I didn’t. It just looks like the fair number of Cisco (and the occasional Dell) 10/100/sometimes Gigabit switches I’ve seen in junk shops.
I bought a nifty blue Netgear 24-port one mostly because I’m more willing to buy junk from the Humane Society shop, but then decided it was too loud (40mm fans) and went to 2.5G (with smaller fanless switches) instead.
Old Cisco gear shows up in the thrift shops here. I think you can’t even give 10/100 kit away.
American security guarantees are the only thing propping up that stupid narrative.
They’ve always made the claim “TSMC will blow up their own fabs in the event of an invasion”. So, they’re dependent on a lose/lose spite play. If an independent Taiwanese state survives, they’ve demolished one of its major economic engines. If, as far more likely, it falls, everyone involved gets locked up or worse for gross sabotage, and you bought, what, 5 years of global economic distress (oh, no, it might pop the AI bubble…) before everyone else gets back to par with your top-line process? Or maybe you successfully blackmailed bigger and more equipped militaries to fight WWIII for you, and even in the unlikely event Taiwan survives the carnage intact, irradiated corpses buy very few semiconductors.
If America washed their hands of the situation, they’d pretty quickly switch to angling for a deal, perhaps expecting that they’d go for a HK-style “one country/two systems” play, which continues to let them make out like bandits. HSBC doesn’t seemed to have suffered too badly after reunification…
We can test. Send a lander with Palestinian tardigrades and see if they experience discrimination and attempts to expel them from the lunar surface.
Not necessarily precise, just a more resonant presentation. She didn’t have a killer sound bite. If details actually mattered, we’d be in the closing months of the second Warren administration after all.
I literally saw scads of signs saying “Trump - Low Prices/Kamala - High Prices” and one that specifically claimed “Want $2.15 gas, vote Trump.” She didn’t counter well at the slogan/vibes level. There was no “Harris/Walz/$2-per-pound ground beef” signage.
It’s also an audience problem. The Democrats, as incumbents, were stuck with higher expectations. They couldn’t pad their numbers with low-hanging “I just want different” and “let’s burn it all down” crowds, so they have to chase voters who are harder to activate.
The message was weak though. The policy was fairly limited-- like limits on gouging in emergencies-- and not expressed in terms of a tangible achievable metric. And it’s not like we have direct economic control that would allow for specific deliverables-- how exactly are you goung to get Kroger to bend the knee? A fine that’s 12 seconds of their turnover?
‘I’ll get the 99-cent Taco Supreme back’ (or the $2 gallon of milk/dozen eggs) would have helped-- a graspable specific rallying cry. “We’ll tax gougers back into the stone age” maybe too. ISTR there’s some rightwing scumball in Canada who achieved most of his political rise by literally campaigning on $1-per-can beer. Again, a tangible goal, and one more achievable because there’s direct state controlled alcohol sales in much of the country…
We need to convince Trump that the way to win a legacy is to deliver something like universal health care. Present it as a display of personal power and his unique talents, and as a branding moment like no other (beyond Obamacare). 'The Democrats couldn’t do it in 50 years, but I rammed it through in 2. Got the chair of Cigna on the phone and fired him personally. Now we all have Trumpcare and even Hillary has to praise it through gritted teeth…"
The GOP tied themselves so tightly to his star that they’d have to own the pivot, or find some way to retract their allegiance. And the rest of us could at least enjoy the historic worst-person-you-know-makes-a-greatipoint moment.
While prestigious, I have to think the type of lawyer who wants Trump for a client is hardly goingbto want to do heavy government work for a civil servant’s salary. Surely there’s way more cash in skip-and-falls and “get six divorce punches on your loyalty club card and the 7th is free”.
What I hate about the current situation is that there’s no room for “Russia is a significant power that won’t suddenly vanish, so maybe if we can avoid being at complete loggerheads with them 24/7, it might avoid decades of tension and expensive military grandstanding.”
You must either fellate Putin or demand the entire 82 billion square kilometres of the Russian state turned to glass. No other options. It worries me that any more nuanced takes on Russia get pushed into the “Kremlin talking points” file.
Not that she isn’t a screwball all on her own, but we could use a less militaristic take here.
ISTR having some hallucinogenic colour issues when Vulkan wasn’t properly installed.
The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.
But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…
If we can pick home computers that lean into cartridges, the Atari 800XL is a real winner. Nice two-tone finish, classy silver buttons with a plexi trim oiece covering the power light.
As a reptile keeper who knows full well they don’t know when to stop eating, I find this story charming. I want to feed her a basket of eyes (pre-frozen to kill parasites)
One hour from new classic myth to kawaii. I think that’s near Rule 34 turnaround speed.
Trident TGUI9440 on a VL-bus card. Surprisingly peppy on a 486/66 overclocked to 80.
I was always disappointed that celebrity and character voice packs weren’t a thing for the voice-assistant platforms. I’d pay literal ones of dollars for a voice assistant with a Sebastian Michaelis intonation and theming.
Cortana for Windows Phone came closest, I think they did use the same voice actress as the game character.
I doubt they enjoy having their balls in TSMC’s vice.
Intel is the only option remotely available to leverage against them.
I suspect that democracy is a “good times” system. It works well enough when the problems are either low-stakes or widely agreed upon.
When you get into a world of hard choices-- for example, anything where we have to devalue some existing wealth – suddenly there’s going to be both a lack of consensus (likely manufactured) and leaders too afraid of losing the next vote to pull the trigger.
That’s why I expect to see China solve its climate change and housing problems faster than the West. Without the almighty polls lurking in the shadows, they can say “petrol is 100 yuan a litre to discourage its use” or “we’re nationalizing second homes and disbursing them to schoolteachers.”
Can we start calling Amazon “AliExpress with American characteristics” now?
I can’t see how this won’t further undermine the value proposition of Prime, as yet more of their inventory is ineligible for “free 2-day shipping.”
Maybe something failed to deliver for the people there that made them lose faith in Western institutions?
Some quality of life factors that didn’t appear in the metrics we track? An overall shift in role or relevance?
If you’re not connecting with an audience, there’s more to fixing it than berating said audience and acting surprised when they’re not interested in what you’re pushing.
But GOG is alresdy the Steam with Principles…