ebruchez

One needs to be a little more sophisticated about it. Ray Kurzweil, for example, set fairly clear rules for his interpretation of the test in his 2001 wager:

https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/a-wager-on-the-turing-...

Those rules are fairly reasonable, at least as a start.

I got here to mention Asimov. For those unaware, it was revealed 10 years after his death that he had actually died of HIV, contracted from a blood transfusion during a heart operation. It's quite tragic.

Oh no they weren't!

Marques Brownlee seems to like the wheels in his latest video review, FWIW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfReqcUJfBU

Not criticizing your decision, but I went the opposite way, deciding that I was ok spending a certain extra amount initially in order to encourage a non-Chinese manufacturer. But I understand not everyone has this luxury.

I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.

It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.

So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!

I suppose that means the museum is doing its job then: educate people totally ignorant of the history of computing. Next time that younger person sees a floppy disk they will know what it is.

Yes - so far.

> There's just no way to deny this.

Of course there is "way".

All the above above in itself sounds like propaganda. You forget other political (authoritarian system making massive mistakes), demographic (1.0, probably less in reality, birth per woman), psychological (disillusioned young population), and geographic (food and other imports) aspects, among other things.

In particular, the IBM 1401 (two of them actually) that you can see demonstrated at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View are transistor-based and were very successful computers.

https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/ibm1401/

> The US and Switzerland are the only two countries that use the same colors for all of their various bills.

Factually absolutely incorrect for Switzerland, and easy to verify. Swiss bank notes are and have been some of the most colorful (and pretty, I should say) around, and all have different sizes.

That's right. There are still S-100 enthusiasts who are maintaining and developing S-100 cards, see http://www.s100computers.com/ (does not seem to respond correctly to HTTPS right now).

One of the interesting aspects of the Altair was that it was based on a bus called the S-100 bus. You would have a CPU card and a memory card at least, but everything else was optional. The serial board was separate, and strictly not absolutely necessary to play with the computer, since you could enter simple programs directly from the front panel.

True or not, be aware that "The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective." (Wikipedia)

Future might tell. But while it's tempting, I wouldn't bet against democracy and freedom just yet.

I don't need to be convinced that China has lots of bright, hard-working individuals. I just want to point out that China faces immense challenges and that we should see beyond, and push back against, the propaganda. There is a massive asymmetry between China and democratic nations in this regards.

Yes, but this will likely hurt China as well. You can't assume only the US will be hurt by this.

This sounds like official Chinese propaganda. This was truer at some point, but things have started turning bad for China with the advent of Xi Jinping. 20-25 years ago, the country was hopeful, developing fast, opening up. Foreigners started moving there, seeing it as a new land of opportunity. Much of that is gone. The economy is in bad shape, youth unemployment is massive, the country is a dictatorship, nobody wants to move there (and China doesn't want you to anyway). I'll quote the Economist: "When Mr Xi took over in 2012, China was changing fast. The middle class was growing, private firms were booming and citizens were connecting on social media. A different leader might have seen these as opportunities. Mr Xi saw only threats."

> China will surpass USA from a GDP Point of view in 2035.

Don't be so sure, this has become much less clear. For example, in this article: "The Centre for Economics and Business Research, which in 2020 predicted that China would overtake the U.S. by 2028, revised the crossover point two years later, to 2036. This month, the British consultancy said it will not happen in the next 15 years."

https://www.newsweek.com/2025/01/31/china-us-compete-biggest...

Fair enough. By the way, the original CSS from 1996 featured only:

- the "descendant" combinator (whitespace) - the "class" selector (".foo")

The 1998 CSS2 introduced "child", "following sibling", and attribute selectors. This state of things then remained unchanged forever (I see that Selectors Level 3 became a recommendation only in 2018?).

On the other hand, in 1999, XPath already specified all those basic ways to navigate the DOM, and CSS still doesn't have them all as of 2025.

There have been proposals a long time ago, including by Tim Bray, for an XML 2.0 that would remove some warts. But there was no appetite in the industry to move forward.

CSS selectors have spent the last few decades reinventing XPath. XPath introduced right from the beginning the notion of axes, which allow you to navigate down, up, preceding, following, etc. as makes sense. XPath also always had predicates, even in version 1.0. CSS just recently started supporting :has() and :is(), in particular. Eventually, CSS selectors will match XPath's query abilities, although with worse syntax.

XSLT will perform the transformations that you instruct it to do. It does not wipe out whitespace just on its own. Do you mean that you'd like facilities to nicely reindent the output?

You are confused. Look at Taiwan's present, not its long gone past. As I mentioned in another thread, during my last trip to Taiwan, I revisited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which features a museum where Chiang Kai-shek's life and rule are documented. The errors and brutality of his rule in particular are well-documented and preserved, officially accessible to all citizens and visitors. This is a wonderful example of transparency. You won't find anything like this in mainland China.

I think the GP meant "a" cultural revolution, not "the" cultural revolution. But yes, the CCP taking over Taiwan would erode and then try to erase the beautiful and diverse culture of Taiwan. Schools will teach obedience to the CCP. History will be rewritten. Free media and foreign media will be censored. The entire set of democratic institutions of Taiwan will be dismantled. And you can go on and on.

You swap character by character, and of course if you want to swap a group of characters related to a particular domain you can do so. The tray is just a grid so you have as much flexibility as you want as long as you have the appropriate characters at your disposal.

I have just finished reading Mullaney’s book.

The possibly unique instance of the MingKwai typewriter, thought lost, was recently found, by the way:

https://typewriterrevolution.com/the-discovery-of-lin-yutang...

Cool, I hadn't seen this video. I am currently working on mapping the character tray and boxes of a Taiwanese Jue Shine typewriter, which uses a different mechanism:

https://typewriterdatabase.com/1972-jue-shine-747l.24670.typ...

The benefit of the tray system is that you can easily swap characters, which is essential for Chinese, but maybe less so for Japanese.

There is absolutely nothing hilarious about any aspect of it whatsoever. We are talking about peace, justice, human freedom and suffering - all values on which the US was founded, by the way.

Whether the US should be involved or not is a valid question: moral, practical, diplomatic. A very recent parallel is that of the war in Ukraine: should the US be involved and be isolationist, or not? I for one think that a more than fair case can be made that holding the moral high ground will also, coincidentally, lead to more stability and more economic rewards. So it's a no-brainer and I don't share your isolationist view.

You should, incidentally, remember that US support for Taiwan goes back to a time when Taiwan didn't even have a semiconductor industry. It's unclear that US support would cease entirely if the US was fully independent in that industry, and it's also unclear whether that will happen in any short-term horizon, or at all.

Saying "Taiwan is in fact occupied by China" is at best a gross misrepresentation. It's like saying "North America is in fact occupied by Europe now [...] for North America to be free, in any proper sense, the European occupiers must leave." Well, maybe, from a certain point of view? But kind of pointless in terms of a realistic path forward.

We are not talking about remaking history here. We are talking about the present and the future of Taiwan. Its population and culture are what they are now.

Chiang Kai-shek's move to Taiwan and subsequent rule was indeed at times brutal, and the immigration massive in relative terms. But that move took place in the 1950s, and since that time amends have been made. You will see monuments and remembrance days related to those events. Taiwan is now a thriving (if at times feisty) democracy where minorities are protected.

During my last trip to Taiwan, I revisited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.[1] What struck me is the museum underneath. Here, for all to contemplate, is a documentation of Chiang Kai-shek's life and rule. The striking part is that the errors and brutality of his rule are also well-documented and preserved, officially accessible to all. Try to find anything like this kind of recognition of past mistakes in mainland China (hint: you won't find it).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek_Memorial_Hall

There are several aspects that come into play:

1. How the PRC (mainland China) regards Taiwan (or ROC).

2. How Taiwan regards itself. This has changed over time.

3. How third-parties play that situation.

Since Nixon's visit to China in the 1970s, the world recognized that it was pointless to deny that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) ruled mainland China for good. From there, the PRC progressively got official recognition in institutions like the UN. In order not to inflame the PRC's leadership and keep access to mainland China, many countries state that they do not recognize or encourage Taiwan's independence. But note that they also maintain de facto diplomatic relationships, being careful not to use the name "embassy" or "consulate".

In reality, Taiwan has been absolutely independent since the 1950s. It's just that it's not officially recognized by most institutions and countries for diplomatic reasons.

I'll add that the "one China policy" is ambiguous by design. It doesn't mean that it must happen in the foreseeable future. It also doesn't mean that the PRC should be allowed to take over Taiwan through military might.

In the end, no matter what the various parties' policies are, almost nobody in Taiwan at this point believes that a peaceful so-called "reunification" is desirable or possible. I put the word "reunification" in quotes in particular because the CCP never controlled Taiwan, and also because in general the historical argument doesn't make any sense. Personally, I think that the principle of self-determination is what should apply here, for moral reasons. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination