Navalny Poisoning Weakens Russo German Relations

[SUZNV + 1,197]

5 hours ago, surrept33 said:

The US being in terminal decline only looks that way to those who look at it like that. I see an era of great promise in the next decade (maybe like the '90s), though we have to catch up to China on wider application of things like artificial intelligence (but keep in mind hardware/software codesign are pretty globalized these days anyways, what "country" do they belong to?). But given that at least from a research sense, we're still the leaders of it, I'm sure we can push ahead as long as enough people are focused on commercialization and the operational details, which should open a ton of new jobs. 

I'm not sure how relevant "marxist rubbish" is in the developed world. I think economic inequality always causes problems. We are lucky to live in a social democracy, but there are many things we can improve on. 

I don't think economic inequality is a problem. In a fast changing tech world, the people invested more time in adapting new tech new skills will advance so fast that after a few generations, the gap will be tremendous. If a person were lucky to be born in the US, enjoy free US education k12, native English speaker and still lag behind, they should blame themselves or their family and certainly not blame the inequality. 

You cannot speed them up with more welfare, so should the hardworking and learning to adapt new technology people have less reward for their effort? China offers minimum, close to none welfare or retirement and the only way to change their lives is to study hard while in the  US, many youngsters don't learn a trade skills, or STEM,  and fall in the welfare trap or minimum wage jobs. If they cannot find job in the US, I doubt they can find job in a more equality country. In US they can have a choice to live with welfare and enjoy the freedom of how to spend their time. In many other countries, that choice is luxury. And if they make that choice, they should be grateful for the people who pay tax so they can have that choice. If you don't know how far you are behind, you won't be able to measure the inequality and complain about that.

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The only reason China can go ahead with AI is because the governments want to have absolute control. Personal identification and behaviors are China's resource and that is why big tech so keen in that.AI is the new oil. In Europe and US, it has many regulation to protect the privacy, at least on the surface.

In the other hand if Big Tech didn't have a relationship with China for financial interests and 1.4 billions of personal data, it would lobby US government to have a sanction with China and China economics would collapse. Big techs, Wall Street and US politicians are not that naïve to not see that. They chose to ignore that.

Green new deal progress is planned economy. US economy now is stimulus addicted, full of zombies companies draining resources and  stimulus effects won't last long as it will have diminishing return effect. They always say the economy is doing great before any big recession. Keynesian or any Modern Monetary Theory economics only works after recession where all of zombies were dead. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by SUZNV

[surrept33 + 609]

On 1/23/2021 at 1:23 AM, SUZNV said:

I don't think economic inequality is a problem. In a fast changing tech world, the people invested more time in adapting new tech new skills will advance so fast that after a few generations, the gap will be tremendous. If a person were lucky to be born in the US, enjoy free US education k12, native English speaker and still lag behind, they should blame themselves or their family and certainly not blame the inequality. 

You cannot speed them up with more welfare, so should the hardworking and learning to adapt new technology people have less reward for their effort? China offers minimum, close to none welfare or retirement and the only way to change their lives is to study hard while in the  US, many youngsters don't learn a trade skills, or STEM,  and fall in the welfare trap or minimum wage jobs. If they cannot find job in the US, I doubt they can find job in a more equality country. In US they can have a choice to live with welfare and enjoy the freedom of how to spend their time. In many other countries, that choice is luxury. And if they make that choice, they should be grateful for the people who pay tax so they can have that choice. If you don't know how far you are behind, you won't be able to measure the inequality and complain about that.

---------------------

The only reason China can go ahead with AI is because the governments want to have absolute control. Personal identification and behaviors are China's resource and that is why big tech so keen in that.AI is the new oil. In Europe and US, it has many regulation to protect the privacy, at least on the surface.

In the other hand if Big Tech didn't have a relationship with China for financial interests and 1.4 billions of personal data, it would lobby US government to have a sanction with China and China economics would collapse. Big techs, Wall Street and US politicians are not that naïve to not see that. They chose to ignore that.

Green new deal progress is planned economy. US economy now is stimulus addicted, full of zombies companies draining resources and  stimulus effects won't last long as it will have diminishing return effect. They always say the economy is doing great before any big recession. Keynesian or any Modern Monetary Theory economics only works after recession where all of zombies were dead. 

China is ahead in AI because (ironically), they are better currently @ capitalism than we are. Have you heard of "996" culture? well, that's how competitive the technology sector in China is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Also, the government has been very supportive of that sector, you could not say the same thing about Trump. Instead, he pushed a nativist agenda that is almost universally reviled in the digital sector (it's not really "big tech", it's pretty much any company whose main revenue is from the internet, which is one of the largest growth areas in the country). It was obvious that trump was oblivious in the "cyber", but what probably rankled people up most is his nationalism. The axis of evil "trump/xi/putin" all passed, or tried to pass laws on stuff like encryption and root certificates. Luckily, the US remains in the open internet (but probably needs better privacy laws like California and Europe). 

ironically, there is a lot of good ideas that the US has "stolen" from China these days in a reverse-robin hood style because there is mass colloboration of people coding together in github (or the chinese equivalent gitee, which was only setup after the US inexorably ordered Microsoft to cut GitHub from other countries like Iran). What country owns a project when you have multiple people from across the world working on it?

The "green new deal" (I don't really like that name) isn't really a "planned economy" (I don't like that name either). It's to prevent hyperbolic discounting because we, as humans, don't necessarily always plan for the future very well. 

Already, groups that own a lot of assets for their clients, as well as the actuarial sciences (those who manage risk), project an inevitable policy response - for example, the PRI has $103.4trn assets under management. See the policy forecasts here: https://www.unpri.org/inevitable-policy-response/the-inevitable-policy-response-policy-forecasts/4849.article

These are always stick and carrot issues, but governments need to coordinate with each other because the resource in question is shared (the atmosphere and oceans). I think stuff like smart contacts between companies in supply chains will help.

Given how much more data rich we are these days (including from satellites), it's becoming easier and easier to figure how to perform uncertainty quantification in atmospheric physics. 

It's pretty clear where cash flows will move towards in the next few decades as climate risk is priced in. It opens a _ton_ of new opportunities, though ironically, more so in the developed world. At least the developing world can learn a lot more things about less energy (well, more so GHG) intensive development from the developed world these days.

Edited January 25, 2021 by surrept33

[SUZNV + 1,197]

46 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

1 China is ahead in AI because (ironically), they are better currently @ capitalism than we are. Have you heard of "996" culture? well, that's how competitive the technology sector in China is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

2 The "green new deal" (I don't really like that name) isn't really a "planned economy" (I don't like that name either). It's to prevent hyperbolic discounting because we, as humans, don't necessarily always plan for the future very well. 

Already, groups that own a lot of assets for their clients, as well as the actuarial sciences (those who manage risk), project an inevitable policy response - for example, the PRI has $103.4trn assets under management. See the policy forecasts here: https://www.unpri.org/inevitable-policy-response/the-inevitable-policy-response-policy-forecasts/4849.article

These are always stick and carrot issues, but governments need to coordinate with each other because the resource in question is shared (the atmosphere and oceans). I think stuff like smart contacts between companies in supply chains will help.

Given how much more data rich we are these days (including from satellites), it's becoming easier and easier to figure how to perform uncertainty quantification in atmospheric physics. 

It's pretty clear where cash flows will move towards in the next few decades as climate risk is priced in. It opens a _ton_ of new opportunities, though ironically, more so in the developed world. At least the developing world can learn a lot more things about less energy (well, more so GHG) intensive development from the developed world these days.

1 China is a planned economy. They can go far with AI because their state corporations can have access to their people privacy and State supervision. That's why big tech love China. Personal data is the new oil, China is the new Middle East for them.

If it is not from free market, then it is planned economy or crony capitalism  or whatever name you like to call. All communism and socialism countries in the past had claimed that they sacrificed free market  for the greater good, then they turn from communism and socialism to crony capitalism, not free market and I couldn't see any greater good achievement but damages.

2 Do you consider the environments cost of the production of lithium battery from mining to end product and after their productive life? Both gas, liquid and solid waste on air, land and sea? If you want to clean up the world and CO2, less pumping pollutions to the sea and grow more plants and trees to absorb CO2 instead of chopping down trees (30% of Oxygen productions), pollution the sea (70% of Oxygen productions). No need to waste money in R&D for carbon capturing.

CO2 is my favorite waste comparing liquid and solid chemical waste to fix that CO2 waste. Go, do research about mining pollutions and how they treated the liquid waste in South America or Africa mines. China is just doing the dirty world for the Western politicians for their planned economy/ crony capitalism . For the green new deal, or whatever you want to call it, multiply these pollutions to at least 1000 times. 

You can burn biomass product from trees for energy. Because the trees have absorbed so many CO2 in  their life, so technically the CO2 it releases is canceled out. That is how EU cut off  half of their CO2 emission on paper. No high subsidies low return needed. Win-Win situation.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by SUZNV

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, SUZNV said:

1 China is a planned economy. They can go far with AI because their state corporations can have access to their people privacy and State supervision. That's why big tech love China. Personal data is the new oil, China is the new Middle East for them.

If it is not from free market, then it is planned economy or crony capitalism  or whatever name you like to call. All communism and socialism countries in the past had claimed that they sacrificed free market  for the greater good, then they turn from communism and socialism to crony capitalism, not free market and I couldn't see any greater good achievement but damages.

 

China is a quasi-planned economy. They do have an industrial policy. So do many other countries. They have huge (badly run) state run sector and a bustling private sector, particularly in technology. It's interesting to see Chinese and American companies competing in other quickly growing countries like India (which is usually the #2 country in English language visitors to many websites, except with Chinese phones and other electronics). 

The US's digital privacy laws (at least federally) are long overdue for an overhaul (right now, it's more or less collect everything, ask questions later by the private sector). In some ways, a Chinese citizen has more rights if we aren't talking about stuff like health care data. The largest usage of AI (I'll just call it generalized pattern matching) has been in consumer data. That's almost completely unregulated in the US except in California (I expect this to change). 

 

1 hour ago, SUZNV said:

2 Do you consider the environments cost of the production of lithium battery from mining to end product and after their productive life? Both gas, liquid and solid waste on air, land and sea? If you want to clean up the world and CO2, less pumping pollutions to the sea and grow more plants and trees to absorb CO2 instead of chopping down trees (30% of Oxygen productions), pollution the sea (70% of Oxygen productions). No need to waste money in R&D for carbon capturing.

CO2 is my favorite waste comparing liquid and solid chemical waste to fix that CO2 waste. Go, do research about mining pollutions and how they treated the liquid waste in South America or Africa mines. China is just doing the dirty world for the Western politicians for their planned economy/ crony capitalism . For the green new deal, or whatever you want to call it, multiply these pollutions to at least 1000 times. 

You can burn biomass product from trees for energy. Because the trees have absorbed so many CO2 in  their life, so technically the CO2 it releases is canceled out. That is how EU cut off  half of their CO2 emission on paper. No high subsidies low return needed. Win-Win situation.

I think the focus has shifted towards a circular economy and doing life cycle analysis (as well as what the EPA calls Scope1/2/3 emissions), and thus tracking the total lifecycle of every product from cradle to grave, including how things like batteries are made (and where the electricity comes from or is offset). As the Li-Ion industry scales up, I think you'll see wins there. 

You almost never want to burn biomass for energy because it is so dirty. Even coal is better. That's how humans historically did it (and even used it for at range communication). 

Edited January 25, 2021 by surrept33

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Answering the question in the thread briefly, if Russian killed not Navalny but Angela Merkel yes this could have spoiled German-Russian relations for short time.
Briefly, because there are 6,000 German companies in Russia, they already have one gas pipe, are building another one and are wondering how to push the USA out of Europe.

In these longterm plans killing of Navalny or even Angela Merkel is only a short-term obstacle.

The article below may only shock someone who does not know that half of Europe was forced to work for the needs of Nazi Germany during the Second World War and looting whole Europe is one of the reason of Germany economic success after Second World War.

Quote

 

roduces cars in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where up to 1.8 million Uighurs are held in internment camps, warns Die Zeit. "Should the company, under whose construction the foundation stone was once laid by Adolf Hitler himself, produce here?" Asked the German daily.

Volkswagen, a German automotive concern, produces its cars, among others in China's Xinjiang Province. In recent years, the communist authorities have intensified repressions against the Uighurs - the Muslim minority in the region.

"If we draw a circle with a radius of 30 kilometers around the factory (Volkswagen), we will see 25 prisons and camps. In the entire Xinjiang region, researchers documented almost 400 such objects. Up to 1.8 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities could have ended up in these camps" - wrote the German daily "Die Zeit".

Volkswagen builds a car on the wrong side of the Uighurs
It added that in a Chinese government document leaked to the AFP news agency, the authorities left no doubt about the intention: "Break their lineages, sever their ties, sever their roots."

Hair from forced prisoners in China. The truth about "black gold"

Can the company, under which the foundation stone was once laid by Adolf Hitler himself, produce here? - ask the authors of the article in the daily "Zeit". The German ethnologist Adrian Zenz, quoted by the newspaper, has no doubts: - Companies operating in the region are complicit in state repression.

The daily notes that this is a dilemma for Volkswagen. No other auto company has become so dependent on China. Every second car that is produced with the VW logo on the radiator rolls off the assembly line in China.

Volkswagen's financial success comes at a time when the Uighurs are going through unimaginable suffering. Former prisoners of the Xinjiang camp system talk of torture, humiliation and indoctrination.

China has denied the camps for years. It was only after the evidence could no longer be ignored that the state announced an education program in which people are "de-radicalized" and "incorporated into society."

The Volkswagen scandal. CJEU: car owners can sue the company
There are no official data on the camps and their prisoners. The Australian Institute for Strategic Policy recently published a comprehensive map. It lists 380 camps and prisons that have been built or expanded in recent years.

Adrian Zenz, who conducts research on behalf of the US NGO Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, estimates the number of inmates at 0.9 to 1.8 million, or up to ten percent of ethnic minorities in the region. According to Zenz, there is growing evidence that forced sterilization and abortions are being used against women from these ethnic groups.

Zenz sees this as fulfilling one of the UN genocide criteria - not as targeted mass killings, but as the slow decimation of a population group while suppressing its identity. It is clear to Zenz: "If companies like Volkswagen do not want to join forces with state repression, they must withdraw from Xinjiang."

The company sees nothing wrong with its decisions
Stephan Woellenstein, VW's head of China in China, knows these allegations. "I don't think the withdrawal from the region will solve the political problems," he said.

Volkswagen is not the only international group that has invested in the region. The chemical concern BASF produces semi-finished products for synthetic fibers there, and Coca-Cola bottoms drinks. "But Volkswagen is perhaps the most controversial investor. Especially because of its history" - journalists "Die Zeit" emphasized.

SEE ALSO

MOTO Volkswagen is laying off workers in Polish factories
In 2009, there were major clashes between the Uighurs and the Han Chinese in Urumqi, resulting in the death of 197 people. In the following years, there were terrorist attacks for which the authorities blamed Uyghur separatists or Islamists. Beijing responded with waves of arrests and repression. And he chose economic development to help ease tensions. "We will improve people's living conditions so that all ethnic groups can lead a prosperous and happy life," Chinese party leader Hu Jintao said shortly after the attacks.

Of the largest international car makers, Volkswagen was the only one lured into the region. - We saw great economic potential in Western China. Political considerations played no role, stresses Woellenstein.

"In Beijing's business circles, it is already clear that the saga of apolitical location decisions has never been true," wrote Die Zeit, "The conditions in the region are too bad for the car factory. There are no suppliers and no infrastructure. Individual parts. they have to be transported thousands of kilometers before they are fitted to cars in Ürümqi. "

The balance seven years after the opening of the factory is as follows: instead of the target 50,000 vehicles

 

Quote

 

 

[SUZNV + 1,197]

27 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

China is a quasi-planned economy. They do have an industrial policy. So do many other countries. They have huge (badly run) state run sector and a bustling private sector, particularly in technology. It's interesting to see Chinese and American companies competing in other quickly growing countries like India (which is usually the #2 country in English language visitors to many websites, except with Chinese phones and other electronics). 

The US's digital privacy laws (at least federally) are long overdue for an overhaul (right now, it's more or less collect everything, ask questions later by the private sector). In some ways, a Chinese citizen has more rights if we aren't talking about stuff like health care data. The largest in using AI has been in consumer data. That's almost completely unregulated in the US except in California (I expect this to change). 

You really don't know anything about China political system especially the "private tech sector". CCP depends on their technology to supervise their citizen & censorship what people think and do to ensure their totalitarians power, an extension to the firewall that prevent Chinese to access "Western's" news.  There is much more data to mind than just consumer behaviors (which is available in the Wests as well ).

The privacy laws and labor data protection regulation made US and EU big tech got problem with getting data for training AI, especially in face recognition supervising systems, tracking people. For example I challenge you to find a company in EU or US have a supervising system that measure the time the employee got to toilet, or sitting on a chair measure heart beat to see if the worker is concentrating in their jobs or not. Of course they can do that, but no data to train for AI.

The so called "private tech companies" are just a masking for listing their stocks on Hongkong or US to attract oversea investment. China won't risk transfer the power that can potentially undermine their totalitarian party system  to private China tech companies like US and EU did.

Edited January 25, 2021 by SUZNV

[SUZNV + 1,197]

33 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

 

1 I think the focus has shifted towards a circular economy and doing life cycle analysis (as well as what the EPA calls Scope1/2/3 emissions), and thus tracking the total lifecycle of every product from cradle to grave, including how things like batteries are made (and where the electricity comes from or is offset). As the Li-Ion industry scales up, I think you'll see wins there. 

2 You almost never want to burn biomass for energy because it is so dirty. Even coal is better. That's how humans historically did it (and even used it for at range communication). 

1 How many more lithium batteries need to be created compares to what we have now? The chemical will lose their capability to hold power after used.  Recycling won't match the demand for growth in the green new deal for now and maybe never.

2 But that how EU is implementing with their reduction of CO2 emission percentage, no matter they like it or not.

Edited January 25, 2021 by SUZNV

[surrept33 + 609]

15 minutes ago, SUZNV said:

You really don't know anything about China especially the "private tech sector". CCP depends on their technology to supervise their citizen & censorship to ensure their totalitarians power, an extension to the firewall that prevent Chinese to access "Western's" news.  There is much more data to mind than just consumer behaviors (which is available in the Wests as well ).

The privacy laws and labor data protection regulation made US and EU big tech got problem with getting data for training AI, especially in face recognition supervising systems, tracking people. For example I challenge you to find a company in EU or US have a supervising system that measure the time the employee got to toilet, or sitting on a chair measure heart beat to see if the worker is concentrating in their jobs or not. Of course they can do that, but no data to train for AI.

The so called "private tech companies" are just a masking for listing their stocks on Hongkong or US to attract oversea investment. China won't risk the transfer the power to big tech inside China like US and EU did.

I know more than most people, What you say about the government's power might be true. But doesn't mean there isn't real innovation coming out of China. I've listened to a lot of these podcasts (and so have many people in Silicon Valley) so I'm not completely in the dark. 

Also, the great firewall in China more or less is bypassed by anyone technical enough in practice from what I've heard. Hell, out in the open, you have people indexing and using neural translation (what is the government going to do, ban trillions of words? In the digital world, copying is easy, moderating is hard. Besides, everything is unicode. Hell, banned sites like *Google* in China are indexed and autotranslated to Mandarin, even people working for companies like Alibaba who just release the neural nets for free: https://github.com/PaddlePaddle

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by surrept33

[surrept33 + 609]

17 minutes ago, SUZNV said:

1 How many more lithium batteries need to be created compares to what we have now? The chemical will lose their capability to hold power after used.  Recycling won't match the demand in the green new deal for now and maybe never.

2 But that how EU is implementing with their reduction of CO2 emission percentage, no matter they like it or not.

I think smarter grid systems will help with that: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/second-life-ev-batteries-the-newest-value-pool-in-energy-storage

I've seen similar ideas even with new "smart building" microgrid designs. Hopefully standardization of battery types happens because they should help recycleablity/reusability. 

[SUZNV + 1,197]

1 minute ago, surrept33 said:

I know more than most people, What you say about the government's power might be true. But doesn't mean there isn't real innovation coming out of China. I've listened to a lot of these podcasts (and so have many people in Silicon Valley) so I'm not completely in the dark. 

 

 

 

US innovated in shale oil production because they have shale oil on their land. I didn't say anything about whether China have real innovation or not. But these AI are in the application side rather than innovation side.

The heart and soul of AI industry beside data and algorithm is the hardware of Cloud , 5G infrastructure with came down to the ability to have homebrew technology to make chips and chip designs. Even Huawei needed to buy these 7nm chips. They couldn't have the access to EUV lithography machine so far because Trump stopped it but with Biden administrator, it will be removed soon. But to buy a device will be very different from owning that technology. China's advantage in 5G depends on their monopoly of rare earth resources supply for 5G rather than innovation design that surpass other in 5G.

China planned economy or quasi-economy if you want me to call it like that, they control the supply to meet political goal rather than supply and demand. For example their goal is 70% of chip self sufficiency in 2025 but see the graph I attached you would see how hard it is to achieve it. 

Last year when Trump banned Huawei, China spent lots of money to improve its chip production capacity and as the results many inexperience unrelated company open chip production departments to get the funds. No one will do anything if their startup failed. 

Another technology related to AI and cloud is ARM instruction set. China was desperate to have ARM so they are trying to keep the control of China ARM, surely some action like this cannot be possible without China's government support. 

https://www.ft.com/content/fc5daa8f-e0da-4a75-8194-de1848a2ea55

[SUZNV + 1,197]

23 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

I think smarter grid systems will help with that: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/second-life-ev-batteries-the-newest-value-pool-in-energy-storage

I've seen similar ideas even with new "smart building" microgrid designs. Hopefully standardization of battery types happens because they should help recycleablity/reusability. 

Surely it would help. But it is nowhere for meeting the demand x1000 times. 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

Interesting conversation.  Seriously.  Do continue.

[surrept33 + 609]

10 minutes ago, SUZNV said:

US innovated in shale oil production because they have shale oil on their land. I didn't say anything about whether China have real innovation or not. But these AI are in the application side rather than innovation side.

The heart and soul of AI industry beside data and algorithm is the hardware of Cloud , 5G infrastructure with came down to the ability to have homebrew technology to make chips and chip designs. Even Huawei needed to buy these 7nm chips. They couldn't have the access to EUV lithography machine so far because Trump stopped it but with Biden administrator, it will be removed soon. But to buy a device will be very different from owning that technology. China's advantage in 5G depends on their monopoly of rare earth resources supply for 5G rather than innovation design that surpass other in 5G.

China planned economy or quasi-economy if you want me to call it like that, they control the supply to meet political goal rather than supply and demand. For example their goal is 70% of chip self sufficiency in 2025 but see the graph I attached you would see how hard it is to achieve it. 

Last year when Trump banned Huawei, China spent lots of money to improve its chip production capacity and as the results many inexperience unrelated company open chip production departments to get the funds. No one will do anything if their startup failed. 

Another technology related to AI and cloud is ARM instruction set. China was desperate to have ARM so they are trying to keep the control of China ARM, surely some action like this cannot be possible without China's government support. 

https://www.ft.com/content/fc5daa8f-e0da-4a75-8194-de1848a2ea55

Keep in mind ARM is owned by NVIDIA now. ARM just licenses intellectual property. It doesn't make stuff (usually),  but licenses designs to others. TSMC, based on Taiwan, makes a lot of stuff in China. 

Either way, the biggest competitor to ARM is most definitely going to be RISC-V. It has no royalty fees and is perhaps the start of the "open hardware" movement (it was originally developed at UC Berkley, and the policy of the UC system is no patents). It has immense industry interest: https://riscv.org/members/

In the US, the (very high tech) fabs are back, they are just not making integrated circuits but other stuff. Samsung's plant in Austin, for example, besides producing stuff for Apple, also works on microfluidics relevant to next generation computer assisted surgery. 

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, SUZNV said:

Surely it would help. But it is nowhere for meeting the demand x1000 times. 

Well, it depends on where the batteries are made. If they are made in many more gigafactor(ies), in say, scandanavia where there is "free hydropower" or say Texas (where there is a lot of wind/solar/wasted gas), or somewhere there is nuclear, it's not so bad. 

The other alternative is to build a lot of high voltage transmission lines (which China has beat us by miles). 

Edited January 25, 2021 by surrept33

[SUZNV + 1,197]

36 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Keep in mind ARM is owned by NVIDIA now. ARM just licenses intellectual property. It doesn't make stuff (usually),  but licenses designs to others. TSMC, based on Taiwan, makes a lot of stuff in China. 

Either way, the biggest competitor to ARM is most definitely going to be RISC-V. It has no royalty fees and is perhaps the start of the "open hardware" movement (it was originally developed at UC Berkley, and the policy of the UC system is no patents). It has immense industry interest: https://riscv.org/members/

In the US, the (very high tech) fabs are back, they are just not making integrated circuits but other stuff. Samsung's plant in Austin, for example, besides producing stuff for Apple, also works on microfluidics relevant to next generation computer assisted surgery. 

If you read the link I sent, you would see ARM in China it is still an obstacle for NVIDIA to acquired ARM and still in negotiations. ARM have to fulfill their part of the deal.

RISC-V is fairly new and it will need an widespread of eco-system to catch up. Windows didn't success much with Windows ARM because of that. It takes time to build library and framework  and ecosystem for new instruction set.

21 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Well, it depends on where the batteries are made. If they are made in many more gigafactor(ies), in say, scandanavia where there is "free hydropower" or say Texas (where there is a lot of wind/solar/wasted gas), or somewhere there is nuclear, it's not so bad. 

The other alternative is to build a lot of high voltage transmission lines (which China has beat us by miles). 

You missed my point completely. The pollutions scale from the chemical pollution by  mining and extracting x1000 for lithium battery, with is the core of the green new deal, independent to where they are made, and the recycle process at best every 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? It is negligible in percentage with the proposed growth.

You should pay more attention to the details, not the hype for stocks or political purposes.

Edited January 25, 2021 by SUZNV

[surrept33 + 609]

21 hours ago, Tomasz said:

Answering the question in the thread briefly, if Russian killed not Navalny but Angela Merkel yes this could have spoiled German-Russian relations for short time.
Briefly, because there are 6,000 German companies in Russia, they already have one gas pipe, are building another one and are wondering how to push the USA out of Europe.

In these longterm plans killing of Navalny or even Angela Merkel is only a short-term obstacle.

The article below may only shock someone who does not know that half of Europe was forced to work for the needs of Nazi Germany during the Second World War and looting whole Europe is one of the reason of Germany economic success after Second World War.

 

I think that is simplifying things a lot. Just look how Stalin literally moved the borders of Germany to the Oder River, displacing almost all of "old Prussia". Even now, former East Germany is poorer than the former West Germany. This is partially because half of the Warsaw Pact helped the USSR much more so than natural trading partners in the west that central Europe historically had. It was economic exploitation. The USSR also had horrible "central planning" sometimes. Does it really make sense to build factories in the middle of Siberia?

In most communist countries almost all of the collectivist "experiments" horribly failed. What did work was land redistribution, because of the breaking of centuries of feudal structures (except for the Emancipation Proclamation, the US didn't exactly have this problem due to the Homestead Act). This happened all over Asia "communist" or "capitalist" country-alike. As a counterpoint, it's interesting to see how in aging societies like Japan where land is so devalued (except in cities maybe). Maybe that's humanity's future.

Edited January 25, 2021 by surrept33

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Western media:

Angry Russians fed up with Putler's corruption pour into the streets

Opinion polls on Putin's approval rate (after the "palace" video):

Levada: 65%→64% https://levada.ru/2021/02/04/prezidentskie-rejtingi-i-polozhenie-del-v-strane/… - this is independent reseacher classified as foreign agent 

VCIOM: 60%→61% https://wciom.ru/ratings/dejatelnost-gosudarstvennykh-institutov/… - state researcher 

Don't waste time on hacks. Look at numbers.

 

 

 

1:28 PM · Feb 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

 

Last question is about which politicians you really trust 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

If you have time I suggest this tweet from The Independent correspondent in Russia Olivier Caroll and responses to his tweet - it shows very clearly Western and Russian attitude in one topic and both point of view

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1356843109351649283

The second issue in the comments is also interesting - whether the Ukrainian Second Maidan should be a model to follow for other countries of the former USSR or is it a defeat or a catastrophe of modern Ukraine,rather warning that bright example.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Tomasz

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

5 hours ago, Tomasz said:

If you have time I suggest this tweet from The Independent correspondent in Russia Olivier Caroll and responses to his tweet - it shows very clearly Western and Russian attitude in one topic and both point of view

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1356843109351649283

The second issue in the comments is also interesting - whether the Ukrainian Second Maidan should be a model to follow for other countries of the former USSR or is it a defeat or a catastrophe of modern Ukraine,rather warning that bright example.

@Tomasz

I'd just like to take the time to say thanks, to you and to others from around the globe, for your contributions here on OilPrice.com.  I don't speak for the website or its management in any way, shape or form.  I'm just a contributor as well.  But the fact is that you bring a perspective on a host of topics that is at the very least enlightening, and at its very best it changes people's perceptions.  Well done, and thanks.

[surrept33 + 609]

5 hours ago, Tomasz said:

If you have time I suggest this tweet from The Independent correspondent in Russia Olivier Caroll and responses to his tweet - it shows very clearly Western and Russian attitude in one topic and both point of view

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1356843109351649283

The second issue in the comments is also interesting - whether the Ukrainian Second Maidan should be a model to follow for other countries of the former USSR or is it a defeat or a catastrophe of modern Ukraine,rather warning that bright example.

Why was this guy poisoned if he was not "threatening" Putin's hold on his kleptocracy (or oligarchy whatever)? His strategy in the "anyone but putin's party" seemed to be working too well. 

To me, Russia has a lot of potential for both internal and external exporting of volatility because its dependency on resources (where not much "innovation" has happened since the '80s), the global arms trade (which is an unfortunate inefficiency in economics caused of the cold war), and cyberwarfare (defensively, and offensively, at least it could learn a less or two about privacy from Europe). Meanwhile, the "opioid epidemic" in Russia still seems to be alcohol, which unfortunately, has been a problem for many many centuries (the Czars made a lot of $ making vodka).

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country

Also, looking long term, changes to the climate could both help and hurt russia. Think about the Ural Sea ecological disaster, but the Caspian instead or the military arms race in the *arctic*. At least the US is taking the last part very seriously as seas start becoming navigable (but you still need advanced magnetic sensing devices to "see" north correctly "up" there). Think about all of the trapped methane in the permafrost. 

Edited February 5, 2021 by surrept33

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Well I suggest watching his close associate Ashurkov CEO of Navalny foundation in talks with some Brittish Diplomat

Is is a propaganda movie  to discredit Navalny - yes. But if true would you like having such a leader of country?

There may not be some high treason on this video, but the right hand of Navalny suggests that in return for a cash grant he will help British banks to fight VTB - it is the second largest bank in Russia.

He says literally that they will spend a few millions and earn billions after some time.

I do not really know if the recording is authentic, maybe it is faked by the FSB.

But the fact  it that now it is very popular on the Russian net and the Navalny Foundation will probably not gain more supporters even if it is from 2012.

He then suggests that MI6 could help him out with dirt on prominent Russians .

It should be added that the alleged British diplomat refuses the offer and advises to apply to Amnesty International for a grant.

Quote

In some cases we don’t have maybe the direct evidence, our evidence is circumstantial, but I’m sure that SFO has access to a lot of information that would not be available to us right from British sources. And if, you know, I’m sure there is information within the British agencies which would like Abramovich or Usmanov, people in the Russian government. Britain is a key European country that can influence and is already taking a tougher stance towards Russia.

Quote

 

Assuming that is legit, it’s quite damning. Imagine the degree of Russiagate hysteria the Blue Checks would have been driven to if the manager of Trump’s campaign was filmed begging for money and dirt on Hillary Clinton. It would have literally been Russiagate as a reality, not as conspiracy theory.

But aside from the not unusual double standards angle, it is also interesting in that it shows that the kremlins seem to really have “kompromat” against Navalny. Perhaps there are even much bigger revelations kept in reserve should he ever become a real threat.

It’s quite interesting that this was released now, and not even back in 2013, when Navalny won 27% in the Moscow mayoral elections. Possibly it means that the kremlins are serious with going ahead with a treason trial against Navalny, in addition to the 2.5 years of his suspended sentence for fraud that he will now have to serve out (3.5 years in total, but the year he spent under home arrest will be deducted). A treason sentence, which can potentially be as long as a decade, will keep Navalny out out of politics until after the 2030 elections.

I don’t think this video will mean much. The “vatnik” vast majority is already convinced that Navalny is a traitor. The Navalnyites don’t care, will consider this a fake, or actually a good thing if true.

Since the imprisonment does not come as a surprise, so I don’t expect a much higher turnout in the third protest. My guess is that it will be bigger than the second one, but no bigger than and possibly smaller than the first one.

I do wonder whether or not Navalny and his people expected this damp squib.

I expected it and predicted it because I know that Putin’s approval rating is really around 65%, that Navalny has a high anti-rating, and that Russians treat elite corruption as an inescapable reality.

However, in the past month, I met on net some people, even sociologists, who believe that Putin’s ratings are absolutely fictive and that the sociological services making them up (e.g. see this Russian language interview from a couple of months ago with Sergey Zadumov).

If this is a widespread view among Russian liberals and oposition (wishful thinking > logical thinking), then this might help explain why Navalny felt bold enough to come back.

Perhaps he expected 250,000 or even more on the streets in Moscow, not the 15.00- 25,000 he actually got.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Tomasz

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

1 hour ago, Tomasz said:

Is is a propaganda movie  to discredit Navalny - yes. But if true would you like having such a leader of country?

If you believe this to be propaganda, why reference it at all?

[Tomasz + 1,608]

2 minutes ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

If you believe this to be propaganda, why reference it at all?

The propaganda event does not have to be false. According to my definition of propaganda, the event is rather real, only so symbolic that it can be politically exploited.

Here I am rather wondering if the voice was possibly not planted because it cannot be checked.

The recording fits in with the propaganda because Navalny is portrayed as an agent of Western influence and that movie  fits the concept perfectly.

I do not know if he is an agent of this influence, but at present he is definitely more popular in the West than in Russia itself.

His idea to fight corruption is most laudable because it is one of the biggest problems in Russia, the problem is that in 2021 his postulates enjoy modest popularity.

Personally, I think that all interviews in the West do not increase his popularity in Russia, too, given the strong anti-Western resentment in Russia.