NaibofTabr

You'd think being people would be common enough... life has enough difficulty without us creating more for each other.

Yeah, don't want to end up unemployed... better create some more monsters...

The only system that has sustained common cause in human societies long-term is religion. It's outlasted nationalism and political ideologies, noble families and dynasties, and even the collapse of civilizations.

Which is terrifying, when you consider how much violence has been done in the name of religion throughout human history. Why do none of our more productive ideas and organizing principles have such longevity?

Better have some off-season income though. Couldn't store enough food and you can't afford to feed your family otherwise, fuck you. Bad winter? fuck you. Crops blighted? fuck you. Unable to work due to injury? fuck you.

Don't forget to pay your tribute, peasant, and don't you dare go hunting or foraging on the king's land.

And this is why anyone who suggests that machine learning systems can be used to make social decisions of any kind should be laughed out of the room. Even when the system programs itself, its goals are set by people and it is trained on data generated and selected by people.

I mean... nothing substantial, I guess you're right... but I'm also not claiming to know anything about Switzerland. I'm claiming to have actually read the article, and to have some reading comprehension which you are evidently lacking.

We must assuredly 'all hang together', or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

I think you've misunderstood. It sounds like you've interpreted the headline to mean that General Hodges is threatening to invade Switzerland. Perhaps you only read the headline and not the actual article.

"The best way to prevent a war is to prepare for it,” said the former commander of the US armed forces in Europe [...] The US Department of Defence is currently funding 100,000 soldiers in Europe, said Hodges. For him, it is clear that President Donald Trump will withdraw troops. “The only question is when, and how many soldiers he will withdraw,” said the former general. “According to everything I hear from Washington, Europe is no longer a priority.” Trump sees China as the main opponent of the US.

Hodges is stating the reality that Trump will withdraw US troops from Europe in the future, regardless of how bad an idea that is.

From Trump’s point of view, the US would be paying billions for the defence of Europe, said Hodges. [...] “Incidentally, the US benefits enormously economically from a stable Europe,” he said.

Trump is the kind of moron who only understands short-term profit (especially profit for himself) and doesn't give a shit about long-term international cooperation. Some very bad decisions are going to be made in the near future.

Hodges understands the value of European relationships but also sees the inevitability of what's coming and is trying to make the reality of it clear.

Hmm, the Borg internet (or intranet I guess) probably has a lot of entertainment material collected, but then we know that drone emotions are suppressed by implants so you wouldn't actually be able to enjoy any of it...

"Homes" feels like a stretch... an alcove is worse than one of those sleeping pods in Japan, you don't even get privacy.

Ummm... basically all of the silicon comes from Taiwan, China or South Korea, so I don't know what you expect there... the PCB is most likely manufactured in China too, along with the capacitors, resistors, diodes and probably the casing... do you mean final assembly done in Europe, or just repackaged and resold by a company from Europe? I'd bet the solder paste used to mount the components on the PCB comes out of a factory in China too.

Even if the circuit design was done by a company in Europe, the most likely production path is chips from Taiwan and subcomponents from China soldered onto a PCB from a board maker in China by a manufacturer in China, burned with firmware developed by subcontractors from India, South Korea, and Japan, and then packaged in a casing from a plastics manufacturer in China and finally retail packaged and shipped by another facility in China.

Consumer electronics production is a global supply chain. Nobody anywhere is doing the entire thing in-house. No matter who you buy from, the hardware will come from all over, and the firmware/software will have had many hands involved from many outsourced developers from god knows where.

And beyond all that, USB-IF (which develops the USB interface standard) is based in the US, so technically everything USB is US-dependent.

I mean... the method is basically "join us or die"... I don't think that's particularly nice...

I don't think enforced conformity through literal mind control counts as democracy.