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User: cheesybagel

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  1. Re:EU needs to knock FB TFO on Facebook Could Face EU Sanctions If It Doesn't Change Its TOS (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Point to one law they made. All EU directives either come from the Council of Ministers or the European Commission.

    Europarl only has the right to veto the directives.

  2. Re: How many times has this been threatened/Rumore on Alibaba To Set Up New Chip Company Amid Fear of US Tech Dependency (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Your whole argument is flawed. One of the most social welfare states in Europe is Sweden and they aren't even in NATO. So you can have both. You Americans don't have it because you simply don't want to.

    Back in the Cold War the countries now in the EU had vastly more military spending and in fact had more social benefits than they have now, where much of it has been privatized.

  3. They have facilities there to soothe the Chinese government. But the thing is, they are two process generations behind because of trade restrictions.

  4. Re:EU needs to knock FB TFO on Facebook Could Face EU Sanctions If It Doesn't Change Its TOS (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    No. In the EU the organ with the most power is the Council of Ministers, which has the Prime-Minister (or equivalent chief of the executive) of each country in the EU. They can both create laws, enact them, and veto them. The second organ with the most power is the pseudo-executive branch of the EU which is the European Comission. It has a President and a bunch of commissioners for different branches of the economy. The have the power to create and enact laws. They used to be directly chosen by the Council of Ministers. There is now a confirmation vote in the European Parliament but it is mostly for show. Then there is the European Parliament, with directly elected MEPs, which only has a right to veto.

    So it's closer to the USSR's system where locally appointed political leaders elected the regional leaders, then in turn selected the national leader. This kind of political formation is hardly new, it dates back at least to the Mongol Empire. It creates a more stable, albeit more corrupt system.

    There were attempts to make the EU a Federation, but rather interestingly, the UK was the leading opponent against it. They never wanted it to go past a confederation. Where the national governments have the most to say. So the European Parliament is mostly toothless.

  5. Re:EU needs to knock FB TFO on Facebook Could Face EU Sanctions If It Doesn't Change Its TOS (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    The MEPs in the European Parliament only have a right to veto.

    The main power of the European Union is in the council of ministers. One per country. The problem is, ever since the Eastern European countries joined, Germany got themselves a bunch of lackeys which just rubber stamp whatever they want to pass. I still remember the brazen comments of the Slovak prime-minister once when there were dissenting voices in the Council regarding the treatment of Greece.

    Who was it that decided to just give a free pass to any emigrants that came to the EU? It was Germany and their lackeys.

  6. 1) It does not have an army.
    2) It cannot collect taxes directly.

  7. The EU is a Confederation basically.

  8. Sales are already taxed in the EU. It's called VAT. This is about Corporate Tax.

  9. In the US they have an office at Reno, Nevada to avoid paying taxes IIRC.
    They also park (or used to park) the money of their international operations ofshore in the British Virgin Islands IIRC.

    Much of the tax evasion is due to abuse of patents and the like. They have an offshore companies which "own" the patents and license them at a cost which makes the subsidiaries operate at zero profit.

  10. Re:I say this on every nuke thread on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    I meant electric water heaters.

  11. Re:I say this on every nuke thread on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Also, because of the cheap nuclear electricity, a lot of French use resistive heating and electric water coolers on their homes. By shutting down nuclear, a vast amount of housing infrastructure will have to change to natural gas, large natural gas networks will need to be build across the nation, and further increase their dependency on natural gas.

  12. Re:I say this on every nuke thread on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Given past experiences with other countries the electricity prices will keep going up as a result of shutting down the nuclear power plants. France is building a lot of wind power plants, but they are also building natural gas power plants to compensate for wind's variability. Right now natural gas prices are quite low, but natural gas prices are highly variable. A large part of France's natural gas comes from Algeria, which is a country which has been on the brink of a civil war for decades. Natural gas is also often tied to the price of oil. It also is a lot more expensive in the winter than in the summer. If you take it as an aggregate this means the new capacity is be more expensive than the old nuclear capacity and it will expose France to risks as their fuel supply will become dependent on unstable countries (like Algeria) or countries which are antagonistic to the EU like Russia. Also if they import natural gas from Russia, it will be piped through Germany, which means they'll get a cut from transport passing there. So France will go from being a net energy exporter to being a net energy importer.

  13. Re:I say this on every nuke thread on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The CO2 is mostly generated because of concrete production. With their (stupid) arguments hydropower is also a CO2 hazard. Because of these stupid arguments what they will get is more natural gas power plants which will produce even more CO2.

  14. Re:U.S. only country really fighting climate chang on US Congress Passes Bill To Help Advanced Nuclear Power (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    When Obama was POTUS they licensed the construction of four new nuclear reactors in the USA. Two were cancelled for economic reasons outside the government's control (going over budget and Toshiba nuclear going bankrupt). I wouldn't say he was against nuclear power. The US government even gave incentives to build the reactors.

  15. Re:I smell a rat on Saudi Arabia Invests $1 Billion In Potential Tesla Rival (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Global productivity improved for sure, but because more people got into the labor market the salaries got cut in half. At the same time women don't have time to either do household tasks or to take care of children. So family sizes decrease.

  16. Re:I smell a rat on Saudi Arabia Invests $1 Billion In Potential Tesla Rival (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    You provide a quick production boost, on paper, yes, but then you ruin your economics in the long run as you get close to negative birth rates. What it means is that what used to be not a part of the economy like child care, etc, becomes a business and then it starts showing up on GDP numbers as people get a salary.

  17. The first Tesla Roadster was available for sale in 2008. It sold in teensy numbers. It was not made for the mass market. Musk then exposes his "masterplan" of moving down the cost chain to produce the Model 3. Well the thing is, the Leaf was already at that cost almost a decade ago. The main difference is both companies started their approaches from different ends of the price segment and now they are overlapping in a segment. Nissan built several electric cars along the years. But Li-ion technology only became viable in terms of capacity, density, and cost, quite recently. The Leaf was designed to be an electric car with mass market appeal from the onset. So it came with a small battery to keep costs down. As manufacturing costs of the batteries went down (they have their own factory capacity hired in the industry BTW) they have risen the range and performance of the vehicles.

    I might say that Tesla made electric cars fashionable and they produce a decent product for a lot of the segments they are in. But they still do not have the best selling electric. The best selling electric is still the Nissan Leaf and has been the case for years now. What kind of put a damper on a lot of electric vehicle car manufacturer plans was when the oil price crashed back down again. Everyone and their mother wants an SUV again, they forgot about the last oil crisis, once the Iranian sanctions begin to hit hard, or even worse, if tensions increase in the Persian Gulf area and it gets blockaded somehow, the oil price can easily go over the last historical highs. Ford shutters everything but their SUV production in the USA and other companies move to do the same. The same insane retarded batshit insanity again.

  18. I guess you never heard of vehicles like the Nissan Leaf.

  19. He owned stock in Tesla and was part of the board. He founded SpaceX. Yes, he did not found Paypal, he was brought into the business after he tried to do a competitive business called X.com. His main claim to fame before that was selling Zip2 to Compaq. Which was supposedly some sort of micro-portal platform or directory. I can't remember exactly. Other people have founded similar businesses and gotten rich with venture funding afterwards like Paul Graham but don't seem to get the same amount of vitriol that Musk gets.

    You can definitely say that SpaceX wouldn't exist today without Musk. As for Tesla, had he not gotten into handling the business personally like he did, I doubt they would ever be more than a niche electric sports car maker like Koenigsegg. The management was full of Electric Engineers from Silicon Valley with next to no car manufacturing experience. He was the one who pushed the company to get into the mass market. The fact that the Model S was manufactured out of aluminium was due to suggestions from SpaceX mechanical engineers. What he does not have is people with experience with mass manufacturing on the scale he needs for the Model 3. He's stumbling along the way with growth pains because he decided to reinvent the business manufacturing model without having a priori knowledge of how the industry worked. But even supposed "established" car makers have made similar blunders with excessive faith in automation of car assembly in the past. Remember Saturn? The division of GM which was supposed to compete with the Japanese? This is just another rehash of that.

    They might be stumbling along the way but they are churning cars out. I think it's disingenuous to compare him with either Tucker or DeLorean because they never even dreamed of selling as many cars as he did. The company might eventually go belly up but it wouldn't be the first car company to do it. In fact many hope for it so they can fold the remains into one of the incumbents. Which would, in my opinion, actually kill the motive drive for the company and surrender the market to the Chinese and Europeans.

    The Chinese BYD already has an electric bus manufacturing facility in California for example.

  20. Re:Don't really care about who on SpaceX Says It Signed First Private Passenger To the Moon (nbcnewyork.com) · · Score: 1

    It can be a business. Much like the Mir flights. If they can land the three F9H main stages back on site and reuse the rocket the costs might end up to be similar.

  21. Nah. It was just for profits sake. Soldier farmers lost their lands on prolonged campaigns and the wealthy purchased them at bargain prices from the destitute families. The soldiers brought slaves from their campaigns which were bought by the wealthy as cheap labor to till the fields. It was win-win for them.

    You should read about water mills in the Roman Empire. It's a load of fun. Some wealthy farmers with large plantations ordered water mills from craftsmen to grind wheat (which used to be done with manual labor). They kept this secret from the other farmers because it gave them a competitive edge for generations.

  22. The Egyptians also manufactured beer.

  23. Not "always". In the time of the Roman Empire a large chunk of economy was powered by slave labor. That changed with the fall of the Roman Empire though.

  24. Re:Where are the intels or sony or boeing/airbus o on China Now the Most Prolific Contributor To Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Math (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, Oppo, DJI.
    Due to sanctions Chinese can't purchase semiconductor manufacturing tools unless they are two process nodes behind the leading edge technology.

    As for their aeronautical sector, they working on it, with projects like the Comac 919. They are still behind countries like Russia, Brazil, Canada though.

  25. Duh. It was all tulip-bulb mania and we all knew about it. Well, WORSE, than tulip-bulb mania since tulips at least look nice. Well I guess some people can also be fascinated by crypto hash numbers. Maybe they can print and frame theirs and put it on the wall.