The problem with these reports is that it's hard to discern how real these conclusions are.

You see, the most effective propaganda don't straight up tell you lies and fake news. They are based on kernels of truth, but exaggerated and overblown to gigantic proportions so that they can draw conclusions that fits the agenda.

So it can very much be true that there is overproduction and oversupply in their auto industry, but is it to the state where it's a crisis imminent of an industry collapse, or even an economic crash? That is not a conclusion that can be easily drawn.

The problem is that there are so much sensationalist headlines and fake news about China, that it is reasonable to have doubts about these conclusions. Especially when they are based on outsiders claiming to know better and drawing these conclusions; while projecting that the ones in the driver's seats in China, in these companies and their government, which have much more data and info than foreign outsiders, are unable to see these problems and the crisis, and have done nothing to correct course. They are assuming the Chinese are stupid and incompetent.

I'm not saying this report or the opposite is false, it's that we shouldn't easily trust this conclusion, and that we need to have self-awareness that we may not truly know enough, and keep an open mind.

Yes that's their looming crisis, the same problem happens in every developed country, and it's one that no one knows how to truly solve. They really screwed the pooch with the one child policy, which made the crisis develop much earlier than it would have, and even though they corrected course, it's too late.

The West tries to address it by setting a high rate of immigration, and that brings along a whole new basket of problems. And also have to consider that as the rest of the world develops further, there will be less and less attractive targets to attract from.

China doesn't have the luxury of using immigration, as their population density is already much higher. They are hedging their bets by rapid development and hoping that by setting a strong enough forward-thinking foundation now, it will cushion the impact of the problems later.

If we really want to treat China as an opponent, or even more strongly, an enemy, then 1 of the most important points is to never underestimate your opponent.

And yet throughout our media, we constantly paint a picture that they are incompetent, they are failing, they are stupid. And even more self-contradictory, they are both incompetent and a major threat, which logically makes no sense. That's when you know it's propaganda.

Based on this argument: building a coal power plant doesn't hurt much either, it's only a tiny percentage of total pollution output.

Exactly. If China invades, it will be to destroy the country and deprive their enemies use of their facilities, not to make use of them, which they know there is little chance of. And they will only invade if their hand is forced, if Taiwan breaks the status quo and openly ally with their opponents. Otherwise there is little to gain for an invasion. This is why we shouldn't let those with vested interests escalate this into a war (ie the military industrial complex), status quo is best for everyone, especially the Taiwanese.

It's pretty obvious that with initial construction and one-offs, large reactors are more efficient than smaller ones and thus more cost-effective.

What smaller reactors allow for is economy of scale, which requires constructing much larger numbers of them so that we can optimize costs akin to a production line. To do that requires a regulatory environment that allows for more freedom, new players entering the market to provide competition, creating pressure to optimize costs. Without that, we can't achieve economy of scale, and frankly we don't have an environment that allows for that.

This is really basic economics.

Looking at how people react to news, on social media, in real life, and how judgmental people are even when lacking context and info, it seems this concept is far too lacking in people. It's both depressing and scary in how little people appreciate and respect such an important foundational concept of our justice system and the values of what our society is based on.

It's funny years ago, slashdotters, being young and tech-savvy back then, jest at the older generations for being ignorant about technology and hobbies like video games. They'll probably raise hell if the boomers tried to ban what they like. Now the ones here do the same about those young'uns being corrupted. There is a real problem, but this shouldn't be the reaction we are having.

Sadly it seems the case. Banning things that you don't like sounds great on a surface level, nevermind if it actually works, or is it practical to implement. Bans works when it's universally bad, and can be eliminated or heavily controlled even for adults. This is a complex social problem that is difficult to address, which can't be solved by a simple call for a ban that a lot of people won't agree to.

And I'm a bit surprised how reactionary people on slashdot has become.

We should always beware of anyone who tells us that what they're doing is in the interests of national security. This is something we do not want to copy the likes of China, and yet our governments and people are just as susceptible to it, and too many jumps onto the bandwagon of the witch hunt.

Tiktok and social media is not a matter of national security, it's a matter of data privacy. We shouldn't be targeting a single company because of their origin and their owners, we should be putting in place laws and regulations that applies to everyone equally, and then take action on those that have violated them through the legal system. It should not be under the power of the executive and president, it should be a matter of the courts.

I support the EFF wholeheartedly on this.

You can keep phones out of schools with varying success, but you can't keep it out of their every day life, which is part of what the proposed solution is.

Hell all of the other "bad things" you brought up we aren't able to enforce on teenagers very well either. Let alone they aren't the same degree of "badness"; what did you think happened to the claimed corrupting influences of video games, rock music, and the long list of activities that past older generations have claimed to have corrupted the children? Smart phones and social media belong to the same category, they aren't inherently bad, but excessive use to the level of addiction causes the problem.

The author describes a real problem, but then propose a solution that is impractical to ever implement and enforce. We all know it's not going to happen, the cat is already out of the bag. This is one of those examples where people loved to propose solutions to social problems but never think about practicality and execution.

And it's also ironic that the author states that the problem is we deprived children and adolescents of freedom and unsupervised play, and then proceeds to propose a solution where they want to deprive them of more freedoms.

What we should focus on are the other aspects, how to cultivate responsibility, competence, and maturity.

I take issue with calling every case stealing, as if whoever discovered or invented something first has perpetual ownership over the ideas.

The fact of the matter is that knowledge and technology will spread, regardless of who claims ownership and tries to prevent others from copying it. It's the same reason why DRM cannot stop piracy, it can only delay it, as long as the knowledge and technology is used and people interfaces with it, it will spread.

And American and foreign companies aren't exactly altruistic when they tried to take advantage of Chinese cheap labour and profit from their market. There's numerous cases of foreign companies abusing their position in 3rd world countries and enjoyed one-sided relationships where they reap most of the benefits. China is actually fairly smart about it, they observed what happened, and thus demanded they get more benefit out of it. And the companies thought the benefit is worth it. It's called trade, it's mutual.

They aren't necessarily trying to start a war right now, but they want to keep the embers burning. If you want to keep military spending up, then you need to justify it by having an enemy; and if you don't have one, then you need to make one. And make sure you have backups. This is why fear mongering happens. Blaming foreign states and actors, justifying policies in the name of national security, is in the typical playbook of all states. And there's also the added benefit of distracting the public from real domestic problems that aren't being solved.

I don't deny that espionage by the Chinese likely exists, and that's because the same type of acts are done by most states. There's no lack of spying and espionage by the US themselves either, there are plenty of historical records of what they are capable of. So this isn't surprising or new information, and we should ask ourselves why this is being continually brought up.

The reason why so many users prefer 3rd party apps is because they did a better job building apps than Reddit themselves. And considering Reddit has much more resources than these 3rd party developers, this tells you the quality and efficiency of their software engineering practices and direction.

The users are customers and core of what makes Reddit valuable, and their uproar and unpopularity of this move shows how unwise this decision was. There were so many other better ways of handling this, and frankly it wasn't necessary that they make this move and take the risk of losing users. The reason why they still did it was because of their dominant market share in their space and think users will take it because they don't have another choice. Their arrogant response tells you a lot.

IMO they could have partnered with these 3rd party developers instead and leverage a competitive market of software talent to build great apps with less risks, and make rules for these apps such that they can still gain the benefits that they could have if it was in-house. It could have gain them a lot of good publicity and mind-share, and make it a win-win situation with the devs. What they did instead, massive inflating the API fees on short notice, and then telling everyone that killing the apps wasn't their intention, just shows their dishonesty.