My favorite meme about Google AI is the one where it tries to justify that the pool of the Titanic is not full of water.

Keep in mind, while China is aggressively pushing for Data Centers and AI expansion like the US is, the one thing the US has to deal with is property rights and disjointed regulations. A lot of infrastructure projects in the US end up running over budget or get halted entirely, whereas in China, if the Government wants something built, they relocate you and take the land.

Many years ago, I remember Verizon wanted to build a Data Center in my area located in the middle of a farm field for their Terremark and 5G MEC projects. They had the ability to purchase the land. It was located in an industrial area near a power plant. The owner of an adjacent plot of land, who was doing absolutely nothing with said land (it was all weeds and brush), and still hasn't done anything with said land, ended up blocking the entire project to the point where Verizon just gave up. This was before we got into the weeds with AI and Crypto, but back when the intent of a data center was still do something useful with it rather than waste power on unprompted/unasked requests.

Given China's determination, the US will likely end up losing on the Infrastructure front, like it has been with many infrastructure projects. The US will continue to remain on the forefront for a while on engineering and development. But long term usage and deployment? That's going to depend on who can open source all of this crap the fastest...

It's the same kind of people who think Socialism means Communism, without realizing that anything funded by taxpayers is already, technically, a socialized knowledge/service/product. That includes the roads their vehicles drive on and the military if you want to put it that far.

One might incorporate principles of the other, but that doesn't make it the other product automatically.

In the meantime, the Poopaganda machine will continue running with the kind of ignorance being shown.

The overly restrictive DRM preventing you from getting above 720p video on a streaming service that you pay for is generally reason enough alone to pirate.

The US hosts a lot of critical infrastructure for the rest of the Internet, still. There have been a lot of projects to decouple from the US for this exact reason. If you also look at Cable maps, the connectivity between Europe and Asia relies on those high capacity links going through the US. There have been more connections constructed between Europe and Asia to eliminate the US as the only path over the years, but some of those cable routes also tend to venture through contested / not-so-friendly territories. Thus, transit over those paths is also more expensive!

We also have to consider that Starlink can only do so much. I believe they have trialed or have even activated Inter-satellite connectivity. But that is still a US-based company, and other countries like China are working to launch their own constellations out of fear that US and Europe-based Satellite companies can just come in someday and turn off service.

Also, cutting that Fiber will break the Public Telephone Network, which is essential for any business. I don't know how many Telcos maintain Satellite uplinks between continents these days for the PSTN, but the end result won't be pretty for anyone. Total economic collapse, especially for the US!

I know the IA has mentioned in the past they have projects in place to try to back up their archive. I hope their backup plans are true, and if they are attacked by the US, they can relocate to a new safe haven and come back online quickly. The IA has been such a wonderful resource for research and accountability.

I suppose the major bit of hope I have about the IA is with their partnership with the Library of Congress.

As for ISPs shutting down Torrent users, I suspect they would do that strictly based on bandwidth usage alone. I know my local Cable company will send nastygrams if they see you using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to other customers. I've seen them also shut down Business Internet accounts for doing the exact same thing!

I think it is safe to say The Onion has basically turned into a Time Machine rather than a Satire site. It seems to be predicting just how crazy things will be in the future.

It will actually be for both! Emphasis on the part of the article where it says China will still have a stake of 20% in the company, AND they get to keep the algorithm.

All the US is doing is buying up physical assets and infrastructure, and the user base. The juicy bits they wanted, they didn't get. Everyone is likely going to jump off of TikTok the moment it comes time to segment the US market from the Rest of the World. China doesn't have to do a thing because Douyin is already maintained separately for the Chinese market.

No.

It's the gun analogy. Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. People with guns kill people over disagreements they can't properly resolve, or lunacy. Guns are a tool for hunting for food, but caveman brain leads to them being used as both deterrents, and as misused weapons.

If Fox News promotes lunacy and caters to lunacy, then they should probably be dealt with and taken off the air. My biggest problem with Fox is just how awful their opinion segments (most of their runtime) are and sound. My goodness, I lose IQ just listening to it for more than two seconds. When Fox News reports on news, and only news, without an opinion, they are fine.

Companies are locked to Microsoft Office whether we like it or not. Many don't seem willing to contribute to LibreOffice to make it beat out Excel in terms of performance, or to replace PowerBI, or any of the many Add-ins that are specifically written for Excel by Governments, etc.

We also both know, the moment any country or significantly large business starts talking about replacing Microsoft products, Microsoft is going to take notice and do the absolute bare minimum to save themselves. That's what makes all of this so difficult. At least as a consumer, I'm happy to run Linux and LibreOffice on my hardware, and I'll promote the usage of both to anyone who asks.

I say the same thing about Cisco Meraki (not Meraki Go). Who likes paying yearly for Cisco network hardware that bricks itself and takes down your network if you forget to pay the licensing? At that point it's not even about having the support contract to get firmware updates and support. It's just a company dragging you by the balls for recurring revenue, after you already paid for the hardware. But companies keep buying that crap because the product makes management of the hardware easy enough to make it seem valuable. I'd much rather buy Ubiquiti UniFi gear.

Gotcha. Yeah, my longest lasting Washing Machine was a Maytag or GE that ran from the mid-80s all the way to about 2005. It only died because the wash tub bearings (or whatever they are called) started to fail and leak the wash water everywhere. The wash motor was also extremely loud just before that happened, so it was either already struggling against failing parts, or, it too was failing. It survived a house move as well. Electronically, there was no computer. It was just a dial controlled machine with various cycles tied to certain positions in the dial.

After that I had a Kenmore, which died after about a decade. It, too, developed a leak in the wash tub that couldn't be fixed effectively without effectively buying a new machine.

The LG still works today, over 10 years later.

Funny you mention the suspension going bad. The manufacturer price for suspension rods for my washing machine was $230. I was able to source the part online for about $30. All I had to do was toss in some new grease on the joints after taking the top of the machine off, and replacing each rod. The Sump Pump Motor was about $120 from the manufacturer. I sourced the same part from the upstream supplier (which, as it turns out, is used in non-LG washers as well) and that was $60.

Not gonna lie. That doesn't look like Tizen, either. It almost looks like they are running Windows Phone or Windows 8 on that Fridge lol.

Then again Windows 8 was considered bleeding edge when Skyrim came out. Samsung was still in their bubbly TouchWiz / Smart Hub era then. Things hadn't turned into industrial style rectangles.