And Windows 11 is dog slow. So you're going to have a really hard time matching the performance of the MacBook neo because Windows 11 really needs a minimum of 16 gigs of RAM and to be honest you really want 32 gigs and even then you need a stupidly fast processor to deal with all the Cruft and slowness.

But with all that ram that you need just for your operating system to be barely functional and with ram being so stupidly expensive you're just up a creek without a paddle.

This is not to say the MacBook couldn't use another 8 gigs of RAM but it's at least going to be functional with that much memory. Windows 11 will technically boot with 8 gigs of RAM but the experience would be something like running Windows XP with 64 MB. You can do it but it would be so painful you wouldn't want to.

But hey at least you're operating system constantly spies on you and uses every single movement you make to train an AI with the hopes of using it to replace you at your job leaving you homeless and destitute.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered [Linux Mint] community when IDC confirmed that [Linux Mint] market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent craft survey which plainly states that [Linux Mint] has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. [Linux Mint] is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive working test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict [Linux Mint]'s future. The hand writing is on the wall: [Linux Mint] faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for [Linux Mint] because [Linux Mint] is dying. Things are looking very bad for [Linux Mint]. As many of us are already aware, [Linux Mint] continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

[Linux Mint] is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time [Linux Mint] developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: [Linux Mint] is dying.

All major surveys show that [Linux Mint] has steadily declined in market share. [Linux Mint] is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If [Linux Mint] is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. [Linux Mint] continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save [Linux Mint] from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, [Linux Mint] is dead.

I already know that people are going to be stupid and easily manipulated. So does everyone else who has an IQ in the triple digits.

If we already know a substantial percentage of the population is easily manipulable and that they can be manipulated to do terrible terrible things then those of us who aren't in that boat have a basic moral responsibility to prevent the people who can't see past bullshit for whatever reason from screwing everything up in their lives and ours.

It's like the old quote, for evil to win all that has to happen is for good men to do nothing.

But screw morality, I'm talking about basic self-interest here. Again we know what those stupid motherfuckers in America are going to do if we let Russia do whatever with them. We also know that the people in America who aren't idiots have already lost out to Russia because of course we did Russia is a nation state.

So given that the most obvious line of defense has fallen I'm saying Europe just in terms of self-interest should have prevented Russia from tricking dumb Americans into being dumb Americans.

Instead Europe followed a different line of self-interest the predominantly benefits a handful of European billionaires at a very very high risk of total world devastation from a batshit insane United States.

If you're a billionaire trying to become a trillionaire and a borderline God then that's probably an okay gamble. You own private islands with bunkers that you have a chance of hiding out in.

But for the other several hundred million Europeans that's not a good gamble to make since you're not on your way to becoming a trillionaire and you don't own a private island that you can try to ride out nuclear war at.

It doesn't fucking matter whether or not it's the job of the American voter to stop being stupid or not. The point I'm trying to make here is that the American voter failed at that job and now Europe has the option of either helping us clean up our mess or getting dragged into it.

Protectionism isn't an option because we have a huge military here in America and we are fucking insane. It's like if your neighbor has a shitload of firearms and psychosis. You can't just pretend that's not happening. Well I mean you can but you'll wish you hadn't eventually when he inevitably starts just randomly firing off high powered rifles in your vicinity.

And again remember the reason Europe is ignoring Russia attacking America with propaganda and cyber warfare is because Europe's billionaires are hoping that America going down the tubes will give them a chance to become trillionaires. It's not that you guys are over in Europe are washing your hands of everything you're actively participating in the downfall of America because you think, or rather your ruling class thanks, that it will benefit them personally. As for the people of Europe I don't blame you for wanting to ignore your crazy neighbor but unfortunately you can't evict an entire nation state from planet Earth.

Basically nobody, European or american, gets to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore. Christ that hasn't been true in at least 300 years.

Europe knew that Russia was running roughshod over the United States voters and working hard successfully to put Trump back in the White House. They also knew the Democrats weren't going to do shit because they were too weak and trusted the voters too much.

Europe's intelligence agencies should have stepped in and prevented Russia from installing Trump but their billionaires are hoping the United States gets knocked down a bit and maybe even they can get the euro and as the world's default currency if the United States crashes hard enough. Which was Trump president is definitely on the table.

If they can pull that off then the first trillionaire will be a European instead of Elon Musk. Meanwhile they'll have lots of great economic opportunities while the rest of the world collapses.

It's all well and good but it's a hell of a gamble because the United States still has the largest military on the planet. The only reason we didn't steam roll Iran is that we are still a little constrained when it comes to war crimes, we can do some but a total genocide of 60 million people isn't on the table yet. Yet. And to do an occupation we would have to do a large scale draft and we still nominally have elections so that wasn't on the table.

I keep bringing this up but I don't think the rest of the world realizes just how batshit insane most Americans are. You would think electing a convicted felon, pedophile, rapist and six-time bankrupt businessman to be the most powerful person on our planet would have been a clue but nope. People still think Americans have the slightest shred of sanity.

About 40% of us believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and about 35% of us believe Noah's flood is real. We absolutely would launch nuclear weapons safe in the knowledge that God would protect us from a counter-attack. We are that fucking insane.

The rest of the world needs to do something about how crazy we are because we obviously can't. And you can't just quarantine us because sooner or later we're not going to have elections anymore and that means we can start drafting people to invade your countries and we don't care if you have nukes because as I mentioned above we are crazy.

If you're going to do something now is the time but it does mean you're going to have to give up on having the first trillionaire.

Every country has problems with the Epstein class. Some more than others. These laws are getting pushed by social media, AI and surveillance companies so they can track us and control us.

If you don't like it you need to convince the rest of the world that they don't need a ruling class.

That's the thing I don't get about Britain why don't they just kick out their ruling class. All those Epstein Islanders. If you got rid of the hereditary ruling class I think that you'd see projects getting done and done more or less on time and on budget. I mean humans are always wasteful so there'd be some overrun but when you look into a big projects they've done that failed you always find some nepo baby getting the contracts.

Then again I'm American so I shouldn't be throwing stones in my glass house over here.

At least not like you're thinking of them. There are lots of ways to store energy at scale besides regular batteries. When you start doing things at these scale of a public utility all sorts of options open up that don't work for the home or even large buildings or structures.

Honestly if we here in America were still a functioning society the only thing we would be doing is just building out massive amounts of wind and solar and energy storage.

So I guess they've got that going for them...

Yes we do use slave labor through the prisons but it is not fully integrated into our supply chains. It's mostly around periphery. This is not to say that we shouldn't do away with slave labor. We should. But I'm explicitly talking about why American car companies cannot compete with Chinese car companies here.

If American car companies can start tapping slave labor in prisons yeah you would have a point but so far they haven't been able to do that, although that's probably mostly up to the unions preventing it. Still it does mean that American car companies can't possibly compete. Because again, you cannot compete with someone who is using slave labor.

It took a little while but she got there. Good on you

Don't get me wrong I'm American and my civil rights have been substantially eroded and it's getting really bad over here. I mentioned this on another thread but one of the core supreme Court rulings that allowed the federal government to prevent abuse and corporate crime is in the process of being dismantled by our courts over moonshining of all things.

And that's before we talk about Trump using immigration enforcement to gank citizens off the streets and disappear them. So far all them have popped back up after a few weeks but it's only a matter of time before one of them just goes missing or dies in custody.

But none of that makes China's civil rights situation any better. You go to China and you live there and you criticize the government and ask me how that goes for you. Or try to unionize. Which is hilarious because they pretend to be communist. Never mind the fact that they have an American style Private healthcare system.

It's not 1987 but that doesn't mean China has gotten any better. Becoming the world's factory has improved some of the people's economic situation but that doesn't make the slave labor or the cancer villages okay.

If you want to compete compete head on and fairly. Make China enforce the same level of civil rights and the same safety regulations for workers and the same rights to unionize (the ones on paper not the ones we have in practice)

Oh and give China their own version of the EPA minus Trump fucking with it so the cancer villages go away. Or what we used to call super fund sites

Everybody always leaves out all that stuff. It is really hard to compete with a Chinese company that has slave labor all throughout its supply chains, can dump poison into local groundwater, and has a population of workers that make barely enough to eat and whose organs get harvested if they get a little too uppity.

As bad as America is we are not china. I mean not yet anyway. There is a multibillion dollar effort underway to change that but it's not a done deal.

They are absolutely not a market failure they are the inevitable result of the market.

We recognize that fact decades ago and we created laws to regulate the market. Because we recognized that the market does not regulate itself and cannot function in a free and open system. Like a sports game it needs a referee and that's the government and the bureaucrats.

The problem here is in the market failure it's a government failure. We stopped and forcing antitrust law and this is where it gets us. You have a single ticket seller and a small handful of venue owners and they can work with the scalpers to create the current situation that maximizes their profits at the expense of consumers and musicians.

Remember the new owners and record companies love scalpers because they are guaranteed to sell out all the tickets and they can move any risk onto the scalper. This is only possible because a lack of antitrust law enforcement means record companies and venue owners can have a low quality product and then avoid competition by buying up competitors or using their market dominance to run competitors out of business

This is why CEOs can go fuck themselves.

So the real problem here is locally produced cars can't compete with China because China has slave labor all throughout its supply chain up to and including final assembly and manufacture. Do a bit of googling and you will find that byd got caught using slave labor to build cars.

I don't care how good your process is or how good your cars are or how great your engineers are they can't compete when you're competition uses slave labor.

Of course every CEO on the planet is salivating if the prospect of slave labor so they don't want to call it out openly.

Now don't get me wrong there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism. Don't get hung up on the fact that products you use in your daily life get made under such terrible conditions. You have to live your life in the world you live it.

At the same time though more people ought to be pushing for a better world. I don't blame people who can't do that. Among progressives there's a phrase. Do you want you can, when you can, for as long as you can.

But I don't think any of that applies to a CEO that makes millions.

Dude they just wanted an excuse to close source their software without getting the blow back from the community that's all.

Every time you want to do a shitty thing in the world now you just say AI made me do it.

And this is why I hate people who have blind Faith in the free market.

For the absolute top of the line acts like Taylor Swift the people get obsessed with going to see yeah you have a point.

If you go even one level below Taylor Swift you have a curious situation.

You can actually go to a concert and it's sold out but half empty. That's because you have a concert with a thousand seats and each ticket is being sold for $100 in order to guarantee a sell out, however scalpers buy all the tickets and sell them for $300 each because there's 500 people that will pay that and 500 people that will just skip going at that price.

This isn't theoretical bands have been complaining about this for years because what happens is they have a sell-out show and then they can't sell any merchandise because hardly anyone showed up to their sold-out show. And since a lot of bands make their living off merch sold at shows that basically wrecks them.

I forget which band but one of them that brought it up had shows where maybe 10% of their fans made it to what was on paper was sold out show. It bankrupted them.

So yeah Taylor Swift doesn't have any problems but plenty of bands do. If you've got a smaller band you like that isn't touring there's a good chance that's why.

Our current pretend free market economy has all sorts of nasty little perverse incentives like that.