Why can't Russia just switch to Chinese-made electronics? Certain, components may be inferior to what Russia gets from the west, but it's not like Russian space or military programs would grind to halt only because of Chinese-made components.

In terms of economic and trade wars, I suspect Russia could in theory afford to shut down all of trade with USA, all of it completely, because USA is a relatively minor partner for Russia. The EU on the other hand is much more important. Lots of Russian manufactured good imports could from EU, while Russian gas and oil are exported there.

The USA online price of Nexus 9 is in the neighborhood of $400, depending on storage configuration. Overall it's a great package, but google dropped the ball here by omitting the sd card slot. sd card is the only reason I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab S instead.

100Mbps is all you need to stream UltraHD (much less actually). Plenty of households have access to this sort of bandwidth, but it's still rare.

Realistically, 2-3 years down the road, there should be affordable gigabit broadband in every big city, and there will be more UltraHD content on Netflix and maybe Blueray discs. So then it will be a good time to start thinking about buying a 4k TV. Prices will hopefully come down by then.

Not every consumer is a nerd who gets his news from sites like Slashdot or Arstechnica. A typical consumer is a stereotypical family guy, possibly with children, who wants to buy a 4k TV because he saw those beautiful screens at Sams Club or Costco, playing a stunning looking content (that was specially recorded to be demod at the stores).

Still, I agree.. I can't see people tripping over their HDMI cable running to an electronics store to buy even a 4k TV. Realistically, buying a 4k TV would start making sense 2-3 years down the road, once we have gigabit broadband in every big city and ultrahd content on Netflix, Blueray, and possibly on cable tv.

I do not argue that Russia has the right to annex any part of Ukraine at will. My point has always been that all minorities of all countries have the right for self determination, which does not even necessarily mean the right to secede. But at very least, the minorities in the compact areas of their habitation should have the right for a certain degree of cultural and even political autonomy from the center. So far, Ukraine has not offered this type of deal to its Russian-speaking minority, and this tension has been the source of political divisions in Ukraine for two decades now. They keep having "revolution" after a revolution, switching back and forth from pro-Russian, back to Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev, while creating a rich ground for Russia to stick its nose in Ukraine politics. So I really do have a cynical attitude to both sides of this conflict, and can't feel entirely sorry for what happens with Ukraine.

Your reply suggests that you did not read the above post. Like I have said, the South East Ukraine actually has nothing to do with the historic "Ukraine". Before the creation of USSR, today's South East Ukraine was known as "New Russia" from 18th century on. Before 18th century, it was controlled by Tatars, not "Ukrainians" (the name Ukraine is a a Russian word meaning "borderland", and was adopted by a bunch of New Russian intellectuals in order retain a distinct identity from the rest of Russia). In 18th century, the South East Ukraine was an empty land that was settled mostly by Russians, so Russians were there before the word "Ukraine" or "Ukrainians" was even invented. Ask any Russian or European of that time WTF the word "Ukraine" means, and they'd stare at you confused. It was the 1920s communist government of USSR, which did a lot of weird stuff, that awarded this land (the New Russia) to the newly formed Ukraine SSR (soviet socialist republic). In the 1950s, Khruschev, an ethnic Ukrainian and effectively the ruler of USSR, also had Crimea transferred into Ukraine SSR allegedly for administrative purposes.

So like I said, I don't understand how one can possibly treat the Russians of Ukraine as some kind of a fifth column and a bunch of people do who don't belong there. Russians of the South East Ukraine came first to that place an long time before "Ukraine" even existed as a geographic or ethnic concept, and the ones who got displaced by Russians were not "the Ukrainians", and Tatars, the real victims of Russian expansionism of that time.

It's also utterly ridiculous of you to argue that ethnic cleansing, deportation, or racism is justified for the sake of a "stability". It's nearly like saying in the 1950s that African-American blacks should have been deported to Africa from the USA for the sake of "stability".

I could give you my version of stability recipee for Ukraine. Either, Ukraine defines itself as a bi-lingual and a bi-cultural country, giving equal recognition to Russian and Ukrainian cultures and languages, at least in the areas of the South East Ukraine, or perhaps Ukraine eventually splits into West Ukraine and East Ukraine, using the Dnepr River as the natural geographic boundary. At this point, the stability will prevail, and the comical and intolerant nationalists of the West Ukraine can transfer their capital to Lvov (which is where most of current Ukraine ruling elite come from) and start building the pure mono-ethnic country of their dreams, where everyone speaks and thinks in Ukrainian, and thinks that former nazi collaborator, guy known as Bandera (the fonder of UPA, the Jew and Pole exterminating organization so vile, that even Poland is disgusted at the attempts to glorify them), is the national icon and hero, while the East Ukraine Russians go back to their mother Russia. At this point everyone will be happy.

It would have been a love letter and a great act of goodwill towards the PlayStation enthusiast community if Sony allowed running Linux on it again.

I own one, but I use it only as a media player.

You're setting up an irrelevant argument with the 0-100F. For one, in places like Canada or Siberia, -30C is considered an unpleasant but still livable temperature. On the other hand, in central Texas, the temperatures hit 110F on daily basis during the hottest time of Summer. The Celsius system makes a lot sense to me. 0 is the freezing point, 100C is the boiling point at sea level. The extremes observed between places like Siberia and deserts are somewhere at -45C and 45C, add or subtract.

You don't have to do it all at once together. How about for start to switch default food labeling from imperial to metric? I know both measures are usually present, but right now metric is treated as a second class citizen. For example, the metric print is often small and the supermarkets often add to the price label the price per oz of food, but not say the price per 100grams.

Run a Cat 6 cable into every bedroom, office, and living room. Nothing beats GigE, not even close, despite of several years of "gigabit Wireless AC" and the new "gigabit powerline" tech, the truth is that under a typical real life scenario those give you at best maybe twice the speed of 100Mbpbs Ethernet.

You can get something like this from HP. And HP Envy is available with AMD FX APUs. Changing the screen to 1080p is a $50 option, and you still should end up with under $600 laptop. Personally though, I would prefer to configure a laptop with a mobile Intel Core i5 and a $50 optional dedicated GPU. This combo may cost $100 more, but will slaughter AMD system in every respect.

You should also take AMD's claims with a grain of salt. I recall the disappointment that was the Kaveri parts once they hit the test labs, and with Kaveri, AMD really made a "paper release" of the mobile units, with a long lag of something like a year before people saw Kaveri laptops.

Listening to some Western pundits and analysts about their ideas about what NATO could do to help Ukrainians fight Russian aggression is hilarious. First of all, I don't think it will help to train Ukrainian Army or give them more weapons. Russia will then up its game, give more weapons to the rebels, send more instructors, send regular troops in, if necessary. Putin has already proved in 2008 and 2014 that he will go all the way, as far as necessary to protect Russian interests.

But the most damning reason not to arm Ukrainians is that Ukraine does not have the human resource for this war. The Ukrainian maximalist nationalist youths, the kind who were bused to Kiev to stage the quasi-violent coup there and who are willing to volunteer to fight in the East are few and far in between. Those come from the West Ukraine, the part Stalin took away from Poland and it was historically a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalist. The rest of Ukraine has a mixed Ukrainian-Russian speaking population, with significantly less radical anti-Russian views. The fact that Ukraine is facing a problem with human resources is underscored by the fact that they're increasingly recruiting conscripts and recalling reservists from the more pro-Russian regions of South East Ukraine. I wouldn't estimate the morale of those troops to be very high. Even after being properly dressed, trained, and fed (the necessities Ukrainian troops often don't get), facing the prospect of Russian on Russian violence, many will shirk, surrender, etc.

I am sorry but this "take it or leave it" idea to asking Russians to become "Ukrainian or leave" sounds like some kind of a twisted neo-nazi ethnic cleansing idea. It goes beyond the modern European norms of human rights of minorities. And it really cracks me up when Ukrainian or say Estonian nationalists love to say that they share European liberal-democratic values, but are also quick to judge and treat their Russian minority as some kind of "fifth column", people of second rank, while also rehabilitating their nazi-collaborating, Jew-killing nationalist ancestors of WWII era, who were considered traitors under USSR.

And what did Ukraine's Russians do to deserve such "solution"? For one, they're living on their historic homeland of many hundreds years. They're not a "fifth column" like some Russia-haters want to believe. The South East Ukraine was conquered by the Russian empire from Crimean Turks in 18th century, not from Ukrainians (in fact term Ukraine as geographic designation didn't become common until late 19th century). At the time of conquest, it was an empty land as it was the policy of Crimean Turks to keep it empty and use it as free a path to raiding lands in the north for obtaining slaves and loot to be sold into Ottoman Empire. Both Russians and Ukrainians settled it in 18-19th century, and then the Russian Empire and USSR spent a lot of effort on building up and industrializing that area. The area was historically called "New Russia" before the revolution, but by some bizarre twist of history, the early day Soviet Communist, and Lenin in particular, decided to roll former "New Russia" into Ukraine SSR jurisdiction, that that's how it's now part of independent Ukraine.

But anyways, regardless of what the history was, the human rights and the right to self determination should always be respected. So in particular Ukraine's minorities, or any other country, should have a right to cultural autonomy if not outright political one.

Please. It's quite disingenuous to say that NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance, just like it is disingenuous to say that NATO's missile defense system in Poland or elsewhere in Europe is meant to protect NATO allies from Iranian missiles. To say "you're not our enemy, but we surround you with our bases just in case if 200 years later things change" is as aggressive and expansionist as it gets. By expanding into and militarizing East Europe NATO is doing the same thing that USSR did after WWII. NATO indeed swept in and gobbled up all of east Europe as fast as it could. Less than 10 years after dissolution of USSR, pretty much every east European country a NATO member.

After dissolution of USSR, East European countries like Poland or Estonia were certainly free to choose within which sphere of influence they exist based on economic ties (e.g. joining EU), but without having to enter any military alliances at all. Russia did not bully or extort any of its neighbors, not until after USA-backed coups in Georgia in Ukraine in 2003-2004, when GWB and his neo-con friends started talking about NATO and EU membership for those countries. It's specially ridiculous to try to invite a country like Ukraine into NATO, a country with a huge Russian-speaking population, and many lands that Russians consider parts of their cultural heritage (the historic states of "Kievan Rus", regions like "New Russia" and "Little Russia", Crimea, etc)

The "future" war you speak about will never happen. But there have been many conflicts in post-soviet space, where tanks and armor have proven to be both useful. It always cracks me up when there is a discussion about a new tank, there are "internet experts" who proclaim that tanks are obsolete. Well, who is going to pick the fight with the USA? Probably no one, but in all other conflicts, the tanks can be damn useful, and that's why Russia and even Ukraine sold heaps of them. In fact, even conventional tank-vs-tank battles do not happen that often, what we see is many asymmetrical conflict, where one of the sides does not have much armor, but a good quantity of anti-tank weapons. In such setting, the current generation of Soviet-derived tanks have often experienced horrendous loss, just enough to look at Syria or Ukraine wars. So the new Russian tank is probably meant far more to address such settings than a mythical abrams vs other tank conflicts.

I am not sure why you consider me Russian but ok. Russia wants to gobble up Ukraine not for profits, but to prevent NATO expansion into it. You have to first admit that this whole mess and the conflict between the West and Russia is a direct result of relentless and aggressive NATO expansion. There was a handshake agreement when USSR withdrew that NATO will not go beyond Germany. NATO gobbled up all of east Europe, some post-Soviet states, and now wants Ukraine and Georgia. The Ukrainian coup was sponsored and supported diplomatically and politically by USA, down to USA diplomats delivering sandwiches to the protesters in Kiev's Maidan (not just this time, but also in 2004). Russia had to say enough is enough at some point, so they did in 2008 and 2014. Want to end this conflict? The west has to tell Ukraine firmly that it can not join NATO, and that Ukrainian nationalists should tone down their maximalist rhetoric and demands. The American involvement simply adds more fire to this conflict, and is also the cause of this conflict.