I can tell you that, at least for Europe, they’re doing pretty much the same thing as the US, only it’s higher tariffs rather than blocking the Chinese products.

The effect of special protectionist tariffs on the competitiveness of local companies might not be as strong as for outright blocking of the competing foreign products, but it’s in the same direction, which is why recently even Tesla (which are shit at the actual building cars part of the business) were wiping the floor on EVs with massive European car making businesses which had enormous expertise in actually making cars and decades to evolve EV tech and failed to do so.

Corruption is so entrenched in Portugal that unlike pretty much anywhere in the World, Libel is an actual CRIME prosecuted by the local version of the Public Prosecution Office, which in practice means that no actual damage has to be proven (the legislation literally talks about “protecting the honor” of the person targetted by the libelous comments) and only people with the proper political connections to get the Public Prosecution Office to act (i.e. politicians and rich people) get to be “protected” by this Law.

Oh, and in a country infamous by an extremelly slow Court system, they in practice expedite Libel cases where politicians are the “victim”.

So even descriptions of systems to detect Corruption have to be very carefully worded so as to not even imply that anything caught by them is actually Corruption.

I’m Portuguese and, having also lived elsewhere in Europe, firmly believe that in the domains of Politics and Justice, Portugal is basically a chunk of South America that happens to be in Europe. If it wasn’t for the EU - mainly the laws and pressure coming via it, many ultimatelly originating in places like Northern Europe - the country would be an even bigger shit show.

Clearly they think that gaming is the same as working.

This shit has been in place and in use since the Patriot Act.

It’s also been an open secret that they do it for industrial espionage purposes so never bring company devices or devices configured to access the company network over.

Part of the reason I’ve avoided the US for vacations or even just changing flights since the early 00s - I’ll just go to Canada instead.

“Burning the future of the company for extra personal upsides in the short term” is pretty much MBA-Age management strategy summarized in one sentence.

A loss of overall competitiveness of the local companies is actually a well known and studied problem with using tariffs and import restrictions to protects said local companies.

So any competent government which desires for their local companies to survive and prosper will seek different ways to strengthen then which don’t suffer from that problem. The Chinese government is doing just that, the US government is not.

By all indications, US politicians are spectacularly incompetent and/or are following a strategy of burning the future of US companies for a short term boost in the money they yield for current CxOs and investors.

NEVER, ever, ever host your projects in the site of an American company.

The actual problem isn’t at all making a 4G mini-computer: you can literally buy the necessary parts as modules and wire them together with a a half-way decent microcontroller board and an smallish LED display and then make some code for it in something like Arduino IDE (though I would recommend Platform IO + VS Code instead).

The problem is making it small (especially thin) and capable of running of batteries for days rather than hours.

For example, if you’re trying to actually solve the hard part of the problem you would be better of using a micro-controller with an ARM core rather than the ESP32 as those things are designed to use less power. Also you wouldn’t be able to use boards as those things usually waste power versus designing your own.

That said, it’s a nice hobbyist project.

Well that’s a shame.

I’ve been looking around for a replacement to my aged Samsung A6 (which has been given an extended life by replacing the factory ROM with something with less bloatware, but is still pretty limited in terms of memory) which is not a Surveillance Outpost for just who knows how many nations and just about any companies willing to pay the 3 cents of whatever for the data, and all the Linux and degoogled Android makers only have 10"+ ones, which are too big for my use case which carry a tablet on a coat or trousers back pocket when I’m going to be sitting down somewhere and waiting for something so that I can read books and maybe browse the internet on their free WiFi.

Personally I would LOOOVE a small Linux tablet, but I’m OK with some kind of privacy respecting Android which isn’t riddled with backdoors mandated by governments which have Information Courts issuing Secret Bulk Information Collecting Orders, like the US and the UK.

Guess I know which brand my next smartphone upgrade will be.

If they did some nice 7" tablets too, that would be perfect.

My point is that forcing age-gates on anything provided via such formal systems incentivizes kids to go around those systems and install themselves an OS that doesn’t do age-gating to evade it, not necessarily at school were they’re unlikely to control the hardware, but at home.

Even before this, MS and Google have used their money to create a situation were very few of the formal systems for kids to access computers, such as schools, put anything other than their OSes in front of kids, so only kids who are naturally geeks/techies might have tried Linux out on their own - those kids would always end up trying Linux out because they’re driven by curiosity and enjoyment from tinkering with Tech.

My point is for the other kids, the ones who wouldn’t try out on their computing devices any OS other than the mainstream stuff that they’ve been taught about at school: with this law California might very well just have created a strong incentive for those kids to go around those formal systems and try Linux out on hardware they control, which not all will but certainly more will that they would if there wasn’t a law in place to limit what they can do when using a mainstream OS - if there’s one thing that is common in all societies and historical times is that teenagers naturally rebel against outside control and try and find ways around it, so limiting what they can do in the officially endorsed systems will push them towards alternatives systems which won’t limit what they can do.

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Think about it this way: how do people learn enough about it to program for and admin Linux systems as adults?

Unless things changed a lot since my days (granted it was over 3 decades ago), the path to knowing all about using, administrating and programming software for running under Linux was through being able to play with it for fun as a teenager.

That said, thinking further about it, this might actually push more teenagers to try Linux out to avoid age-gating since they can just download a distro from anywhere in the World and install it in their own PC.

Ok, that does make sense.

If you’re producing electricity in it, you can always bring some water up and use some of that electricity to extract hydrogen from the water to make up for any leaks.

It really depends how bad the leaking is since that dictates how much weight of water is needed to be brought up and electricity must be used for hydrolysis.

Wasn’t the way the Hindenburg burned due to both the Hidrogen AND the alumium oxide paint covering it?

LibreOffice can be used to produce and consume Pornographic Content in the form of of erotic stories, so it makes sense (within the “logic” of this law) that it’s age-gated.

You’re confusing GenX with Boomers - the explosion in Tech was in the 90s, not the 70s.

Even then, most GenX weren’t involved in Tech since when they learned how to use it, it wasn’t yet normalized and widespread, so only really people who found such things interesting went for it and generally the personality type of those attracted to power over others is almost the opposite of the personality type of those attracted to solving problem which are expressed in strict and complex logical structures (for example programming languages or electronics designs).

Considering the massive number of servers running Linux used in the industry, this sounds like a good way to kill the Tech Industry in California.

Exactly.

People behaving as “consumers” supports the current system and hence supports the harmful side effects of such system, from the systemic suffering from wealth inequality to ecological destruction.

Whilst very few of us, living within this system, can in practice stop living within the system, we can refrain from living in accordance with the rules of the system which are not imposed on us via removing all other choices or force, but which we are “nudged” or manipulated to follow using marketing or even propaganda, and pretty much everything which is “impulse” or “deriving a momentary pleasure from buying” are the latter kind of thing.