> The ethos assumes a world in which Bitcoin has become widely accepted as a currency... That world wasn't necessarily impossible.
That world has always been a hallucination at best and a cruel deception at worst, but it's never been possible and never will be.
> Bitcoin was never adopted as a currency
It was and it is, it's not a central bank currency but the promise of BTC is the opposite of that. BTC is officially tradable in the US, you can exchange it for dollars to pay your taxes.
> so there was no way to anchor its value.
The promise of BTC has never been "anchored value"... it's always been a "to the moon" scam.
> It's still possible that the US government could... anchor the price of BTC, the whitepaper ethos could find a foothold.
That cannot happen without invalidating everything written in the white paper, in other words that wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore and nothing like that could function in the current financial system.
Collectively, "social media" is basically everything that allows interactive expression and evolution of different opinions online. The manipulation of Big Social is simply a deterrent to that process, in effect it's a tool against good social media.
> any harm which comes from the misuse needs to be very carefully weighed against the benefits.
Also, misuse can be addressed in different ways, blanket bans and surveillance-enabling authentication are misuse themselves.
> Maybe China should not have blocked rare earth exports
They didn't block exports, they required government permission for export. [1]
And that happened after 150% tariffs on China and the ban of exporting EUV semiconductor equipment to them. China's response was a quite normal negotiation tactic given the chapter of "The Art of the Deal" which was being used against them.
"On 4 April 2025, as one of the responses to US President Donald Trump’s administration’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, China introduced export controls on seven heavy REEs (with licensing requirements), as well as on all related compounds, metals and magnets. Exporters are required to obtain a licence, and need to provide information on the end users of REEs" [1]
Then the tariffs normalized somewhat but the EUV ban remains, nevertheless China repealed the licensing on rare-earths as a sign of good will - only to be blamed for... the policies of others which have shown to bring only suffering, poverty and wars.
> This is why ExChina is the name-of-the-game in the REE space, because this risk has been something most of us in the space recognized would occur since 2011
Subsidies are normal in the West, it's not China's fault that the West didn't subsidize rare-earths for many years. The issue here is excusing other risky policies (erratic tariffs, hostile trade restrictions, etc) with a country that simply provided what they were asked to provide.
> China repealed the ban on rare-earths as a sign of good will
This is the crux of the issue. To Indian, Japanese, European, and policymakers of other affected nations even taking such an attempt against them burnt all goodwill to China.
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Following the export controls in 2025, the decision was made in most countries to expand the development of an ExChina supply chain.
> Following the export controls in 2025, the decision was made in most countries to expand the development of an ExChina supply chain. > This is the crux of the issue.
It's not. I clearly stated that developing an REE supply chain outside of China had to be done a lot earlier.
The crux of the issue is these countries are blaming China for the fragility of the supply chain instead of blaming themselves for their tardiness while thanking China for sending a clear message - "develop your own sheet, we are afraid of running out ourselves".
I'm talking politics 101 but, by default, you're stuck on "blame China" which is how we fail to fix the real problems - they don't come from China.
Not subsidizing REE earlier was a dumb decision, doing it belatedly by way of hostile alliances against the single, long time and rather benevolent supplier is another folly.
Include China in the negotiations, its a simple matter! Too bad the "China bad" attitude is so addictive that it excludes rational thinking.
This is a misquoting of my tiny quote blurb so it is clear that your are discussing this topic in bad faith.
The key demand for India, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, and other Asian nations adjacent to the PRC is that the PRC negotiate in good faith and frankly, drop demands over Ladakh/Arunachal, Senkaku, Hoang Sa, the Yellow Sea, and other disputes.
This means mutually discussing how to develop an offramp. And as I mentioned elsewhere, Asian states already began building an ExChina supply chain for critical minerals processing and magnet manufacturing in the 2011-17 period.
The issue is the PRC under the current administration has not negotiated from a position of good faith, which has forced all neighboring nations to start building their own supply chains and ecosystems independent of PRC.
The PRC has also been treating the EU in bad faith by undermining the EU as an institution (which I have noted multiple times before with sources) as well as a fairly mainstream view in MOFA affiliated think tanks that the EU will always be subservient to American interests [0] as well as attempting to kidnap European nationals [1] and running disinformation campaigns against European defense exports [2]
This is why there is a global initiative now to build a critical minerals supply chain without China.
> you simply can't run the business without a minimum price or equivalent ongoing subsidy.
This is the question - what form of subsidy to use? You seem to imply they're all the same but that isn't true. For example, farming is subsidized in the US without mandating minimum prices - there seem to be good reasons for that but why are minerals so much different as to warrant a different approach which is significantly more disruptive to competition and thus to market forces?
> The US is the largest consumer and could be a major supplier of these minerals. Their position on this issue is relevant regardless of trust.
That statement is irrelevant to the quote it replied to. The issue was trust regarding agreement-breaking tariff and other trade policies which turn any agreement into a one-sided tool for achieving market domination - that is, when one side conforms to agreements and the other doesn't, that other side is effectively dictating its conditions to the rest. This should be quite obvious but what do I know.
Farming in the US is indeed subsidized with minimum prices. Because the government isn't itself in the value chain of most farm goods, there's a two-level payment structure; rather than telling the buyer they must pay at least $X, the government steps in to pay the difference between the market price and the minimum (https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/programs/arc-plc). But the products made from critical minerals are almost all destined for government purchase, so there's no point in complicating things.
> That statement is irrelevant to the quote it replied to.
I don't think that's true, unless the quote was meant as a snippy aside that's irrelevant to the source article. If the US wants to talk about critical minerals, you can (probably should!) be skeptical of any promises or commitments the current administration makes, but refusing to talk isn't a realistic option.
They're talking to China too, to be clear. The EU hosted talks in October. However, the Chinese position on the matter is pretty clear: they're happy to export these minerals for civilian applications, but they don't want to supply foreign militaries, and they're going to enact whatever restrictions are necessary to ensure that stops happening.
> They're talking to China too, to be clear. The EU hosted talks in October. However, the Chinese position on the matter is pretty clear: they're happy to export these minerals for civilian applications, but they don't want to supply foreign militaries, and they're going to enact whatever restrictions are necessary to ensure that stops happening.
This is also why the EU signed a Defense Pact with India [0] and Vietnam [1] last week - critical mineral sourcing from India and Vietnam leveraging Japanese [2] and Korean [3] technology partnerships in both countries drove both deals. Additonally, both Indian and Vietnamese component and defense vendors are now elligible to participate in Rearm Europe/Readiness 2030 along with their Japanese and Korean partners like Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Hyundai, and Samsung.
Most countries are adopting a Production Linked Incentive model for REEs which Vietnam [1] and India [0] are using to build our capacity, as both face active military disputes against China, and have been supported by Japanese [2] and Korean [3] processing tech transfers and JVs.
Western countries like Australia and the US are adopting similar strategies, which is the point of the summit mentioned.
> The issue was trust regarding agreement-breaking tariff and other trade policies which turn any agreement into a one-sided tool for achieving market domination
The issue is China has already [4] done [5] this [6] for over a decade [7].
As such, most countries (especially Asian countries where the majority of the electronic supply chain exist) are fine working with the US because China is an existential threat that wishes to invade them.
The EU used to be on the fence but Chinese leadership's constant undermining [8] of the EU [9] as an institution [10] led the EU to get on board as well.
These drones have cameras, it's a matter of time before they "share" footage... basically becoming robo-cops, traffic edition - this might be of interest to your coworker.
Most roads already have plenty of cameras registering passing cars, so if you want to travel highly privately, take a bike, which does not require number plates. Also don't forget to wrap your phone in foil (yes, even when turned off), and regularly change your shirt color, or something.
If you are not that paranoid, you might appreciate the extra camera footage available from passing cars in an event of an accident involving you.
> Social media has given me a rather dim view of the quality of people's thinking, long before AI. Outsourcing it could well be an improvement.
Cogito, ergo sum
The corollary is: absence of thinking equals non-existence. I don't see how that can be an improvement. Improvement can happen only when it's applied to the quality of people's thinking.
The converse need not hold. Cognition implies existence; it is sufficient but not necessary. Plenty of things exist without thinking.
(And that's not what the Cogito means in the first place. It's a statement about knowledge: I think therefore it is a fact that I am. Descartes is using it as the basis of epistemology; he has demonstrated from first principles that at least one thing exists.)
I know the trivialities. I didn't intend to make a general or formal statement, we're talking about people. In a competitive world, those who've been reduced to idiocracy won't survive, AI not only isn't going to help them, it will be used against them.
> Plenty of things exist without thinking.
Existence in an animal farm isn't human existence.
> How is impossible to stop using electronic warfare when it's communicating electronically?
It's narrow beam directed communication, hard to track down or jam especially if you don't have full control over the area and the air above it.
> How is Iran supposedly jamming Starlink?
Full control on the ground and up helps a lot, besides, the ground stations there are few and far between.
> any terminal not sold to Ukraine being activated in Ukraine could be flagged and disabled immediately.
To prevent the use of stolen or captured equipment, Starlink and Ukraine should maintain a shared list of valid active terminals in the area which would be updated in every case of terminals switching hands. I doubt that is being done though, it seems Starlink in Ukraine is more like a "dump and forget" operation. I also doubt that there's a real political will to help Ukraine this side of the pond.
> AI had a real impact on certain daily activities, such as search, coding, etc.
You aren't addressing the issue at hand, the problem isn't a total lack of impact, it's the cost of that impact, both the actual and the opportunity cost of it.
Currently, the AI "revolution" is running on pure credit - as every other bubble - even the operating costs of the AI supply chain exceed its income and economic impact. Their capital expenses are orders of magnitude higher and constitute a severe drag on the rest of the economy.
There's no indication that anything would change in the future, more AI leads to less employment, less disposable income and less income for the AI providers - it's a race to the bottom.
If this isn't reversed, it will soon end in bank bailouts, more inflation and income degradation for those bellow the top tier.
I’m not sure how I’ll feel if it actually happens, but just even entertaining the idea of LLM companies getting bailed out makes me irrationally angry. Like, really? Gonna go for the hat trick here? Housing crisis and Covid stimulus didn’t fuck everyone over enough?
It’s not like I can even leave for greener pastures, there’s nowhere to go.
It won't bail out AI ventures directly but it will bail out the banks that financed them.
Not a trick, if banks fall everything falls. what is infuriating: that we can see the value isn't there to justify the cost, yet that unprecedented amounts continue to flood into this tech segment, especially to the loudest and popular and over promising flavour of it: GenAI.
That world has always been a hallucination at best and a cruel deception at worst, but it's never been possible and never will be.
> Bitcoin was never adopted as a currency
It was and it is, it's not a central bank currency but the promise of BTC is the opposite of that. BTC is officially tradable in the US, you can exchange it for dollars to pay your taxes.
> so there was no way to anchor its value.
The promise of BTC has never been "anchored value"... it's always been a "to the moon" scam.
> It's still possible that the US government could... anchor the price of BTC, the whitepaper ethos could find a foothold.
That cannot happen without invalidating everything written in the white paper, in other words that wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore and nothing like that could function in the current financial system.
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