But also failure to deploy renewables faster enough. This week we have had two periods of free electricity due to the abundance of renewables. The things keeping retail prices high are mostly gas and a bit of nuclear. Our system works on the basis that everyone gets paid the price of the most expensive source, which is always gas or nuclear (we don't have any coal).

Another example of NIMBYism making things worse for everyone. Every objection to renewables is forcing prices to remain high.

Tesla started doing it, now everyone is at it. At least with Xiaomi they don't change the behaviour of the system unless it's actually broken. It's not like Tesla were one week it does a stretch of road perfectly and lulls you into a false sense of security, then the next week it's broken and you die in a firey wreck.

I've heard complaints from autistic people that they have been accused of being AI due to the way they write. I bet the false positives are pretty bad with this one.

Yes, because he's just saddled taxpayers with 10% ownership of Intel. And by offering suggestions to Nvidia to "invest" in Intel he's trying to show the world he's a good businessman that doesn't make poor investment choices, like casinos, airlines, hotels, and other things he's lost money on.

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.

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.

I heard Linus of Linus Tech Tips talking about being required to buy 3 Chromebooks for his 3 kids. He lives in Canada.

On the other hand, they decided no more wood burning stoves around Bejing, and overnight they all went away.

Courts so have a lot of power in China, and rulings are generally not interfered with by the government unless there is a very specific reason to. An example I've been following is copyright, specifically the GPL. A court ruled that it was an enforceable contract, and more than one company had to scramble to come into compliance. Many seem to have taken the opportunity to leverage open source by publishing their own code, with some success stories.

I have not personally tried it, but I hear that if you just decline the EULA on LG TVs they work pretty well as dumb TVs. When it comes time to replace my Panasonic I'll have to do some research. Current one has some smart features but is not connected to the network, and behaves like a dumb TV.

I'm not saying it's acceptable or anything, but most countries are at least a bit like that. Look at how we treat travellers, or participate in the Israeli genocide.

What I'm saying is that it's not good just complaining about all the bad stuff China does, we can only win by proving ourselves and our ideology to be better. Also hoping that the Chinese people will wake up and overthrow their oppressors isn't going to work either. Not accusing you of either, just explaining the point I was making.

I have used it once. The main issue is that some events only allow you to apply if you have an address in Japan, a common issue with things like loyalty cards too. Fortunately I can get around that, but most people can't.

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.

Which is pants on head retarded.

Both from a moral level, keeping people in debt to ensure they're indentured to someone and from a business perspective as it's a imperial shitton (about 1.8 Metric fuckloads) of risk. In case you don't remember the last time the banks over-leveraged on risky customers, it was only 2008, there was a massive collapse we're still feeling the effects of.

I'm glad my country doesn't have anything of the sort. Experian are trying to "sell" their credit score system but no-one is buying. When you apply for credit here (I.E. home or car loan) your existing credit obligations including potential ones (like a credit card or phone contract) are listed as risks and detract from the amount you can borrow.

I think everyone is over thinking this. NVidia need to do something with that money they're drowning in and there's only so much that can be syphoned off to tax havens before everyone starts asking questions. If they kept it, they'd need to pay tax on it and we can't have that.

What's surprised me in the processor market is AMD making inroads in the laptop space that Intel owned for decades, even when AMD were dominating on the desktop and had very strong server offerings (the Athlon 64/Opteron days, for those who's memories stretch back that far). 15% of laptops are now AMD.