Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday....
The military industrial complex is currently also doing what it's supposed to be doing by helping defend Ukraine and thereby Europe. There are two sides to this coin. One could also argue that it makes a lot of sense for the United States to help defend the only democracy in the Middle East, not just for strategic reasons.
To illustrate your point, my old GPU, a GTX 1080 from 2016 (basically ancient history - Obama was still president back then) remains a very useful for ML-applications today - and this isn't even their oldest card that is still relevant for AI. This card was never meant for this, but thanks to Nvidia investing into CUDA and CUDA being useful for all sorts of non-gaming applications, the API became a natural first choice when ML tools that run on consumer hardware started to get developed.
My current GPU, an RTX 2080, is just two years younger and yet it's so powerful (for everything I throw at it, including ML) that I won't have to upgrade it for years to come.
Even first gen ones from 2015 are still being used. I don't think these die all that often. They will be obsolete at some point, but even this takes far longer than with other tech. As long as you make sure it doesn't overheat, it should last for a while longer.
Because that's where the audience is. Peertube is deader than the lemmyverse. You are essentially making the silly "but yet you choose to live in society" argument.
China isn't ready for any random event that might happen today, like for example another epidemic, given the baffling show of incompetence that was Xi's and his government's reaction to COVID-19.
Given how they are also messing up the relatively new three-child policy and the economic challenges the country is currently experiencing, one does not have to worry about any baby boom any time soon.
China is a regional power with nuclear capabilites, not a superpower. They lack both the conventional force projection and soft power capabilities of an actual superpower - and what little soft power China has ever had (which has always been less than that of several individual European nations on their own) has been decimated by Xi's highly destructive "wolf warrior diplomacy".
I also disagree with the claim that any war with China would immediately spark WW3. Neither Beijing nor Washington have an interest in this and for as irrational and delusional as Xi is, he's not stupid enough to strike US mainland; if he ever made that suggestion, I'm sure that an army of far more intelligent advisors immediately tried to dissuade him from that using gentle enough language in order to not upset the emperor. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that a second Pearl Harbor would, even in this day and age, unite Democrats and Republicans against China. No amount of buying senators and riling up young voters through TikTok could counteract this.
I'm pretty certain - based on how similar China's buildup and propaganda is to what Russia did in the years before invading Ukraine - that the Asian dictatorship is going to start a war over Taiwan in the coming years, but they would struggle enough with combating Taiwan alone, conducting the most challenging naval landing using armed forces that haven't fought in any serious war (apart from a small regional conflict with Vietnam) since the early 1950s. They could have the most advanced weaponry in the world (which they clearly don't) and the lack of institutional experience would still put them at a massive disadvantage against the sole superpower on the planet. For as many issues as the US has a country and as a society, they are currently defeating what was once believed to be the "second army in the world" using Ukrainian soldiers and largely obsolete and/or expired 1970s to 1990s weaponry using no more than 5% of their military expenditure (and even that figure is misleading, since most weapons sent over were already considered worthless to them). China, which has been commonly ranked below Russia in terms of capabilities (remember Russian units struggling with poor quality Chinese tires in Ukraine or are currently embarrassing themselves with running head-first into Ukrainian positions on Chinese golf carts?) would face current American equipment and (sorry Ukrainians) far better trained American soldiers, far more competent American command in a far more challenging environment against a nation that built up a military strong enough to fight and win several wars at the scale of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan at the same time - that's what all those expensive carrier groups are for.
This would be a ridiculously uneven fight.
They might be able to score some cheap hits in the initial chaos (which would only rile up the American voting public as a few of their boys come home in coffins), but have no chance of maintaining that momentum. My guess is that a war against China would result in more American casualties than the war against Iraq, but far less than Vietnam. Chinese and Taiwanese casualties (especially civilian ones in case of the latter) would be horrific though, with potentially destabilizing effects for mainland China as the number of bodies become impossible to hide.
In previous discussions of this topic, there's always someone who dropped the impressive tonnage of the Communist Party's navy, which ignores that most are "coast guard" (i.e. vessels built for range, solely for the purpose of harassing fishing boats thousands of kilometers away, which lack weaponry and systems that would allow them to do anything more than look scary) would be near useless in an actual shooting war against a non-third-world military. That's on top of countless issues inherent to the Chinese system, like enormous corruption (remember when it came out that fuel for ICBMs had been sold and swapped out for water?) and party-led governance that is entirely based on obedience and loyalty instead of competency, even more so than before since Xi took power. Nearly all issues that Russia is still experiencing in Ukraine would also hamper China against Taiwan, except that they would have to cross a giant moat instead of just rolling over the border. No amount of manufacturing capabilities (which would at least partially collapse without foreign help in case of a war) can help them with this.
There would be a massive global recession, you're right on that (it would hit China the hardest right after Taiwan though, especially in the long run), and the danger of this war escalating into a nuclear one still exists, but based on everything I've read on this topic, it's far from certain this would "immediately spark" a nuclear Holocaust. I'm just some random guy on the Internet though, so it's your choice whether you take my word on it or not. I hope I've made my point clear.
I'm sorry, but have you been living under a rock in recent years? Have you totally missed the ramp up in belligerent Chinese propaganda and their military buildup?
The thing is, floating windows were absolutely useless in the age of 13 - 17" CRTs. On modern ultrawide or even just conventional widescreen displays, they make far more sense.
What a dishonest and empty comment. I feel second hand embarrassment and shame for you. You know that that the US isn't exactly the same, yet you chose to lie, just to defend a genocidal autocratic regime using the last line of defense any sycophants for dictatorships are using: Hypernormalization. After all, if everyone and everything is equally awful, your favorite oppressive machine maybe isn't so bad. I've seen this exact line of reasoning, if one can call it that, used by defenders of Russia, Iran, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Hamas, Saudi Arabia, etc.
I have one question for you: Why are you doing this? Are you a paid troll for the Internet Research Agency, fighting on the virtual front lines of the new Cold War so that you aren't sent to the real front lines of the hot part of it, so that you aren't end up as the main attraction of some Ukrainian drone bombing video, dying slowly to the sound of some questionable music? Are you perhaps a delusional Western Tankie who is still reflexively applauding to everything Moscow is doing, despite the fact that the "evil West" you've been indoctrinated (or indoctrinated yourself) to hate is now far more left than the currently extremely far-right Russia? Or perhaps you are much further to the right and simp for Russia precisely because it aligns itself so well with your belief system, e.g. in regards to its oppression of ethnic and sexual minorities, its violent imperialistic politics, the macho strongman aesthetics the insecure leader is cultivating.
I point out that the US is just as vile as all the oppressors
That's not pointing out anything, because it's flat out wrong. For all its faults, the US not as bad, not even close and nobody sane would make this claim. You are doing nothing but normalizing actual oppressors with this.
The fact that you included Hamas and not Israel
I don't think you are quite aware of just how stark the difference between Israel and Hamas is - or you're deliberately ignoring it. Tel Aviv is considered one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world - whereas in Palestinian territories, gay people are being publicly tortured and executed. That's just one aspect. The difference between Israel and Palestinian territories in regards to civil liberties is about as stark as the one between the two Koreas. This doesn't mean Israel is perfect, far from it, but the fact that you feel the need to lie about yet another topic and in the same sentence excrete a vile insult doesn't exactly make you look like a reasonable person.
ASML Holding NV and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most sophisticated chipmaking machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter....
No, they are not. There are certain high technologies, especially litographic equipment, that China can not produce and can not catch up to, because it's a moving target and they will be perpetually lagging behind. The end result will be the exact same issue that Eastern Bloc computing suffered from during the Cold War.
BMW, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Volkswagen (VW) used parts made by a supplier on a list of firms banned over alleged links to Chinese forced labour, a US congressional report has said....
Why do people who degrade themselves by defending China always resort to whataboutism? It's almost as if what this murderous dictatorship is doing is entirely indefensible, so they can only come up with clumsy ways of pointing fingers at others.
No surprise about Telepolis being on this list. They like to portray themselves as some bastion of journalistic integrity, but they have been neck-deep in conspiratorial thinking and propaganda going at least as far back as the earliest 9/11 truthers.
I also had to laugh about "anti-spiegel**.ru**". That's about as subtle as a T-34 shell to the face.
The entire thing is horrible, but this is the worst part:
Fawzia says that a few months later, “they asked our family to kill us”. The authorities argued it would stop the shame they were bringing on the family. “They said, ‘We will help your son do it,’ but my family refused,” she says. “
I'm the kind of person who reads the source code of software I'm using at least some of the time (and modifies it on occasion), but I'm no genius and not qualified to notice a well-hidden backdoor or potentially fatal software bug - let alone issues with the design, construction or implantation of the hardware. I would never ever trust a brain implant or any device that interfaces directly with my brain.
I'm suggesting that you don't make up fictional dialogue.
I am not denying that kids are dying in this war. This has more to do with how Hamas are deliberately embedding themselves within civilians, preventing them from fleeing and using them as human shields than the IDF deciding to deliberately murder children. I am not aware of any other armed forces going even remotely to the same lengths to warn civilians as the IDF. They even invented the practice of roof-knocking, which Palestinians trust so much that they are standing within meters of a marked building in order to film its destruction.
Your second link does not support your claim that Israel said they are only killing Hamas.
Should they, for example, abandon their residences as individuals
That's not the issue. Hamas terrorists are doing far more than just going home in the evening to their families. Read this academic paper on Hamas' use of human shields. It's highly accessible, yet in-depth:
I seriously implore you to actually read it and not just dismiss it, because you dislike the title or because I'm the one recommending it to you.
Would this also have applied to, for example, Jewish resistance fighters during the holocaust?
Originally, I was prepared to write a lengthy reply to each of your points, but I'll not waste my time any further with someone who has the sheer audacity of equating Hamas terrorists with Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighters. How dare you smear the legacy of these people in such a shameful way!
Allied bombings killed more German civilians in WW2 than German bombings killed Allied civilians. Does this mean that the Allies were morally inferior to the Nazis on the Western front?
Have you considered that there is more to this than just numbers, namely intent?
And then what? For how long is this war supposed to last?
Hamas needs to be defeated, the remaining living hostages liberated - and this requires boots on the ground. The sooner Hamas are out of the picture as a major threat to both Israelis and Palestinians, the sooner the war will be over. This is the best hope Palestinian civilians have. Once the organization has been dismantled to the point that nothing more than tiny, relatively easy to deal with splinter cells remain, international aid can pour into the strip without being disrupted by the fighting, without terrorists stealing it, without the whims of the current far-right government in Israel (whose days are numbered) limiting it. Then rebuilding can begin and the international community can start work on a sustainable post-war order - which needs to involve substantial changes to Palestinians society, governance, education and media (no more UN-funded schools teaching kids to murder Jews, for example) - that paves the way towards a two-state solution. A two-state solution has been pushed into the far future by the October 7 massacres, but the process can't even begin for as long as Hamas are still in a position of power.
And people get really angry with you if you point out that their sources are awful. It's kind of eye-opening, proving that the far-left can be just as susceptible to blatant misinformation and resistant to rational thinking as the far-right.
"Think of the children" has rarely ever been used rationally and your comment is no exception. No, that's obviously not what I'm saying and you know that. The sooner the war is over, the fewer children will die.
Hamas and their cause are considerably is less popular in Gaza than in the West Bank according to independent Palestinian polls. This more recruits talking point that I see repeated all the time has no basis in reality. The uncomfortable truth is that people in places that have been bombed by Israel are less likely to consider armed resistance a valid option and are instead dramatically preferring a two-state solution now:
I think that most Palestinians who have been unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end of Israeli weapons and lucky enough to survive are starting to realize just how enormous the disparity in capabilities has become.
The land in Gaza is near worthless to Israel. There are almost no natural resources, the soil is of abysmal quality and fresh water is highly contaminated by seawater. The only resources that exist in abundance are sunlight and salt water. It's an awful place to settle, which is one of the reasons why Israel was willing to forcefully evict their remaining settlers in the Gaza Strip in 2005 and why today, only a far-right fringe wishes for Israelis to settle in the strip again. It is completely pointless to ethnically cleanse Gaza and has no majority within Israeli society.
There are other reasons for there being a famine in Gaza right now; it's not some dastardly Israeli master plan:
Israel had no plans for this war and it's taking far longer than expected. Hamas attack caught them totally by surprise and the response is nowhere near as well thought out as it would have been if this war had been planned ahead.
War obviously caused nearly all local food production to cease. Israel tanks driving straight through fields and orchards (avoiding main roads and creating their own in order to circumvent IEDs) doesn't help. Israel unsurprisingly puts the safety of their soldiers above the concerns of local farmers.
Since the war is continuing for so long, the food supply was inevitably going to collapse. Gaza is notoriously reliant on food imports, unlike Israel, having never built up the ability to be self-sustainable. Damage to infrastructure alone makes maintaining pre-war levels impossible right now - and it doesn't help that every truck has to be screened for weapons beforehand, which takes a ton of time.
Hamas is misappropriating a significant portion of the aid and hoarding it so that they can continue their fight. They know that this will result in more civilian suffering - but they are counting on it, because they know this will result in pressure against Israel, not them.
The far-right government in Israel is unsurprisingly unwilling to allow in significant aid that gets stolen anyway in order to continue the fight.
Aid that doesn't disappear into the tunnels gets sold on the black market instead of being distributed to the people in need. Extreme local corruption, including within international aid organizations (which are overwhelmingly staffed by locals), hampers any and all aid efforts.
Before you think I'm some mindless defender of Israel (or, worse, a Hasbara), read this: I detest the current Israeli government with a passion, just like any other far-right government. I'm frequently horrified by public statements by leading Israeli politicians, I think that the war has exposed serious operational deficiencies within the IDF, I think that individual soldiers and officers who recklessly endanger civilians or, worse, commit war crimes need to be far more seriously punished than they already are and every nation that has friendly relations with Israel should never stop pressuring them to conduct themselves as best as they can in this war.
However, I do not subscribe to the belief that Israel is guilty of committing a genocide in this war. Note that I am not denying individual war crimes - those are being committed by Israeli soldiers, there is no doubt about it - but I have seen no evidence of there being a master plan to eradicate Palestinians as a people or even attempt it. The enormous lengths the IDF goes to warning Palestinian civilians alone - to the detriment of military operations - should put this hypothesis to rest. In my opinion, and you are free to disagree, this is merely a war and wars are universally terrible. Most of us, especially in the West, have been shielded from the realities of warfare, especially the fact that it's civilians who are always and in every single war suffering the most, for so long that we are mentally unprepared for a war that is as heavily "televised" (outdated term, I know, but still appropriate) as this one.
Combine this with a shocking lack of knowledge of international law and international affairs among the wider population, even in reasonably educated circles like young academics, a massive multi-national disinformation campaign (Russia, Iran, China, Qatar as the four big players) finding fertile soil and it's not difficult to see why a small number of easily debunked talking points are dominating public discourse. It's incredibly frustrating to see idealistic, well-meaning people fall for this. It makes me fear for the future of the developed world, if I'm honest. How will they react to the likely coming war against Taiwan, for example? How easily could they also be manipulated into taking China's side there or Russia's side in a possible attack against the Baltics?
Sorry for the long diatribe. I don't blame anyone for tuning out after the fifth paragraph or sooner.
Yes, I'm aware that Memri has a pro-Israel bias (to say the least), but all of these examples are literally from the horse's mouth, just collected in one place here.
By the way, I hope you are not naive enough to believe in the milder language of that 2017 charter. Among other things, it claims that Hamas believes in pluralism and democracy. That's obviously a lie and so are most of the rest of the revised points.
No, it's not a war crime to bomb civilian infrastructure that is being used for military purposes. This distinction appears to be entirely lost on people. I'll let you think about why the Geneva Convention explicitly creates this exemption.
They would all be still alive if Hamas hadn't massacred their way through Israel on October 7. Every single nation on Earth would have reacted to this with a full-on war - there is no other way any nation can react to this.
People are just under the delusion that somehow, clean wars with few or no civilian casualties are even possible. They are not, especially not against an enemy that does everything they can to increase the suffering of their own civilians.
You don't lash out against oppression by massacring, raping and abducting civilians. Hamas are not resistance fighters. They deliberately attacked small, peaceful communities that were far-left and extremely pro-Palestine, the very opposite of the current Israeli government and its policies. One of the most well-known Israeli pro-Palestinian advocates was among the victims:
Read the article. She was the kind of exemplary human being that is instrumental in bringing Palestinians and Israelis together. Her death alone was a terrible blow to the peace process.
This is not a coincidence - Hamas targeted these communities in order to make peaceful coexistence unpopular in Israel, push voters to the right, because they know this would result in more heavy-handed reactions by the Israeli state. One of their many miscalculations was just how destructive to their organization this response would be.
Hamas relationship with the Israeli government in general is far more complicated than how you are trying to describe it. For starters, this off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood began as a less militant religious alternative to the far more dangerous secular PLO, which is why there was initial clandestine Israeli support for them. The far more recent influx of Qatari cash that Israel signed off on happened after significant international pressure against Israel - and Netanyahu sold it to his power base as some kind of "divide and conquer" strategy after the fact. In reality, the Israeli government was under the delusion that Hamas were growing fat and lazy in power, that the billions in misappropriated aid money enabling a luxury lifestyle for the leadership would make this leadership less militant and thereby pacify Gaza. This was a foolish miscalculation.
The reason a ton of civilian infrastructure gets destroyed in Gaza has less to do with Israel being callous and far more with how Hamas are operating, how deeply they decided to embed themselves within civilians.
I mean actually click on the PDF link and at the very least read the first few pages. It's a thoroughly researched, yet accessible academic paper that shows just how systematic Hamas is in their use of human shields.
I'm pressing you on reading the above report, because I highly doubt you actually ever read the Geneva Conventions (so many people I've debated are using them in a vague manner, never able to name any specific sections), because there are explicit exemptions contained within that you would be familiar with if you had actually read them. If for example a hospital is being used for military purposes, it loses its protection under international law:
As well as carrying out unlawful killings, others abducted by Hamas were subjected to torture, including severe beatings with truncheons, gun butts, hoses and wire or held in stress positions. Some were interrogated and tortured or otherwise ill-treated in a disused outpatient’s clinic within the grounds of Gaza City’s main al-Shifa hospital. At least three people arrested during the conflict accused of “collaboration” died in custody.
Idealism on its own is admirable, but it doesn't solve any problems. Yes, I want there to be no war, no injustice, no suffering in the world as well, but that's not how this wretched planet works. I've learned to strive for and support the least terrible realistic options instead of unobtainable fantasies. It's painful and uncomfortable, I'm constantly questioning myself about it, but I really don't see alternative to it.
Shopping app Temu is “dangerous malware,” spying on your texts, U.S. lawsuit claims ( arstechnica.com )
Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday....
Key Democrats allow US sale of F-15 jets to Israel in $18 billion deal ( www.cnn.com )
Just in case you thought maybe the Dems had finally seen the light after Rafah. Nope! How about even more bombs for Israel?
Nvidia becomes the most valuable public company - GSMArena.com news ( m.gsmarena.com )
At least 550 hajj pilgrims die in scorching temperatures ( www.abc.net.au )
YouTube is dedicated to making itself worse; destroys SponsorBlock with ad injection changes ( www.youtube.com )
Xi Jinping claimed the US wants China to attack Taiwan, FT reports ( www.yenisafak.com )
Archived link...
Change to Adobe terms & conditions outrages many professionals - 9to5Mac ( 9to5mac.com )
The problem with GIMP ( www.spacebar.news )
'Russia now is like 1984': Inside a Russian dystopian library ( www.bbc.com )
If the billboards in Ivanovo are to be believed, Russia’s really going places....
ASML and TSMC Can Remotely Disable Chip Machines If China Invades Taiwan ( www.bloomberg.com )
ASML Holding NV and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most sophisticated chipmaking machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter....
Car makers BMW, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Volkswagen (VW) used parts made by supplier with links to Chinese forced labour, U.S. probe says ( www.bbc.com )
BMW, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Volkswagen (VW) used parts made by a supplier on a list of firms banned over alleged links to Chinese forced labour, a US congressional report has said....
Which German websites help disseminate pro-Russian narratives ( insightnews.media )
Alternative link...
Why FOSS projects are using proprietary, privacy invasive infrastructure?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15691030...
Google is redesigning its search engine — and it’s AI all the way down ( www.theverge.com )
‘They’ve destroyed us because of some tweets’: why has Saudi Arabia targeted these three sisters? ( www.theguardian.com )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20917977...
Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip ( arstechnica.com )
Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking ( arstechnica.com )
Surely the clearest path to retaining only the best.
Israel seizes 'operational control' of Rafah crossing in Gaza ( www.middleeasteye.net )
Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza after Israel orders Rafah evacuation ahead of attack ( apnews.com )