It's interesting to me

[674534db15163Kolya]

What this video - with all its warnings to Silicon Valley - never really touches on is that a technological lead of China won't just be an economical problem for American engineers. Chinese tech will carry Chinese cultural values into the rest of the world, just like American tech has done before.

[674534db153aafox]

Yes, that will become very interesting. As much as I think Trump's current economic warfare is irresponsible and started for the wrong reasons, I do think it's necessary to think about the dangers of a dependency on Chinese goods and ressources. The outcome of such a war is very unpredictable, I think but I do see some potential for a re-orientation towards a (slightly) healthier global economy in the long run.

Whether there's truth to the latest claims or not, as far as Huawei goes, I've been having a bad feeling about Chinese communication tech for years - ironically not least thanks to the methods displayed by the US.

[674534db155c1Hatsuseno]

You guys have pretty much summed up my own thoughts about China's vertiginous rise - seeing videos like these gives me the chills, it's simply fascinating to see such a huge concentration of energy and young people driving the world economy, to see all of this innovation and this technology, yet from a cultural point of view this is a world that's the exact opposite of ours, with the potential to erode the Western liberal model that has dominated the planet in the past few decades.

It's obvious this would have happened one day, and I even partly welcome it, as it's doubtlessly a positive thing for the world to be ruled by more than just a single culture and a single economy, but the enormity of Asia also suggests that democracy is nothing more than a blip in our world - the majority of it is ruled either by young, frail democracies that easily risk slipping back into less liberal societies, or by openly oppressive regimes. It feels plain eerie to know that major world powers like China or Russia, the archetypal examples of non-democratic, centralized states, are going to directly challenge and erode American influence in the near future - things like these make it painfully obvious that the triumph of the Western liberal model in the '90s was nothing more than a short-lived illusion that faded away a long time ago.

[674534db15768voodoo47]

well yeah, if you mean the "everyone will hold hands, ride unicorns with rainbows in the background forever with no strife, hunger and other bad stuff" model, then uncle Darwin has some bad news for you.

it's kind of fascinating - I've spent my childhood under an oppressive communist regime, and as far as I can tell, I'll live long enough to experience the next one as well. so yeah, (democracy is) just a tiny bump on a long road, when you think about it.

because people never learn.

[674534db158d3icemann]

Many of the chinese tech often comes with malware allowing easy access to client information stored within. Not a fan.

[674534db15b45Kolya]

I don't see China subjugating the rest of the world into Communism. But due to them living in a communist surveillance state, they don't have the same regard for the rights of the individual that Americans have. And that spills into their tech: a lack of encryption, data safety, privacy.

That's the obvious one. Less obviously it might be competitiveness, eg in games. A lack of legal recourse in transactions, eg in buyer/seller apps. A lack of environmental awareness, eg in how much power your new washing machine takes. And so on.

On the bright side America and the EU are big enough markets so that we can try to enforce some of our values as import restrictions. But much like the EU's attempts to establish our understanding of privacy and Informationelle Selbstbestimmung in our use of the internet, this will always be an uphill battle. Because it costs extra money and because the creators of the product don't fully understand or reject these foreign values that clash with their own values.

An example in the past has been how American companies emphasised freedom of speech and took a deliberately neutral stance on all their social platforms. Even when huge political propaganda campaigns, manufactured by troll factories and botnets, threatened free elections. Even when popular anti-scientism now threatens themselves.
That's because the American engineers behind these platforms grew up on ideas of meritocracy - democracy as a market of ideas in which anything goes. That's why they reacted so late and reluctantly. Taking any kind of active stance against even the worst parts of the internet always reeked of censorship to them. Well for better or worse, it won't smell the same to the Chinese.

[674534db15c48Kolya]

I'd like to add that censoring titties has always been mandatory on those same social platforms. There you have your social values.

[674534db15d6ficemann]

I think the notion of "free speech" under a democracy has become a bit cloudy nowadays, as the new way appears to be that free speech is fine as long as it's not offensive to others or be hate speech, which to me does not = free speech. Free speech to me is saying exactly what you think, whether it offends someone or not. If said speech is not allowed, then that's not free speech.

[674534db15e9aKolya]

Imagine a priest who regularly holds sermons about how a certain ethnic group are a bunch of baby-eating drug-dealing murderous subhumans who deserve to die in an eternal fire, riling up the congregation into an irrational state of hatred against that group. And these sermons happen in your neighbourhood, every Friday. And you are a member of said ethnic minority. That's cool with you? (It's practically the definition of hate speech.)

[674534db16001icemann]

I wasn't saying whether or not I want absolute free speech, I'm just saying that if x thing is not fine to say something about then that's not free speech.

If anything I'm quite torn on the issue, as I despise hate speech related stuff, BUT then not allowing it, is therefore not free speech then. That was all my point was on. It's a tricky slope to go down once you say that certain things cannot be talked about, but then say there is still free speech.

To give an example, my wife is Muslim, and I often see anti-islamic related stuff on FB, but we are in a free speech society, so I often just prefer to debate the person on why I think they are wrong, where as many just unfriend the person. Unfriending in such situations leads to tribalism, which in itself is not good at all.

[674534db1610cvoodoo47]

if stating a fact is qualified as hate speech, then your society is in a heap of trouble - and that seems to be the case on the west as far as I can tell (even as someone who lives in a basement, purposely not looking into all the RL crap that flies around as much as possible).

[674534db168c3Hatsuseno]

I don't see China subjugating the rest of the world into Communism. But due to them living in a communist surveillance state, they don't have the same regard for the rights of the individual that Americans have. And that spills into their tech: a lack of encryption, data safety, privacy.

That's the obvious one. Less obviously it might be competitiveness, eg in games. A lack of legal recourse in transactions, eg in buyer/seller apps. A lack of environmental awareness, eg in how much power your new washing machine takes. And so on.

On the bright side America and the EU are big enough markets so that we can try to enforce some of our values as import restrictions. But much like the EU's attempts to establish our understanding of privacy and Informationelle Selbstbestimmung in our use of the internet, this will always be an uphill battle. Because it costs extra money and because the creators of the product don't fully understand or reject these foreign values that clash with their own values.

An example in the past has been how American companies emphasised freedom of speech and took a deliberately neutral stance on all their social platforms. Even when huge political propaganda campaigns, manufactured by troll factories and botnets, threatened free elections. Even when popular anti-scientism now threatens themselves.
That's because the American engineers behind these platforms grew up on ideas of meritocracy - democracy as a market of ideas in which anything goes. That's why they reacted so late and reluctantly. Taking any kind of active stance against even the worst parts of the internet always reeked of censorship to them. Well for better or worse, it won't smell the same to the Chinese.

You've summed the problem of Chinese influence pretty well - as you said, it's not really a problem of their ideology taking over the world, especially not Europe or America, as we have the resources and the know-how needed to sustain ourselves and defend our values from outside influences (for the most part). Not to mention that we've learned (or at least, should have...) to be careful about the world we live in, which would make it hard for something like the surge of nationalism of the '20s/'30s to reoccur. Of course, today's situation in Europe and the US seems to be suggesting otherwise, but that's a different story...

However we're just a small fraction of the world in its entirety, and a large chunk of it can't defend itself as well as we can. It won't be Communism that'll spread around the world, but it'll definitely be the lack of protection for individual and intellectual rights and other such hard-earned achievements in our world that are disregarded in most of the rest of the planet. It doesn't take much effort to realize that these things have already started spreading out of China, now that their technology is mature enough to rival the American one and be exported around the world.

By the way, your observation on American companies keeping a neutral stance is pretty interesting - I have always been pretty surprised myself at how the giants of the Internet remained passive for a long time in front of a world that was becoming more and more polarized in a return of nationalistic and racist mentalities and the spread of misinformation. They do definitely deserve some credit for that, even if they should have taken action to stop such things as Russia's attempt to influence the 2016 elections.

As for free speech, I agree that simply censoring stuff can be damaging in the long run - who sets the standards for what is considered acceptable or for what isn't? At most, I'd just target deliberately unfounded and dangerous ideas. In the end, the only real solution to this problem is education and culture - it is only through that that an individual can be intelligent enough to judge what can be dangerous or baseless and what isn't. It is only through that that they can, for example, understand that racism can only spread hatred and violence even further. Education, and a healthy debate between people who are willing to talk. Unfortunately, not everyone is really interested in any of this.

[674534db16b0cicemann]

Which is largely due to tribalism (why people are not willing to debate issues anymore). I agree though. Present both sides. Don't hide one.

On China. Many companies and governments in countries worldwide in recent years have been falling victim to cyber attacks, cyber theft of information etc. And which is the no.1 country where the vast majority (not all mind) of these cyber crimes have been coming from. I wonder. So I have a hard time putting my trust in tech from a country where this goes on to such a grand scale.

Not to say that I wouldn't buy any tech from there mind you. Just speaking generally. And the only country with the balls to call them out on it (the U.S), not to soon after got into a massive trade war with them. America's reasons for the trade war, I completely agree with, on a side note. Over here in Australia, our car manufacturing industry was completely wiped out, due to free trade and cheaper imports from overseas. So I get where Trump is going on that issue.

[674534db16f89Kolya]

I wasn't saying whether or not I want absolute free speech, I'm just saying that if x thing is not fine to say something about then that's not free speech.

No functioning society allows people to say anything they want at any time. There are always loads of restrictions on it, many of them legal and even more social. You don't tell your boss he's a shithead, nor your mother to shut up already, nor the police man to mind his own business or else. Society is very much regulated by what you can say and do in which situations and the only alternative is no society.
Absolute free speech was never on the table. It's always about the kind of restrictions we are willing (or unwilling) to accept for the benefit of everyone and whether we can see a benefit and are willing to pay the price. It's a deal, a compromise about where we as a society want to go. The ability to participate in that deal is free speech. Not to break it whenever you feel like it. 
Since there necessarily are restrictions on free speech we can add some or take some. Maybe the most important case where we can act out this freedom is when a liberal society needs to protect its rules and its citizens against open hostility, which is hate speech.

To get back to the original point though: Americans have slightly different ideas about this than Europeans due to their respective histories. And Americans were able to set the rules largely alone on the internet due to being the inventors and producers of the technology. China has very different ideas about it as far as I can tell.

[674534db17113fox]

Now for something completely different:

I just finished watching the season 5-finale of "Bosch". If you are into hardboiled neo-noir stories, I highly recommend watching this show! It's Amazon's adaption of Michael Connely's novels about troubled present day LAPD detective Harry Bosch. It feels a bit like a cross between a modern "LA Confidential"  and "The Wire" (with quite a few of its cast members reappearing in Bosch).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-HUa10kVpQ

[674534db172f1Kolya]

WSL or Windows Subsystem for Linux allows to run Linux inside Windows10.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about
It's not a VM but both systems run simultaneously. The Linux subsystem also has full access to the windows file structure.

For me this is a pretty big deal, because as the sole developer on a windows machine at my company I frequently have to deal with tools and processes that were written for OSX and Linux. This will hopefully make things a lot easier for me. So now I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on Windows10 on a MacBook . Just installed Node on top. Ahahahaha.
[X-All-The-Y.jpg expired]

[674534db173f5fox]

I didn't know quite a few of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg5rStNXHq8

[674534db17582Gawain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmRpvs6-Sss
Cyberspace

[674534db176bcKolya]

Someone recreated the sentry station program from Aliens on the original laptop.

https://old.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/c3jphd/special_effects_week_aliens/
[Screenshot_2019-06-22 Special effects Week ALIENS (1).png expired]

[674534db177d0fox]

Customers who viewed this item also viewed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaUS7VVQuU

[674534db178edicemann]

That's pretty damn awesome. Not to be compared with the unmanned drone shot down by the Iranian military a few days ago, very nearly starting an all out war in the process.

Trump for all the stupid things he's done, did well on that one.

[674534db179f9Kolya]

This footage of the Hong Kong protests looks like out of a music video. I guess this is what happens when civil unrest erupts in a high tech society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCyrJTmUpNQ

[674534db17b03Kolya]

Very much related to this forum's subject: Elon Musk's neural links: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20697123/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-reading-thread-robot

[674534db17c1dKolya]

What Louis Armstrong saw: https://youtu.be/YPXitv2CRJs