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SouffleHuman

@ SouffleHuman @lemmy.ml

Posts
17
Comments
134
Joined
6 mo. ago

  • 2025 National Security Strategy Released

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  • I feel really concerned for Latin Americans now, the whole restructuring the US military for that region makes me think that the US is going to ramp up their "interventions" in a region that has far too much of that already. Also the Europeans are definitely not happy about this one.

  • Are DeepSeek Moments Now the New Normal?

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  • Posting Deng’s quote again because it’s very relevant:

    The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system.

    It’s honestly surreal now that in the West, no matter where on the political spectrum, you find people who admit that China’s system is just doing better than theirs. Unfortunately, they often point to stuff like state control or planning or decisiveness, rather than Marxism or socialism, but the point remains that many people are increasingly disillusioned with what their system is doing, compared to what China’s able to achieve.

  • Are DeepSeek Moments Now the New Normal?

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  • Basically, llama-4 was a huge flop, Zuckerberg went on a massive hiring spree and demoted their old Chief AI Scientist who advocated for open models and research, who then left the company. Then the new team convinced Zuck to stick to closed models.

  • Are DeepSeek Moments Now the New Normal?

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  • Given the recent Deepseek 3.2 release was yet another jump forward, it seems pretty clear that the US money sinks can’t get a commanding lead over Chinese firms. They are also actively losing out on customers due to pricing as American startups just choose cheaper, open Chinese models instead.

    Of course, the advantage of US companies is their impressive hardware that still exceeds anything China has, but buying that same hardware on a giant pile a debt seems increasingly like a liability, especially due to their rapidly depreciating nature.

  • To be an "emerging country" you'd actually need to be emerging instead of sinking

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  • https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/tout-s-est-inverse-les-pays-emergents-c-est-nous-la-france-en-quete-de-transferts-technologiques-venus-de-chine_AD-202512030116.html

    "Everything has been turned upside down. We are the emerging countries. They are the developed countries. So we have to do to them what they did to us. We have to impose joint ventures and technology transfer," argues Nicolas Dufourcq, CEO of the public investment bank Bpifrance, in an interview with AFP. (Translated)

    It is honestly interesting to see neoliberalism being quietly thrown out the window, now that it's shown to really be quite awful for actually building up a country. Now western countries are trying to emulate strategies that China figured out decades ago, albeit without the right ideological foundation beneath it. Really reminds me of Deng's quote:

    The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system.

    And we are really beginning to see that here. Of course, actual socialist reforms will not come from bourgeois governments, and revolution is absolutely still needed, but Chinese socialism has already shattered the efficiency myth of neoliberalism, and I'm quite hopeful that eventually capitalism itself would be discredited.

  • Trump's East Wing Ballroom is getting MORE BIG and MORE-MORE BIG and MORE-MORE-MORE BIG and...

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  • The real inflation that’s going on

  • Trump’s Push to End the Ukraine War Is Sowing Fresh Fear About NATO’s Future 🎉

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  • In Masala’s scenario, NATO’s failure to act over such a small incursion has big consequences.

    Ah, time for Domino Theory V2, Russophobia edition.

  • 🇰🇵 North Korea is moving forward with its energy development strategy. In the city of Hamhung, local solar systems are being added.

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  • Thought the DPRK was somehow deploying solar panels in Hamburg before reading it again 🤦

  • 🇰🇵 North Korea is moving forward with its energy development strategy. In the city of Hamhung, local solar systems are being added.

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  • China has been exporting a lot of wafers and cells lately, which are the hardest components to make. These are often assembled and finalised at the destination country to bolster domestic manufacturing and technical capability.

    It’s seems reasonable that the DPRK could be switching from importing the whole panels to importing the components and building the rest themselves, thus continuing to push towards greener energy while simultaneously building up their industrial capability

  • Deepseek-v3.2Speciale, built for agentic work, just released

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  • The title seems a bit confusing. I believe that the Speciale model specifically does not support tool-calling, while the regular V3.2 is designed for Agentic work. I see you explained that in the description though, which is nice.

    Anyway, it's pretty hilarious that OpenAI just started to experiment with ads (apparently even on the paid tiers), right when they're getting absolutely hammered by everyone else. Especially with Deepseek's really cheap API that basically makes it very difficult for western companies to turn a profit.

  • Chinas "social points system"

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  • Ok, so when people talk about the "Social Credit" system, they usually mean some combination of two things:

    • Alibaba's "Sesame Credit"
    • The actual Social Credit System

    The first one is Alibaba's opt-in credit scoring system that functions similarly to the credit scores in the US, they basically measure how much you spend and borrow, and whether you repay your loans on time or not. It's completely optional and offers discounts and other perks in Alibaba's ecosystem with a high score.

    The second is a system that is primarily designed to enforce regulations on buisnesses. Back in the early 2000s, there were a bunch of health scandals around Chinese dairy companies and other food products, as well as corporate corruption and lack of transparency more generally. So this "Social Credit" basically measures how compliant and transparent these companies are. Originally it was debated on whether it should be extended to individuals, but that basically never materialized.

    These have nothing to do with each other, but people in the west often combine the two and make some weird extrapolations to make it sound all encompassing, when it really isn't. In fact, a study (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444819826402) showed that 80% of Chinese citizens approved of the Social Credit system, and only 1% expressed any disapproval at all.

  • The cost of living and housing in China is forcing young people to move out of megacities

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  • What is the current state of the Russian economy?

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  • Apparently they're currently spending 6.3% of GDP on defense this year. In comparison, the US spent 9.4% during the height of the Vietnam war, the CIA estimates the USSR spent around 10-15% through the late 70s and 80s, and the Nazis spent 25% in 1939 and 75% in 1944.

    I haven't really done a rigorous check on these numbers, and all of them are from western sources so take them with as much salt as you'd like, but it's pretty clear Russia is still far from a true war economy and have significant room to ramp up further if they decide they need to. Also, they have a large trade surplus with both China and India, so they have a consistent source of revenue.

  • China is making trade impossible

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  • https://archive.is/Bqlf0

    The difficult solution is to become more competitive and find new sources of value, as the US does with its technology industry. That means more reform, less welfare and less regulation: not because welfare and regulation are bad per se, but because they are unaffordable given the competition.

    It is now increasingly hard to see how Europe, in particular, can avoid large-scale protection if it is to retain any industry at all.

    So the plan is to wreck your welfare policies with neoliberal-style austerity... then also violate neoliberal principles through protectionism? This isn't just following a bad plan, this is following no plan. Also, I really don't see how deliberately making your workforce poorer and less educated will somehow produce 'new sources of value'.

  • OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates

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  • This is also assuming that OpenAI can capture the entire market of consumer AI, AKA having no significant competitors anywhere in the world, which… uh… doesn’t look likely.

  • China’s chip industry will surprise the world

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  • Does it feel like the Economist is genuinely scared of China’s development these days? They’ve been pumping out a lot of articles about the progress China’s making, when they used to be one of the spearheads of the ‘Collapsing China’ narrative.

  • At just 6 bln parameters, Z-Image- produces photorealistic images on par with an order of magnitude larger models. It can run smoothly on consumer-grade graphics cards with less than 16GB of VRAM.

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  • I’ll probably try it out, it’s been a long time since a new image model can fit on my GPU, and people on the Stablediffusion subreddit seem very happy with it.

  • When you check a forum thread

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  • Anecdotally I do feel like there is, to a degree, more of a pro-China undercurrent to mainstream-ish discourse than there was before. Outright celebration and respect of China and the accomplishments of their people is still rare, but I’m seeing a lot of “Well, at least they’re doing [insert X] better than us.” Even if they just have to add a “But authoritarian!” somewhere.

    I think there’s both a push and pull effect, Trump is an obvious push factor, but there is also a rising disillusionment of western governments’ ability to deliver a better future for their people. The pull factors meanwhile are China’s visible achievements in building a prosperous society, and the rise in Chinese cultural exports like video games, movies, and technology.

    The main challenge for us is to maintain this sentiment after the Democrats take over and the liberals all fall in line. I think that emphasising what China does well, not just what China does better than Trump, is a good start. We need to erode the omnipresent idea that only liberal electoral systems can produce good outcomes for their people, and China makes it pretty easy for us to point to as a counterexample.

  • When even The Economist has to stop pretending China is collapsing

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  • It’s really annoying to me because there are probably genuine economic headwinds in China, just as there are in most economies these days, but even at its worst it’s doing better than most western countries, and no one is predicting they would suddenly collapse. Everything that happens in China is put under a microscope and magnified as a big problem regardless of whether it is, or even if it’s a good thing.

    This makes it very difficult for me tell what is a genuine problem and what is just misinformation. All I can say is that a country that produces most of the things they need and other countries like to buy is probably in a decent spot.