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#11

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - Today at 12:49:31 AM

2 National Guardsmen shot in DC by Afghan refugee.

#12

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by The Minsky Moment - November 26, 2025, 11:29:05 PM

Believe it when you see it

#13

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Savonarola - November 26, 2025, 09:41:38 PM

Yep. Almost like putting an incompetent idiot whose main qualifier for his job is nepotism in an important job is a bad idea.

Like father, like son...




 

#14

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by crazy canuck - November 26, 2025, 09:38:17 PM

I was looking to see if I can walk on set, but I can't find info on where it will be shot

#15

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by HVC - November 26, 2025, 09:03:05 PM

So you're saying that GPUs are gonna be affordable again?

#16

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by The Minsky Moment - November 26, 2025, 08:58:42 PM

Sounds like similar claims being made elsewhere, like these guys: https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/02/26/psiquantum-announces-omega-a-manufacturable-photonic-quantum-computing-chipset/

#17

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by viper37 - November 26, 2025, 08:01:16 PM

Hey Viper, just hesrd theres a new stargate project in the works at amazon

I've seen this! 

Anxiously and cautiously awaiting for this. It's from the original creators.  It should be good, hopefully.

Wondering if it will again be shot in CC's backyard

#18

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by viper37 - November 26, 2025, 07:52:04 PM

Leaked recordings prove Putin is making Trump his puppet

The Witkoff tape reveals how much the game has changed - US diplomacy now appears to centre around flattering and stroking the ego of Donald Trump 



In normal times, we the public are left to wonder what presidents and their envoys say to one another behind closed doors, when they're negotiating deals on which our future safety and prosperity depend – for understandable reasons, this kind of statecraft is kept as secret as it is possible to be. 

But, of course, we are not living in normal times. Our latest reminder of that is the publication by Bloomberg of the full telephone transcript between Donald Trump's special envoy for peace, his billionaire pal Steve Witkoff, and Vladimir Putin's top aide on foreign policy, Yuri Ushakov. 
If nothing else, it's fascinating to see how much these ultra-rich and ultra-powerful men flannel one another even in private. As the call – which took place on 14 October, shortly after Israel and Hamas agreed a US-brokered ceasefire – opened, Ushakov fell over himself to praise Witkoff for his role in that deal. 

Witkoff, in turn, gave Ushakov extensive advice on how he should make sure to flatter and praise Trump over the deal, and how he could leverage that flattery – and Trump's ensuing good mood – to try to net a favourable deal for peace between Russia and Ukraine.
"Just reiterate that you congratulate the President on this achievement, that you supported it, you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you're just, you're really glad to have seen it happen," Witkoff said, per Bloomberg's translation of the call. "So I would say that. I think from that it's going to be a really good call." 

As the call continues, Witkoff suggests the two men work together on a 20-point peace proposal "just like we did in Gaza", which could become a "Trump plan". Just weeks later, the US and Russia supposedly agreed a 28-point plan for peace that in reality read almost word-for-word like a list of Russian demands, with virtually no concessions towards Ukraine and its red lines. 
The transcript makes for extremely difficult reading. At a surface level, it looks almost like treason – it seems as if a top aide for the US government is helping one of America's most prominent adversaries, and being chummy to the point of oleaginousness as he does so.


The reality of negotiation is more complex. "Good cop, bad cop" – the tactic used by police to try to make suspects confess – is one of the best-known and oldest negotiating strategies in the book, and few would suggest the good cop is being disloyal when he's nice to the suspect. In more normal times, when people had confidence in the ability and loyalty of those at the top of US government, it might be possible to shrug off Witkoff's tactics. If it gets results for America, then maybe it's fine. 

But the very fact that we are able to read that transcript, that we know what was said on the call, shows that it worried someone – perhaps a whistleblower within the US government, or perhaps a usually-friendly intelligence agency who intercepted the call. Someone well placed thought it was important enough to be out there, and that the world should see it. 

That might just be a rational response to the erratic nature of the Trump administration, which has been accused of going around the world doing deals that also net millions or billions for the business interests of the President or his inner circle. It is a response to the alarm bells raised at the apparent willingness of the US to endorse a peace deal that looked as if it was authored by Russia – even if it seems to have rowed back on that support since. 

But more than any of that, the Witkoff tape reveals how much US diplomacy seems to centre around flattering and stroking the ego of Trump. Diplomacy is usually a matter of knowing your own country's strategic interests and red lines, and trying to advance those goals. 

The Witkoff recording revealed the game has changed. Out are America's long-term interests, let alone any consideration for the security of Ukraine or even Europe as a whole. Instead, Witkoff seems laser-focused on delivering a deal, any deal, because that's what Trump wants.
More than that, he seems to know that how Trump will regard any proposal depends more on his mood at the time – and his disposition towards whoever he's talking to – than its contents. Witkoff is telling his counterpart Ushakov how to do something he is surely very familiar with: he is telling him how to manage someone ruling like an autocrat. 

That, more than any concerns over Witkoff's personal loyalties, is what's alarming about this extraordinary leaked call. It is not how a democracy negotiates: it's how you handle a world in which the world's greatest superpower is run in the interests of the man who leads it.

[New Chinese optical quantum chip allegedly 1,000x faster than Nvidia GPUs for processing AI workloads - firm reportedly producing 12,000 wafers per year]

#19

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by Jacob - November 26, 2025, 07:10:03 PM

If this gets close to the kind of mass production they're saying, then we may soon have the answer to whether LLM can produce AGI with sufficient computational power:

New Chinese optical quantum chip allegedly 1,000x faster than Nvidia GPUs for processing AI workloads - firm reportedly producing 12,000 wafers per year

Quantum computing is still a long way from becoming a mainstream part of society; however, a Chinese firm has developed an all-new optical quantum computing chip that is closing the gap, called the world's first scalable, "industrial-grade" quantum chip. The South China Morning Post reports that the chip's developer claims it is "1,000 times faster" than Nvidia's GPUs at AI tasks and is already being used in some industries, including aerospace and finance.

The chip in question was built by the Chip Hub for Integrated Photonics Xplore (CHIPX) and is based on a brand-new co-packaging technology for photons and electronics, and it claims to be the first quantum computing platform to be widely deployable. These photonic chips house more than 1,000 optical components on a small 6-inch silicon wafer using a monolithic design, making them incredibly compact compared to traditional quantum computers.

All of these factors have reportedly allowed systems with these quantum chips to be deployed in just two weeks, compared to six months for traditional quantum computers. Its design also allows these chips to work in tandem with each other, just like AI GPUs, with deployments allegedly being "easily" scaled up to support 1 million qubits of quantum processing power.

More her: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/quantum-computing/new-chinese-optical-quantum-chip-allegedly-1-000x-faster-than-nvidia-gpus-for-processing-ai-workloads-but-yields-are-low

#20

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by HVC - November 26, 2025, 03:52:24 PM

Things like knockoff clothes are often made in the same factories and just siphoned off to the black market... or so I've been told by expats

It's probably both, by different people.

The people who run the production lines can keep them running a little longer and sell the extra output as high quality "knock-offs". But someone else can also make shoddy cheap imitations and sell those online, with nice looking pictures as marketing material.

True enough. Even the made in Italy, France, and other European stuff is made in China anyways and "finished" in Italy or wherever. Slap on a sole and that shoe is made in Italy. So European quality is a lie anyway. But that's way older than the China or even Taiwan manufacturing things. Shoes made in Italy in the, 60s, and 70s, and 80s were actually made in Portugal and finished in Italy for the huge markup... well huge markup compared to if they were marked as Portuguese