It's an area of law the could do with seeing clarification. If stuff like this happens you should be due a refund on your bricked hardware, lost app purchases, lost media etc. It's particularly bad with consoles and Steam, where you can lose many years, even decades of purchases due to an error on their end.

Same when the mandatory TOS changes and you can't agree to the new terms.

Formula E is more interesting, because they are still a long way from there limits of the human drivers, the cars are all the same, and the "gimmicks" like fan boost and on-track power-upa actually make it more interesting.

I'm just wondering what people expected, and if there are articles in China about how ChatGPT parrots US doctrine, and Grok is a Nazi.

Let them?

One of the reasons why much of the world, especially the developing would, is moving away from the US and its soft power is because the US thinks it gets to decide how fast and how far they can develop.

Zeiss must be very upset that the Chinese have been pushed to develop competitive lenses even faster.

To be fair the US has been shafting its partners since at least WW2, it's just that now the lack of economic lubricant is really starting to make it painful.

It's a variation on the 4 stage strategy.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F3hua1pkDmJc

1. Say you don't believe them.
2. Say it's technically true but nothing to worry about.
3. Admit that they caught up, but it's just a copy and they can't improve on it.
4. Tariffs to "protect" Western industry that has been left behind.

Maybe that's why Trump is buying stakes in US tech companies now. Whatever they are doing seems to be working.

It actually says a lot that those are the most recent thing you have the beat them up over. Let's judge the modern US by the standards of its response to AIDS and civil rights in the 1980s and 90s.

There is plenty to criticise China over, but if you look at the COVID protests a few years ago it is pretty clear that things have changed a lot.

According to their website, they "developed a brand-new optical system that uses ultrasmooth, multilayer mirrors inside a vacuum chamber. Each mirror has over 100 layers of materials that were carefully chosen and precisely engineered to maximize the reflection of EUV light.

Flatness is also crucial for EUV reflection. The mirrors are polished to a smoothness of less than one atom’s thickness. "

"The prototype, completed in early 2025 by former ASML engineers who reverse-engineered the Dutch company's machines, is operational and generating EUV light". "recruits are working under false identities inside secure facilities"

China must be paying them a fortune for this theft, no wonder they want to remain anonymous. The basic technique ASML uses to create the EUV light is public knowledge and ASML even describes it, but the machinery to do it is not.

They shine a powerful industrial CO laser at microscopic droplets of molten tin inside a vacuum chamber. When the laser energy is absorbed, the tin is turned into an extremely hot plasma that emits extreme ultraviolet light with a peak wavelength of about 13.5 nm.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.asml.com%2Fen%2Ftechno...

I assume the thieves have been able to replicate that part, but there's a lot more to it. Apparently most of the light is lost. They can't use any refractive lenses so it is all channeled by coated mirrors.

"To get enough brightness for high-volume manufacturing, the tin-droplet and laser interaction is repeated up to about 50,000 times per second. The combination of high repetition rate, precise droplet positioning, and efficient collection optics produces the EUV power at the scanner input needed to expose hundreds of wafers per hour."

They aren't clones, they are just the optimal shape. The USSR's Buran had similar claims made against it, but it was very different to the Shuttle. No main engines, larger, different mission profile, and much faster turn-around times. It's just that the best shape for a spaceplane is the shape that the Shuttle is, so every other one looks like a "clone" of it.

It's worse with China for some reason. I was reading today that they have apparently been testing a new far UV lithography machine that was "reverse engineered"... By simply hiring people who worked on the ASML one. That's a new definition of reverse engineering to me.

China might go for the poles. Maybe depends how the US gets on, if they think they can get there first with an easier mission. They have landed a robotic probe there already, so have some experience that the US lacks, but it's a more difficult landing.

Let's be honest, it's an ideological dick measuring contest. If capitalism doesn't get there first, people might get the wrong idea.

NASA won't go for the poles. It will be boots on the ground ASAP, nothing fancy.

At the moment it's looking 50/50 who gets there first.

I wasn't going to watch it anyway, but Gervais would ensure I actively avoid it. He's never been funny, just cringe. He's no Steve Coogan.