China isn’t making EVs for the sake of going green and the companies making them should have their manufacturing methods questioned.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CpO4zOwElY0

I can’t believe I’m wading into a “who’s worse” thing on the internet,

China. China is way worse. It’s not even a fair comparison.

China has a near 99% conviction rate of all “trials”. People get disappeared all the time at an alarming rate. Criticizing the government is illegal and silenced immediately. Buying a woman (trafficking) is punishable by three years in prison. Importing an invasive species of plant is punishable by 7 years in prison. Buying/owning an airsoft rifle can land you life in prison.

They are currently violating the maritime borders of many countries, to the point where they are deploying nets as a way to “claim” the waters well beyond what they’re entitled to by international law.

During covid they welded shut the entrance to buildings to forcibly keep people inside. And many of those people died from starvation or being ill and not receiving care. Then there were those buildings that caught fire and the occupants couldn’t get out.

Then again during covid it was mandated that “foreigners” were not allowed into grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc. And it didn’t matter if you lived their for decades, or your whole life, of you weren’t Han Chinese you’re a foreigner. Some people even had signs up that said “blacks are not allowed inside”.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-stay-away-from-here-in-china-foreigners-have-become-a-target-for/

And this isn’t the people’s fault. They’re working off of information and mandates given to them by their government. A government that has a death grip on all communication in the country.

And this doesn’t even get into the allegations of organ harvesting of the Uyghurs (and others). And yes, “only allegations” because that kind of thing would be done in very dark and secure basements. Although there are first hand accounts of people who witnessed such things who managed to get out, it’s anecdotal but there are more than one account.

Edit: just to add. I’m not American, and don’t live in the US. I think that country is terribly broken in many, many ways. I would never want to ever live there, but I would choose the US in a heartbeat if it was down to that place or China.

you are literally spewing out oil industry talking points.

Not at all. My original comment in this thread was replying to a comment that made it seem another person was vilifying “Asians” as opposed to talking about the technology.

If you’re talking about my other comments in this post, then that’s still not true. I’m not saying, and haven’t said, that EVs are bad. I’m saying China is contributing to massive amounts of ecological damage. They produce massive amounts of of e-bikes and EVs, and then throw them into a field never to be used. This is being done to meet quotas so they can get government subsidies, and to boost numbers.

It’s not about the damage of making batteries and other components, it’s the damage being done by creating those things at such a scale that a lot of it is wasteful and unnecessary. And to top it off, there’s going to be even more damage as those vehicles rot in those huge fields and leach harmful stuff into the ground.

So no, I’m not “spewing out oil industry talking points”. I hate that people just assume what you’re saying without taking a moment to understand the context. The oil industry is among the nastiest groups of people to ever live, but that doesn’t give EV makers a free pass to do whatever. The reality is that, right now, making EVs is a dirty process. So it has to be done right and carefully, otherwise we won’t be around to see the benefits.

Yes, I asked “which countries”, not “what kind of countries”?

China is using subsidies to accelerate the green transition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfLWFv3ixk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEMtTtUZXEk

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/world/asia/china-fishing-south-america.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/17/chinese-fishing-armada-plundered-waters-around-galapagos-data-shows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFCBTnrMow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEfwoqKRU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLFYChw5c0Y

Yup. Totally green.

Which countries?

Idk, I didn’t feel like they were pushing an agenda

The conflation of “Asians” being always applied to China is a common CCP propaganda tactic. There are many Asian countries, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc. These places are known for good quality products. They are all Asian. So yes, pushing the racism angle on commentary of products coming from a country not known for quality is an agenda. And to be clear, I didn’t say “China doesn’t make quality products”, I said it’s not known for quality. Which is different from say bad quality outright.

The downvote bots are out in force.

Yup. Once you go down the rabbit hole of what kind of CCP propaganda gets pushed constantly, it’s eye watering. I’ve been to China at its peak (2011), and I have multiple Chinese family members born and raised in China. The propaganda is no joke. It’s subtle and everywhere. You say “I think Chinese EVs aren’t safe”, then you’ll start getting accused of attacking “Asians”, which is a classic technique to push the argument from “manufacturing practices” right over to racism.

Your cheque from the CCP is in the mail

Edit: I welcome the downvotes from the wumao

more environmentally friendly vehicles

I wouldn’t call what’s coming out of China environmentally friendly

https://youtu.be/yOA7qKMcjcE

https://youtu.be/1SEfwoqKRU8

https://youtu.be/oEMtTtUZXEk

Edit: https://youtu.be/qKa8mVOe5so

Not “Asians”. Companies that follow the CCP’s policies and ways of doing business.

What you did was typical pro-CCP misdirection. You took “fear of cheap Chinese EVs” and ran with that to “Asians bad”. Chinese are not all Asians and the CCP is not a race.

https://youtu.be/yOA7qKMcjcE

Edit: https://youtu.be/qKa8mVOe5so

Sorry, I didn’t mean to shoot you down or anything. I just really didn’t like Rings of Power. There were things I did like, such as Durin and his wife (although all Durin’s are supposed to be black-haired). But overall I think it’s terrible.

a lot of our decisions are guided by NERC CIP standards and where certain things fall within that framework.

I would hazard a guess that this is more of a “safe-bet” thing rather than a hard policy. I tried looking up anything that stipulates using Windows over any other OSes, and this Software Integrity and Authenticity is the only thing I could find with a five minute search.

Microsoft Windows provides such a mechanism for Microsoft signed software through its default configuration and through a Group Policy Object (GPO) that expands this capability to other trusted third parties.

It doesn’t make sense that you wouldn’t be able to use Linux, unless the higher-ups making the decisions are your classic dinosaurs that still believe Microsoft’s propaganda from the 2000’s about the scary “communist” Linux OS and the dangerous open-source programs that will steal your company secrets.

That’s a perfect application for VMs. But either way, both Windows and Linux are just tools. For what I do, Linux is a better fit 95% of the time, and the last 5% I find alternative solutions. I don’t want to be bothered to maintain another OS for some edge cases when I can get by with alternatives. The only thing I use Windows for right now (personally or professionally) is BlueIris, and even that is really wearing thin. Both the Windows OS is causing issues and BlueIris is just… bad.

Well, at my last job we were a 100% Microsoft free company. And at my current company I got the company to implement a policy to allow Mac and Linux workstations. I’ve managed thousands of Windows systems and server before also. I don’t miss it.

For me it’s deleting the Windows partition and then installing Linux. That’s just me though.

Rings of power was alright

No it isn’t. It’s terribly written. The speech of Sauron to Galadriel was something a five year old wrote. Galadriel just jumped into the middle of the ocean? Also she took a pyroclastic blast right to the face and doesn’t even have a scratch? Whereas other characters are fully blinded.

And all the changes, which each on their own might be forgivable, but there where just so many that it all added up to something off-feeling and weird. It would be like shifting each note in a Mozart piece by a little in different directions, and then listening to the whole thing wouldn’t be pleasant. This is another one of those things where they made changes for sake of change or to fit a particular story/reveal they wanted to write. Tolkien’s works were already a masterpiece, what was the benefit in changing it? At best it adds absolutely nothing to the final product itself, and at worse just makes the whole legendarium muddied and disjointed.

For example, when the show took place Aman was not cut off from Middle-Earth yet. Specifically because it was cut off after Sauron poisoned the hearts of the Numenoreans and convinced them to attack the Valar and invade Aman. As a punishment Eru Illuvitar sunk Numenor into the sea and made all of Middle-Earth “round”, so that sailing west would just bring them back around to the other side of Middle-Earth. So to get to Aman after that required sailing through a special path that only the Elves knew about, which is what we see in the show. But before the sinking of Numenor, anyone could sail west to Aman. And, IIRC, in the show we actually see a glimpse of Aman in the distance of one of the Numenorean ships. They regularly would see the shores of Aman in the far distance and wonder about it.

So if Aman was only reachable by the secret path, why could the Numenoreans see it from their ships? But in either case, this is a huge change in the lore and order of events. It might not matter to the casual viewer, but to fans of Tolkien (the people who are the hype-men for these kinds of stories, and generally the reason shows like this ultimately get green-lit) it doesn’t make sense and breaks the story.

The thing with that series is that it’s not possible to adapt every single thing from 14 books to 8 seasons with 8 episodes.

Completely fair, but when they spend entire episodes on things that could have been easily and faithfully reduced to a 10 minute scene, or spent more than half of the first season on “who’s the dragon? it’s such a mystery!!” when that wasn’t even a plot point of the first book. It’s a fair argument, but not when they completely squandered their available screentime on frivolous things. At that point it’s just a cop-out.

I went into it as a new turn of the Wheel

I get this was the approach of a lot of viewers, but when you have to do personal mental gymnastics to justify liking the way the adaptation was done, then you’ve already admitted that it’s bad. And forget things like the order of events and such. I’m talking about radically changing the world rules, how the One Power works, and characters assassinations. Rand is supposed to be one of the most gentle and caring people alive. To the point that was slowly driving himself mad with trying to keep everyone safe and alive. The effort to do the right thing was breaking him inside and it’s one of the major aspects of his character. And then in the show he murders a guy to get into the hospital where Logain was living. Nope, I have no interest. I have the books and I can enjoy those.

This is true, and frankly a huge issue. It’s ironic that right now “older generations” (like myself) know more about computers than younger ones. When I was growing up the widely accepted concept was that the younger generation was always going to do circles around the older ones when it comes to technical and computer concepts. You have no idea how many younger ones know nothing about computing. Like asking if a laptop with “8GB of memory is enough to store all their music”. It’s kind of alarming.

Well, the article mentions multiple games that are “Windows only” and yet then run better on Linux. So how exactly does Linux suck for gaming?