Ultimately, whatever will be will be.

Why should we care what people that are still using Reddit do or don’t do do?

Sorry, but anybody still there deserves whatever shit they get.

IMHO Liberalism was manufactured by Capitalism as a left-sounding form of politics to allow mainstream parties which were genuinelly leftwing to move Right in Economic, Quality Of Life and even broad Equality whislt still appearing to be left-wing due to their pro-liberty posture on Moral and Social subjects.

I say this because I have yet to see any form of Liberalism in mainstream politics, ever, anywhere, which sought to maximize people’s freedom to access limitied or constrained resources which are required merelly to live, such as Land (which Land Ownership goes against), so I don’t think that at least in Politics there was ever any genuine Liberalism for Capitalism to corrupt.

A TOS presented after an electronic device has been sold is not valid in most of the World since it’s considered an attempt to, after the sale, force a change of the terms of the implicit contract which is the sale.

A company can shove whatever they want in front of the customer as contract conditions they have to accept for a sale before the sale - by which point the potential customer can refuse and not buy or accept and buy - not after.

Of course, they don’t do that because they would lose most sales, so instead there’s a TOS or EULA which the owners of the devices are forced to agree to after the sale to fully enjoy that which they bought, but these are really just legal fictions in most countries.

Mind you, this does not apply to a subscription to an ongoing service, though even then at least in Europe, there are conditions they much obbey to have the customer accept a TOS or a TOS change after subscribing, such as it being possible for the customer to cancel the service at no cost rather than accept the new TOS.

I’ve been boycotting Sony since the Rootkit Scandal, what took you so long?

I really, really hope that the Chinese take most of the market away from these assholes.

The thing with Fascists is that they’re jingoist as fuck, so they can at best tolerate foreign Fascists (and only as long as they can use them as useful idiots) before, ultimately, treating them like they do all other foreigners.

This is why, as Meloni recently found out with Trump, even when they’re looked to as an inspiration by foreign Fascists, they’re looking down on them.

The only foreigners they don’t do turn on are the ultra-rich that keep giving them money.

Me too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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