Taking the plot device entirely literally misses the point of the book somewhat; it's so highly metaphorical and so much of it is told through the "VR" dream sequence exposition.
It's really a book about the question: how do we know what we know? Specifically, how do we find truth when powerful forces have devoted themselves to obfuscating it for us? In other words, the "cultural revolution" in China. And by extension, the present day wumáo dang era.
>The EU's obsession with getting money from US tech companies is leading it down really dangerous paths.
Yeah shame on EU for issuing fines for the anti-consumer, privacy abusive and illegal practices of the saint ad-ware empires of US big-tech companies. How dare they protect their citizens? Don't they know big-tech should be left unregulated to abuse people so billionaires can become trillionares?
Speaking of double standards it's funny how the US keeps wanting to ban Chinese TikTok for doing the same abusive data collection Meta and Google was doing without issues.
> if you want better protection for your data than the US provides: do not send your data to the US
Should EU companies be allowed to send my data to the US, then?
> If you seriously think that the US government is going to let the EU fine some US-based business without any EU presence millions of dollars because Brussels passed some law, you’re headed for disappointment.
The US shut down a lot of non-US poker businesses, including PokerStars in the Isle of Man. And sent the FBI to New Zealand to seize Kim "dotcom". If a US based business becomes a sufficiently big problem for EU privacy, it's going to get fined, and we're going to find out whether the EU-US cooperation is bidirectional.
I live in Europe and the measures my county is taking to combat energy shortage are pretty wild like limiting the heating of apartments, indoor swimming pools, reducing street lighting, but nowhere was is stated "banning crypto mining".
Pretty insane how we're just tolerating this massive energy waste just so some people and organizations can have something to speculate on for money.
It means the rich and corrupt people (they're lawyers) use the EU's strong data protection regulations to hide from the public knowing the extent of their wealth, businesses and influence.
The problem with Germany's coal is that it's mostly lignite, the lowest quality and dirtiest type of coal. At least the UK lucked out on having the best quality coal.
I think people from actual third world countries would love to be in the US where the government gives you stimulus cheques, instead of back home.
Trust me, the unemployed life in third world countries, and even in second world countries, is far more brutal than the unemployed life in the US, especially for unemployed big-tech workers who can find a new job anytime.
>This would be no-problem if cities built more houses
"Just build more houses" is not something that scales infinitely. Long commute distances and geography tends to get in the way with stuff like hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, etc. while demand from foreigners and tourists will stay virtually infinite.
At which point do you stop building and say your city can't house more people without ruining the character that makes it a desirable city in the first place?
Should we level Lisbon's 2-4 story housing and turn it into a dystopian city with hundred story megablock towers like in Judge Dredd, just so that everyone in the world who wants to move to Lisbon has a place to live there? But then people won't want to live there anymore if Lisbon is just megablocks.
It's definitely doable, but it's far from simple, and is going to further change the character of the city. And involve a lot of public spending which people object to.
>A specified hardware platform with set performance does wonders for optimization
That only works when you have a critical mass adoption like the X-Box and PS4/5, while SteamDeck is a bit far away from those both in sales numbers and performance wise.
Most game studios still target the current gen consoles for minim performance specs, that even on powerful gaming PCs, the ported games still run like ass.
And even those consoles are getting a HW refresh soon.
So it's in Valves interest to update the HW to make sure that modern AAA PC ports can run on the SteamDeck.
As Nintendo did with the Switch, which has been an overwhelming success. The Steam Deck is the Switch for Valve, both technologically and as a business/marketing point of view.
Maybe cost too. Custom 7nm silicone aint cheap and the steamdeck is quite an affordable product considering Vlave don't have access to the same economies of scale that Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft do.
As Nintendo did with the Switch, which has been an overwhelming success. The Steam Deck is the Switch for Valve, both technologically and as a business/marketing point of view.
In hobby/student projects, yes, very often. Maybe even in some cheap white goods. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered publishing application notes on it.
It's awesome to just hook up a random coil you found/wound to the pins of an AVR and watch it just work.
It's definitely done commercially. It's "niche", in the sense that you'll have to go where the jobs are, but those niches can be huge. Audio, power, and RF electronics all need analog design.
>They're not impenetrable per se, but iPhone is pretty secure, even with physical access.
Citation seriously needed for this bold statement.
Apple is not known for timely patches for their vulnerabilities, so no, you don't even need physical access to compromise iPhones, RCE vulns not acknowledged by Apple will do just fine. Just ask shady Israeli/Saudi security companies.
Also, nothing is ever impenetrable. In cybersecurity, if your opponent has physical access to your device then it's considered game over and you have to wipe or even throw it away. That's why burner devices are heavily used.
Plus, what do iPhones have to do with the Intel chips here anyway?
People are a bit more squeamish about applying this logic to mobile devices. After all, iPhones remain attack-resistant with physical access.
"Secure against physical access by all but extremely determined attackers" is worth aiming for. Even if it's just a measure against the resale of stolen devices.
>As someone born in Eastern Europe I feel that Brexit has been specifically targeted at our ethnic group. [...] and I feel offended.
Meh, what you heard were mostly just the voices of a loud and stupid minority, not he norm in the UK. I don't see any reason to feel offended by that vote result, it's nothing personal, their country, their voting rights.
As an Eastern European myself, I found the UK to be the least discrimating and most fair towards immigrants than the other rich European nations when it came to glass ceilings for foreigners in their society.
Eastern Europeans, and foreigners in general for that matter, hold many top positions in companies in the UK, whereas this is much less accepted in traditional German/Austrian/Swiss companies for example, who are far more elitist, and dare I say openly discriminatory sometimes.
> this betrays on your part a contempt for your countrymen
A lot of people would deny this, but I'm at the stage where I am openly contemptuous of a lot of my countrymen for their aggressive refusal to listen to reason and their vindictive pursuit of policies which have harmed a lot of my friends. I count both EU and non-EU immigrants among my colleagues. Are you saying I should choose loyalty to random idiots I've never met but happen to share a birthplace with over people I actually work with and like?
> evidence of migration is glaringly obvious
People's immigration status is not written on their foreheads. What you mean is that you can see nonwhite or hear non-English-speaking people.
> In a democracy the populace should be offered a choice and have their choice respected. If you don't believe that, you believe in tyranny.
Sounds great, but what if the choice is meaningless, impossible, or infringes the rights of others? We can't "respect the choice" to, say, abolish rain on days when cricket is being played. And we should not respect the choice to take away the rights of others, such as the deportation and de-citizenship of British nationals who were born in Britain but happen to be of non-white ancestry.
All systems are unsustainable if the money coming in, is less than the money going out, so the main problem is maths and economics, not private or public.
While public care systems don't need to turn a profit, but they also can't run on a huge deficit because you can't have it bankrupt the state, you still need money for education, defense, infrastructure, etc. so while there's no pressure to turn a profit, there's a huge pressure to cut costs wherever possible, while at the same time a huge political pressure to keep the voters happy who want their cake and to eat it too.
Both systems have their pros and cons but both can be made to work if managed right and have money or fail if managed poorly and run out of money. IIRC Singapore has a well thought out privately funded healthcare and safety net system.
The reality kind of contradicts you. Sure, there are people living without smartphones, the same way how there are people living without electricity or running water.
The thing is, in the developing world, smartphones and the various apps have really improved people's lives, mostly by getting ahead in speed and innovation of what the governments, public services and local companies could offer the traditional way.
So it's not like everyone is forced to get a smartphone, but everyone got a smartphone because it now allowed everyone to communicate better, organize better, and sell their services/goods easier.
This is a salutary anecdote which I wish we could convey to all those people who think that having a smartphone makes you "not poor". It's the exact opposite: it's so useful that even people who have not much else will go through hell or high water to keep their link to the world.
> How do I get a job within the EU Commission that will give me the opportunity to make millions for myself?
Simple! Be born into the wealthy elite or have very close ties to them (entrenched old money families) giving you access to enough funds, connections in the party and media, to campaign, advertise, win elections, and brush off all accusations of corruption and cronyism that could stick to you, while lying your way to the top by telling the rabble everything they want to hear (affordable housing, healthcare and education, lower corruption and taxes, higher wages and pensions, etc.) and once you're at the top, do none of those things and instead scratch the backs of those who helped you get there by giving them various tax breaks, lucrative government contracts, bail out their industries/companies, etc., and blaming external factors for making things worse for those who voted for you (Covid, Putin, China, immigrants, scalpers, terrorists, the boogieman, etc.).
"Apples do not cost the same as oranges, therefore oranges are being price-fixed" is not a convincing line of reasoning. The two technologies are very different and NAND storage is much newer, and has always been much more expensive than disk storage.
The correct thing to compare NAND prices to is other chips that are being fabbed at the same process node, by die area.
The thing is, it's not much of a livelihood or career - you can't do it all year, and it's very much only for the young and fit. And usually imported guest workers.
Probably at the same time it will be available on the PlayStation and Switch.
Which is maybe never as this law mostly targets critical computing devices like smartphones since you need those in the modern world for almost everything important like payments, transactions, tickets, transportation, navigation, government interactions and national emergency notifications, etc.
Since I haven't seen anyone paying their bus ticket with a Nintendo Switch or filing their taxes from a PlayStation, I guess they're exempt. They're just entertainment devices without cellular connectivity.
And as a sidenote, X-Box already lets you sideload your own apps in sandbox mode so I guess Microsoft can claim the X-Box is compliant.
This is also done for iPhones, which have not been exempted.
The "security" of the console against "unauthorized" software is arguably against the public interest. Is it really to the customer's benefit to exclude software providers from the market? Haven't we been round this with app store discourse?
> consoles are often sold at a loss with profits recouped on game sales
>It's this Libel and Defamation law that has often contributed to the allegations of censorship.
Exactly the same in Austria. Often politicians and even shitty businesses use the libel law to get undesirable negative information about them removed from public spaces
An MP was called a "corrupt traitor" on Facebook and Facebook was forced to remove that comment under the libel law.
Often businesses will force Google, Kununu and other websites where people can leave reviews, to remove the negative ones under the libel law, that even doctor's practices do it.
Basically, your not allowed to air the dirty laundry of the rich and powerful unless you have bulletproof hard evidence, wich you can never really get as the GDPR and other strong privacy laws make legal evidence gathering nearly impossible by individuals.
This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy, especially in false or ambiguous situations, and whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house worth and several years on this kind of fight?
(This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US standards of free speech)
You probably won't. The aerospace industry has one of the highest barriers of entry in cost, know-how, regulations and political connections.
Both Boeing and Airbus received a lot of government funding to get started and grow and still do to this day.
What will happen most likely is that the US and France/EU will just bail them out since they're not only vital for jobs but for defense and national security as well as their execs having strong ties to politicians in their respective regions who can push for a bailout package.
Ok, if we're being pedantic, I meant German Government Institutions, like BaFin for example, are into protecting local corporate corruption. But BaFin is not some rogue organization, it's still a reflection of the German Government itself, regardless of which parties are/were in power.
And I don't know how you can claim it's conspiratorial when literally the whole world knows about the Wirecard scandal.
This really puts a dent in the reputation of Germany as a "low corruption" country. It does feel to me that there's been a lot more of this kind of stuff all over the west in the past decade compared to previous ones; I don't know whether that's 2008 fallout or whether it's just better reported thanks to the Internet.
It means the rich and corrupt people (they're lawyers) use the EU's strong data protection regulations to hide from the public knowing the extent of their wealth, businesses and influence.
This is pretty much exactly what European data protection law says. Although it doesn't put very much emphasis on protection against accidental disclosure, it's more intended against deliberate disclosure.
They care about making money. Their investments in Linux are their future insurance policy from Microsoft, as unlike Sony or Nintendo, Valve only own the storefront but not the platform on which their games would run, and with Windows being their biggest customer platform, makes their survival completely dependent on the mercy of Microsoft and the potential dystopian scenario where, for example, on Windows 12, 13 or 14 you'll only be able to install apps through the official Microsoft store.
Linux compatibility was their only ticket out. It's purely a business decision, not a benevolent one.
Not knocking them for it, but it's good to keep in mind the reality and not blindly worship a for-profit corporation.
"Valve being deeply involved with Linux also gives the company a "worse case scenario" hedge vs. Microsoft. It's like a club held over MS's heads. They just need to keep spending the resources to keep their in-house Linux expertise in a healthy state."
This is absolutely the point of Valve's Linux involvement, Steam Machine, and so on. It doesn't have to be perfect. It barely has to even work. It's a "fleet in being", ready for a fight with Microsoft that may never come.
Apple take 30% from all game transactions on Apple's iOS.
Google take 30% of all game transactions on Google's Android. (Amazon presumably take 30% from all Fire devices, but hardly anyone uses their store).
Valve take 30% of (many) game transactions on Microsoft's Windows. Somewhere at Microsoft there is a whiteboard with 'Valve' crossed out and 'Microsoft' written instead. They've a long way to go there without getting shot down by anti-monopoly authorities, but don't think they'll never try.
Can't a car hit you while you're sitting in your house? Of course anything can happen in theory, but as a landlord you're trying to minimize the risk as nobody will cover you if your tenant fucks you and destroys your property, so you optimize by picking the safest and less risky option.
.. but there isn't suddenly, unexpectly, no need for the employees to pay their rent, mortgages and bills.
When I was made redundant a decade ago in the UK I got:
- week's "consultation period" during which the ranking process for who would be made redundant was explained
- pay in lieu of month's notice
- (optional on behalf of the employer) three month's pay for signing away my right to sue for wrongful dismissal
The only situation in which employees can really lose out is if the company goes bankrupt in which case they are at risk of losing their last paycheque.
I was being relative. Of course you're not gonna make US salaries but tech salaries in Dublin are super high compared to Austrian ones for example due to the huge number of available tech companies you have there, especially from the US.
The middle ground is finding a US multinational that's hiring in the UK or Ireland. Although Dublin has nicely replicated the insane property prices and commuting disaster that comes with growth.
The US mega-salaries also appear to be very localised?
Yes, by PCs you probably mean PCs with Windows have been through the roof. PCs with linux are a super niche market and people in that market usually have different preferred distros(not everyone likes ubuntu) which they know how to install themselves on hardware they can configure themselves so there's not much demand for pre built linux PCs.
System 76 is doing OK, but not growing at any crazy rate though.
Plus, WSL is now eating the market of linux on PCs.
That's still a huge majority of PCs. The self-built PC has always been a bit of a market anomaly; people don't have self-built Macs and self-built cars are a truly tiny number.
And I'm working on the assumption that this would have applied decades ago, when there weren't quite so many viable alternatives to the PC and Microsoft was the terrifying market monopolist.
>Social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat will face possible shutdowns when they don't crack down on problematic content
Ok, and who defines what exactly is "problematic content"? Let me guess, it's gonna be whatever the government wants silenced.
>"When there is hateful content, content that calls – for example – for revolt, that also calls for killing and burning of cars, they will be required to delete [the content] immediately,"
Aha, but if I invite 100k people to a meeting in the city center next to the parliament building for a peaceful protest, that will be fine and not get removed, right? Right?
> TikTok is a social network that could not be made by an American company, due to its complete disregard for free speech and embrace of censorship.
This is nonsense. All the social networks have things they will remove and ban your account for, from spam and CP upwards (Instagram and FB being notoriously touchy about sexuality). It seems that TikTok is heavier about politics than most, but censorship is not a boolean.
>Russia invading Chechnya is like USA invading Texas.
Chechnya was an independent country in 1991, as was Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and other ex-USSR republics post 1991. It had no right invading Chechnya.
It means the rich and corrupt people (they're lawyers) use the EU's strong data protection regulations to hide from the public knowing the extent of their wealth, businesses and influence.
Sure, but on HN we can only talk about CPI, as that's what every government reports and it's something we can easily compare. We can't compare each other's own inflation because we live in different countries and have different jobs, expenses, lifestyles, etc.
We all know "the real inflation I'm feeling is higher than the one reported by the government" trope but there's nothing we can do about it here and now.
So why don't these two line up? I submit two candidate explanations:
a) inflation is actually more an exchange-rate phenomenon, especially vs the dollar, so printing dollars or virtual M2 dollars makes remarkably little difference;
b) CPI does a poor job of capturing cost-of-living due to housing.
Probably because saying "some employees in WFH are playing videogames all day instead of doing any work" is not a politically correct answer so then corpo-speak about culture and values it is.
It's the UK which is insisting on closed borders, specifically exit from the customs union and ending freedom of movement. The EU is just promising to reciprocate.
Brexit is the UK imposing sanctions on itself. You can watch the GBP tick up or down according to how likely it looks to actually happen on any given day based on stupid statements by the PM.
I can recommend you read the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich and he'll tell you that overpriced useless planes are a government corporate welfare program designed to keep military contractors in business and skilled workforce employed.
His case in point was the B2 which was supposed to got to Lockheed as they had the better tech and could have made it cheaper but instead they gave the contract to Northrop to prevent Lockheed having too large share of the defense pie and to keep Northrop afloat as they were denied other lucrative contracts in the past.
Procurement is almost entirely political; whether you get something working at the end of it is determined by how that impacts the careers of the procurers. And it's rare that it does.
If it were actually necessary to use this plane, or any plane, to win a war, it would be very successful. In a world of irrelevant wars of choice, it's simply not expensive enough or high-tech enough to sell well.
Anecdotally, when Cyberpunk dropped during covid winter of 2020, all the big gamers on the team had nothing to show for over a couple of weeks in terms of output.
I'm pro WFH, but it was obvious the productivity of some people had dropped significantly after the switch to WFH and were actively avoiding dodging work due to no more in-office oversight and being too close to many fun distractions at home, like their gaming rigs.
You want proof, well obviously the management or company has no proof that those employees were playing cyberpunk all day on their gaming rigs at home, since they don't have CCTV in your living room, but the guys were admitting it themselves during some calls with other colleagues, which correlated with the major drop in their productivity.
Again, I'm pro WFH, but let's not pretend that there are no slackers in this racket who would abuse every bit of trust and privilege to do very little work. I'm sure everyone met some.
>.. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another.
The statistical risks from nuclear actually causing a disaster are absolutely tiny in comparison, especially considering the upsides, but the Germans and Austrians want to be EU's nuclear doomers for shits and giggles just because Chernobyl and Fukushima happened, even though so many nuclear plants worldwide have run for decades without issue.
But sucking on the sweeet teat of Putin's gas for decades and burning it is the green way for them.
.. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another.
(Germany has oddly lagged in deploying renewables, though. Possibly due to lack of offshore sites, meaning that wind farms have to be deployed against the efforts of NIMBYs)
>1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices
We tried that. It all went into real estate and stocks and gave birth to a massive scam industry involving crypto and other get rich quick schemes as the world is full of stupid people and opportunists.
The average joe didn't see much trickle down to him unless he was already invested in real estate or stocks.
It was basically a wealth transfer. Housing is now about 30% more expensive than pre pandemic but take home wages are not.
Giving away free money without any strings attached to individuals or corporations is a bad idea.
> So there will be no will to rescue anything and a full on bank run can commence, destroying lots of wealth
How does this actually benefit anyone? It's not wealth redistribution.
> When will then take some of the extra money out of the real economy
But it wasn't real money in the real economy, it was fake money in a fake economy.
Admittedly some real money went in, and some came out again to buy stadium endorsements and superbowl adverts, but the main effect of this is to wreck the savings of (a) ordinary rubes and (b) over-optimistic VC firms. I can see why people want (b), but you can't separate it from (a).
>Here's what rich countries are doing in general: outbidding pour countries for the limited amount of resources available in the short term.
Not just energy, but food, vaccines, medical supplies, consumer products, etc. This has always been the case but now it's at the point where third world countries will probably have major civil unrest and emigration due to the shortages of food and energy they will face from being outbid by Europe and other rich countries during this shortage.
Europeans can resort to going on fewer and less expensive vacations to compensate for the increased prices of energy, food, game consoles and GPUs, but I doubt anyone here will actually starve or freeze to death, while that may be an actual reality for some people in some developing nations.
> Why do you think the West will be ok in the long run? What happens to the rest of the world? Will they just sit there and wait to die?
Neo-colonialism. There's no shortage of ways to push the externalities of environmental damage and industry to other countries.
It's not a question of "waiting to die", it's a question of "scraping a living from whatever you can find". Which is already the case in the poorer parts of the world.
>"inflation has made everyone poorer - get used to it not ask for wage increases"
Which is absolutely horseshit, because the European countries that had the least amount of inflation (besides the super wealthy Switzerland and Luxembourg), were the countries where salaries are automatically indexed with inflation, like Belgium.
So it turns out that forcing companies to increase wages by inflation is a very effective deterrent against price gouging and inflation, yet those in charge try to convince us otherwise, that we should accept lower wages for our own sake lol.
Can you believe the nerve of these people? It's disgusting, but we get what we vote for. You want better, then vote better.
> Inflation isn't a fair metric for referencing if wage raises
Arguably this is the only one that the voting public really do care about - the relation between wages and the cost of living is one that historically produces unrest, and that's because it's not related to abstract figures but to each individual's cash flow which they experience directly.
It's also one where decades of political effort have gone into making sure there's no mechanism for people to demand higher wages.
The alternative to printing money would be to raise money through taxation, which is also politically infeasible.
I get the issue with Pluton but TPM is only a dedicated and certified secure key and random number generator that does a better job than CPUs doing it in software, and it's also a secure enclave for storing your encryption keys. Would you rather store the keys in memory where they can be easily grabbed by malicious apps like Mimikatz? Macs had the same feature for years in the T2 chip.
It's the exact system that enables wireless payment and other strong security features on your phone.
So having TPM on PCs and using it for its interested purpose is a boon for everyone's security so I don't see the issue, just FUD.
It's infuriating that all modern computers have a secure crypto TPM, but you're explicitly not allowed to use it for your own important keys, it's only for securing things against you like the DRM in certain drivers.
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