I dunno. China is a "market socialist" system -- which is a contradiction in terms. If China is socialist, then for practical purposes Norway and Sweden have to be even *more* socialist because they have a comprehensive public welfare system which China lacks. And those Nordic countries are rated quite high on global measures of political and personal freedom, and very low on corruption. In general they outperform the US on most of those measures, although the US is better on measures of business deregulation.

No, it's not that easy. Because you have two different offices to agree, the political office in the Ministry of Defense, and the military office Direktion (directorate) 6.

It does not work that way. The "CTO" would be Generalmajor (Major General) Hermann Kaponig, as the commanding officer of the Cybertruppen (Cyber corps). But he has no right to purchase anything, because this would be the task of the Ministry of Defense. On the other hand, the Ministry of Defense would not buy any software the Direktion (directorate) 6 does not condone.

It makes no sense to claim Chinese courts have a lot of power, although it may seem that way â" itâ(TM)s supposed to seem that way. One of the foundational principles of Chinese jurisprudence is party supremacy. Every judge is supervised by a PLC â" party legal committee â" which oversees budgets, discipline and assignments in the judiciary. They consult with the judges in sensitive trials to ensure a politically acceptable outcome.

So it would be more accurate to characterize the courts as an instrument of party power rather than an independent power center.

From time to time Chinese court decisions become politically inconvenient, either through the supervisors in the PLC missing something or through changing circumstances. In those cases there is no formal process for the party to make the courts revisit the decision. Instead the normal procedure is for the inconvenient decision to quietly disappear from the legal databases, as if it never happened. When there is party supremacy, the party can simply rewrite judicial history to its current needs.

An independent judiciary seems like such a minor point; and frankly it is often an impediment to common sense. But without an independent judiciary you canâ(TM)t have rule of law, just rule by law.

Hereâ(TM)s the problem with that scenario: court rulings donâ(TM)t mean much in a state ruled by one party. China has plenty of progressive looking laws that donâ(TM)t get enforced if it is inconvenient to the party. There are emission standards for trucks and cars that should help with their pollution problems, but there are no enforcement mechanisms and officials have no interest in creating any if it would interfere with their economic targets or their private interests.

China is a country of strict rules and lax enforcement, which suits authoritarian rulers very well. It means laws are flouted routinely by virtually everyone, which gives the party leverage. Displease the party, and they have plenty of material to punish you, under color of enforcing laws. It sounds so benign, at least theyâ(TM)re enforcing the law part of the time, right? Wrong. Laws selectively enforced donâ(TM)t serve any public purpose; theyâ(TM)re just instruments of personal power.

Americans often donâ(TM)t seem to understand the difference between rule of law and rule *by* law. Itâ(TM)s ironic because the American Revolution and constitution were historically important in establishing the practicality of rule of law, in which political leaders were not only expected to obey the laws themselves, but had a duty to enforce the law impartially regardless of their personal opinions or interests.

Rule *by* law isnâ(TM)t a Chinese innovation, it was the operating principle for every government before 1789. A government that rules *by* law is only as good as the men wielding power, and since power corrupts, itâ(TM)s never very good for long.

Yes, and one solution proposed was to make DST voluntary for businesses, which I pointed out was nonsense, as opening times are already voluntary for businesses, nevertheless they all sychronized out of necessity.

You don't solve the problem at hand. Businesses right now already have the right to open whenever they see fit. But they all synchronized on a 9-5 schedule. Why is that? Because customers have to know when to expect businesses to be open, and businesses have to know when to expect their business partners to be open, so they can schedule accordingly.

Time zones are how customers and businesses are synchronized, if they are not immediate neighbors. Time zones are a result of the invention of telegraphs and railways, for the first time making it necessary to know the local time of people you can't just walk over and ask. And as long as you don't abolish long distance communication and travel, the need for time zones will continue.

DST does not solve it, but makes it worse. If you want that additional bright hour in the evening, it will cost you that hour in winter mornings.

So you don't mind getting up in absolute darkness during Winter times and not having any sunlight for the next two hours?

Brazil is around the Equator, where there is basically no difference in daylength between summer and winter times.

DST is for countries outside the Tropics, where the time of Sunrise and Dawn differs greatly between the saisons.

It makes sense for Brazil to have no DST. It makes sense for Minnesota to have it.

As a parent of two, I never experienced it. Children adapt much more easily than parents.

We introduced time zones because locals having their own time was too confusing. Or do you know from memory if Peru, IL has CST or moved to EST during summer for longer evenings?

Because parents have to be in office at 9 am.

Well, this is direction not to buy certain hardware components in order to favor domestic manufacturers. The Tiktok case was direction to divest a social media supplier to avoid secret, illegal foreign influence campaigns or transfers of personal data.

I'm just an engineer, but the two seem pretty different to me.

Actually, it does. USB-C ports are smaller, and more of them can fit in the same space.

That's a different issue and has little to do with USB-A vs C.