Even without Nvidia openly shitting on consumers I wouldn’t buy from them again.
There’s also the dangerously badly designed 12VHPWR connector, selling frame generation as a performance gain, lackluster Linux support, the 4080 having so many known potential compatibility issues that diagnosing a manufacturing defect took me two damn weeks… Honestly, I haven’t seen much quality work from them in the last years.
At least Mexico gets oil. All the EU gets is Disneyland.
Unlikely.
What is reasonably likely is that there was a person named Yeshwa ben Yosef, born a few years before 0CE, died somewhere around 30CE, who preached and started a Judaism-based cult and who might’ve been a carpenter. He most likely had a reputation for miracles, which is mentioned in non-Christian sources which have no reason to glorify him. (Do note that modern cult leaders and televangelists also often have such reputations.) He was also probably crucified, although probably not for the reasons given in the Bible.
Things like his conception without sex or him being a fish copying machine have no evidence. It’s not even sure if he claimed to be the son of God or the Messiah; apparently he did probably have an end-times cult and did probably assume that he’d get to run the world after divine rule is instituted globally.
So yeah, he probably was some dude who started a cult (which wasn’t even that unusual at the time), was good enough at preaching to get a major audience, and was probably executed because sooner important people considered him a political threat. His cult survived him and people started embellishing his life just a tiny little bit.
Oh, I thought of drones mainly because I expect refineries to be difficult enough to enter without authorization that you can’t just walk in and plop a backpack full of ANFO down next to a fractionating column. It’s more of a “park outside the fence and fly over with a few rotocopters so security won’t nab you before you get the bomb in place” thing.
It’s the second-hand perception of someone who works as a civilian worker in the Bundeswehr. It’s slowly getting better but the damage from two decades of pointless austerity politics (and a lack of enthusiasm beforehand) is definitely felt.
Basically, they’re trying their best but the equipment stockpile isn’t up to scratch yet and it’s currently so hard to find good recruits that the government is considering bringing back the draft. It’s not that the Bundeswehr is bad but there’s a lot to do before it’s fully functional again.
I fully switched to Linux in 2024, my last desktop Linux experience before that being at least five years prior.
On the other hand, I’m happier than expected with Wayland and PipeWire. They just work with little fuss. Sure, I’m a KDE user and Wayland is reportedly less fun outside the big DEs, but for me it just works.
Oh, and those small EU countries combined already have a bigger army than Russia, massive reserves obviously not counted because … again … they are not at war. And yes, we are also speaking about actually well trained and equiped soldiers, not Russian standards.
And we also have the German army, for comic relief!
(I’d love it if our army was equipped and trained for more than that…)
Besides, even though people love to riff on it, Kinect Star Wars was actually great if you ignored everything but the Galactic Dance-Off mode. A very competent rhythm game where half of the songs are Star Wars filk? Sign me up!
How about pipelines and substations? Ports? If they can snuggle a drone in they might even go for something like a refinery. Not sure how the security around oil wells looks but hitting a couple of those might also be worthwhile.
Sure, sowing abject terror is one thing but ideally you also want to make the occupation fiscally unsustainable. America has a bunch of very expensive locations that would fit that part of the equation nicely.
All Starfleet panels are butt-proof and shart rated. This is notably different from Klingon panels, which are only rated for protection against blood, blood wine, and puke containing blood wine.
Romulan panels are rated against subterfuge but the protection has been secretly disabled.
Great, now I want to play an Exalted character who has a custom charm to summon local critters to use as nunchucks after tying their tails together. Kind of like in Kung Pow, except with wolves and they bite on hit.
How about a trade? I mean, Trump really wants Greenland. That’s about 2.2 million square kilometers.
Texas is about 0.7 million square kilometers. California is 0.4. New Mexico 0.3. Arizona is 0.3. That makes 1.7 million square kilometers.
So how about they swap? The USA get Greenland, Denmark gets all of the states adjoining Mexico. That swap is super favorable to the Americans (2.2 > 1.7, after all) and the USA even get a nice buffer state between themselves and those Mexican drug cartels they’re so afraid of. There’s literally no downside. Trump would be the greatest landswapper in all of history, if not more. I’m sure Denmark would even give him a Nobel Prize in Economy or two.
I’m pretty sure that whether it can is irrelevant. Unter Trump it won’t because China playing strongman appeals to him more than petty things like allies and an independent semiconductor market. Also, he can very clearly be bought and Xi can just send him a couple yachts with tacky decor or something.
He has pretty much torched all of the USA’s soft power and standing as a trade partner.
GWB had already done some damage to both, which Obama tried to repair (more so on the trade front). Then Trump I happened and made it very clear that the USA were no longer a reliable partner and probably not even politically stable in the medium term. Biden tried to salvage something but then Trump II happened and conclusively buried what little goodwill the States had left.
I don’t think the pax americana is going to survive the decade and neither is the petrodollar. It remains to be seen whether the States will become a local hegemonial power, a failed empire with lasting ambitions á la Russia, or will even fade from relevancy entirely. I don’t expect them to remain a superpower.
Also note that the EU has just signed a free-trade agreement with Mercosur, meaning that the EU and pretty much all of South America are pivoting trade away from the USA towards each other. Conveniently, that should also make both of them less reliant on China.
If you want to download once and then never have to deal with updates unless you want to, there’s always GOG.
(Also, yes, Steam is a lot more comfortable with a faster connection. I generally spend more time waiting for Vulkan shaders to be precompiled than for downloads to finish.)
We just signed an FTA with Mercosur. That’s a major trade bloc. I think we’re doing good on that front and it demonstrates that we have the capacity to just pivot trade home away from the States.
Still, I do agree that counter-tariffs don’t feel too great as a response, even with the new FTaa in place. It might really be time to bring out the anti-coercion instrument.
Mind you, that’s for the same reason all American phone numbers in shows have a 555 prefix – showing a real address could lead to liability if e.g. someone tries to launch an attack on that address they saw on TV.
Unlike phone numbering schemes, the IPv4 address space has no well-known area reserved for fictitious addresses. Sure, you could use something like 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, or 203.0.113.0/24 (test networks for use in documentation), but those aren’t well-known outside of certain circles.
So they just go with completely invalid addresses because that’s easy.
The main difference is that the additional software you need to install doesn’t always come from the manufacturer on Linux. Other than that it’s actually pretty similar.
Heck, there are even devices that work better under Linux, such as the Logitech F710 gamepad. That one has been subtly incompatible with the USB stack of every Windows after 7 while it works with Linux just fine.
It’s a German laundry detergent brand.