It is likely that they are using data from a few years ago. Salaries have risen dramatically in the last few years. I lived in Shanghai ten years ago, and was able to hire unskilled workers for $100 / month, and degreed engineers for $400. Today, it would cost at least five times that. Shanghai is more expensive than many other areas, but Zhejiang is not cheap. It is just south of Shanghai, and a lot of high end manufacturing is done there.

I have been to Yiwu several times, and the place is amazing. There is block after block of buildings filled with product displays and sales offices. There is often an entire building devoted to just a single product, like, say, hair pins. Most major retailers, including Walmart, Target, Sears, etc. have permanent offices there. But most of the stuff sold there is not manufactured in Yiwu. Most of the goods are shipped in from manufacturing hubs in Shenzhen, Pudong, etc.

Sorry if the truth hurts, but that's how the shit flies. Sure, some do it out of patriotism and with enough "the enemy is everywhere and trying to kill YOUR CHILDREN" propaganda anyone can be very patriotic until they find out that at the other side there's just exactly the same ordinary guy trying to live his life and getting by somehow. Few and far between are the hyped up supersoldiers who'll die gladly for land and fame. Usually you have a bunch of people who just want to make another day go by.

It's not the ordinary guy that "hates" you. Far from it, usually they don't give a shit about you. It's just like it is over here: The real assholes are up at the top. Kill them and the world is a better place.

So it isn't me, it is kinda odd that this guy's defection comes conveniently at exactly this point in time?

Some people really know to come right on cue.

Love of Country sure is much easier if you're part of the nobility. Actually, fuck the country, but as long as it makes my life pleasurable at the expense of the 99% of the rest, what's not to love?

In a country where the internet is about as commonplace as for us having your own rocket launch system in the backyard? Please. How do you hit NKor via internet? Take down their online payment system? Hack their official pages so their citizens would get to see defaced pics of li'l Kim?

How?

I can see that as an offensive force, but defense? Please.

That is only needed during the design and testing, when a lot of CFD simulations will be needed. But once the bird is deployed, it will just use a lookup table. When you are walking down the street, you don't use physics to calculate the exact length of stride to optimally place your foot. Instead, you just take a step more-or-less like the last one, and then compensate any over/under stride on the next step.

No, the hack certainly wasn't part of their plan. But after it happened, they sure wondered how they could turn it towards their favor.

Who the heck said it was NKor? Sony? The US? Ok, that's nice. Anyone who isn't, let's say, a wee bit biased?

Not that I want to defend li'l Kim, but I just don't believe they have anything close to resembling anyone who could do shit like that.

No, I prefer spending nothing on a movie that's not worth my time, let alone my money.

Certainly not just 'cause it allegedly pisses off some little megalomaniac gnome I care even less about.

There were enough tells in the first movie that I decided to skip both prequel sequels. My only regret concerns the movie not made.

The problem when you have a strong emotional investment in something is that one's instinct is to give it one more chance. By the time you've watched two bad movies, you're almost pot-committed to watch the third.

It takes a special will to abandon a franchise without falling into the emotional mulligan trap, and so there's ultimately little incentive for Jackson to not do what he did.

I'm slowly learning. My loyalty function has now evolved to where it's almost vertiginous.

Are they guaranteeing throughput? Then it's meaningless for most folks. It's like putting tires rated for 200 MPH on your care and assuming it will now go 200 MPH.