Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter
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As long as Trump is president, I don't think we need to have any illusions as to which side he would chose in a hypothetical armed conflict between the EU and Russia (he would pick no side).
EU politicians should wake up and smell the coffee, and invest in an EU army before it's too late. We really (desperately) need strategic independence from the US and other foreign powers. The US in particular has been an unpredictable, unreliable, and untrustworthy partner in the past two decades or so (e.g. Iran deal, Paris climate accords, Iraq war, EU-US trade wars, ...)
EDIT: Stop downvoting me and tell me instead where I'm wrong.
So until January 21st.
They could, but at least in the short term it appears to be cheaper to let the US spend the money on their military and still get the benefits, even factoring some lost trade to China. It would take many $123mm lithography machines to make up for the billions they would need to create a standing army. That trade off will change, but everything hinges on the “before it’s too late” part of your argument, which you can be assured that virtually no democratically elected politician will get right, since they are looking at <10 years by nature of political campaigns.
As for NATO , the EU has long has the technical means to do away with the need but they don't want to pay for it. How much do you value your security? Getting rid of NATO would be the first step in probably forcing the American government rethink its military spending; sadly the percentage of the US budget going there decreases by small percentages overall letting politicians on both sides claim they have reduced spending. Even halving the US defense budget won't solve the US deficit issues.
I think more US citizens should understand this. Even if the ENTIRE military budget were eliminated, the budget wouldn't put the US in the black. In fact, eliminating EVERYTHING except benefits programs still wouldn't balance the budget.
Millennial shouldn't forget that social security issues start in 2037 with a reduction to 76% of their current payout and it rapidly declines from there [0]. The only social program likely to work is the one you personally setup around yourself and save for right now.
[0] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
Both of which have precedent in the last 100 years. Ofcourse if you only read history from the perspective of the winners, gold is always a good long term investment.
The EU isn't necessarily worried it can't live without the US because the US wouldn't simply answer by withdrawing all support and embargoing the EU. They'd be shooting themselves in the other foot. But they would respond the way all superpowers do when direct, public intervention is not on the table. With subversion. If the NSA leaks have shown anything it's that even allies were thoroughly compromised and one button press away from a series of "unfortunate" events.
What's been recently dubbed "asymmetric warfare" has existed for decades. It's simply deniable attacks, economic or actual warfare via proxies, etc. Covertly supporting certain political candidates while subverting others in order to destabilize a country is in any superpower's playbook.
This is what the EU fears more than that it will suddenly have to face a Russian invasion without US support. For now it's a deal out of which the US gets far more than the rest. They get to cement their superpower status by having the most important and credible allies, and in exchange offer some protection and the promise of not shooting said allies in the foot... maybe just whack them over the shin once in a while.
It's also cheaper to let the US do its military thing and be a bodyguard, and that means the EU can focus on more important social issues. Maybe it's a small price to pay, maybe not. Some future generation will have to answer that.
I guess Europe had better hope America doesn't do what Americans want and pull troops home...
The only truth of foreign policy is "might makes right". Ignoring treaties as just pieces of paper isn't new. Hegemony isn't just about power. If you have the might, you make the rules and can twist them to your benefit. In any case, I guess the EU believes an American hegemony beats out one by Russia or China by a large margin.
I'd guess if the US could spare people and equipment, it would be moving much closer to China at the moment.
They are just set up differently. The EU doesn't have a central military, so they can't do foreign adventures very well, and as a result they don't invade places very often. But this could be seen as a good thing...
On the other hand, the US actually LIKES the show of force, and sees it as a strategic strength, to the extent that they're overjoyed to have an ally to protect as an 'excuse' to flex muscle in the region.
Russia is a threat, but in the annoying neighbours who keeps holding loud parties, deal drugs and litter the streets and who's dog keeps crapping on your lawn kind of way. You don't want to do anything to encourage them, but actually your uncle is in the police and you have two cousins in the Army, and if the neighbours tried anything really serious, reality would assert itself pretty fast, and not in their favour.
The US is keeping it's military presence in Europe to serve US strategic interests, yes versus Russia but also with respect to the Middle East. US operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are heavily supported from bases in Europe. Pulling out those bases would cripple US ability to support those operations and project power across large swathes of Euraisa and Africa.
But would they be willing to sacrifice their countries in a nuclear exchange on behalf of Germany? Also, Britain and France have far fewer nukes than Russia and the US. In addition, they don't have the massive land area to make a first strike implausible.
Actually countering Russian military capacity really isn't
an issue any more, and Britain and France have enough
nukes to act as a deterrent
Which... okay, yes. It's distinctly better than not being safe from a preemptive Russian nuclear strike. However, this is merely necessary; not sufficient.
Have you considered the vast number of non-nuclear aggressions that Russia might undertake, and in fact has already undertaken?
Crimea was safe from Russian nuclear attack too. Ask them how it went.
Are France and the UK's nuclear arsenal going to help if Russia makes more Crimea-style land grabs? Shuts down shipping lanes? Cuts pipelines or internet access? Shoots down geostationary satellites over Europe? Assassinates the leader of a NATO nation?
Granted, there's no guarantee that the United States would help you then, either. We have not been the most reliable partner, and I am deeply sorry for that. I do not support the leaders who have made things this way. I want us to be a better partner.
Regardless, surely you understand that there is a great need for conventional military deterrence by NATO? Nukes solve an extremely limited list of potential problems.
The problem is: How do you convince a world class chip designer like HiSilicon that it should use a local foundry rather than TSMC? TSMC which is more advanced, more reliable, maybe even cheaper? Without breaking China's commitment to WTO and other agreements that facilitate open trade.
That problem is solved now by the policies of the US.
It totally would have worked, had the US not escalated to sanctioning any entities that dared to utilize this alternative system to deal with Iran. You are right to say the EU needs to get a bigger stick to successfully protect its interests when they diverge from American interests. In the long term - I'm talking decades - American troops will leave Europe, perhaps leaving a skeleton crew managing nuclear deterrence: whether they will be pulled back, or pushed out remains to be seen, but the natural evolution of the EU project will eventually result in a standing European army. What happens on Nov 3 will accelerate or delay this eventuality
While I (as a German) agree that the US imperialism and dominance in high tech is a problem, I would not go as low and say the US is on the same level as China, which is an outright threat to all core values of the Western nations.
I'm assuming the previous comment about "core Western values" wasn't referring to "unfettered capitalism" but to stuff like "democracy", "respect of human rights", ... :-)
If you're going to parse hairs, democracy is inherently NOT a "western value". Alexander Hamilton went on at great length in the early federalist papers about the fate of democracies. All failed rather quickly. We formed a republic with democratic elements BECAUSE direct democracy is so tyrannical and doesn't protect minority groups leading to it's downfall. Despite all the complaints, I'd love to see a country throughout history with better treatment of minorities. That country just doesn't exist and countries making things better for minorities over time was even less known at the USA founding.
Finally, foreign affairs are much closer to anarcho-capitalism than anything which implies that anarcho-capitalism is the most free one could theoretically be (though the immediate fall into despotism would make the short-lived freedom of little value).
This supposed lack of justice is then used as justification for destroying those institutions which do stand for rule of law in the US. In that way, those focused on this supposed lack of justice manifest their own fears.
Why is it a problem?
> I would not go as low and say the US is on the same level as China
Why not?
> which is an outright threat to all core values of the Western nations.
I see this mantra repeated over and over again? What are these core values of Western nations. Nazism, imperialism, neocolonialism, antifa? Or are you referring to the virtue signalers manifesto?
In retrospect, Intel should have insisted on much more onerous terms.
There are other suppliers who make photolithography equipment, if ASML went bankrupt, the industry would just fund the competitors.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-intel-stake/...
> The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology.
I hope they charge Apple 30% for every phone sold.
Apple doesn't like to comprosmise on their profits.
(Saying based on Apple's response to current Govt. Tax system)
[0]- https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ASML/asml-holding/...
Apple also shouldn't complain, but still they let the consumer pay twice: once for the phone, and then the tax.
If not, you're likely paying for it, due to the increased average cost to deliver the service/product.
Please educate yourself about what things are before making wrong statements like this.
Speaking as someone completely clueless about the engineering at that level... damn, that's impressive.
There's something deeply wrong when the best purpose humanity can find for all the effort that goes into things like 5G and EUV lithography is to use it to keep people addicted to Facebook and unregulated gambling ("game with in-app payment") apps.
While we could survive with so little work, others keep us in artifical scarcity to elevate their quality of life and protect themselves from people more predatory than them.
I realize not everyone is doing what I'm doing. But, seeing my friends' baby's pictures and all on Facebook isn't altogether worthless.
There's a limit to useful cynicism.
There are a good number of excellent mobile games though: Monument Valley comes to mind.
That's true. I also read a lot comments on hacker news.
Everything is designed to extract the maximum amount of money possible, and ideas are only good if they generate money. And nobody sees anything wrong with that at all, long-term. It's interesting to watch, as someone who comes from a different upbringing.
That’s a great fact to impress friends and family with.
They compare it to the A12 for a start rather than the A13 of last year, so it can't be that big of a leap. Plus it's clocked faster which would account for almost all of the increase in performance from the A13. I'm sure it's a solid new chip - as always - but I see no evidence of a particularly massive revolution this year, in the iPhone or iPad Air.
Of course the rumoured 16 core version for MacBook (maybe iPad Pro too?) is a different matter! That's where I'm excited.
They got a lot of gains by going super-wide to extract obvious parallel performance. They are now at the point where adding more units costs more than it offers (at present). Their fundamental advantage over x86 is that aarch64 is less quirky, so implementing good ideas takes less time.
Their only "easy" dial left is ramping clocks, but that's linear power scaling, so it doesn't matter too much for their portable electronics. I'd guess they'll be focusing a lot more on data locality and caching. It's probably 5-10% gains every couple years from here on out.
(still buying one though...)
I am very curious how the "width" of an Apple cpu was measured. One of the few good measurements I know of was done here and it's a bit inconclusive as the result is very particular.
Android smartphones are smarter than iPhone technically by the article's common sense
13:21 in the video clearly shows that Snapdragon 865 already at 15 TOPS while A14 only has 11 TOPS
how is that skepticism?
Last night my son took my earphones from the table to play with them, and I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for them (they ended up in the terrace!).
But this morning I got several ads on youtube for headphones.
I don't like this one bit.
However beating down on China over their behaviour only achieves anything if it changes that behaviour, otherwise what the heck are we doing? I don't think Trump has it in him to actually solve those problems. I'm not entirely sure Biden does either, but even if he doesn't at least there's a chance he might listen to people who do.
There is a silver lining though. The US land is more fertile and has greater resources than China. It’s also got a more diverse system across the board - and the world stage typically prefers the US to China (at least before Trump).
You tell me how the US positions itself any better than what it did and now seeks to undo.
As it is, I put a bulky case/screen protector and carry a spare battery and cable. Not exactly an ideal solution.
Is that still the case though? I'm not sure about the Android world, but the last several iPhones have been getting thicker and heavier with bigger batteries, to the point that I would say the iPhone 11 is heavier than I'd like.
Fragility I agree with, but I think it's less the thinness and more that every high-end phone now has a glass back for wireless charging. I tend not to use cases and I've never once charged my phone wirelessly (and really don't care about it), so I wish there was an option for an aluminium back.
A tangential quote about the persistence of old, uninformed ideas:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.” — Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950