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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • It’s a guy babbling about an anonymous website with the same-old stuff against Stallman, and how that is part of a conspiracy to harm free software.

    I watched it (most of it) despite having formed my opinion on the quality of that DistroTube channel a while ago… you might want to be wiser than me and do something else with your time.

    PS:

    Before you put me in the pro-Stallman faction, let me clarify that I think the FSE (non the FSFe - BTW you should change your name guys) is largely irrelevant and so I’ve never investigated the allegations to Stallman enough to take a stance pro or against: I do not care.





  • If the US or EU want to keep up, they can sunbsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree

    You can’t allow dumping-inducing subsidies without also allowing defensive tariffs, otherwise the richer and more authoritarian countries, which have greater capacity for subsidies and greater ability to concentrate them in specific sectors, will easily kill foreign competition and establish monopolies.

    The marketplace brah is a place where, without regulations that maintain a degree of fairness, the rich kills the poor, competition dies off, and consumers are drained to their last cent.

    Just think of it: competition is when different actors fight it off and it ends the moment one of the contenders wins.
    If you want the fight to go on forever, you don’t want an unregulated market.



  • Subsidizing sales of EVs (ie. I pay for my neighbor’s new EV because I want cleaner air) does make environmental sense.

    Subsidizing production does not have the same positive environmental impact, mainly because factories in China pollute more than factories, say, in the EU (due to different environmental laws), but also because moving finished products from China to the “west” obviously pollutes more than moving just those components that would need to be sourced from China anyways (eg. batteries).

    As for the “makes economic sense” part… IDK: I guess that mainly depend on your political stance.
    Personally, I don’t like that both sales and production subsidies have the effect of moving money from the poor to the rich, but other people may focus on different effects (eg. more production = more jobs) and support subsides.
    In case you wonder: my take is that, instead of incentivizing adoption and production of EVs, one should disincentivize internal combustion vehicles by adding taxes to them (which, in a sense, aren’t really taxes but just charging for the very real environmental costs society as a whole will have to pay for your shiny SUV).

    Anyone not doing this is an idiot and a climate terrorist.

    You should really think twice before spewing judgements… and also avoid misusing words like “terrorist” because, when misused this way, it only conveys that you don’t like someone, dulling your message instead of strengthening it.


  • That’s catchy, but not entirely true.

    China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general), plus they have cheaper environmental and labour standards… it’s not like there’s a fair market EU companies can compete in without some sort of handicap.

    PS: Yes, “western” countries have been playing along with China’s deliberate long term strategy with full awareness of where it would lead, but that’s another story that is both much older and has a much broader scope than the EV industry.


  • The problem with Chinese EVs is that they show it’s possible to innovate, keep prices down, and mass produce.

    It’s not only possible, it’s easy: you just need terrible labor and environmental standards, poor welfare, cheap access to raw materials, and tons of state subsidies :)

    It’s interesting to note that “we” knew all along it would end like this but just couldn’t resist moving/outsourcing production to China nor investing in China’s fast-growing economy.

    “We” were chasing short-term profits and China was playing the long game. Apparently, both parties won, each at their own game.

    Stop making $70K SUVs and start making $20K Taurus and Escort EVs. You did it once. You can do it again.

    The cost of batteries is (relatively) higher for cheap vehicles, so that’s the segment where it makes the most difference.




  • I hate them (seriously).

    It’s basically a second distro inside your distro (try du -chs /var/lib/flatpak/) and if something breaks (eg. last year mesa with my graphics card) it isn’t easy to identify were the problem is (because all libs update at the same time), plus you can’t just try a newer (or older) version of some lib as you would in your distro.

    Moreover, you can’t flatpak CLI tools (also servers and OS components, but I guess the ubuntu folks are the only ones who care about those).



  • only dangerous for around 500 years

    That “only” is just ridiculous :)

    Just try to imagine the history of a nuclear waste storage site from the 1500s… how many budget cuts would have it seen? how much buck-passing when it changed hands as a result of war of revolution? how many times would it have been bombed? (and it’s not like we’ve had bombing for a very long time).

    We are just not responsible enough to play around with nuclear. Hell, we are showing we are even not responsible enough for hydrocarbons.

    (yes, I do know some amount of nuclear waste, from medical applications etc., is definitely worth it and unavoidable - let’s just keep it to a minimum)