I had a crisis too some years ago, when Windows 7 was the shit, I heard Windows 7 was very good (for Windows).
So I tried to dual boot Windows 7, goddam a load of crap!! I’ll never believe anyone claiming Windows is good again.
The structure of security is a bloody mess, providing worse security, while taking control away from the owner of the system.
And lack of package manager makes it ask for updates at the most inopportune moments. Just a tiny program like Adobe reader was super invasive, and was a major pain in the ass.

Windows is not in any way user friendly, it’s just what most people are used to.

Britain must stand united

Where almost half the flags are not Union Jack but the English flag. 🤣🤣🤣
Such a bunch of morons.

Vanilla means the original unmodified.
And the Pixel version of Android is per definition the vanilla version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla_software

Vanilla software refers to applications and systems used in their unmodified, original state, as distributed by their vendors.

I agree except for this:

But in return you get clean software

Vanilla Android sucks now IMO, it gets a little bit worse with every update, other vendors are actually batter at maintaining sanity IMO.
It’s like vanilla has changes for changes sake, and all the new stupid AI feature they try to push on everything is extremely annoying IMO.

Vanilla Android used to be a feature, but not anymore IMO.

1 inch sensors are no joke, my phone has a 0.8" sensor, which is also quite respectable.
IDK if you are under 16, but compared to cameras just 2 decades ago, modern phones have amazing camera hardware. My own phone can in many ways beat a multi thousand dollar camera from back then.
The light sensitivity alone is insane compared to older cameras.

No, lithium batteries were developed over several decades before they reached a level where they became stable and affordable enough for mass consumption.
There is not a single point that is the driver of such trends, but I’d say that the research resulting in batteries becoming good enough for ever more use cases, is a major part of what drives adoption.
And on that point I’d agree that China is ahead. With BYD and CATL leading the development of better car batteries.
But they are not engines drivings nations away from fossil fuels. Because for instance Europe has been working on that shit since the 70’s.
Sure China is a part of it now, I’ll even admit they are a significant part, but they were not at any point in time the driver for it, and Japan and Korea weren’t either.

It would be more fair to say Denmark was a driver for the adoption of wind turbines, because Denmark was the country that invested money in developing the technology basically from scratch, to enable the big MegaWatt turbines we have today. Something that was developed in Denmark when most didn’t care to, and the few that did failed to make commercially viable turbines. And the Danish company Vestas now also has the world biggest wind turbine production.
But although Denmark were a driver, they aren’t anymore, because wind turbines can now and are developed and built all over the world.

The same with batteries, batteries are developed and built all over the world, with Samsung, Panasonic, LG also being reputable producers of batteries, China is just the biggest production hub, and on some types of batteries they are ahead. But China is not the engine driving this industry, it could be said to be mostly increased demand for electric cars, and electric cars is not a country.

China is driving its adoption

That’s exactly what I responded to. And as I’ve already written, China being the #1 manufacturer on volume doesn’t drive adoption any more than Toyota making the most cars are driving adoption of cars.
Adoption is very much driven by the technologies that have made the technology feasible to begin with. And that was for decades mostly driven by Europe.

It’s a nonsense way to understand the adoption of green energy sources which have many other factors than slightly cheaper production in China driving adoption.
As I mentioned, there are other countries making panels that are competitive, obviously if China stopped making panels, those makers would scale up their production to replace it.
For instance Hyundai are very competitive, and offer 25 year warranty against typically 10 years for Chinese panels. They have very low degradation and cost less than 10% more than a typical Chinese panel.
There are perfectly good options without China.

What’s driving adoption is the fact that the technologies have matured and become affordable, which would have happened anyway.

There is no doubt that adoption is NOT driven by China, and very very obviously not by China alone. Anymore than adoption of oil was driven by Saudi Arabia.

The cameras aren’t really high end either, they are decent mid range cameras with a lot of AI post processing to make pictures look better.
Most of the time it works really well, but at other times, they don’t really capture the actual picture.
I’ve seen pictures taken in fog, where the AI treatment completely removes the fog, impressive if that’s what you wanted, but if you actually wanted the “real” picture, you were fucked because you couldn’t disable the AI post processing.
IDK if they have changed that, but personally I prefer more moderate post processing.

I’m not saying China isn’t a major factor, and in the lead in some ways, especially on batteries.
I’m just saying that being in the lead doesn’t necessarily make you thee driving factor.
Which I thought I gave a good example on with Toyota. Where it’s easy to see how ridiculous the statement is.

It’s easy to double sales from 1 to 2, and it’s only by that measure that Google is fastest growing.
In marketshare percentage Huawei and Xiaomi grew more.

Also I’m not sure Pixel actually counts as a premium phone.
When I bought my current phone 2 years ago, Pixel was absolutely a sub premium phone with pretty mediocre stats.
I’d count it at most as an upper midrange phone.

Yes the claim of the article is obviously false regarding wind turbines, I’m not denying they make their own developments, maybe some are necessary to avoid older patents IDK. But there is no way they are the driver of this development, just like Japan or Toyota was never the driver of development of better cars. Even if arguably they made the best and the most cars.
On batteries Tesla was actually first with their MEGA factory, and although China is now the biggest producer of solar panels and batteries, they were never the driver behind this development.

The drivers were technologies first developed in the west, and China just became the main production hub of batteries and panels. if it hadn’t been China, it would still have been developed and produced at a growing pace for an ever growing market anyway.

And last year, more than 90 percent of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produced power more cheaply than the cheapest available fossil-fuel alternative,

This is NOT because of China, All the technologies for the multi MegaWatt wind turbines were developed in Europe, and the race to make them cheaper per Watt also clearly is more due to European innovation than Chinese cheap production. There has been heavy competition among western producers pressing the price ever lower per kW. This has been done by making larger more efficient turbines, where Europe has been clearly in the lead for decades.

On that front China merely joined the race, and the European Vestas remain the world largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world, and AFAIK Siemens is the worlds largest manufacturer of offshore wind turbines.

China is of course a formidable competitor, but they have in no way surpassed us on wind turbines yet.

On Solar China is making massive amounts of good cheap panels, but both Germany and South Korea make better panels, that aren’t that much more expensive.

“China is the engine,” said Richard Black, the report’s editor. “And it is changing the energy landscape not just domestically but in countries across the world.”

Nope, that’s just not true, China is a major participant/player now, but the engine that drives green energy was started in Europe way before China became a major factor.

I know from personal experience, because we’ve been working on that shit since the 70’s, and made very good progress on it way before China became a factor.

To say China is driving this because they are big today, is like saying Toyota is behind the success of cars around the world. Both are nonsense, Toyota make good cars but that does not make them the “engine” of car production.
China also make good products for green energy, but that doesn’t make them the engine. This development would very obviously have happened without China, because it was already in full swing before China was a factor.

Orban is living in his own delusions, far removed from reality. EU has clearly helped create both prosperity and better conditions for the populations for the former Warsaw pact countries that have joined freely and can leave again freely if they wish.
But Hungary could have been much better off, if Orban had worked constructively within EU instead of opposing EU, to undermine democracy in Hungary. And if Orban had worked with EU instead of Russia, Russia is an obvious enemy to Europe including Hungary. Does Orban really want Hungary to become a vassal of Russia again, like Belarus is?
Why Hungary would want to work with Russia that has a long history of oppressing Hungary and other Warsaw countries is very weird to put it mildly. Oppression that has even often included military intervention into countries that were supposed to be allied. Hungary wants to enter that sphere again?
EU on the contrary has a long history now of working to NOT oppress smaller member states, but work to the advantage of all. Based on freedom and voluntary participation.
Working with Russia is inviting chaos to Hungary in so many ways it’s ridiculous.
So Orban warning about chaos with EU is pure projection, because he is actually speaking of the results of his own policies of working with Russia and against EU.
And Hungarians voting for Orban are voting for a return to the conditions as a vassal nation under the Soviet Union.
If Hungarians elect Orban again, there’s a real chance Hungary can be thrown out of EU!

I suspect most people sense it’s “stupid” without really being interested in the subject, but I also think some lighter real economics context is important to understand how and why.

Countries and voluntary organizations have tried and are trying to help, but Israel is actively preventing help from coming through.
Greta Thunberg and others have been very active in trying to demonstrate that, and create publicity about it.
The level of evil by Israel and Netanyahu is clearly matching the evils of Hitler.
And yes the world needs to step in to stop Israel from actively performing genocide in Gaza.

Was there really any need at all for a slower job market?
Usually the reason for wanting that is an overheating job market/economy, but I don’t recall seeing anything indicating either.
A sign for the job market would be quickly increasing wages, due to shortage of workers. But the only shortage of workers I’ve seen is due to Trump policies, and in very specialized areas like top AI developers/researchers, but those are not general expressions of either economy or job market.

For the economy a typical sign is inflation due to shortages, but the inflation is driven by stupid policies like tariffs, and not so much free market economics. The increasing prices are driven by adding more taxes on goods. Not because there is any shortage anywhere!
And if anyone ever thought this was an overheating market, they are probably blind to the fact that wages haven’t covered for the inflation, and although the inflation is a bit higher than the popular target of 2%, it’s far from overheating economy territory, especially when considering the background for the inflation.

The truth is that the American economy is just stupid because the President is illegally overreaching his mandate with extremely stupid policies, causing stupid results for the economy.

Americans will probably get their low interest rates soon, but don’t cheer that just yet, because the reason will probably be that the economy has gone into recession, and with a declining value of the USD, all Americans are getting poorer.

Wikipedia is also backed by the engines of capitalism.

Stupid knee jerk “no you” response that doesn’t make the least bit of sense, where YouTube is obviously a major engine of capitalism, owned by one of the richest most capitalistic companies in the world, and everything in how YouTube operates is governed by their capitalistic principles.

How do you figure in any way the same is true for Wikipedia which is a non profit organization running on donations?!?!

Bullshit!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

Revenue $185.4 million (2024)
Expenses $178.6 million (2024)
Employees 363 (2024)
Volunteers 277,000 (2024)

How did you ever convince yourself that the 10th most visited website, that doesn’t have any revenue other than donations is rolling in dough? That would be an extremely rare thing if they did.
Apart from smoothly running servers, and administrating almost 300000 volunteers, they need lawyers, both to ensure they stay within local laws in more than a 100 countries, but also to stave off idiotic lawsuits. Just the recent changes to UK law has been a major legal headache.
Without donations Wikipedia would quickly fall apart.

They don’t need donations they have lots of money,

Being a free service with no advertising, I’m guessing the only reason they have money is because people donate.
But for some reason your description quickly skips over the part about where the money comes from?

aggressively begging for donations again.

Aggressively? Showing a banner for about a week once or twice a year?? That’s aggressive???
How the fuck can anyone be so butthurt about a free service? I’m definitely NOT clicking your link to support something so stupid on YouTube.

PS:
We always donate a small amount kr 100 DKK ( about $15 USD ) when they are campaigning. Wikipedia is an amazing service we’d sorely miss if it disappeared.

Good on Argentina following up on this.