3 ms·

> This is often repeated, and I believed it myself in the past as being self-evident, but the Russia/Ukraine war has changed my mind. Russia was selling gas, th

> This is often repeated, and I believed it myself in the past as being self-evident, but the Russia/Ukraine war has changed my mind. Russia was selling gas, the west was buying gas. Other countries produced e.g. iPhones and Russians were buying them. It seemed to be a classic case of a situation where everyone loses if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway. I think you will find that this was an actual example until out outright invasion was made, because since 2014 the EU was buying gas (to the major benefit of Germany) while the US and UK who signed the Budapest Memorandum looked the other way in order to keep 'business as usual' going in the EU while hand-waving about the whole thing. Putin made the grave mistake that the West would capitulate to this once more and Kyiv would fall, instead it finally unified the West to finally see the threat for what it always was (Russia has invaded or outright attacked nations 7 times since '99). What you saw was the deterrence taking place, you probably just didn't realize how detrimental it was because you measured it's success in iphone sales rather than total casualties and displaced people (look at how Syria kicked off the current diaspora out of the ME and Africa). Personally speaking, Globalization did work to a limited extent for a while but the issue is that the Western powers enabled their corps to hallow out their domestic manufacturing Industry/workforce and benefit from labour/regulatory arbitrage and allowed it to have record profits: it ultimately funded these despots who felt all to comfortable relying on Western greed and fecklessness when it came to geopolitics. Cheap trinkets from China aren't worth living in a World with a nuclear capable despot thinking he can kick off WW3 if we don't indulge them at anytime because we rely on them for a broken supply chain, and it never was worth it despite the ability to rationalize this Stockholm Syndrome so many are under.

brucehoult 3y ago
Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). The Chinese and US economies are far more inter-dependent and the Chinese understand that war is unthinkable -- are are very annoyed at Russia. The Western response to Ukraine has also put China off the notion that they could quietly take Taiwan without anyone making a fuss. But this is very far from RISC-V. China has long since (5+ years) taken everything from RISC-V initially done in the West that there is to take. The ISA specification itself, gcc and llvm and Linux and things like that. It is far too late to change that. They have local git clones. At present China is contributing more to RISC-V than anyone else. For example they are doing almost all work on Android and all the parts that go into that, including things such as the Chromium browser. All their improvements go into public repositories that the rest of the world can access. Companies such as WCH and THead and StarFive are also at the forefront of RISC-V cores and chips that normal people can actually buy. WCH's $0.10 microcontrollers are really great (as are their $0.50 and $1.00 chips). THead's C910 core is not only in the highest performance RISC-V SoCs (TH1520, SG2042) and boards you can buy right now, it is also open source (https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910) with a permissive license so anyone can audit it, or take the design as a starting point. StarFive's "Dubhe" core will probably be available on SBCs in the next 6-12 months, and will be similar to Rockchip's RK3588, currently the fastest ARM chip available on SBCs.
- Melting_Harps 3y ago
  > Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). 'We' as in the US, sure,I'm sure the US backed this as much as they have because of projected earning in supplying mainland Europe with natural gas as opposed to Gazprom. Europe however was incredibly reliant on Russia, even though N. Africa and the Middle East could offset the demand in time it was something that could only be done with such a drastic as this took place with the US filling the gaps in between. As for teh US v China dilemma: personally speaking that has come at too great a cost, the fact that they black-mailed the West during COVID for PPE shows that Xi will not consider them as equal partners, and will do anything to disrupt them if he feels it is in his best interest. China ha a myriad of advantages of other nations because it was the nation the West outsourced most to for high tech to low tech. There is no question that this will be a hard tranistion, but it is one that has to be made: Evergrande collapsing was 2 years in the making, everyone knew from the outcry from domestic retail side that it had gone belly up and instead of trying to rectify the situation, tear gas and beatings were used to quell uprisings of it and other banks. I fully expect more inflation from China to be made to prop up there already crumbling economy and unless the West wants to remain in this subservient role for critical goods it must act now when China is more focused on Domestic issues than at any other time since the Industrialization of the mainland. I don't profess to know every minute detail of the chips you mentioned, but if it is in fact in the public domain and the Inflation Reduction act has made enough concession to make fabs in the US with international partners (LG/Samsung) than the only thing waiting is to put this all in motion. Economies of scale will be an issue, and perhaps this will be the reason we revert the planned obsolescence built into every device coming from China. That alone would be a step in the right direction in my view.
  - brucehoult 3y ago
    > 'We' as in the US I'm not in or from the US. I did once (2019-2020) spend 11 months officially living in the US, though even that was broken up by two 1-2 week trips to Christchurch and Moscow. When I say "we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere" I am, obviously, meaning "we" as Europe. Sure, it was a scramble, but it was done, and contrary to Russian propaganda a year ago, no one in Europe went cold last winter. > I'm sure the US backed this as much as they have because of projected earning in supplying mainland Europe with natural gas I don't really care why the US tells themselves they are backing Ukraine. It's simply the right thing to do. Firstly because Ukraine has been making a very serious attempt to follow the paths of countries such as Poland and Czechia who were lucky to get leaders of the calibre of Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel right after the end of the Soviet Union. Ukraine wasn't so lucky in the 90s. It's even harder to do now, but they've been doing it, electing better leaders, rooting out corruption, choosing their own friends. That's what Putin can't stand. Secondly, and more importantly, because Putin should have been called out for his shit a lot sooner, not appeased. It was hard to do something about the Chechan wars as that is internal to Russia, but serious steps should have been taken after the invasion of Georgia in 2008, at the latest.

brucehoult 3y ago

Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). The Chinese and US economies are far more inter-dependent and the Chinese understand that war is unthinkable -- are are very annoyed at Russia. The Western response to Ukraine has also put China off the notion that they could quietly take Taiwan without anyone making a fuss. But this is very far from RISC-V. China has long since (5+ years) taken everything from RISC-V initially done in the West that there is to take. The ISA specification itself, gcc and llvm and Linux and things like that. It is far too late to change that. They have local git clones. At present China is contributing more to RISC-V than anyone else. For example they are doing almost all work on Android and all the parts that go into that, including things such as the Chromium browser. All their improvements go into public repositories that the rest of the world can access. Companies such as WCH and THead and StarFive are also at the forefront of RISC-V cores and chips that normal people can actually buy. WCH's $0.10 microcontrollers are really great (as are their $0.50 and $1.00 chips). THead's C910 core is not only in the highest performance RISC-V SoCs (TH1520, SG2042) and boards you can buy right now, it is also open source (https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910) with a permissive license so anyone can audit it, or take the design as a starting point. StarFive's "Dubhe" core will probably be available on SBCs in the next 6-12 months, and will be similar to Rockchip's RK3588, currently the fastest ARM chip available on SBCs.

Melting_Harps 3y ago
> Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). 'We' as in the US, sure,I'm sure the US backed this as much as they have because of projected earning in supplying mainland Europe with natural gas as opposed to Gazprom. Europe however was incredibly reliant on Russia, even though N. Africa and the Middle East could offset the demand in time it was something that could only be done with such a drastic as this took place with the US filling the gaps in between. As for teh US v China dilemma: personally speaking that has come at too great a cost, the fact that they black-mailed the West during COVID for PPE shows that Xi will not consider them as equal partners, and will do anything to disrupt them if he feels it is in his best interest. China ha a myriad of advantages of other nations because it was the nation the West outsourced most to for high tech to low tech. There is no question that this will be a hard tranistion, but it is one that has to be made: Evergrande collapsing was 2 years in the making, everyone knew from the outcry from domestic retail side that it had gone belly up and instead of trying to rectify the situation, tear gas and beatings were used to quell uprisings of it and other banks. I fully expect more inflation from China to be made to prop up there already crumbling economy and unless the West wants to remain in this subservient role for critical goods it must act now when China is more focused on Domestic issues than at any other time since the Industrialization of the mainland. I don't profess to know every minute detail of the chips you mentioned, but if it is in fact in the public domain and the Inflation Reduction act has made enough concession to make fabs in the US with international partners (LG/Samsung) than the only thing waiting is to put this all in motion. Economies of scale will be an issue, and perhaps this will be the reason we revert the planned obsolescence built into every device coming from China. That alone would be a step in the right direction in my view.
- brucehoult 3y ago
  > 'We' as in the US I'm not in or from the US. I did once (2019-2020) spend 11 months officially living in the US, though even that was broken up by two 1-2 week trips to Christchurch and Moscow. When I say "we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere" I am, obviously, meaning "we" as Europe. Sure, it was a scramble, but it was done, and contrary to Russian propaganda a year ago, no one in Europe went cold last winter. > I'm sure the US backed this as much as they have because of projected earning in supplying mainland Europe with natural gas I don't really care why the US tells themselves they are backing Ukraine. It's simply the right thing to do. Firstly because Ukraine has been making a very serious attempt to follow the paths of countries such as Poland and Czechia who were lucky to get leaders of the calibre of Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel right after the end of the Soviet Union. Ukraine wasn't so lucky in the 90s. It's even harder to do now, but they've been doing it, electing better leaders, rooting out corruption, choosing their own friends. That's what Putin can't stand. Secondly, and more importantly, because Putin should have been called out for his shit a lot sooner, not appeased. It was hard to do something about the Chechan wars as that is internal to Russia, but serious steps should have been taken after the invasion of Georgia in 2008, at the latest.