‘Surely the leopards wouldn’t eat my face?’

India is ‘stamp limit’?

Maybe Xuanzang was annoyed by how expensive it was to send letters home.

The ecological impact of an pre-industrial community is generally much smaller than that of an industrial one.

they’ve only been there since the 1300s

So? Please finish that thought.

Or the fact that they are not white gives them special privileges.

You know what, YES! It does! Now go cry about it.

human habitation on New Zealand has a history of less than a thousand years

I know. My point is that cats (or the Maori) have a minuscule impact on the environment when compared to settlers.

the word “aborigines” in that part of the world carries a potentially problematic connotation.

I see. What would be a more respectful alternative?

Yes, but I think we need to distinguish between the native population, which has proven capable of co-existing with the local ecosystem, and the settlers, who’ll need to be culled.

Maybe we can be a little animale and let the aborigines adopt the more tame settlers. Find them nice, loving homes, you know? The rest will unfortunately need to be euthanised.

You know, I can think of one species that’s a lot more harmful to the environment. Maybe the cats of NZ should start hunting non-native members of that species.

If you lose enough money, you trigger an integer overflow and end up with a profit!

The Radxa Rock 5 series use RK3588s and have USB, ethernet and 4-32 GB RAM.

Didn’t they get a lot of computer hardware from Russia recently?

They have nukes.

I think it would be more correct to say that quality control in Chinese science is very poor. I have seen top quality research, and I have also seen crap that should not have been published at all. But the sheer quantity of output means that the next big discovery in <insert field> will be from China.

OSTP is focused on removing regulations to science and tech bc they argue they are slowing us down in the AI race against China.

I don’t work on AI, but in my field I have seen the insane speed and scale of Chinese research. Now I’m from a developing country; the US can probably give better funding than we can, but I am inclined to agree that Chinese science does benefit from easier and better funding and a faster administrative process.

AI data in China is very poor likely bc of the lack of regulations

The big problem for AI research in China seems to be a shortage of high-end GPUs due to the trade wars. China is very strong in maths and comp sci, and they are finding workarounds, but it is still a pretty hard barrier.

Amazon/Bezos is probably getting some sweet federal kick backs

I think it’s more a threat against employees. The robots can be used as scabs.

which, until Jan. 2025, was one area that the U.S. had unquestionably dominated China

China had more scientists and papers well before this year. And China dominates particularly in fields like maths, computer science and manufacturing.

they are indeed going to try to replace scientists with robots

I can actually think of a lot of uses for robots in research. And, of course, there are a lot of robots in labs already; they just don’t look like humans.

but 6nm without EUV?

I read elsewhere that 5nm was already done (in the lab, not on industrial levels), and they’re planning on 3nm by 2026.

The workaround seems to be to use particle accelerators instead of EUV machines. More expensive and with lower yield, but it’ll do the job.

I only use my phone for phone calls and messaging and the occasional web browsing.

Why not use a feature phone, then? Cheaper, more repairable, and the Nokia ones will also last longer.

It depends on your definition of ‘deGoogle’. You can disable the Google apps on most Android phones. They’ll take up storage space, but won’t run.

If you’re getting a second-hand phone and want to completely deGoogle it, you can check if (1) the bootloader is unlockable and (2) custom ROMs are available online (e.g. Lineage OS compatible devices). In general, Xiaomi, Motorola and Pixel devices have unlockable bootloaders, but not all their models have custom ROMs.