Your right. It could be both. I mean, my wife said to me the other day that she heard Trump was doing the tariffs to lower the bond interest rates. I said while in some types of recessions that’s true, that wouldn’t work in this case and you’d have to be an idiot to think it would. Sure enough the next day Trump puts a stay on tariffs to most of the world because the bond market got rocked. All I could think of is omg, are they really that fucking stupid?

I wish it was that. No, this is actual evil, not incompetence. Trump has turned the US economy into the largest pump and dump scheme ever. Worse, he’s bragging about how his friends made billions. I can’t even believe this is happening. I’m in utter shock. I knew Trump would be bad, but straight up flaunting corruption like it’s a joke and even bringing the SCOTUS on board with this. I’m just gob smacked.

You don’t understand. Chinese companies have been preparing for this for almost a decade now thanks to US policies. Here’s manufacturing locations just for Moto.

https://motosmartphones.com/where-are-motorola-phones-made/

How much is it really made in Brazil? Enough to by pass the tariffs.

This is transhipment. China has been building an enormous transhipment network with those countries heavily dependent on Chinese heavy machinery and services. They expected this, they prepared for this. It’s the US companies that tried to obey their own countries rules that are susceptible. Even Samsung has been working with China to create these networks. Soon, I would estimate, Apple will as well. The problem is, if you thought Tik Tok was a national security issue, forcing every US company to use Chinese logistics to fight your own countries tariffs…

Oh god how stupid. China has built an entire transhipment network. China was never going to pay those tariffs anyway. Instead, US companies that desperately tried to follow the rules are still stuck shipping from China. So what happens next? US companies will now have to beg China access to these networks. You thought Tik Tok was a national security issue? When all your goods and services imports are controlled by China…

Worse the canceling of the deminis clause was only against China and HK. But both those companies have transhipment logistics networks across the globe. We are about to see millions of packages a month from dozens if not a hundred different countries. They’re asking for China to unleash what it’s spent the past 5 years building up.

The Trump government doesn’t understand. US previous actions created this. Perhaps if they did this immediately, China couldn’t respond. But China has been courting the global south for decades to set up a resilient logistics network for literally this reason. If you ever wondered what BRI is about, well your about to find out.

Oh god, what an allegory to the current state of USA. You have the symbol of America performing to an empty theater having upset everyone in the audience except for 2 people/countries. It’s coming collapse wasn’t a big deal because everyone had already left the theaters. It does seem to be somewhat predictive of the future.

Of course she does. All American politicians are Israeli puppets. It’s always been strange to me that this is the case. However, I’ve also never seen an example that goes against the grain. Even Sanders is all about decreasing weapons sent, not stopping.

No I’m saying regardless of your opinion, you shouldn’t have an opinion based on the source of the statement is what I’m saying. Yes MBS is trash, but I would still listen to what he has to say.

So you think giving people freedoms to drink and go to bars is a bad thing?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/saudi-arabia-opens-first-liquor-store-rcna135597

And yes I’m fully aware of Khashoggi. What I’m saying is all people all governments have good and bad. I can easily agree with many things that awful people do. It doesn’t make them any less awful, but I’m not so ignorant to be opposed to something just because an awful person says it.

So to hate a good idea just because of it’s messenger is ignorant at best and harmful at worst.

The reason I bring this up is because in USA it’s becoming more and more like this. That regardless of what the policy is, the only thing the stupid politicians care about now is who the messenger is. And it’s doing incredible damage to the country.

Now, obviously you’re just making a statement. I don’t really disagree with it as I think MBS is a horrible human being. But I really don’t like the idea of agreeing or disagreeing with someone based on the person saying it.

This is true, China doesn’t care. I’m actually confused about the narrative around China wanting to take TSMC. Even the most cursory glace at the situation should make it obvious this isn’t one of China’s goals. This is because these EUV machines don’t work on magic. They work on knowledge and spare parts. Even in the unlikely scenario that China somehow invades and these machines aren’t destroyed by either China or the retreating Taiwanese, they aren’t going to be able to operate them and more importantly get spare parts to keep them running. They’d at best be used to disassemble and review.

All of this ignores the fact that China is already at 5nm using their own equipment anyway. For the extra 2nm of difference between TSMC’s 3nm to SMIC’s 5nm isn’t large enough to rationalize anything close to what they’re talking about. It’d be cheaper to just keep subsidizing the Chinese industry rather than invading.

All of this is to say, that China may or may not invade, but TSMC isn’t on the list of reasons. If anything, it’s on the opposite end. China has a LOT of motivation to bomb TSMC to prevent the west from getting chips as if TSMC is gone, then suddenly Chinese 5nm are pretty much the most advanced chips in the world (besides Samsung). Thus, the real conclusion is we need to invest in Samsung, which surprisingly isn’t happening for whatever reason is beyond me.

It’s good that you point that out. Because it shows US really can’t sanction China and only entities within it like it does to its own allies as opposed to straight country sanctions like Iran and North Korea.

https://www.tradecompliance.pitt.edu/embargoed-and-sanctioned-countries

Here’s a list.

In fairness though, that list also shows the US can’t sanction Russia either. So not sure how much of a flex not being able to sanction China is.

Yes, they can’t operate the website in USA so they’ll operate it in Canada and Mexico. And yes, that’s why they’re targeting the stores and not the site, because the only thing they can do is prevent operations inside the country but they cannot block access to it.

Finally, of course technically Apple could only allow EU to do this, but much like their transition to USB-C it would be weird if they did that. ESPECIALLY since having Tik Tok on their phones would be a benefit to them, not a negative.

*Edit: Also I was defining free speech in my initial post, which you seem to agree with. I was not trying to define this abhorrent loophole of a bill that bans but doesn’t ban because of 1A Tik Tok. And if you don’t understand why the government trying to loophole out of the constitution is bad, well I have no words.

Actually that’s not correct. Media isn’t like other products, it’s protected speech. This is why even though we’ve sanctioned Russia, you can still go and read Russian Times. Even foreign media, which Tik Tok is, would be protected under our free speech laws.

This is why this “ban” isn’t a ban, which the senators keep repeating. It doesn’t block Tik Tok or it’s website from being used by Americans. All it does is block Tik Tok from being distributed by American app stores. So if they don’t divest, you could still go to their website and download their app. With the new EU ruling, Apple is going to have to allow third party installation anyway, so you’ll still be able to use Tik Tok as if nothing happened.

So what’s all this really about? Propaganda and showmanship. They’re just pushing a China bad narrative as realistically our 1A laws prevent them from doing anything actually effective here.

That’s an excellent question because people completely misunderstand freedom of speech. The law is freedom of speech from government persecution. Which is literally what banning Tik Tok is. It’s the government persecuting a company for being Chinese.

What the law does not protect is private persecution. If you come to my house and announce you’re a pedo, I can kick you out of my house for that. Just like tik tok can ban you.

What you’re saying is true, but misses the point. Yes, larger content creators can get sources of income besides advertising. However, the whole point of youtube is to let anyone big or small get started. Small creators can’t get started if they don’t have a source of income. So that’s where the advertising comes in.

In a sense, twitch builds upon the success of youtube. They took large creators who could get the $5 subscriptions on to their platform. But this only increased the need for youtube to court advertisers.

In a world without advertisers paying content creators, our options would be severely limited. We want small upstarts and cutting off their source of income is a terrible idea.

Unfortunately, our world requires the necessity evil of youtube doing whatever it can to stop ad blocker. No matter how nice it is. And if you as a user are satisficed with the limited content from large creators, as you said, there’s always twitch.

Actually the other person who tried to disagree with me made a great point for my argument.

Youtube needs content creators and pays them through advertising. If advertising stopped, there would be no content creators.

So regardless of if it’s storage or bandwidth, they absolutely need to stop ad block. Otherwise no one will make content for youtube.

…yes, so google desperately needs those advertisers to advertise. And if they stop, their content stops existing. So yeah Google has to stop ad block. Otherwise who’s going to make anything for YouTube?

*Edit as you said

Google isn’t just giving away their money.

So they need advertisers to give out that money or they have no one posting videos.

Unless you think Google will just start giving out money.

So then they need to do whatever they can to stop ad block. Because Google pays shit loads of money due to ad revenue. I’m not sure how your logic disagrees with anything I said.

That’s fine, but that’s why Google is doing this. They need people who won’t watch ads to stop using it to lower their costs. I mean what business survives with zero income? The question google is asking isn’t whether or not some people will stop using it, the question their asking is will enough of them stop for them to generate income.

They’re already doing that. That’s why the spending bill is being rolled up into one. That way they can say they’re voting for it to stop the Russian genocide and so what if it does a little genocide in the Middle East.

Sadly, your joke is just reality

I don’t think we have differing opinions actually. I’m saying there have been many countries that have stated they do not see the stuff USA talks about to make it reasonable to ban. They all shut up and followed the US after 2020 and individuals even started to say Huawei is more evil than American companies. Again without any particular evidence.

Would I argue that Google and Huawei do similar and equally bad things, yes absolutely. I’m just tired of people attacking Huawei and saying they’re worse than American corps. That’s all I’m trying to say here.