I know what happens. I put on a bunch of weight, the automatic immigration gate wouldn’t let me through and I got sent to the desk with a person. they told me it was because my face has changed too much grin they made a new picture and I was fine after that.
I lost a bunch of weight recently and while the machines let me in they wouldn’t let me out without going to the big desk again for a new photo.
The real estate market doesn’t account for 30% of the economy. Though I suppose there’s a bunch of way to measure “the economy”.
There is pent up demand for housing yet property marketing is dropping. Actually it may have bottomed out but who knows. Beijing wants to correct it and that’s what’s been happening.
I have property in tier 1 and tier 2, it dropped to pre covid levels. I wasn’t doing property for quick flips but I definitely noticed it.
The scars of covid are everywhere in China just like most countries. its going to take a while for it to recover. just like everywhere else.
China collapse remains a click bait dream for the time being if you ask me.
There’s a bit more to it than that. But yes EVs are subsidized in China.
I worked in a business where we had one product that was useful for automakers but especially useful for EVs. About 8 years ago the EVs in China were mostly cheap shitty BYDs.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the government changed a bunch of rules and regulations for new cars. Within a month design teams were being established at every major automaker in China focusing on EVs. It was a great year for us.
Key EV components, especially the materials to make batteries, started to come down in price.
Then the green plates started turning up. Every city has its own rules for car registration, some places like Shanghai, would auction new number plates each month resulting in a low supply and high demand. It was possible to buy a car cheaper than the number plate. Then if you register an EV you can get a green plate for almost nothing.
About 3 years ago the cities started requiring new taxis and busses to be EV. Places like shenzhen just converted everything to EV. Released licenses for training and testing self driving.
Charge stations started popping up everywhere. There’s no way a shopping mall or new residential development could avoid having at least a large section for charging. My own home, converted an entire floor to charging parking stations in the underground car park.
Finally tesla set up Shanghai giga factory. I have no idea how they managed to make that deal but not long after they started shipping model 3s domestically they slashed the prices down to cheaper than a niceish BYD.
If you go to Shenzhen today about a third of cars are EV and you will see a dozen brands you’ve never heard of before (some are terrible cars, but most are reasonable quality and a handful are bullshit luxury)
As in tradition in China, the government will now let them go into a price war to push the manufacturers to find cheaper ways to make them. Many will go bust or give up.
my mum bought me a vic-20. it was beat up and didn’t have a tape deck.
I had type my games in from a magazine in basic for a summer, I was hooked.
My uncle gave me a photocopy of a book about assembly for c64 and showed me intros on his c128. He had no idea about programming, he just figured I’d be into it. I worked my heart out to get the cash together for a c64 AND a disk drive.
yeh but I got ten years of a really great game, with a really great community. It took a long time for me to care that the lane change mechanics weren’t optimal.
that ten years buys a fuck ton of good will for me. Life doesn’t run on legal obligations.
Yhey optimized and expanded the last CS game for like ten years. It was driven by DLC but the entire time CS vanilla was getting fixes and improvements.
There were some pretty lame limitations to the core simulation that stayed there the entire time but at least the devs were pretty open about having no plans to change them.
The CS2 story won’t really play out entirely for a year or two yet.
I have to assume that openAI also paid for the books. if yes then i consider it the same as me reciting passages from memory or coming up with derivative text.
if no, then by all means, go after them and any model trainer for the cost of one book.
Asking an LLM to recite an entire novel isn’t even vaguely a thing yet.
I didnt like friendlyjordies brand of humor. not one bit.
when he started going after that dog cunt broz I couldn’t help myself. I had to watch.
by now I love him, he’s become a hero of what free speech (such that it) is in Australia. served with a massive dose of sarcasm and ridicule.
I’ll keeping giving him money and watching his shit while he keeps going there and calling out all the bullshit that goes on in australian government.
It’s going to freak you out to learn there are actually pro-unification people in Taiwan of the “one country two systems” ilk. A lot less than there used to be, and I doubt it will ever be more than it is now.
This guy has been mega successful on the mainland he had reason to believe it would be a good thing for Taiwan.
If you ask people on the street most of them just want peace. Even if that means the Taiwan question never gets answered in their lifetime. When some thirsty westerner grand stands about Taiwan they cringe in fear knowing it will be their families who has to pay the bill.
Alot of people on either side of the strait feel nothing will happen and are tied of politicians amping it up and tempting fate.
China was briefly an observer state to Warsaw Pact and then pretty quickly completely withdrew.
After sino-sovet split in the early 60s Sino-soviet relations did not really normalize until Gorbachev.