I bet that overall percentage of people who actually connect this with AI or even really care is tiny. Aside from gamers, majority of people don’t really build their own rigs, or upgrade computers constantly.

I’m not really sure what critical areas China needs to catch up in at this point. The chips they produce are already good enough for any practical applications. It’s also worth keeping in mind that improving software is much easier than hardware. Western software stacks are incredibly bloated. For example, Huawei starting fresh with their HarmonyOS can make a much leander stack by cutting all the cruft and backwards compatibility out.

I also don’t see China being decades behind in chips. They can already make 7nm, they’re prototyping EUV machines, it’s not going to be long at this point. On top of that, China is investing into research of alternative substrates like graphene, spintronics, etc. Any one of these could make silicon look like vacuum tubes overnight if they can scale them up to mass production. There’s no new fundamental physics that need to be discovered here, we know these these things work in a lab. It’s just a matter of scaling up production. And that’s precisely where state driven development comes in.

Can you explain what this tide of reversal you’re talking about with BRI? Last I looked, the investment is record high https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3340442/china-signs-record-us213-billion-new-belt-and-road-deals-2025-report

The Epstein files are the biggest scandal the western system has faced to date in my opinion. This is bigger than stuff like Watergate because it spans multiple administrations in the US, as well as other western regimes. It’s a total indictment of the idea that there’s any sort of a democracy in the west. It’s now plain for everyone to see that the west is ruled by diabolical monsters who are accountable to no one. And this comes at a time of a rapid decline in the living standards which makes people angry and politically engaged. Things that might’ve been ignored before cannot be ignored any longer.

Finally, it seems to me that the west is headed for a massive financial crash. While people keep playing games with the numbers, it’s pretty clear that all the tangible metrics like job numbers and cost of living are doing very poorly. The only question in my mind is what the catalyst will be. It could be the coming war with Iran which might drive oil prices through the roof.

There might actually be a direct relationship there as well. Taiwan being the chokepoint for western chip production puts them in a perfect position to insert backdoors into all western tech. There’s a reason the US was freaking out over Huawei tech spreading in the west. The problem with it isn’t that there’s some Chinese malware in it, but rather that western agencies can’t use it for spying.

Zulip pretty easy to self host. I ran a server for a group of friends a little while back, and it worked great. The UI takes a bit of getting used to, but it is great once you do because everything is a thread by default. And that makes it really easy to catch up on things.

It’s all a matter of jurisdiction. Open source platforms like Stoat can be run outside the reach of western regimes.

not much, just slightly different UX

I’ve seen a few similar projects before, but can’t recall what they were off top of my head.

it looks nearly identical to a cube I had at one of my jobs as well, I think even the phone is the same

The simple answer is it’s because western liberal regimes are not democracies. A system where you have one set of laws for regular people, and another for the affluent is a plutocracy.

The funniest thing for me is that humans end up doing the exact same thing. This is why it’s so notoriously difficult to create organizational policies that actually produce desired results. What happens in practice is that people find ways to comply with the letter of the policy that require the least energy expenditure on their part.

I’d expect they will be Linux friendly just because there’s a big push towards using Linux in China now since they want to decouple from western proprietary tech. I guess we’ll have to wait to see once they become generally available though.

UN can absolutely impose sanctions, the actual problem is that the west is a bunch of rogue states that take unilateral action ignoring the UN.

That’s pure nonsense. There is only one version of international law and the UN is the only globally recognized organization to enforce it. These other organization are just unilateral tools of specific countries representing their interests. And sanctions such as the ones the west does against their adversaries are unilateral actions by these states.

Yes, Bessent was just bragging about this in Davos. These aren’t international sanctions, they’re not approved by the UN. These are unilateral sanctions by the Burger Reich and their vassals used as a form of siege warfare against Iran.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/treasurys-bessent-says-iran-facing-precarious-moment-economy-trouble-2026-01-08/

I can recommend PhotoGIMP which makes GIMP UI fairly close to Ps.

It would be nice if they made their stuff more open source friendly, like publishing specs alone would go a long way.

The level of investment in AI in China is a fraction of that in the US, and they’re already starting to make money. The whole dynamic in China is different. Instead of chasing unicorns and promising stuff like AGI, companies in China are treating AI as shared infrastructure that you actually build useful stuff on top of. Hence why models are being released as open source, they’re not seen as the key source of revenue. It’s closer to what we see with Linux based infrastructure where companies build services like AWS on top of Linux. China also has far more application for AI in stuff like robotics, manufacturing, and other types of automation. There are simply more niches to apply this tech in than there are in the west that’s largely deindustrialized now.

Can you tell me what sources you two are asking for? My argument is that economies of scale make new technologies cheaper over time because industrial processes become refined, people learn better and cheaper ways to produce things, and scaling up production brings the cost down. What are you asking me to source here specifically?

Are you seriously asking for sources for things that HAVE NOT BEEN DONE YET, that’s what you’re asking for here? 🤡

I love how you just keep repeating the same thing over and over. Your whole argument is that we need some amazing breakthrough to make other materials viable, but the reality is that it’s just a matter of investment over time. That’s it. China is investing into development of new substrates at state level, and that’s effectively unlimited funding. The capitalist economic arguments don’t apply here. If you think they won’t be able to figure this out then prepare to be very surprised in the near future.