A typical use case for large laptops is when you want to store it away after work or when you only carry it occasionally. I have a PC for coding at home, but use a thinkpad with the largest screen I could get for coding in my camper van (storing it away when not using it, because of lack of space) or when staying at my mother's home for longer (setting it up once at the start of my visit). I also have another very small, light and inexpensive subnotebook that I can carry around easily, but I rarely use it these days and not for coding at all.
That was meant ironically. The article explains in great length that this quantitative "productivity" does not result in qualitative "productivity".
The fundamental problem, in my view, is that any significant reform of EU procedures would mean strengthening the European Parliament. In other words, EU governments must be persuaded to relinquish some of their sovereignty. Since the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, there has been no significant progress in this regard. This is also related to the fact that, unlike 20 years ago, many center-right governments are now in power in many EU countries, and strengthening the EU is not on the agenda of most of them—often quite the opposite. France is an exception, but Emmanuel Macron's initiative was met with little response.
I truly hate how this buzzword is misused with regards to the EU. Voluntarily delegating authority is not the same as losing sovereignty. If you can un-delegate the authority at your own prerogative, you have not lost sovereignty. If the UK, for example, had genuinely lost its sovereignty, it would not have been able to voluntarily withdraw from its participation in the EU.
I would rather say that the term “sovereignty” is multifaceted. We have the concept of popular sovereignty, which means that political power emanates from the people and all other sovereignty is delegated.
However, there is also a use of the term “sovereignty” in the sense of self-determination over one's own state structure and the ability to ward off external interference. When a state transfers certain sovereign rights to the EU, this is more than just delegation. In German constitutional law, for example, this means that the transfer of such rights to the EU has constitutional status.
If there is a lawsuit before the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) that challanges an EU law or regulation, the court first examines whether the EU law in question regulates something that actually falls within the EU's area of responsibility or whether it is something over which Germany has reserved its sovereignty.
The most prominent example of such a ruling is the PSPP (Public Sector Purchase Programme) case from 2020, where the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that another ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding the European Central Bank (ECB) program of purchasing government bonds is not binding in Germany because the CJEU exceed its judicial mandate and violated the sovereignty of the German Bundestag. The case was "solved" when the European Central Bank provided the Bundestag with additional documentation regarding the program and the Bundestag concluded that everything is in order.
In this decision the term "sovereignty" is explicitly used to outline the case: "In particular, these [complaints] concerned the prohibition of monetary financing of Member State budgets, the monetary policy mandate of the ECB, and a potential encroachment upon the Members States’ competences and sovereignty in budget matters."
The decision later concludes:
"This standard of review [in the ruling of the CJEU] is by no means conducive to restricting the scope of the competences conferred upon the ECB, which are limited to monetary policy. Rather, it allows the ECB to gradually expand its competences on its own authority; at the very least, it largely or completely exempts such action on the part of the ECB from judicial review. Yet for safeguarding the principle of democracy und upholding the legal bases of the European Union, it is imperative that the division of competences be respected."
Because a disunited Europe was the cause of both World Wars and multiple genocides.
The continent should be tightly linked together so that war is unthinkable, and so that the pluralistic and very factional nations of Europe can negotiate as equals with other great powers.
Compare the UK pre-Brexit and post-Brexit for some evidence.
Cutting down scope doesn't necessarily reduce cooperation.
Until 2004-07, the EU was an economic and political union for Western, Northern, and parts of Southern Europe - all of whom are largely aligned from a developmental, economic, and social perspective. It was after the rapid Eastward expansion of the EU without updated checks and balances that dysfunction arose.
The EU will remain dysfunctional as long as CEE countries that are not aligned with the core mission of the original EU remain politically relevant. The only way to reduce this dysfunction is to either decouple the policy component from the economic component, or reduce the amount of nations that should have a say in policy to those that are aligned with the EU.
The fact that the government of an EU member state like Hungary still has political privileges yet is clearly preparing for some form of economic [0][1] warfare and potentially actual [2][3] warfare highlights how tenuous the project is as it stands today.
First it's Hungary, then it's Slovakia, then ...
Clearly the EU status quo is unsustainable and needs to be reformed ASAP.
The article misses to explain why this is an EU problem, not just a BMW problem. Is the problem described caused by a specific EU regulation (which?) or is mentioning the EU just click bait? (Honest question.)
It is a BMW problem and the rest is clickbait. If you own a BMW you know all this as it has been the case for over decades.
It's also not a eu thing as all manufacturers are locking things up, Ford and other US brands are trying as much as all other manufacturers. They just haven't reached BMW levels yet.
UN Regulation No. 155, and 156, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are requiring car manufacturers to implement cryptographic validation that allows only authorized software from the manufacturer to be run.
What I meant more is that you need more and more specialized tools (according to the manufacturers). My previous ford needed a special (expensive!) bracket to keep the drivetrain in place if you want to do anything on the engine which makes home service less likely.
These regulations do not mean you need 25k in tooling, but that is what it has come to. And thus there is a blooming (mostly Chinese/Russian) aftermarket tooling business with sketchy software you want to run in a VM.
This is just signing, nothing cutting edge. Verification of signatures is a fairly old tech. What is the exact problem here? Is it that manufacturers do not publish the signed binaries or is it that you want to run something on your car compiled by you?
Authorized software means authorized for that car's VIN number. Basically it's the same issue with parts in Apple products that are serial number locked.
If for instance if you damaged a headlamp, and then went to an authorized BMW dealer, bought the correct brand new OEM BMW head lamp assembly from the parts department of an authorized BMW dealer, and followed the replacement procedure to the letter in the BMW service website... it won't work. The headlamp assembly is not authorized to talk to the rest of the car even though it's OEM, untampered, with stock firmware.
The headlamp has to be reprogrammed with the correct VIN number in order for the rest of the ECU's in that particular car to recognize it as authorized.
This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever own. £395 for an oil change. £180 for brake fluid. £500 a year road tax.
Meanwhile my 2011 Prius continues to pass its MOT without fail, needs just the usual very affordable consumables, gets 50% higher MPG and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1.
You have just discovered that SUVs are large because some people want their cars to be large. They come with all the downsides of that and not much of the upsides.
They don't come with all the downsides. They externalise the reduced forward visibility for people behind you, the headlights spinning onto other users' cabins, the running over of toddlers, and, my favourite, the driving in the middle of the road rather than risk getting mud on their fucking tyres
No tax rate is too high. Rebates for agricultural workers maybe.
Hmm... I never bought a BMW, certainly because I am poor, but also because everyone around me who drives a luxury car keeps telling me how expensive yet unreliable everything is, while everyone who drives a Toyota and Honda almost never talks about their car. I took the hint and have been doing what is financially responsible.
Sounds like you're getting it serviced by a BMW dealership? I take my PHEV 3-series to a local independent mechanic, and the entire cost is usually less than you're paying for oil alone. Also, because it's a hybrid, the road tax rate is very advantageous.
I was more or less pointing to the expensive repairs needed in BMW as in you know it's locked down and you need expensive OEM stuff. Maybe that is covered under "quality is expensive" for normal people but when you buy a BMW you know the replacement parts bill is costing you an arm and a leg.
1. The EU de facto mandates the car manufacturers have to develop and sell cars that produce less CO2 (mostly by the way of fines for higher polluting vehicles). This led to the development of hybrid ('mild-hybrid', 'full-hybrid', and PHEV) and EV vehicles.
2. The manufacturers tend to both complicate the technology and lock the stuff down, so it's not easily repairable. This has its own enviromental price, and EV Clinic says this is not accounted for. That's not completely fair as on one hand there are EU repairability directives that address this but on the other we still want to have some degreee of market competition and in the end the market should punish those manufacturers (as it is already doing, I think).
One thing I want to add is that the EU also mandates real-world-fuel-consumption-measurement (OBFCM) devices in new cars and if that is followed to its logical conclusion and the manufacturers pressure is resisted, this will mean the end of hybrids as the real-world data is horrible for them.
Gartner estimates that worldwide AI spending will total 1.5 Trillion US$ in 2025.[1] As of 2024, global GDP per year is 111.25 Trillion US$.[2] The question is how much this can be increased by AI. This describes the market volumn for AI. Todays investments have a certain lifespan, until they become obsolet. For custom software I would estiamte that it is 6-8 years. AI investments should be somewhere in this range.
Taking all this into consideration, the investment volumn does not look oversized to me -- unless one is quite pessimistic about the impact of AI on global GDP.
To increase the GDP you also need people to spend money. With the general population earning relatively less, I'm not sure the GDP increase will be that substantial.
It's all going to cause more inflation and associated reduction in purchasing power due to stale wages.
I suspect that it is purely a literary invention. The core idea of the story is a variant of the "Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", where a stolen gem was eaten by a goose. For the new plot, Conan Doyle needed some identical copies of something where a jewel could be hidden. These copies need to be destroyed, in order to reveal the jewel. If you decide on using busts in 1904 for an American and British audience, Napoleon is an ideal candidate: notorious, but not venerated. Imagine what a scandal it might have been if busts of the late Queen Victoria or of Abraham Lincoln had been smashed.
Etymonline states: "The meaning 'pad of writing or blotting paper' is by 1880".[1] Also see the variety of meanings listed it the Webster 1913 edition, including: "1. A small table or flat surface. 2. A flat piece of any material on which to write, paint, draw, or engrave; also, such a piece containing an inscription or a picture. 3. Hence, a small picture; a miniature. [Obs.] 4. pl. A kind of pocket memorandum book. [...]".[2] -- No information on the frequency of use, though.
According to the article, Russia is just a precursor: "What had been viewed as having negligible credit risk suddenly carried confiscation risk. For any country potentially facing future sanctions, the calculus of holding large dollar reserve positions shifted." -- So the question is: what share of the global economy do these countries represent? If China is among them, this share is considerable.
China has no serious alternative to Treasuries (bc the closest competitors have lower yields). Also, other countries don’t place themselves in the same group as Russia, bc they violated international norms in an extreme manner.
Someone should tell the Chinese that, because they've been a net seller of US treasuries for some time now. They are clearly at a minimum diversifying right now. I'm sure if you ask some people they will say "diversifying" isn't a strong enough word for the velocity of the changes we're seeing. "De-linking" is the popular word these days for what's going on. Truth, as always, is likely somewhere in the middle.
Obviously we can't see all that goes on inside China, but we have 100% visibility on what's happening with US treasuries. Regarding the whole picture, just from what is publicly reported, it certainly seems like China is betting on what appears to be, themselves. Maybe that's a good market in the future and they make out like bandits? Maybe it's a bad market and they take significant hits? Not really sure anyone can say with certainty right now?
If I was forced to bet, I'd say it will pay off, but not as big as they think. Probably big enough to not really need the West though. Which is a strategic win I suppose?
Good question on the USDCNY trajectory. I think it’s fair to assume that they manage this through capital controls rather than market forces, so the adjustment might play out differently than typical reserve diversification scenarios. The GDP growth question is the interesting one: are they trading some growth for strategic autonomy, or betting they can maintain growth through domestic consumption + non-Western trade? Probably find out in the next 5-10 years.
Thank you. If it's for strategic autonomy, it's a bad trade. China needs domestic consumption like you mention, to absorb their supply / keep people working. Weakening USD would make Chinese exports more expensive, esp. if they convert it to Yuan. Meanwhile there's a property crisis and they can stimulate demand, including for strategic autonomy. One devious possibility is just giving it to Russia. Repatriating it as Yuan to stimulate doesn't make sense to me.
The property crisis and domestic consumption issues are real constraints, but I think the framework's point is that the calculus has shifted even if the alternatives aren't great. China's treasury holdings peaked around $1.3 trillion in 2013 and are now closer to $750-800 billion.
You're right that repatriating as yuan for stimulus doesn't solve the structural issues. But Pozsar suggests the alternative isn't necessarily converting back to yuan, it's using dollar reserves to lock in commodity supply agreements or funding infrastructure that creates yuan-denominated trade flows. Strategic rather than economically optimal, but reduces exposure to assets that could be frozen.
Your "giving it to Russia" point is interesting because it addresses multiple objectives simultaneously: supporting an ally while converting financial assets into physical resources and geopolitical relationships. Whether that tradeoff makes economic sense long-term idk.
> While unemployment in Austria increased by 19% in the period of the free money campaign, it fell by 16% in Wörgl
The details of words like from/to/by matter a lot, but assuming translation is correct, maybe the confusion here is about absolute vs relative changes.
Guessing the "over 30%" claim comes from the idea that if Worgl was performing normally unemployment would have also increased 19%, instead it fell 16%, i.e. performed 35% better than baseline, assuming it started in a place around average and could have been expected to be average. A different stat than 0% unemployment, but interesting
The fact is, from Berkshares to Disney Dollars, local currencies are not only possible, but they nudge everyone to buy local and hire local, strengthening the economy. The miracles have very good explanations :)
Nuclear produces very dangerous substances. The long term cost to guard us from them for a million years and the risk that something gets out of control are extemly high.
Solar doesn't? As far as I know the process for mining the panel and batteries is the same sulphuric acid process with extremely toxic tailings. And you get uranium in this process of rare earth mining. These toxins are orders of magnitude greater in risk and in volume/ quantity than process's nuclear fuel waste.
Yes but a very small amount and it is nothing we don't know how to manage.
> the risk that something gets out of control are extemly high
Except this is false, you are just spreading misinformation. I suggest you confront your current knowledge to different sources and listen to the arguments of the proponents of nuclear energy before you make up your mind. Don't just repeat what you have heard.
"At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted much more economically from conventional fuels.… This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public has been led to believe." — C. G. Suits, Director of Research, General Electric, who was operating the Hanford reactors, 1951.
The C.G suits were right as long as the digging operation is not too costly (the more shallow and concentrated the better)
Fossil fuels are nothing short of a miracle because they are so energy dense, but it's a slow poison and has high addictive power.
As long as we didn't (want to) know about negative externalities (chief among them CO2 and CH4) whose cost was borne by humanity, it was ok. Dirty but everyone seemed to think it was worth it.
The advantages of nuclear is not that it would be too cheap to meter (even though that becomes true with time because most of the price is upfront investment).
- It is that you can get energy independence even if you don't have uranium because it is so energy dense that you can just stockpile it. For example France could run its plants for 2 years with its current stockpile of uranium, and it only recycles around 10% of its fuel. Compare that with its oil needs, the oil stockpile would only last 3 months, probably less.
- It is CO2 free
Bonus: Nuclear industry is required to take of its waste products (which are only waste products insofar are we are too lazy/cheap to recycle them, else they are just more fuel)
I create PDF files from C# using LaTeX as an intermediate format. This works very reliable but sometimes takes a bit of tinkering until everything fits.
People here on HN recently recommended Typst as a replacement for LaTeX, but I haven't tried it myself yet.
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