I think it’s the opposite of what you’re implying - instead I expect that a response that was boringly in line with prevailing opinions would be marked as a poor response. As would one that was counter but only controversial for controversy’s sake.
The idea would be to present well thought out and interesting arguments, not to be an ideological filter to make sure people agree to prevailing opinions!
Just upgraded to the Linea Mini after dreaming about it for almost 10 years - I actually used to have a two group ex-commercial machine in my kitchen that I got 15 years ago, so people are shocked when I tell them this machine was a big downsize from my old one!
Part of the reason I bought new is that they are so expensive on the second hand market here - so I’m not too worried that I’ll get most of my money back if I upgrade to something else in 10-15 years.
I’m going to overhaul the old commercial machine and will probably get a bit more than what I paid for it so not complaining!
The Super Jolly is fine, I have a used one at home that I’ve had for 15 years (which I use now with a Linea Mini that I just a couple of months ago) and get really good results.
The point is that investing in such a crazy expensive machine but not a much better grinder is really foolish, because the machine is going to be limited by the grinder so they may as well buy a machine that is 1/3 the price.
But really it sounds like 80% of the problem in the case tow OP is talking about still would have been the poor skills of the baristas, because they should still be able to pull very decent shots even with the mid-range grinder.
That’s ignoring a lot of other losses. Like in air travel you’re instantly losing 10-15% of your fuel generating lift, then you have to add in the fuel used for carrying the other fuel required throughout the flight. Whereas with high speed rail, rolling resistance (which we could say is the equivalent of lift in aircraft) is less than 1% from a quick search, and for a lot of passenger rail and almost all high speed rail you don’t need to carry fuel which is supplied as electricity from an overhead line.
Hyperloop of course was always a non-starter because the kind of energy that would be required to pump down such a huge volume would be ludicrous, maintaining the low pressure extremely difficult, and the amount of materials needed for the tube would be ridiculously large.
Geography like that does help a lot, it’s part of the reason it’s so easy to do really good high-speed rail in Italy over somewhere like Germany that is way more spread out. But it’s only half the picture, you also need the political will to get it built!
The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy.
But because cars are major German export driver and car manufacuring is major employment in Germany, anything competing with cars has not much political support.
The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy.
That would be if kilometers of rail tracks scaled linearly with population density per unit area. My guess (based on no research at all) is it’s more that there’s a population density tipping point, and after reaching it rail development dramatically increases. I do also think you’re right about the influence of the German car industry.
It's not the current administration that started this process. The US has for decades gone against the Europeans, step after step, asserting policies that only favor US companies. In the past however, the US administrations sugarcoated this fact with the language of cooperation. The current US government is now laying bare the fact that they're creating a political system where all technology and resources are controlled by the US and their "allies" are mere observers that should not do anything about it.
This. This is something which the current administration does not understand. We Europeans have done what Washington says for 80 years. We are behaving like a colony. We let the US have bases here, we follow their economical model, the petro dollar and let them suck the wealth out of Europe. You want military bases on Greenland: ask friendly, we already said yes in the 50s. You want overflight rights for your wars: we give them to you since 80 years. You wanted access to our fibers. Oh let us help you with that.
It is the deal and the tone. You gave us security and let us participate in prosperity. You acted friendly. Trust, security and tone is replaced by bullying. Why should we continue to bend over?
You guys have to bend over because you willfully sold out your constituents and dissolved competition in the name of anti racism gloablism. You guys could have had the same thriving tech sector anyone else does. There’s no conspiracy to keep you guys down. You do that to yourself, while simultaneously waxing poetic about how much better you are than Americans with your social programs. Well turns out you can either have your guaranteed social programs where no one ever has to truly work hard, or you can have economic growth. You guys made your choice 30+ years ago, you only have yourselves to blame.
California and Israel have an unparalleled tech sector. I don't think it's correct to imply that it is an easily achievable feat or that every country could attain that.
>Well turns out you can either have your guaranteed social programs where no one ever has to truly work hard, or you can have economic growth. You guys made your choice 30+ years ago, you only have yourselves to blame.
That is somewhat true. World Happiness Report has the US at 23rd place, only 7 countries higher than it are not European (despite most having lower GDP/capita). I think Europe is mostly contend with this outcome.
Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this.
In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies:
"The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies.
If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
You’ll never get an honest conversation on this topic from these people. They’ve been allowing themselves to steep in America bad doomer “news” content for decades to the point these people can’t tell up from down. Every year the discussions here get closer and closer to Reddit slop, with the same exact talking points and acceptable spectrum of ideas.
Do you really think the American empire is never to be challenged? Everything and everyone goes down after a while. Whether it‘s now is unclear, though the active resentment against the US is unprecedented.
Sadly, your comment lacks any substance to argue with, all there is are unsubstantiated ad hominems. Sad.
No I'm a realist and realize that all candidates (CERTAINLY China and Russia, but even EU if we're honest) are far, far worse than "the American empire".
It's also two different things, you might be right that China, Russia or the EU would be worse as a hegemon, but that doesn't imply that it wouldn't happen.
Being a realist would imply that you would understand that a fundamentally worse hegemon could still replace an existing hegemon.
Why can't people understand this basic fact? China does not have a free press. The only information you're getting on public channels about China, unless you dig as deep as a financial analyst (i.e. getting trade data about China, but exclusively from non-Chinese sources. Other countries. Central Banks. Satellite images. Ship records. And so on) you are getting propaganda and nothing but propaganda.
So it doesn't matter what is going on with China, in the press you will always find "China is succeeding", with 1000 because's, usually "because" exactly what the last CCP meeting decided their economic plan is. It doesn't mean shit.
These same people also gobble up anti America and anti western headlines like fat kids at a buffet. They’re literally gluttonous for this kind of doomer porn. It’s hilarious, and also incredibly sad.
Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU.
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
There are now "loyalty tests" for those who apply to positions at the FBI, to be hired you have to state that the "patriots" on Jan. 6 2021 were the rioters attempting a coup, not the Capitol Police defending the constitutional transfer of government power.
I think the parent post is defending what somewhat older people know to be true. Nixon was far worse than Trump, also betrayed US allies for example. And where it hurts: he effectively stole gold from them.
And I'm sure in another 20 years even democrat voters will remember, probably correctly, that Trump was so much better than $us_president_at_that_time.
Nixon was never credibly accused of sexual assault, never organized a mob of rioters to sack the US capitol, never published tertiary syphilis-coded rants for the world to see in the middle of the night, nearly every night.
Nixon had a competent cabinet, some of them even had principles. Nixon's Attorney General was willing to resign on principle for his refusal to fire the special prosecutor. Nixon didn't put his own attorney at the head of the DOJ.
I could go on. To be clear: Nixon was a corrupt thug. At the same time he was nowhere near as symptomatic of a national malignant political cancer as Trump has been. Plus there was a congress to keep Nixon in check, we don't have a functioning Congress now, just a department of a political party.
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.
> It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well..
It's not all about economy though. I'm much happier living in Southern Europe than I would be in the US with probably 3x the disposable income.
Everything went South after the US listened to Merkel's phone. That happened during the Obama administration.
If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.
Proxmox can do containers too and has other benefits like really good ZFS support. I only have a couple of VMs and everything else in containers on my little Proxmox server.
Proxmox can do LXC and has some experimental support for converting Docker based images... that said, it's not the same as Docker/Podman support, which are more feature rich.
I would suggest at least a minimal Linux Server VM if you're running containers, underneath ProxMox or on a bare metal install if you don't need other virtualization on said server.
I stoped using Twitter (around when it was changing to be X) because 60-70% of the accounts I cared about left the platform. More and more people will look elsewhere as more organisations and people who aren’t into Musk’s politics leave.
I think that a lot of people unconsciously quit Twitter/X due to friction/hassle.
By analogy, think of news websites that are generally paywalled, take ages to load and only offer 'USAID propaganda'. A lot of people just won't open a link to the New York Times and their ilk because of this friction. You might as well get the same story elsewhere.
Twitter/X has become similarly 'meh', perhaps even more so. A 'tweet' is measured in characters, originally SMS message length, now biglier, but still small. In theory you could get a feature length article on the NYT-style bloated news websites, so the friction could be worth the effort - in theory. But for a tweet? Why bother, particularly if it wants you to provide your age and other details that shouldn't be necessary, but marketing dictates otherwise.
As for Musk and his politics, I don't think Bezos is any better, as for Rupert Murdoch and the other press barons, they are equally odious. Yet, if the product is any good, I can overlook such awkward realities to a certain extent. If Amazon can get me that vital part I need tomorrow rather than 'in twenty eight days', then take my money!
I am a moderately heavy user of Telegram as I prefer to get curated news from there. If bad things are happening, I want to get my news from the natives, not from the 'Epstein' empire. Much is cross posted to X but much is not. All considered, nothing beats Telegram, particularly as far as friction is concerned, it makes X, WhatsApp, Instagram and much else seem to have a dated user interface.
IMHO, EFF need to embrace Telegram, not least because it reaches people in parts of the world where the EFF message resonates.
The idea would be to present well thought out and interesting arguments, not to be an ideological filter to make sure people agree to prevailing opinions!
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