Lets all bow down to the inventor of the powers of 2 right here! All hail, inventor of the powers of 2.
The CCP doesn't exist 400 years ago. The CCP is not China. That's what they want you to think. It is really just a political faction that has taken the rest of the country hostage. For all I know the CCP members could be lizard people based on their inhumanity.
The ROC (originally KMT since it was also a one party state) has just as much rights to claim Taiwan as the CCP, and probably more, because they've actually ruled it.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus's networth is like $250 million so she's right when yelling at George Costanza ;-)
If I was him, I'd be a little cautious about taking Russian money. It's not about damaging your own reputation. (its already damaged anyway). Its about being subject to Putin and Russian oligarchs and getting unalived if failing to do certain things.
China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.
I seriously doubt chips is the most important thing. Its more about Taiwan's geographic location, being a part of the first island chain / line of defense. And just the fact that CCP has been claiming it for a while and don't want to lose face (internally) by giving it up.
Also as a Taiwanese, fuck the scorched earth strategy. I rather the island be preserved for generations to come. The longest Chinese dynasty was Zhou Dynasty for ~800 years, but that was 1046 to 256 B.C.E., then Han Dynasty for ~400 years. It would totally suck ass and I rather not have that happen. But I believe the CCP will eventually come to pass anyway. None of us will be here if it was for 400 years, but I would hope Taiwan will still be around and just as beautiful and great in the far future. I'm hoping the CCP will disband yesterday.
I think the experience of building the previous smaller ones helped though. I think if you just go for the large one, it will probably fail or overrun the budget and we'll have nothing to show for the money spent.
Such a weird hill to die on for Apple. How much does it really cost to just add 8GB more RAM? $5?
Its good and bad. I'm conflicted about it, because I think everyone should pay a fair share of the property tax. The person that moved in 20 years ago and the person that moved in yesterday should shoulder the same amount of burden if their properties are equivalent.
But I also think its stupid that my property tax goes up just because some idiot decided to overpay for the house a few houses down the street.
I simply don't like the idea that the property tax is tied directly to the appraised value of my house. It should really be tied to the size of the land that I am occupying and the total cost of running the city/county that I am in. If I build a fancy shed (insert any structure here) in my backyard, that shouldn't really cause my taxes to go up even if it increases the value of my property. The only exception is if I change the dwelling type. If it goes from a single family home to a multifamily unit, then definitely the tax rate should be reevaluated, if it is using the infrastructure more.
I suspect when rates go down, there will be a new rush for people wanting to change properties. That means new high demand for houses and another jump in valuation.
This is not how things work in the US. At least not in the states that I've lived in: TX, CA, IL.
My current state, TX, regularly updates the property value assessment, so even if I don't refinance, my property taxes goes up. With homestead exemption, the rise is capped at 10%, but over 2-3 years, it easily catches up to the market value.
But if you're in CA or NV, that value assessment increase is capped at something like 2% or 1% annually, respectively. (Proposition 13) Creating situations where homes purchased 20 years ago are still paying really low property taxes compared to today's buyers.
That something else is: Taiwan is an important geographic location. A separate Taiwan prevents China from having full easy access to the Pacific Ocean. If China holds Taiwan, China will be able to project its naval powers much further into the Pacific and the US does not like it.
This has always been the case since the KMT fled to Taiwan, way before Taiwan became a high-tech chip producing country. Way before Taiwan democratized. (Remember, Chiang Kai-Shek himself was a authoritarian asshole that has killed many earlier migrants to Taiwan.)
It's nice to have TSMC producing high-tech chips, but Samsung and Intel can also do so, perhaps only a process node (or half) behind TSMC, but Intel CPUs are no slouch compared to AMD's despite being a node behind. And Samsung have been producing some of nVidia's GPUs so they're not out of the game. But TSMC does need to be recognized and I don't really think it can be reproduced in the US. Taiwan has a very highly educated and underpaid engineering work force. I really don't think you can reproduce the same results in the US at the same costs. Its going to cost 5-10X more to move to the US.
Same here. I am introverted and I hate social interactions. It drains me. BUT for me, after talking and meeting a person face-to-face a few times, all the rest of the online communication becomes a lot more smooth-sailing.
tone deaf post
It would be interesting to see Kamala Harris vs. Nikki Haley in a future election -- Two Indian-American woman vying for the US presidency.
Its interesting to see your post to be so controversial. People who thinks all scientists are atheists either just don't know any scientists or never been out in the real world. There's really no difference between scientists and any regular population. I'm a engineer and in my group of about 40 engineers, many of us are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and some Atheists. We don't let religion interfere with our work, and there's no conflicts with each other. We do a mix of R&D in our work, and we build software and hardware that gets used by millions of consumers daily.
On top of Ryobi tools, when my Dyson cordless vac battery stopped holding a charge, I bought a Ryobi -> Dyson adapter, and now my Dyson vacuum also uses Ryobi batteries. Wife was really impressed with it because you can just swap out a new battery and keep on vacuuming. Also the vacuum actually make use of that battery way more than any of the actual power tools I have.
I remember seeing BYD in China back in the early 2000s with a logo that looks very similar to BMW's logo. I guess they have to start somewhere by copying somebody. There were also a lot of cars that had fake badges (added by the owner, not the manufacturer) in China, there was a strong desire for the western brands, of course, that's why Buicks and Audis were so popular in China. I guess I would stay away from that brand until it has proven itself somewhere else from China. Don't trust any stats published out of China.