• 0 Posts
  • 62 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023
  • lemmylommy@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What does China achieve from invading Taiwan?
    377·
    1 day ago

    You are approaching this from the perspective of a rational peaceful person from the west, where usually the economy is number one in everything.

    Xi has achieved unrivaled rule over the party. He has successfully established a police state that ensures that any domestic dissent is immediately crushed with brutal efficiency. He has subjugated the provinces that dared to think about self rule and cultural differences, and is in the process of ethnic cleansing without any significant opposition or consequences. He has gained colonial influence all over Africa through economic means. He has taken over Hong Kong. He has significantly modernized and expanded the military, including nuclear weapons. He had made China into a global economic superpower, which other countries, including rivals, depend on for a significant amount of manufactured goods and resources.

    So what is left for him? Surely he is not a man who can be content with what he has.

    The obvious next step is to make China into a military superpower. For that you need to exert power abroad. What better place to begin with than that small island just off your coast that has been a challenge to Chinese supremacy for decades?

    Of course, Taiwan is kind of protected by the US, the dominant superpower of the time. But they are struggling, looking weak. If China manages to take Taiwan, they will not only have removed that thorn in their side, they will also have punched the biggest, meanest kid on the block on the nose and gotten away with it.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Your TV Is Spying On YouEnglish
    151·
    13 days ago

    You probably can use your tv without it using you, or probably not.

    I, too, use pihole. But it does not prevent your data from leaking 100% and never will. And it’s easily circumvented by using other DNS servers or even by connecting to hardcoded IPs. I dont know specifically about TVs, but some manufacturers do that.

    The only way to make sure that TV can never spy is to never connect it to the internet.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Ads on YouTubeEnglish
    131·
    15 days ago

    I despise ads because they steal time, and their very existence is an insult to the people that are exposed to them. All ads tell me is „your time is worth very little and we believe you are easily manipulated“.

    Based on average ad length and cost on YouTube, ChatGPT has calculated that advertisers pay about $9 per hour of ads. While that seems a bit high to me, it is plausible. My time is worth more than that.

    Yes, I do pay for YouTube premium. Though in a cheaper country, because the normal price is excessive imho.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Has anyone seen Al Jazeera's Youtube stats?
    183·
    1 month ago

    Calling Al Jazeera „independent“ is quite a stretch. They are funded by Qatar, a authoritarian monarchy based on sharia law, where homosexuality is punishable by death, women’s testimony is worth half of that of men and they have fun punishments such as stoning and flogging.

    That doesn’t mean YouTube is not suppressing media. In fact, in my experience the algorithm heavily favors right wing propaganda and has done so for years.

    So maybe Al Jazeera has fallen out of favor. Or maybe they have themselves inflated their numbers previously with a method that no longer works, or they are just focusing their propaganda efforts on other, stupider platforms, like TikTok.