servitude.
The Apache example is both not similar to Atlantic slavery, and mainly from the 18th century period where I specifically said such systems existed among North American natives.
If you're trying to make a point about the racial hierarchy within the Aztecs, the term Mexica is much more precise. If you're just referring to the slave social class within the empire itself, I can't imagine why you think it's remotely similar to colonial slavery. Aztec slaves weren't property in the sense of colonial era slavery. They had to consent to sale, only their labor was actually sellable, and it wasn't hereditary, among other differences.
While it was (mostly?) unintentional, the biological warfare committed by Europeans makes for a different story than anything that happened before they arrived. The Americas weren't a paradise, but neither were they a slaughterhouse.
The author of the rust software did not solve the platform problem, as a result it is not a solution. Since it is not a solution, it should be reverted. It's really that simple.
I seem to remember the FBI attempting to compel Apple to decrypt a criminal's iPhone, only for Apple to refuse and claim that it wasn't possible. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. I think it was suspected that the NSA was able to do it by exploiting an unpatched zero-day. So they didn't need Apple's help anymore and the issue was dropped from the public's eye.
1. Apple can and does comply with subpoenas for user information that it has access to. This includes tons of data from your phone unless you're enrolled in Advanced Data Protection, because Apple stores your data encrypted at rest but retains the ability to decrypt it so that users who lose their device/credentials can still restore their data.
2. Apple has refused on multiple occasions, publicly, to take advantage of their position in the supply chain to insert malicious code that expands the data they have access to. This would be things like shipping an updated iOS that lets them fetch end-to-end encrypted data off of a suspect's device.
Not to mention, while apple will publically deny it, there are government agents working undercover at every major tech firm. They may or may not know. They certainly exist.
And of course Apple is quite right not to miss the marketing opportunity, on behalf of the shareholders. While acquiescing to lawful demands of course.
I don't remember Apple ever saying that it was impossible for them to do it, just that they didn't want to.
It was always kind of assumed that they could, by eg signing a malicious OS update without PIN code retry limits, so the FBI could brute force it at their leisure, or something similar.
They said it was impossible for them to build a backdoor into iOS that would only be accessible to legal requests from law enforcement, which is true in the strict sense. So law enforcement bought a vulnerability exploit from a third party.
They successfully argued in court that being forced to insert code the government wanted would be equivalent to compelled speech, in violation of the first amendment.
As the Feds often do, they dropped the case instead of allowing it to set a precedent they didn't want.
> They successfully argued in court that being forced to insert code the government wanted would be equivalent to compelled speech
This isn't true, they never "successfully argued in court". There was never any judgement, and no precedent. They resisted a court order briefly before the FBI withdrew the request after finding another way into the device.
There wasn't judgement because the Feds dropped a case that would set a precedent they wanted to avoid.
Since there is longstanding legal precedent that corporations are people and code is speech, forcing a corporation to insert code that the US government demands is a violation of the first amendment.
That being JTAG debugging. Now there are greyhat groups discovering what they can do with it beyond bypassing the PIN at power-up. Honestly surprised phones are not being sold/marketed as having that disabled on both bluetooth and USB.
If you follow the things that have been disclosed / leaked/ confirmed when they’re 20+ years out of date, then yes the probability this is true is significant.
I recall there being a little more substance to it at the time. But looking back from where we are now, that is a succinct way of describing its results.
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