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China Takes Control of U.S. Consulate in Chengdu
Flag lowered at US consulate in Chengdu as China takes control
Chinese authorities have taken over the US consulate general in Chengdu, marking the diplomatic mission’s official closure and a new low point in ties between the world’s largest economies.
At dawn on Monday, the American flag outside the consulate was lowered while police held back crowds that had gathered over the weekend to watch. At 10am, the mission was closed, according to China’s foreign ministry.
Chinese soldiers goose-stepped in front of the consulate while teams of workers in hazmat suits and officials dressed in white short-sleeved dress shirts and black briefcases entered the mission. Workers draped grey clothes over signs bearing the consulate’s name.
“Competent Chinese authorities entered through the front entrance and took it over,” the foreign ministry said.
U.S.-China engagement is over. Is military conflict next?
There is now a bipartisan consensus in the United States on the need for a tougher China policy. Even longtime China scholars and policymakers who have spent their lives building closer ties with China in the belief that such engagement would induce democratic reform have grown disillusioned.
At the same time, they say the Trump administration’s “sledgehammer” approach, which seems intent on starting another cold war and leaves no room for dialogue, is counterproductive and disingenuous in its purported concern for Chinese people. It is also dangerous and could lead to outright conflict, they say.
“There are ways to handle the relationship without blasting through it,” said Deborah Seligsohn, who served as a U.S. diplomat for more than two decades, mostly in Asia. “There are ways to weigh the pluses and minuses. It doesn’t have to be this antagonistic.”
How the Cold War Between China and U.S. Is Intensifying (archive)
The Trump administration has increasingly challenged China’s assertions of sovereignty and control over much of the South China Sea, including vital maritime shipping lanes. Just last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has described China as a major security threat, decreed that most of China’s claims in the South China Sea are “completely unlawful,” setting up potential military confrontations between Chinese and U.S. naval forces in the Pacific.
[...] The New York Times, concerned about the possibility of further limitations on journalists working in China, announced last week that it was relocating much of its major news hub in Hong Kong to Seoul, South Korea.
Previously: U.S. Scoops Up Chinese Spies; "Friendship" Ended
U.S. Scoops Up Chinese Spies; "Friendship" Ended
US arrests three Chinese nationals for visa fraud
The US has charged four Chinese nationals with visa fraud for allegedly lying about their membership of China's armed forces.
Three are under arrest while the FBI is seeking to arrest the fourth, who is said to be in China's San Francisco consulate.
FBI agents have also interviewed people in 25 US cities who have an "undeclared affiliation" with China's military.
Prosecutors say it is part of a Chinese plan to send army scientists to the US.
Singapore man admits being Chinese spy in US
A Singaporean man has pleaded guilty in the US to working as an agent of China, the latest incident in a growing stand-off between Washington and Beijing.
Jun Wei Yeo was charged with using his political consultancy in America as a front to collect information for Chinese intelligence, US officials say.
Separately, the US said a Chinese researcher accused of hiding her ties to China's military was detained.
China earlier ordered the closure of the US consulate in Chengdu.
The move to shut down the diplomatic mission in the south-western city was in response to the US closing China's consulate in Houston.
FBI arrests Chinese researcher for visa fraud after she hid at consulate in San Francisco
A researcher who took refuge in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco after allegedly lying to investigators about her Chinese military service was arrested and will appear in court on Monday, according to a senior Justice Department official.
According to court documents unsealed earlier this week in the Eastern District of California, Juan Tang, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, applied for a nonimmigrant J1 visa in October 2019. The visa was issued in November 2019 and Tang entered the United States a month later.
Tang allegedly made fraudulent statements on her visa application by concealing that she served in the Chinese military. The FBI concluded that Tang was a uniformed officer of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force after photographs of her were uncovered on electronic media seized in accordance with a search warrant.
Officials Push U.S.-China Relations Toward Point of No Return
Top aides to President Trump want to leave a lasting legacy of ruptured ties between the two powers. China’s aggression has been helping their cause.
[...] China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has inflamed the fight, brushing aside international concern about the country’s rising authoritarianism to consolidate his own political power and to crack down on basic freedoms, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. By doing so, he has hardened attitudes in Washington, fueling a clash that at least some in China believe could be dangerous to the country’s interests.
The combined effect could prove to be Mr. Trump’s most consequential foreign policy legacy, even if it’s not one he has consistently pursued: the entrenchment of a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.
Ukraine Prez: Everyone should watch the 2005 film Earthlings
Ukraine Hostage Standoff Ends After President Agrees To Promote Joaquin Phoenix Film
A hostage standoff on a bus in western Ukraine ended Tuesday after a bizarre demand from the captor was met when the country's president publicly recommended a 15-year-old animal rights documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.
Just before the end of the 12-hour standoff in Lutsk, a city located some 250 miles west of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a video clip to his Facebook page stating: "Everyone should watch the 2005 film Earthlings."
The post has since been deleted.
Anyone in Phoenix want some old computers?
I'm moving soon, to a much smaller place, and I can't take all my old machines with me. I suppose I could recycle them, but it seems like a damn shame, since most of them work just fine, they're just old.
Anyone want four Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 era desktops? The drives have been nuked, so they've got no OS, but they used to run Linux.
I figure if anyone out there can also appreciate older hardware, they'd probably be here.
5-port 2.5GbE Switch
At Last, a 2.5Gbps Consumer Network Switch: QNAP Releases QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Switch
After entirely too long of a delay, the wait for faster consumer-grade network switches appears to be coming to an end. This week QNAP launched its QSW-1105-5T switch, one of the industry’s first unmanaged 2.5Gbps (2.5GBASE-T) switches. The 5-port switch supports 2.5GbE operation on all five of its RJ45 Ethernet ports, and along with being unmanaged it is also fanless, allowing the switch to work maintenance-free and installed virtually anywhere. The QSW-1105-5T is already on sale in Taiwan for roughly $100, meaning that we’re looking at a price-per-port of about $20.
[...] As the first of what will undoubtedly be many 2.5G switches over the coming months, the QSW-1105-5T also gives us our first real look at what we can expect from this generation of switches as far as footprints and power consumption goes. Since it’s not carved from a pro-grade switch, the 18 cm x 14.5 cm switch is significantly smaller than earlier NBASE-T switches. And with a maximum power consumption rating of 12 W, we’re looking at power consumption of just a bit over 2 Watts per port, which is also a significant improvement over admittedly far more powerful switches.
All of which sounds unremarkable, and indeed that’s exactly what makes the QSW-1105-5T so interesting. The biggest barrier to wide consumer adoption over the last few years has been the cost – both in regards to the core technology and added frills – so we’ve been waiting for quite a while to see NBASE-T technology transition from pro-grade switches to cheap, consumer-grade gear.
PinePhone Gets New Version With 3GiB RAM and 32GB Storage
Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS” Launched with 3GB RAM, 32GB Flash, USB-C Hub
After PinePhone “BraveHeart Edition” with any OS pre-installed introduced at the end of last year, Pine64 launched PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” with Ubuntu Touch last April, and now the company is taking pre-orders for Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS with Convergence Package”.
Besides using a different operating system, the new PinePhone also got a hardware upgrade with 3GB RAM and 32GB flash instead of the 2GB/16GB configuration from earlier models. Due to the changes and the addition of a USB-C dock for convergence, the price has also gone up from $149.99 to $199.99 with shipping scheduled to start at the end of August. If you don’t need the extra memory, storage, and convergence package, you can still pre-order PinePhone with postmarketOS for $149.99.
Two Chinese Companies Working on Discrete GPUs?
Previously:
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) Starts "14nm" FinFET Volume Production
Look out Nvidia and AMD… Chinese GPU maker has a GTX 1080-level card in development
The new story:
Asia based Zhaoxin has plans for a dedicated graphics card series
A 70 Watt GPU wouldn't be as interesting as the 200 Watt "1080-level" GPU w/HBM concept from Jingjia Micro, but it could be good enough for cheap office PCs. It's also just a start: note that Zhaoxin's CPUs are on "16nm" while the GPU is on "28nm".
Left/Right, what do you *really* think of the other side?
One interesting thing about Soylent News is that there's a very clear, very tangible political division in comments for practically everything. You see everything from Nazi sympathizers to full-blown Communists, but the far ends of the spectrum generally talk much more often. I suppose that could describe wider America, too, but usually it's not so intermixed in real life. I suppose internet makes that easier.
Myself, I'm socially center-left, and far-left economically. I value freedom of speech as a near-absolute, but I think capitalism is about to burn itself out and take a lot of us with it. But whatever, my beliefs are not what this one is about.
I'm wondering, what do Soylentils *really* think of their political opposition?
What do far-right think of the far-left, etc?
Describe how you think they view the world, what you think motivates them, nothing's off the table.
Only rule is, be honest about how you actually perceive them.
I might weigh in at some point in the comments, but I can't promise that.
I wonder if this journal will get any attention, whether it will explode into a white-hot thermite flame war, or whether I'll just get two or three comments calling me a faggot.
I'm genuinely curious about this. Let's hear it.
Holographic Optics for Lightweight VR, and Volumetric Video
Facebook reveals holographic optics for thin and light VR headsets
Now it’s revealing a holographic optical architecture designed for thinner, lighter VR headsets, which it expects will appear in future “high performance AR/VR” devices.
Discussed in a Siggraph 2020 research paper titled “Holographic Optics for Thin and Lightweight Virtual Reality,” the system uses flat films to create a VR display only slightly thicker than today’s typical smartphones. Facebook’s “pancake optics” design combines several thin layers of holographic film with a laser projection system and directional backlights, delivering either flat imagery or volumetric holograms depending on the sophistication of the design. Depending on how many color, lighting, and alignment-enhancing components a prototype contains, the thickness of the optical system can range from 11mm to just under 9mm.
In wearable prototype form, each eye display features a resolution of roughly 1,200 by 1,600 pixels — comparable to current VR goggles — with a field of view that’s either a 93-degree circle or a 92-by-69-degree rectangle. That’s roughly comparable to the display specs of a 571-gram Oculus Quest, but in a glasses-like form factor that weighs less than 10 grams in total, albeit with only a single eye display in the prototypes. The researchers note they could cut parts and change materials to achieve a 6.6 gram weight equivalent to plastic aviator sunglasses, but would compromise performance by doing so.
Google Takes a Step Closer to Making Volumetric VR Video Streaming a Thing
Google unveiled a method of capturing and streaming volumetric video, something Google researchers say can be compressed down to a lightweight format capable of even being rendered on standalone VR/AR headsets.
Both monoscopic and stereocopic 360 video are flawed insofar they don’t allow the VR user to move their head completely within a 3D area; you can rotationally look up, down, left, right, and side to side (3DOF), but you can’t positionally lean back or forward, stand up or sit down, or move your head’s position to look around something (6DOF). Even seated, you’d be surprised at how often you move in your chair, or make micro-adjustments with your neck, something that when coupled with a standard 360 video makes you feel like you’re ‘pulling’ the world along with your head. Not exactly ideal.
8-Channel Threadripper Rumor Back From the Dead
They will be supported by AMD's new WRX80 platform which is actively being worked on by several board partners right now. Main features include 8-channel DDR4-3200 support in UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM flavors, 96-128 Gen4 PCIe lanes with 32 switchable lanes to SATA and some PRO features which will allow these chips to be the ultimate workstation solution in the market. In another tweet, Videocardz reported that AMD will be introducing its Ryzen Threadripper PRO lineup on the 14th of July which is next week [Tuesday].
I think 256 GiB RDIMMs (Samsung) are still the highest capacity out there, so it could support up to 4 TiB of memory.
That's also a greater amount of PCIe 4.0 lanes, TR 3990X only supports 64.
