it may well be terrible software, but Palantir are effectively an arm of the new Trumpian state, so guaranteed access (and ownership?) to the largest public sector projects of the largest economy in the world. It's got a good chance of becoming the Samsung of the US, so any value is not an overvalue
Ridiculous statement. If you're actually investing your money in a company then you need to run the numbers, it's the most basic kind of due diligence you should do.
"national security" is always invoked when draconian authoritarianism is extended. Trump was voted in to reduce the government, yet he is massively extending it, just in a different, darker direction
to be fair to VW, they have long known that their only way back is actually (and counterintuitively) go further and integrate into the China manufacturing supply chain, then export back to the Germany from China, where lower production cost can be achieved. They were on course until 2022, when Ukraine War + end of ZIRP spiked inflation unexpectedly, whilst also placing economics firmly after politics in order of priorities. Probably too late now
this is basically how Chinese social media works - liability for 'problematic' user posted content (ambiguously defined by the govt...) is on the technology platforms themselves, so they inevitably have to scan messages / posts, taking a zero risk policy on whatever content type is proscribed.
An example of the EU being a sacrificial pawn in a game they don't even realise they are in.
US 50% BIS export control rule - that would've placed Nexperia on the entity list and therefore cut it out from the supply chain - was suspended for a year after the Trump-Xi meeting in ROK. This was like - one week (?) after Netherlands seized the company back from Wingtech, in order to prevent it from being subject to those rules!
Now European supply gets re-routed to Nexperia China branch, in RMB, whilst the Nexperia workers in Nijmegen have to sit there and hope for the best.
The improvements on public sanitation in China is one of the most obvious signs of social development. When I first visited in around 2008, sanitation was definitely 3rd world - incredibly bad, even in major cities like Beijing and Guangzhuo, no need to say more!
15 years on the change has been incredible
Firstly, availability - there seem to be public toilets every 500 metres so you are never caught short. This is huge for accessibility, especially for older generation. Secondly, cleanliness - either modern + self cleaning or modern + staffed: the result is better hygiene than you find in other people's homes. Thirdly, connected. I'm not sure about this particular example but it wouldn't surprise me to see that these public toilets are connected, so that the data can be used to better understand utility and even public health. It's been great progress
this is the way - 'multi-polarity' is another word for 'diversity' which is another way to understand resiliency. We have seen in recent days what over dependence on single point of failure looks like (AWS outage), so from a species level perspective, it is better that we have many different forms of organisation and narrative. We just have to ensure that these narratives are not evangelical and intolerant!
I think hackernews might be the only place on the internet where a commenter uses an AWS outage as an example for why authoritarianism is a good thing.
That's not what multipolarity means, at least by those leading such propaganda.
By their standards multipolarity means control ove different circles of influence without interference.
That's what Russia wants for example, they want to secure the regime by controlling nearby countries (ideally turning them into Belarus, or by threat of destruction, like Georgia and Moldova, or by annexation, like Ukraine).
China wants to control territories surrounding them as well.
So don't be fooled by multipolarity, it's just a repacked imperialism and colonialism by right, not by earned influence.
"the media" indeed has a credibility crisis but I suspect the rise of alternative narratives about the world (social media) is the main factor behind rise of a sense of generalised distrust, which I'm sure we're all feeling right now.
What we call 'truth' is really just consensus (hence the importance of cancelling / de-platforming / downvoting etc - techniques to secure that consensus) and narrative violations from competing versions of truth which are able to persist is deeply disturbing. We're going to have to get used it - certainty is one of things 'the media' once provided to us but will never be able to do so again
I think the concentration of ownership in Murdoch and Bezos, and like, has not helped. C suite newspaper people have become more craven as the rewards rise. So we see pay-off to politicians for market access. That undermines trust from the top.
I think the emergence of infotainment paid stories eroded the "news is something somebody doesn't want you to read" side.
And I think the fusion of non journalist commentators and editorial meant we get slant and not as much facts.
The willingness of Bezos and Soon-Shiong (for example) to directly interfere definitely decreased trust. Reports are that WaPo lost 350k subscribers since Bezos' open editorial interference last year.
