> implies that US forces sought to kill these people rather than their being caught in a battle zone - or at least it's trying to suggest that, although that interpretation can be retreated from if challenged.

No it doesn't imply that and it's not what I'm suggesting or meant. Killed is a pretty neutral term, and how these deaths are called doesn't take away from their atrocity.

You've been using comparatively pretty tendentious language, but your point is noted and I can better appreciate Brown study's choice of words.

> caught in a battle zone

That doesn't imply they even died, and how you use the expression sounds like an attempt to minimized what has actually been happening.

> By contrast Stalin's purges murdered ...

What's your intent? Does what Stalin did 75 to 100 years ago make the "estimated 432,093 civilians ... that died violent deaths as a result of US wars" between 2001 and today any less atrocious for the survivors, their families, and their communities?

> Seriously? want to offer a source for that?

I purposely said hundreds of thousands because that could mean as little 200 000 violent civilian deaths, a number that even the US government doesn't dispute.

But the actual numbers appear to be much higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://watson.brown.edu/costs...

I'm still surprised a lot of people don't realize this.

> If you can't define it, how are you sure we're not 5 years away?

What can we be surer about the thing we can't define? That it's five years away, or that we don't know how far away it is.

> The worse claims for political deaths against Western ...

I was referring to more or less the past 40-50 years as you mentioned "their suppression of the Tibetans, Uighurs..." and I assumed you wanted to include events like Tiananmen square.

In that time frame the US has openly killed hundreds of thousands of civilians worldwide, injured in countless numbers, invaded countries and then left them worse off, tortured people, and so on.

Further back, the USSR and China were definitively massively oppressive regimes as you say.

SO2 is interesting : https://www.windy.com/-SO2-tcs...

> maybe just maybe someone should look at the PM2.5 concentrations measured from space

Windy uses data from CAMS the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service:

"CAMS is one of the six services that are part of the earth observation programme called Copernicus,[2][3] which is managed and coordinated by the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), along with EU Member States and some EU Agencies" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

NO2 : https://www.windy.com/-NO2-no2...

2.5 : https://www.windy.com/-PM2-5-p...

> Commenting as AC undoes mod points. It didn't in the past, but does now.

Test confirmed. My AC post set you back to 1 after I had modded you up to 2.

Thanks for saying, I was surprised it did that and didn't warn me it would remove my moderation.

> Anyone who starts muttering 'but the West was / is just as bad' has no idea what was actually going on.

But maybe some of those people know both, how bad what was actually going on in China was, and how bad what America was actually involved in too?

>> Can government itself and it's agencies also be seen as market players?

> Other market players don't get to toss people into prison when they do something they don't like, so no.

Ok, so maybe there are different market sizes and ways to delimit them, and some of them have less level the playing field's than others.

>> The EPA told them...

> So it wasn't the market, after all?

Can government itself and it's agencies also be seen as market players?

> Alcohol, in small quantities, is extremely beneficial for your microbiome. It is a mutagen, so kills off bacteria that are fragile and diversifies the bacteria that are healthy.

Can you give any references that support those statements, especially the second one ?

All I'm finding is a 2020 study that showed a positive correlation between low red wine consumption and bacteria quantity - https://www.gastrojournal.org/...

that "could be attributed to other diet or lifestyle factors, or it could be that something in alcoholic drinks [polyphenols] might benefit the microbiome — though it’s likely not the ethanol" - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/0...

> I haven't seen any evidence that China is able to get 28 nm resolution at present.

Neither have I.

But I'm sure SMEE is capable of it and have maybe already gotten past there to even smaller pitches. But as far as more tangible evidence, all we seem to have today is that SMEE was promoting, selling and making 90 nm chips on their "home build" equipment at the start of 2022 and that those machines can be used to make chips down to 7nm with some work. I also think it's credible SMEE started hiding their progress in 2021 and even more so today.

So for me, even without more concrete evidence, I think it's very reasonable to think today that SMEE (and maybe SMIC too) have made significant progress.

> China can domestically make devices with a resolution of 90 nm at present.

If you follow the reference, when the Wikipedia editor uses "currently" it refers to an article written a bit more than two years ago in February 2022:

"Founded in 2002, SMEE is developing its second-generation DUV immersion lithography system, which could produce down to 7nm chips with multiple patterning. Currently [February 2022], SMEE lists its SSA600/20 on its website as capable of 90nm resolution. When I wrote the article on SMIC [China: Who Needs TSMC When They Have SMIC] quoted above, I noted that in Q1 2020, SMIC generated 1.3% of its revenues by selling chips at the 14nm node. Then came U.S. sanctions, and in its Q4, 2021 financial presentation, there is no reference to 14nm node production, as shown in Chart 2. Back in 2020, there were media reports that a SMEE model SSA800 capable of 28nm resolution would be on the market by the end of 2021, which would be followed by the SSA900 capable of 22nm. Keep in mind that using multiple patterning, resolution could get to 7nm. Now, with SMIC on the U.S. "entity list" and SMEE on the "unverified list", both companies are keeping plans about DUV insertion quiet for fear of more restrictions." - https://seekingalpha.com/artic...

So today it seems we have both companies like Intel relying on ASML equipment advertising future capabilities to attract investors and companies like SMEE and SMIC underselling their capabilities to avoid attracting more American sanctions.

And today we also have to contend with some companies using 5 nm terminology like this:

"The term "5 nm" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors being five nanometers in size. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a "5 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 51 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 30 nanometers. However, in real world commercial practice, "5 nm" is used primarily as a marketing term by individual microchip manufacturers ". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

--
But one thing seems clear, the Dutch are state of the art and clearly in advance compared to Chinese companies, but by exactly how much is hard to tell.

> Possible of course, but what makes you think they are?

It's not easy to know for sure, none of the chip makers seem to be very open about whose lithography equipment they're using.

Some of what I found was:

"Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE) ... Currently, its most advanced product is the SSA600, with a resolution of 90 nm. SMEE is developing the SSA800, with a resolution of 28 nm, which will be followed up by the SSA900, with a resolution of 22 nm" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Back in 2020, there were media reports that a SMEE model SSA800 capable of 28nm resolution would be on the market by the end of 2021, which would be followed by the SSA900 capable of 22nm. Keep in mind that using multiple patterning, resolution could get to 7nm." - https://seekingalpha.com/artic...

"a home grown 28nm DUV lithography machine is scheduled to spin up from Shanghai Microelectronic Equipment by the end of this year [2021], and to be fabricating 48nm and 28nm chips for IoT devices on a proprietary Shanghai production line." - https://www.verdict.co.uk/chip...

> Correction to my last comment:

When I said China was competitive on 28nm chips, they surely are but it might well be using ASML's or other's equipment, and not "home grown" equipment as I was thinking at the time.

> You state that China "currently operates" fabs. No doubt they do, but did they make the hardware they are using in those fabs?

From what I can tell they are building 28nm lithography equipment and they might be building some 16nm machines.

> And are 28nm and 16nm devices competitive with 2nm? Intel recently announced plans for 1.4nm.

This is more a guess, but from what I've read for 28nm chips and larger from China are very competitive, and of course for smaller sizes they're just not in the race.

So I think you were about right when you said that when it comes to building lithography machines companies in China are "10 years behind" companies elsewhere. The companies elsewhere being two in Japan, one in America, one in Taiwan, and one in the Netherlands (that one, ASML, seems to be the only company in the world that can actually build 5nm and smaller EUV equipment).