China isn't developing, it's AHEAD of the West. They have nearly zero crime, the streets are safe and clean, highspeed rail over the entire country, education and family are highly valued, teachers and fathers get respect in public, and most importantly NO WARS.

Their political system is highly criticized but there never, ever could be a Trump there. No PACs, politics isn't run by billionaire donations, no foreign aid and no bending the knee to foreign countries and bombing other foreign countries for their interests.

Morons are permanently locked out of the system at the leadership and grassroots levels.

Ever wanted a government by rationalist atheists? China is your country. Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer.

The most important billionaire, Jack Ma, was shut up in prison when he tried to use his wealth to fuck with politics.

Imagine an America that had the courage to do the same to Elon Musk, the Sacklers, Miriam Adelson, David Rubelstein, Bill Ackman and all the rest of the far right.

We'd be a different, and better country.

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

Ah yes, let's ignore a huge part of the last half-century's history and pretend that prior conflicts don't translate into current detente. The ongoing size and strength of the US military contributes to the relative stability in the region because it is well understood that disruption could lead to intervention.

Oil prices are low and stable because of constant, unending, ever-threatened intervention by the USA.

No fan of Darth Cheeto, but that is simply not true. Cosby was deposed in a civil suit and admitted in his testimony to drugging women so he could have sex with them.

He totally did (see above). It is, in fact, why he is not currently in prison because, despite the DA granting him immunity for said testimony to remove his 5th amendment protections, that deposition was used against him in his criminal trial and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated his conviction as a result.

Do you know you have TDS? You are having an argument with voices in your head.

Literally nobody is saying any of this.

I'd almost feel sorry for you people, you're obviously suffering from mental health problems. But then I remember you told us men can get pregnant and mutilated children's genitals.

There is no punishment we Americans can give you worse than the one you already have.

Sure, just as soon as the taxpayers stop subsidizing petroleum companies. I'm okay with that solution. Let's see what the market decides when the government isn't gifting free land in protected wildlife areas and cleaning up abandoned wells and waging wars to protect oil interests in the middle east. Let's go.

New buildings for AI datacenters are clearly the plan. The weight per rack and the rack height are minor considerations compared to the electricity and cooling requirements. This is obviously the approach Tesla is taking, having custom-built the Cortex datacenter, and now with construction well underway for Cortex 2.

With 350kW/rack, a large datacenter is looking at hundreds of MW. No wonder Tesla had to build a new substation for Cortex 2. I haven't looked at what the other companies are doing, but it can't be that different.

My TCL TV has a game mode that you can enable. They say it's for reducing lag and disables some "image enhancement," but I wonder if it also disables ACR? It certainly helps with audio sync when the audio doesn't run through the TV.

Supposedly I've also turned ACR off in the menus, and I've blocked their ad server, so I'm in better shape than average.

I will say that I really like the Roku interface. Even if you never connect it to the Internet, the interface for selecting inputs is really nice. I have family with a Samsung TV, and I despise that interface.

Granted, keeping RC4 around has led to many "wrecked" systems and environments, but pretty sure it "wreaked decades of havoc"... not "wrecked" decades of havoc. Or are we trying to be funny with words ala Reek from Game of Thrones?

100%, glad we agree on that. :)

I wonder what will happen with their other BEV. By most accounts, it's a competent vehicle, and from my research, it's currently the most affordable used non-Tesla BEV. You can pick one up for around $25k Canadian. Not cheap, but half price? Will they keep it just to keep their toe in the water?

Yes, why would anyone think that invoking Nagasaki is fearmongering? It's crazy to think "Nagasaki" is anything but a reference the reader can identify with (like "as long as ten football fields" or "more books information than the library of congress") and the choice of the phrase "nuclear device" is anything other than the author's desire to be technically correct (the best kind of correct) in his descriptions.

Crazy, I say.