Russia is hanging on by a thread, China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity. The US coasts on dollar and US treasuries demand until it doesn't. The only thing the US builds anymore is grifts.
> The biggest economic story in the world right now is China’s growing dominance across advanced manufacturing sector after advanced manufacturing sector — from electric vehicles to batteries to solar panels to software like A.I. and open models, where they’ve become a world leader. What is happening here is very different than what we call the first China Shock, when China became a big exporter of things that were not that important to advanced economies — things that mattered maybe for particular communities, for many jobs, but weren’t the frontier of economic growth.
But now it’s different. China is very much at the frontier, and they’re dominating it, and that is going to transform geopolitics. It is going to transform the politics, many say of European countries, where China is pushing them out of manufacturing that has been the absolute cornerstone of their economies.
So I think understanding this second shock is about as essential to understanding economics and geopolitics in the coming era as literally anything is.
> U.S. tariffs have done little to slow China's export machine. Exports hit a record $3.8 trillion last year and are up 14% through July this year, even as shipments to the U.S. plunged.
> Now covering 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas, the Tech Tracker’s dataset has been expanded and updated from five years of data (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years of data (2003–2023).
> These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies.
The biggest of the "sharpening with AI" models, if you let 'em go, they'll turn you into a celebrity on accident.
If you go to the Topaz AI forums on Facebook, you'll see examples of where the AI sharpening tool went off the rails and turned a blurry photo of someone (typically the user who bought the software, who is trying to clean up their own photos) into whichever celebrity that is in the AI model who resembles them.
IE, it might turn a photo of YOU into a photo of Robert Downey Jr.
A couple years ago, we needed a good photo of my grandfather for a photo collage. The best photo I had of him was where he's sitting next to a very decrepit looking old woman (some family friend?). It really was a great composition, great lighting, background and pose but the old lady was killing the vibe. My wife is really skilled at Photoshop but removing this old lady would have been really difficult so we decided to try the generative fill, something she had never used before. She selected the lady and typed in "delete this person". Instead of deleting her, it creates this strange, human like being. We try again and again with different permutations of the same command. Most of the attempts just replace the old lady with a small asian child. Eventually we just try with a blank prompt and it gets it in the first go. The Asian child thing was really strange, it truly looked like the same kid but just slightly different appearance each time.
Also wonder how how long until photos are no longer court-admissible evidence because they get overwhelmed with the burden of the amount (and the cost) of the "non-AI" certification?
We've been living in the age of photoshopped photos for decades now. You can't just present a random photo as evidence without being able to back up its provenance.
As long as you know how to edit metadata, you can definitely fool minor “trust systems” like adjusters, police, etc. It’s a big gap. (For any future readers, no I have not done this and would never do it, really.)
The only solution I see is some kind of hardware-linked signature showing that the image was produced at a certain time, by a certain device. In theory, you could make this signature somewhat “provable” and anchored to a specific time by combining something like 1) the latest Bitcoin block hash, and 2) a blockchain anchor, thereby proving that the photo was taken within a certain time widow after the hash was known and before the anchor was published. But even that arrangement is highly susceptible to hardware attacks.
A service will allow you upload a file and attach a date and signature. Additionally, you add the email addresses of anyone else that needs to also date and sign. The service then verifies all signatures and then dates and signs. Then it makes a SHA-512 hash, publishes it next to the signatures on its site and then publishes a url including the hash on the blockchain. When someone visits that link, they can see the hash of the file, dates, signatures and a final hash of everything. Anyone wishing to view the actual file must be able to prove their identity using their private key (or alternatively, host an encrypted version for each signer). Thus anyone can prove a few things:
1. You agreed that the document was correct on the date you signed. You can't date your signature any earlier than when the file was uploaded. This prevents you from uploading the wrong version of a document or predating your signature well in the past. It's like signing in front of a notary.
2. The additional person can verify the document is correct (no contract clauses have been edited, a photo is legit, etc). This gives credence to what you've posted, especially important for a contract.
3. The service verifies that the file you uploaded matches what everyone signed and the date everyone supplied is in the past. A requirement could be that everyone involved needs to have their public keys published on a well-known key server that at least verifies email addresses. A better option would be one that verifies through physical identity documents. Even better would be if your national ID card had PKI keys. Regardless, the service ensures that each signature has been tied to some sort of identity and that the signatures are all valid.
4. The hash published on the blockchain again can confirm that at the time of publishing, everyone agreed to the contents of the file and that everyone signed when they did. If someone claims the file was changed, we can simply verify the signatures and as long as no one was impersonated, we can prove that signers A, B, and C all signed a copy of the same document on dates X, Y, and Z.
5. The original document is still available for signer that still has their private key, even if it's expired. Additionally, the service has their own copy of the file that can be subpoenaed if necessary.
The entire system ensures a file has not been changed in any way since it was first published (via the signatures), real people have arrested to its truth (via public key verification), and that the attestation has not changed (via publishing the hash of all signatures on the blockchain). Additionally, nothing can be deleted without signed deletion requests from all signers.
You could potentially do this without the neutral 3rd party but then there's no verification when you actually attested to its truth, only that you published that attestation on the blockchain publication date.
> Letting the kernel use SSD based swap space for something this big would be a good way to destroy its cumulative write endurance over a period of just a couple months.
Optanes are a good option here, right?
I bought mine for $100 for each 128GB DDR4 stick. I believe write performance is off-the-charts on these, besides the fact they're c-h-e-a-p.
Stop the hyperbole. Jacobin is more like social democrat (what most nominally social democrat parties used to do, but aren't doing anymore). That's about two significant notches less communist than communism.
> “The pattern invites us to read welfare as macroprudential policy, part of the toolkit that keeps financial openness politically survivable. Where redistribution runs vertically and broadly, the welfare state itself absorbs the shocks of global finance. Where it runs horizontally, protecting established insiders while the rest carry the risk, governments buy stability at the financial border instead. Capital controls work as a cheap, imperfect substitute for redistribution. They calm an exposed society without asking anyone at the top to pay.”
Their analysis will yield false conclusions because they’re completely ignoring a number of variables.
For instance, the USSR had capital controls for financial and political reasons. The article assumes that politics plays no role, only finance.
Wall Street influences US financial policy, but so does politics.
The laziness of this research is shocking, so I looked up the author. He’s an author for the Communist blog “Jacobin.”
