I actually worked on the team that designed these! If I recall correctly, the top connector is for the motherboard BMC. It should work fine without being connected. The right hand side as others said is power.
That is not a plane if you look close. That is thieving. The board layout had no copper there, but this can make the plating process more difficult to get consistent across the board. Usually this is added by the fab house to help them manufacture the board.
Hi-resolution audio, especially for streaming. The general idea is that listening to digital audio files that have a greater bit depth and sample rate than CD (24-bit/192Khz vs 16-bit/44.1 KHz) translates to better-sounding audio, but in practice that isn’t the case.
For a detailed breakdown as to why, there’s a great explanation here. But in summary, the format for CDs was so chosen because it covers enough depth and range to cover the full spectrum of human hearing.
So while “hi-res” audio does contain a lot more information (which, incidentally, means it uses up significantly more data/storage space and costs more money), our ears aren’t capable of hearing it in the first place. Certain people may try to argue otherwise based on their own subjective experience, but to that I say “the placebo effect is a helluva drug.”
which, incidentally, means they use up significantly more data/storage space and cost more money
All of this is very true, but this is the only issue I really disagree with here.
I am in an era where a good quality rip of a movie can be almost 50 gigabytes by itself. That means for every terabyte of storage, I can store just 20 of movies of this size.
Don’t even get my started on television series and how big those can balloon to with the same kind of encoding.
An entire collection of FLACs, thousands of albums worth, is still less than 500 gigabytes total, in other words half a terabyte. (My personal collection anyway)
I mean, the average size of one of my FLAC albums is around 200-300 megabytes. Even with the larger “hi-res” FLAC files you’re still not getting as obscenely big as movie and television files.
Sure, it takes up more space than an MP3 or a FLAC properly encoded to CD standards (my preferred choice, for the reasons outlined above), but realistically, the amount of space it takes up compared to those is negligible when compared to other types of media.
Storage and energy to operate storage has become incredibly cheap, especially when you’re dealing with smaller files like this.
This is true, especially if you are storing files locally. However, even compared to “CD quality” FLAC, a 24/192 album is still going to be around three times larger (around 1GB per album) to download. If everyone switched over to streaming hi-res audio tomorrow, there would be a noticeable jump in worldwide Internet traffic.
I’m personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping up over 3x (and even more compared to lossy streaming) for no discernable benefit.
I’m personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping tenfold for no discernable benefit.
An extremely reasonable position to take! Because even if the increase in energy usage is negligible locally, when widespread, those small chunks of energy use add up into a much larger chunk of energy use. Especially when including transferring that over an endless number of networks.
I always talk about this in regards to automobiles and manual roll-up/down windows versus automatic windows. Sure, it’s an extremely small amount of energy to use for automatic windows on a car, but when you add up the energy used on every cars automatic windows through the life of each and every car with automatic windows and suddenly it’s no longer a small number. Very wasteful, imho.
50GB for the simple dual layer discs. You can theoretically reach 100GB with triple layer disks. The largest BDRip I have is 90GB for the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Edit: UHD Blu-ray only supports dual and triple layer disks, not quad. Quad layer discs do exist though, with up to 128GB of capacity.
Oh yeah. 128k rips from back then were rough. MP3 has gotten somewhat better since then, to be fair. V0/V1 VBR is still perfectly fine to listen to; it’s just not as efficient as the newer codecs.
Yeah they do, although CBR performs noticeably worse than VBR with Lame MP3. As I mentioned elsewhere, MP3 @ V0 or V1 VBR sounds just as good as the above. I just personally haven’t used MP3 for years because the newer codecs are more efficient.
VBR is always preferable over CBR, no matter video or audio encoding. I use OPUS a lot. Also YouTube providing OPUS 160 VBR as audio stream option for all of its content is very handy.
I’ve always kinda wondered about this. I’m not an audio guy and really can’t tell the difference between most of the standards. That said, I definitely remember tons and tons ‘experts’ telling me that no one can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p TV at typical distance to your couch. And I absolutely could and many of the people I know could. I can also tell the difference between 1080 and 4k, at the same distances.
So I’m curious if there’s just a natural variance in an individual’s ability to hear and audiophiles just have a better than average range that does exceed CD quality?
Similar to this, I can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, but not 60 to 120, yet some people swear they can. Which I believe, I just know that I can’t. Seems like these guidelines are probably more averages, rather than hard biological limits.
It’s a fair question. Human hearing ability is a spectrum like anything else, however when it comes to discerning the difference in audio quality, the vast, vast majority of people cannot reliably tell the difference between high-bitrate lossy and lossless when they do a double blinded test. And that includes audiophiles with equipment worth thousands of dollars.
Of that tiny minority who can consistently distinguish between the two, they generally can only tell by listening very closely for the very particular characteristics of the encoder format, which takes a highly trained ear and a lot of practice.
The blind aspect is important because side-by-side comparisons (be they different audio formats, or 60fps vs 120fps video) are highly unreliable because people will generally subconsciously prefer the one they know is supposed to be better.
i think hi res is for professional work. If you’re going to process, modify, mix, distort the audio in a studio, you probably want the higher bit depth or rate to start with, in case you amplify or distort something and end up with an unintended artefact that is human audible. But the output sound can be down rated back to human levels before final broadcast.
O couse if a marketing person finds out there is a such a thing as “professional quality”. . . See also “military spec”, “aerospace grade”
Yeah to expand on this, in professional settings you’ll want a higher sampling frequency so you don’t end up with eg. aliasing, but for consumer use ≥44–48kHz sampling rate is pretty much pointless
I think this is the case where certain people simply can’t see it here the difference.
I collect video game and movie soundtracks and the main difference I can hear between a 320kbps VS a FLAC that’s in the 1000kbps range is not straight up “clarity” in the sense that something like an instrument is “clearer” but rather the spacing and the ability to discern the difference where instruments come from is much better in a Hi-Res file with some decent wired headphones (my pair is $200). All this likey doesn’t matter much though when most users stream via Spotify which sounds worse than my 320kbps locally and people are using Bluetooth headphones at lower bitrates since they don’t have better codec compatibility like aptX and LDAC.
A lot of it will depend on your output device; cheap headphones will wreck audio quality.
I remember the bad old days when .mp3 files for streaming were often 128kbps (or less!); I could absolutely hear audio artifacts on those, and it got significantly worse with lower bitrates. 320kbps though seems to be both fairly small, and I can’t personally tell the difference between that and any lossless formats.
All you really need is the Nyquist frequency of human hearing to know. That’s a good breakdown for audiophiles I’m sure but it is broadly as simple as the Nyquist frequency.
Just wanted to say in case others see this, you can buy a .xyz domain from reputable places (maybe for a higher cost). I believe the OP is talking about the specific site ‘gen.xyz’.
I have an xyz domain with Cloudflare, host many things on it (like Jellyfin), and haven’t had any issues yet.
Edit: as many have pointed out, my understanding of registrars was wrong and gen.xyz actually owns all xyz tlds. Sleep in fear if you own one I suppose
Cloudflare can still go bad, but its usually for high-capacity users who are using way more than the average. I haven’t seen any homeserver users get hit with any trouble, but I’ve seen a couple small businesses have bad situations with Cloudflare, although it honestly seems like the minority.
Cloudflare has issues but for most its probably fine.
From what I’ve seen/heard, if you follow the ToS (usually by not proxy-ing hosts that shouldn’t be proxied or are in violation if they are) there’s nothing to be afraid of ¯\(ツ)/¯
I bought from njal.la. they were almost entirely unhelpful but pointed me to the site for the tld. It appeared through their wording that gen.xyz who owns the xyz tld was responsible for taking the domain down. I bought my new domain through porkbun tho.
Njalla just buys domains from major registrars on your behalf and owns them on your behalf. Godaddy, Tucows, etc. It was the owner of the entire .xyz space (gen.xyz) who shut your domain down. Njalla is just passing along the info. Porkbun will do the same.
Since its servhold, you may be able to remove the offending content (for a short time, anything public-facing) and then contact reg.xyz to get it unsuspended. You’re right though that’s not very good customer service.
On a related note, it’s possible a misconfiguration allowed some of the contents or index to be shown publicly and it got caught in a search engine and was taken down in an automated DMCA sweep. I believe .xyz is an American registrar so have to respond to DMCA but could be wrong on that. I like to stay with any .TLD that archive uses… md, ph, etc.
Finally, a question where i can shine. You don’t have to do anything specific. Just do things.
Use a headset with your phone or laptop: You are on a call. Most people don’t speak much at online meetings.
Take a little nap? Thinking.
Want some time alone? Go to a meeting room. Works even better if the room has glass walls since you can see them and they can see that you are “busy”, but no one sees your screen.
Have multiple monitors. There’s always something work-related on at least one screen.
Have fields of interest that blend in. If one of your hobbies is vaguely related to work you are golden. You can totally read something unrelated to work during working time if it seems most your attention goes towards work. (See multiple screens and some switching back and force.)
Shift your working hours slightly from the norm, i.e. come 5 min earlier than others.
Don’t hide windows with non-work stuff when someone sees them. Too late. Act as if you have nothing to hide.
Do a reasonable work-life blend. Work overtime occasionally at odd hours and make managers know that you solved an emergency in your free time. Gives you an excuse to leave early or slack off the next day and any other day.
React to emails with a resonable delay. Of course, you can help, but not right now. You are busy.
Id say the one thing I kind of disagree with here is the emails. If I’m at my computer and the email says “Are you able to handle this 15 minute job for me by EOD?” I respond immediately “Yeah, I can fit that in.” and then go back to whatever it was I was doing and handle it later.
If someone is asking me to do a big job I dont reply immediately and go do some prep work for the big job and email them an hour later. “Not a problem, Ill get on it ASAP.”
If you respond and get tasks done immediately sometimes it makes them think you must be in the middle of something when you dont. When someone gives you a big task that will take 4 hours and they check in on you 3 hours after you reply to the email and you’re almost finished, it puffs up your ability.
But in general I agree, responding to emails is a great tool for managing perceptions and expectations.
It’s a workplace monitoring tool dressed up as a workplace wellness tool.
You know that table that shows the risk of employees who might burn out, given their meeting frequency, teams interactions, email rate, work hours etc.? If you flip the sorting order, you can measure who isn’t doing enough (by whatever metrics the employer decides).
I Remote Desktop from my personal computer into my work computer. All personal stuff happens on the personal computer, the work computer is work stuff only. There is no way for my work to know I am “goofing off” while working.
As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.
It’s neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.
Doesn’t mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don’t need to deny that either.
We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream “blah-blah-blah” and pretend it never happened.
China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.
Doesn’t mean this didn’t happen in a capitalist world, and doesn’t mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.
Some people found their niche and created good for the world, for which they were financially rewarded (this stage is every capitalist proponent’s dream).
Then those who earned money this way let their heirs inherit wealth. Some of those heirs multiplied it, and became so wealthy they could influence either politicians or the market itself.
From that moment onwards, generation after generation accumulate power and skew the world to fit their needs, with little regard to anyone else.
Without wealth redistribution, everyone else loses real economic and political power, and this is an inevitable endgame for capitalism because without this incentive such people wouldn’t do good stuff for the world to begin with. We just finally reap the fruits of the system that were always there, and without a great shake, a “communist threat”, this isn’t going anywhere.
The thing that influenced the world and turned the tides in the early XX century was the success of Soviet Union which radicalized people around the globe and forced bourgeoisie to make concessions.
Unfortunately, workers of most countries stopped there, the proposed worldwide revolution never came, and most of the capital remained by capitalists, which has put socialist block at a huge capital disadvantage, with which they still managed to sustain for most of XX century, building huge economies almost from scratch.
Along this way, many regimes have either faced grave mistakes or considered all means worthy, which has led to a lot of suffering. This was exacerbated by the fact that socialist block was primarily dominated by authoritarian regimes, which gave carte blanche for many leaders to act as they please, with little regard to collateral damage. Aside from that, the Cold War, while it can and should be blamed on both sides of the conflict, has led to plenty of proxy wars costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
You also don’t affect lasting, meaningful change with dreams of an “uprising” or other fanciful ideas spawned by stories of Cuba in the 50’s. There will be no romantic struggle here, no plucky rebels, no heartwarming finale where everyone is happy.
If you want to make the world better, work on it from within the system and learn why the system is the way it is and what power you have as an individual and as a group, THIS is how people have changed the world before.
I would delight in socialism becoming more widespread and accepted as a system to maintain population growth and happiness, I argue for it all the time, we need a number of very important safety nets before we start feeling like our tax money is going into something less abstract than “America: fuck yeah!” But I also know it takes more than cosplay theatrics and defending tyrants.
Most radical shifts, especially as large as revamping an entire economic system, were violent or at least highly outside the existing framework, not some “change from the inside”.
Behind any government is a desire for self-preservation - and capitalist democracies rig elections by underrepresenting the disadvantaged and also, as other systems, through the bureaucratic inertia that is there for a reason.
Taking America as the most studied case, the two-party system absolutely does not allow for the building of socialism, as both parties are highly capitalist in nature, and the rest exist there as a pure formality, deprived of resources for actual political campaigning. All while plenty of anti-freedom acts are taken specifically to silence who people in power don’t want to see.
At the same time, the two leading parties create an illusion that this is the only choice and that Democrats are “the left” and act in the interest of the people. Even the most unprecedented case - the campaign of Bernie Sanders - came with what essentially can be seen as centrism - and even that was seen as “too much” with him failing miserably.
Similar story in many countries.
They flood the media, they control the opposition, and they approve anti-democratic laws - all to cement their place and make sure exactly that no change is ever gonna come from the inside.
Which is why, sadly, through all my desire for peace, I have to say that small and steady change is not enough. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t vote whoever’s the biggest and leftest in your area, that you shouldn’t do what is within the law and the current system to improve the situation where possible - but thinking it would be enough is a bit of a fairy dream.
The fairy dream here is thinking that America is ever going to suffer a violent uprising from a socialist/left direction.
I know if you consume all the propaganda it will feel like this is really the viable solution to so many of our problems, but every meme that proudly shows people in jumpsuits marching under a red flag, they tend to ignore the reality which is if every tankie and socialist were to topple the US government tomorrow, we would still have to live with the hundreds of millions of people who do NOT want a socialist utopia. There is no long-term planning, there is a really delusional belief with some people that actually says “Once the population sees how good it will be, they will fall in line” and I want to scream and physically shake you idiots out there who think this shit.
You can push our society towards more social policies that help more people, but this is nowhere close to a realistic time to talk about actual takeovers and coups. It’s insane and stupid and it fucking HURTS the cause advocating for better policies and social services.
That’s not what revolutionary Leftists think would happen, lol. That would be adventurism, not a mass worker movement. Please read any book by a revolutionary, nobody is advocating for coups and then hoping everyone falls in line, lol.
It sounds stupid because it is stupid, which is why the adventurists you speak of are seen as ridiculous among revolitionary leftists.
No one expects America to turn communist today, not in 10, 20, 50 years. The red scare and capitalist propaganda is so bad it would be idiotic to assume America as a socialist frontier.
But:
We have to work against red scare and change the people, not the government;
We should develop revolutionary movements in other parts of the world. The successes of USSR in the 30s have seriously affected people everywhere, including America.
I get involved in my local elections and city/county boards to endorse and support every policy or candidate that either leans distantly socialist, or puts any measure of power or control back in the hands of the people and workers. That alone will do far, far more realistic good for each of us than “developing revolutionary movements.” That’s still roleplaying and I don’t think the USSR’s “successes” were as meaningful as the tankies propaganda makes it out to be. But that’s not an invite for a biased history lesson.
I think USSR really did influence the world in a big way. No debates, just stating my stance.
It is great that you participate in what you do, and I advise any socialist to act the same, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do both.
Fight the system in existing framework, but don’t forget it’s not the only way. Think revolutionary, but do not settle for that alone and fight the system by legal means too. One shouldn’t exclude the other.
Not sure where you are from, but your type of worldly reasoned view does not come without exposure to multiple systems of governance. Labels like “socialism”, “communism”, “capitalism” are the Newspeak that are used to place the populace opinion into buckets with which to control. And I completely agree about the US - its entire history is based upon capitalism and will always be based upon capitalism. Biden is the MOST progressive president in 50 years, yet it’s a stretch to even call him a centrist he’s so enmeshed with the existing corporatists.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism is dictated by the common (social) ownership of the means of production, and communism is a subset of socialism that entails absence of money and private property (note: not personal property).
US is blatantly capitalist. Nordic countries are capitalist, too. USSR was socialist, Russia is capitalist; revolutionary regime preceding the creation of USSR was also briefly communist (see: War communism), though, make no mistake, this wasn’t the kind of communism anyone wanted, it’s just that government couldn’t run monetary policy properly at the time and had even bigger issues.
We can be critical of the mistakes of past socialist systems without falling into the trap of believing every red scare era lie about them.
Not defending past socialist systems’ accomplishments makes current socialists look like absolute cucks.
Winning the rhetorical war cannot be done if you stop to qualify every single thing you advocate for by disavowing every society that has ever advocated for that thing. The USSR was the most equal society that has existed on this earth since the industrial revolution, and served every one of its member countries better than they are served by their capitalist successor governments today. Meanwhile, basically every person who has been lifted out of poverty in the past thirty years has been Chinese, proving that socialism fucking works in a way that capitalism doesn’t, even when both systems contain markets, wage labor, and an investment class.
We can be critical of the mistakes of past socialist systems without falling into the trap of believing every red scare era lie about them.
Absolutely! But we should also own up to the mistakes that really happened. China did turn to markets, because capitalist world once again got a critical share, and the benefits of international trade could hardly be overlooked. Tiannamen square massacre really happened, as documented in many instances. The conversion happening in Xinjiang is barely peaceful. USSR really did send insane amounts of people to GULAG, despite the scale of this atrocity often being overblown by liberals (but even still it’s massive), and really did forcefully move entire nationalities.
Don’t get me wrong, by any means, I do not denounce USSR or China and the roles they took in building a better future for everyone. In fact, the achievements they’ve made forced governments around the world to improve working and living conditions of the people - people that saw what the world could actually be. And inside countries, socialism has caused immense economic improvements - though, it must be said, the turn in both USSR and China was cruel and radical, which caused a lot of massive supply problems, famines, and more. But at the end of the day, they truly emerged the powerful forces on the world stage, and this really was an economic miracle and victory of the people.
If I would personally assess the heritage of the socialist era, I would say it was a massive win for the world. But if we want for the socialism to finally take over the world, we need to be fair with ourselves and others on the shortcomings of the bygone times. At the very least, not to repeat them again.
You could write textbooks about bad Chinese policies - foreign and domestic.
But a country on it’s fifteenth five year plan is most definitely socialist. And if any nation can qualify as “good”, the miracle of Chinese central planning would seem to qualify.
That’s why leftists are prone to like it. That, and the derth of foreign military conflicts. At least from the perspective of an American, the Chinese government is practically saint-like, simply because it isn’t trying to regime change every country it doesn’t like.
Pre-Iraq, I think you could make a much stronger “China bad” argument. But the bar is so much lower now.
The economy of China is not characterized by the common/social ownership of the means of production, which means it is not socialist. No amount of five-year plans can change that.
China does spark international conflicts and does bully its neighbors, but it is true that the country doesn’t cosplay world police and doesn’t participate much in military operations outside the country, which is a big plus.
As per the bar, it shouldn’t fall lower just because some country got even more evil. We can compare the evils, but the evil will be there.
With all that said, I do not say “China bad”. But claiming “China good” would also not be correct.
I don’t think people are saying that the PRC is economically Socialist, just that it has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat of some sort and appears to be more keen on keeping its bourgeoisie in check.
Coupled with their intent to challenge Western Imperialism (Lenin’s definition), I believe this explains critical support among Marxists for the PRC, despite the many flaws.
Kinda like supporting Biden over Trump, not like supporting Bernie over Trump. You work with what’s actually there, even if it isn’t what you wished, and hope things change for the better.
The economy of China is not characterized by the common/social ownership of the means of production
30% of their industry is SOEs. They have a 90% home ownership rate and one of the most generous pension systems left standing - affording Chinese workers the opportunity to retire inside their 50s. The local property laws force foreign companies to share equity with regional firms, keeping both profits and IP domestic.
And while the high point of the old-school Commune System is long passed, the household responsibility system still guarantees public ownership of arable land. If you work the land, you own the fruit of your labor. That’s textbook Communism.
China does spark international conflicts and does bully its neighbors
the country doesn’t cosplay world police and doesn’t participate much in military operations outside the country, which is a big plus.
It goes beyond the negative. They’ve been a positive force for international relations, helping to buffer North and South Korea to prevent a new war, exporting $100B/year in agriculture products to curb global hunger, and pioneering industrial scale solar, wind, and nuclear technologies to mitigate climate change.
As a global diplomat, they’ve got cache that the Western states have squandered, making them a popular back channel in Middle Eastern politics.
And to quote Dr. Lubinda Haabazoka, Director at the University of Zambia’s Graduate School of Business
Every time Britain visits we get a lecture, every time China visits we get a hospital.
I would say that alone illustrates why Chinese foreign policy deserves praise.
Textbook communism is an economy that is 100% worker-owned, with everyone’s needs directly met without the intervention of money. The rest is not that, by literal definition. Let’s not play into the hands of people who want to call that communism and ultra-left to exploit in their own needs.
China does have some strong policies, but it doesn’t make it communist by any definition. Also, high home ownership rate is mostly a cultural phenomenon, with housing still seen as “best investment” despite the fact there are entire ghost towns full of houses that never ever filled.
I’m well aware that US pressures China militarily, and that China has a much more peaceful approach. However, Chinese ships regularly bully other countries in the South China Sea against international maritime laws.
The infrastructure China builds is not just a gift - but an investment on which China expects a return. I’m not convinced China is actively pursuing debt trap diplomacy, but it certainly uses economic power to pressure other countries into various concessions.
Textbook communism is an economy that is 100% worker-owned, with everyone’s needs directly met without the intervention of money
Utopian Communism is a stateless, moniless society that was hypothized by 19th century European theorists as a possible result of generations of revolutionary struggle.
But if you sit down and read the textbook, you’ll discover even the most idealistic thinkers don’t hold that it would happen overnight. Marx, himself, asserts a number of transitional states - industrial capitalism being one of them - necessary to reach surplus volumes capable of sustaining a post-money society.
China does have some strong policies, but it doesn’t make it communist by any definition.
The policies are the direct result of experimental application of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socio-economic theory. They are explicitly and deliberately Communist, in the same way that American socio-economic policy is Capitalist.
The end goal of Chinese state policy is to advance to a state of publicly controlled superabundance. This is markedly different from the American policies intended to fashion fully privatized ownership of an artificially scare pool of goods and services.
The infrastructure China builds is not just a gift - but an investment on which China expects a return.
A return in the form of improved economic and political relations. It is for the same reason you would bring a gift to a birthday party.
I’m saying that China does not economically classify as a communist state, neither did even USSR, because it just wasn’t feasible at the moment.
I’m combating the change of meaning where communism as officially proclaimed ideology is conflated with communism as an actual economic system. As a result of this, people start thinking that communism is when a state controls some sides of economy and gets involved in social programs, which is not a definition of communism, it’s a capitalist state with social elements.
A state can even apply some of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles, but it is economically capitalist as long as means of production are controlled by private entities looking for profit. This is not an argument about what China should or shouldn’t do - this is an argument that China is not economically communist or even socialist, like it or not. Neither was USSR during the so-called New Economic Policy.
I’m saying that China does not economically classify as a communist state
They do. Because they’re pursuing communist economic policies.
communism as officially proclaimed ideology is conflated with communism as an actual economic system
Sure. If I’m Elon Musk and saying “By the way, I am actually a socialist. Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive” then that’s horseshit nonsense.
However, if I’m Luo Wen, the current director of the State Administration for Market Regulation, focused on breaking up monopolies and limiting the capacity of private business to consolidate control in a given industry, I’m both ideologically and actually committed to communist economic principles.
A state can even apply some of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles, but it is economically capitalist as long as means of production are controlled by private entities
The Chinese state leadership gave up on trying to be direct owner-operators of capital during the Deng Era. However, it still strictly enforces a prohibition on foreign control of domestic capital as a legacy of its anti-colonial mission. The means of production remain property of the Chinese proletariat.
If you’re Luo Wen, you’re in favor of state regulations of the capitalist market; you are not pursuing communist policies.
It’s not enough to maintain domestic control of the capital - this is a feature of any protectionist regime, even a fascist one. You should also make sure this capital is entirely democratically controlled and owned by the workers - which is not what happens in China. The capital of Chinese businesses is not the “property of workers”.
Strict prohibitions on foreign controlling interest in real estate, capital, and intellectual property, for starters.
If you’re Luo Wen, you’re in favor of state regulations of the capitalist market
State regulation for the purpose of limiting foreign ownership, foreign manipulation of domestic markets, and foreign monopoly of natural resources. This leads to:
Enormous SOEs where demand is inelastic - in the utilities, agriculture, education, and health care sectors.
Domestication of intellectual property, such that foreign investors effectively subsidize Chinese R&D and future capital improvements
Large investments in public infrastructure which operates at-cost or at-loss, for the purpose of stimulating domestic economic growth
Stringent restrictions on what is seen as socially harmful economic activity - casinos/gambling, recreational drug use, electronic entertainment, and reactionary media
Protecting the viability of public pensions and public insurance, for the purpose of flattening the risk curve and improving long term quality of life
All of these rules are intended to protect domestic markets and maintain local control of business capital.
The capital of Chinese businesses is not the “property of workers”.
It is the property of the Chinese People, as opposed to a cartel of foreign landlords. The surplus produced by Chinese business returns to the Chinese economy in the form of improvements to the socio-economic landscape. Chinese consumers enjoy an abundance of at-cost / below-cost social services, because they are not exposed to the rent-seeking behaviors of the predatory capitalist class. And Chinese business executives suffer the kind of regulatory surveillance and oversight that is largely neglected in Western democracies.
This guarantees that workers enjoy the surplus value of their labor. And that is the end goal of a Communist economy.
Strict prohibitions on foreign controlling interest in real estate, capital, and intellectual property, for starters.
This is protectionism and it has literally nothing to do with communism. Those are two absolute different things that can coexist or not coexist.
Same relates to your other points.
Your rhetoric is eerily similar to protectionist points of Nazi Germany, a very non-communist state that was obsessed with domestic control and protecting domestic capitalist with the proclaimed idea of “capital belonging to all people of Germany”, as opposed to “evil Jewish cartels”.
Simply trapping the capital inside the country speaks little of what gets to the workers. And if we talk communism, ALL of the capital is directly owned by the collective of workers. Which is not China.
This is protectionism and it has literally nothing to do with communism.
It’s protection for domestic ownership of property.
Your rhetoric is eerily similar to protectionist points of Nazi Germany
It was similar to Communist protectionist points of the KDP.
You’ve been pumped full of bad info, and at this point I don’t know what to tell you except to get outside whatever Western propaganda hot house you’ve found yourself in.
As I said, protectionism may coexist or not coexist with communism, as it can with any other economic system.
If you’re serious about equating protectionism and communism, you should probably be happy with the way things were done in the Third Reich.
You should seriously reconsider the terms you employ, and read the classics more thoroughly. Also, open the goddamn Wikipedia if you’re too lazy for that.
protectionism doesn’t mean communism and globalism doesn’t mean capitalism
Capitalism requires an economic frontier for continuous growth, which necessitates extraterritorial expansion. Communism requires home rule and self-sufficient domestic industry, which necessitates protectionism.
They are different terms for a reason.
One describes a broad philosophy and the other describes a tool of policy. Might as well say Plumber and Pipe are different terms for a reason.
Communism does not necessitate self-sufficiency, moreover, a switch to fully domestic production is detrimental to any economy. The reason modern economy is globalized is that it’s simply more efficient, and capitalist economies are all about efficiency, as it allows to extract more value. At the same time, many past socialist economies were forced to only partner with other socialist economies, which limited their options and hurt their economy.
One of the key reasons communist classics called for a global revolution is to gain the critical mass of communism-aligned countries to minimize this effect and maximize globalization efforts. The communist endgame is one interconnected world without any nations to begin with, not to mention any protectionism.
Currently we are witnessing a capitalist genocide in Gaza were children are starving to death and the working class are powerless to stop this. But yea denial on both sides certainty is problematic, the issue is though “tankie” communists will argue propaganda as well as the libs and conservatives. We have been bombarded with fictitious narrative that its a real struggle to find comprehensive and honest reporting of previous events.
Last month I read a “tankies” recap on Tiannamen Square protests, it went as far as to say there was no massacre and quoted creditable journalist that had reported a peaceful evening on the night of the massacre, but I equally saw photos of piled up buddies, bloodied police officers and alike. There’s also a conspiracy that the CIA staged the massacre or played some rule within it.
Ive also dealt with american denying the genocide in Vietnam, or Americas rule in creating North Korean.
Lobbying in and of itself isn’t bad, it makes our politicians aware of issues and alternatives.
Unrestricted lobbying is the problem, I recently read that lobbyists from Amazon would no longer have access cards to the European parliament so they no longer could come and go as they liked.
I just wonder why lobbyists ever got that access in the first place…
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that’s lobbying. You’re asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others’) benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren’t necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I’m sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn’t really work. Now if you’re talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
Lobbying as in “bribery with extra steps” where companies give money to politicians, ask them to do something, then say it’s ok because it’s “lobbying” and therefore not bribery, but people are coming in and pointing out how lobbying technically just means talking to politicians, but that’s not what RotatingParts meant.
Isn’t the problem that the “extra steps” are loopholes?
And legal loopholes are like a hydra. Close one and the lawyers will open up two more.
I imagine the line is hard to draw. But of course, the ones doing the drawing of that line are also on the receiving end of the good stuff, so there’s incentives to not close those loopholes…
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I’m sure there are ways to dial in the abuse, but what legislator is gonna vote for that?
If you own housing that you rent out more than you use it yourself, you’re a landlord.
If you rent out your house or apartment while you’re on vacation, I wouldn’t call you a landlord. But if you have a house or apartment that you only ever offer on AirBNB without ever using it yourself, you’re a landlord.
Btw, I don’t agree that being a landlord makes you deserving of a guillotine, but I do agree that we should limit the ownership of housing to natural persons, with a limit on how much space a person can own.
Buy a second house, fix it up, then sell it OR rent it to help cover the debt and maybe generate enough income to retire early. It’s one of not very many ways regular(ish) people can reliably climb the financial ladder or not work until 75.
Nobody needs 40 properties, but I don’t see anything wrong with one or two. I’m not a landlord myself, but I’ve rented and owned and can see the appeal of a second property.
I can say that having only one rental… is not enough. We have started the process to sell our rental as we were only making < $1500/year on it. It just wasn’t worth it. But if we had had around 3-ish rentals then maybe it would’ve been better as they could better support one another. We charged a lot for rent, but, after taxes, insurance, near constant repairs, and now the threat of not being able to secure insurance (due to companies leaving the higher risk area that we were in,) it just isn’t worth the hassle for a single home rental unless it is next door to your own house, and you are doing the repairs.
My take is that 1-2 houses still isn’t enough. Especially if you’re trying to replace active income generation (jobs and such). Nobody needs 40 units (that would be it’s own property mgmt. job), but one or two is most certainly not enough. I could probably get by with the income of ~10 if a property mgmt company was supporting me.
The problem isn’t that people are trying to make money off of rentals, it’s that people are trying to make too much money off rentals by raising monthly rates to rent-trap level, and low-to-non-existent repair-rates.
Yeah I kinda figured that was the case but I didn’t want to sound like some rich prick that people here in the comments would like to eat lol. As I understand it, you’re just better off taking the interest off your bank accounts vs trying to swing a single rental. Flipping can work but it requires an amount of skill that not everybody has, especially if you have to hire contractors to do the work for you. But yeah if I were to do it, I would probably run straight to a management company.
It seems to me that the average “slightly above average Joe” could afford a second property; my parents are not wealthy (they are semi retired and generally gross less than 20k/year, but own all their stuff outright) but found a house to rent to my brother and I while we were in college and it was a huge boon for everyone involved. My family income is significantly higher, but we don’t have a pool full of money to swim in. From the outside it looks like real estate is an attractive, stable way to grow an investment as opposed to stock market dabbles.
As an aside, and this is all an incredibly “first world” kind of a situation, but I’m not sure how you address the bitterness of some circles (like maybe this thread?) toward the layer of people who got ROI on hard work: I’d also be a proponent of limiting legacy wealth and eating billionaires. I was in college for 15 years at a state school and worked 10 at a university before I made big boy money and got stuff on my own. Not everybody who has some extra money got it by lucky birth or by exploiting the masses and I’ve still got loans to pay, why not own some houses for people like past-me to rent and make a little extra for the effort? I guess it’s easier to see it this way from this side of the problem.
As an aside, and this is all an incredibly “first world” kind of a situation, but I’m not sure how you address the bitterness of some circles (like maybe this thread?) toward the layer of people who got ROI on hard work: I’d also be a proponent of limiting legacy wealth and eating billionaires. I was in college for 15 years at a state school and worked 10 at a university before I made big boy money and got stuff on my own. Not everybody who has some extra money got it by lucky birth or by exploiting the masses and I’ve still got loans to pay, why not own some houses for people like past-me to rent and make a little extra for the effort? I guess it’s easier to see it this way from this side of the problem.
I usually handle this by reminding people-at-large that landlords are not the problem. “Rent-seeking” landlords are the problem. I’d imagine that given the ARR-mindset of some of the larger players also contributes to the negative stereotype. Where the goal is not “Providing a Service”, but instead it is “Building Capital”, that’s where I start to lose interest.
I too, feel that if your annual income is greater than 8 zeros, then you should get a plaque from the IRS saying “Congratulations, you’ve beaten capitalism this year, now go outside and touch grass.” and everything above that is used to actually better society. This is what progressive taxes that were reduced 40 years ago were intended to do (Source: Effects of Reaganomics).
I don’t feel lost in a crowd of shitposters. I post something on c/poetry, ten people upvote and I’m like hey ten people read this, that’s cool. It feels real where Reddit does not often.
I’m glad you like! I’ve discovered that if I check out several poetry ebooks on my phone at a time I’ll always stumble across something amazing. Someone asked me last week who my favourite poets are, and it’s really a five way tie.
Afaik upvote count on Reddit isn’t even real anymore. It is still somehow rooted on the real count but their algorithm tampers with the count in undisclosed ways.
That’s right, the votes are fuzzed. I left Reddit after I made a post about a Nazi, and Reddit banned me for harassing Nazis. Reddit is evidently ok with Nazis.
Exactly this. Everyone has enough space to have their voice heard here. There aren’t too many threads I read where i get bored before I read everyone’s comments.
I post every day since I know people will see it and it won’t immediately get buried. I get to know the names of people that regularly comment on my posts. Just seems more personal.
I’d been toying with the idea forever. My earbuds are old, a little bulky, have some connectivity issues when one disconnects and it takes a lot of fussing to get them reconnected. So I decided to spend the money.
I get them from B&H. I get home, put them in, one of them has some sound issues—but other than that, the sound and fit were perfect. Like, they were my glass slipper. They fit perfectly, the seal was perfect, they wouldn’t ever hurt my ears after extended use…I was shocked.
But.
Having issues with one, I started messing with them, seeing if could get support or troubleshoot. Of course the first thing in the box is a QR for their app. Now, I never fuck with physical products apps. If I need an app, chances are I won’t use your shit. But I really wanted these to work, so I go to the app, and dig through the privacy policy.
Two addenda later, they’re trying to get me to sign the most obscene privacy policy ever. Listen to/record everything I play, collect a profile on me, listen to any ambient noise around the microphone, and weirdly, “map my head shape and movements?”
I deleted that app as quickly as I could. So I go to their support page on their site. Get into a chat with their customer service bot. It says, “replying to this message is agreement to our privacy policy.” So I open the link, read it…it kinda seems reasonable. Just talking about using my chat responses for training, standard. But then THREE layers of addenda deep I find here trying to get me to sign THE EXACT SAME FUCKIN POLICY.
I ran those fuckers back to the store. But not before trying to get someone on the phone about the legal matters. Yeah, nah. They wouldn’t connect me to someone in their legal dept. In fact, the very request seemed to puzzle them to no end.
Is it possible to accept to those terms but disconnect the app from internet access completely so that prevents any calling back to the server? I believe you should be able to run it without internet.
Still a shame that there exists such an invasive privacy policy. I use IEMs when I’m on the go and wired akg k371 when I’m at home.
Well, that’s actually what I was trying to find out. I tried getting their legal dept on the phone because I wanted to be 100% sure I could use those earbuds without ever agreeing to the policy. When they wouldn’t or couldn’t give me an answer, I said fuck them.
They were great headphones. But I didn’t even want to chance that kind of invasion. And I doubt there’d be any way I could be sure of a company clearly willing to violate my privacy so hard would not be collecting that data without my consent. Using their fuckin site was a minefield in itself because they were trying really fuckin hard to get me to sign that policy—not even sign it, just tacitly agree to it by responding to one message in order to get help. Too dicey for my liking.
I don’t know if any company would comply with this request, unless you’re calling a law firm of course. Lawyers’ time is expensive and they don’t spend it speaking to end-users. You could try emailing their legal department - they may have a customer service rep that understands the legal side of things.
We live in fucked up times. I don’t have the patience to read through privacy policies, so I basically have to avoid buying anything that has any kind of sensor on it.
I have some QC25 headphones I bought in 2015 and they’re still working well, other than having to replace the cushions a few times. No “smart” features, just a regular cable to plug them in. Noise canceling works well and I use it whenever I’m flying somewhere. They take AA batteries which is way more convenient than a built-in battery. I use Eneloops, and once the batteries don’t hold a charge well any more, I can just get new ones.
You did not miss much don’t worry. I have them as well, their NC capability sucks, and they run a master slave setup meaning the right unit must be present to operate, you can’t only use the left unit. I regret buying mine
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