shirro

Australia doesn't give a shit about trade with the US. They are less than 5% of our exports. They are the ones that lose in a trade war.

We care about trade with China and when China got petty and Trumpish we handled it fine by diversifying markets until they got over their hissy fit and returned to their senses.

Often the US is an aggressive competitor in our export markets and if they score some own goals in trade wars our exporters will take the advantage just like they do to us whenever they can.

The real problem is what this idiocy does to the global economy as that impacts everyone.

Even with growing disparity between the ultra wealthy and regular people most people in developed countries still score very highly for human development with a lot of freedoms, access to health, education and live reasonably prosperous lives by historical standards.

Its been a long time since most of us saw widespread famine or war or plagues decimating our populations. There is good reason to demand more social and economic progress which you would think would increase the appeal of that and not the politics of self destruction. There is no sane reason to burn it all down for most people.

Yet fascism still seems to be in a massive resurgence. Something really odd is happening. There is a huge information war that has seriously undermined society. It has taken over many religious groups, outsider groups like conspiracy believers and alt health, and conservative leaning parties. It is in online gaming and image boards and normie social media. It preys on socially immature young men, appealing to their insecurities. It preys on people looking for spiritual connections and community. Seeing peace and love hippies standing side by side with Christians and full on Nazis is fucking weird but I saw it during COVID.

The fascists were always there but they were not a political force and there is no reason they should ever be again. Not sure why it is happening or why we are letting it happen. It is certainly not in our interests. It always ends badly.

Probably should point out that DeepSeek is owned by a Chinese hedge fund. They specialize in algorithmic trading. Can't get much more capitalist than that. Very happy to see Chinese capitalists release an open source model. No doubt Altman and cronies will seek protection under the guise of national security. I guess free market competition is only good when you are not getting your arse kicked.

Not excusing Chinese companies but everyone does the same shit. I bet a lot of US companies that behave the same or worse will be looking for trade barriers to protect their business so their interests will be stoking fear of Chinese competitors. I don't really give a shit which country is doing it, I am not buying what they are selling.

US companies have a stranglehold on government, education and business and are getting access to my families data despite my personal objections. Far more concerned about that than a Chinese service I have no intention of using.

Deepseek can at least be self hosted if you want AI in your life. I can happily live without it.

I recognize many of the deficiencies of Gnome but on balance I still like using it.

I never migrated from Windows or Mac desktop. I got into Linux before WIndows 95 came out and although I had used Mac and Amiga desktops I never owned one myself. I have used tiling wms and plain wms with no desktop environment and I can find my way around on Windows 11 or Mac but I don't like either as much as Gnome. KDE generally has a better foundation thanks largely to qt but I never enjoyed using KDE. Not surprised it is very popular with the new influx of Windows refugees. To me KDE always had a slightly dated Windows look and feel to it. It is still a very solid choice ofcourse.

Gnome hate became fashionable when they moved forward from Gnome 2 and some people never shut up about it. We get it. Your favorite band aren't teenagers anymore and decided to make an album you don't like. It is ancient history. Just use something else guys. Plasma is pretty damn good so use it. Whats the point of a free OS if you can't accept people want the freedom to develop and enjoy different computing experiences.

What is socialist to Linus is libertarian to Eric Raymond. In huge collaborative communities people need to learn to get along and be tolerant but if they can't handle that they also have the freedom to fork so there is room for everyone to find their own space.

Awesome. More availability for the rest of us.

For people with experience with any mobile 12th gen intel and the framework 13 AMD, can you quantify what you think the upgrade is worth or would it be better to wait for a refresh to the "ai" series if that ever happens.

I look at the price for board/ram/wifi upgrade and struggle to justify even though I expect the amd cpu to be cooler/quieter and have much better iGPU. I know it should easily outperform the steam deck in raw performance so with some scaling it should be reasonable for some light casual gaming but I don't have any experience with amd outside of desktop cpus and dedicated graphics. Every time I consider an upgrade it makes more sense to buy desktop upgrades and cope with the intel system for a few more years. I don't have a good use for the intel mainboard as it doesn't have much expansion, multiple ssd, pcie etc.

They do it because they can. They are squeezing every last drop out of their customers. Clueless people with roo much money won't cancel. People who want to keep the product but are feeling the squeeze will go ad supported.

The rest were probably going to leave at any price as there is a lot more competition now and Netflix has adapted very poorly.

People either hop between services or go sailing wearing an eye patch or increasingly just so something else.

I think a lot of viewing time has been lost to social media, gaming and other alternatives. Don't know if most people these days have the attention span for day long binges with their phones going off every few minutes and the FOMO. I can handle sitting in a room watching a movie with someone with them looking at their phone for half of it