What happens if you taser this?

The Chinese Embassy reacted to Senate President Pro Temp Tito Sotto III’s post about the Mutual Defense Treaty that the Philippines has with the USA. In a text message, Sotto questioned the embassy’s reaction, saying: “Why do they feel alluded to? I never named anyone.” | @keithcINQ

These transactions should be taxed like sales, loophole is ridiculous

NEW: The Information Brain Drain — The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have poached several key staffers from Jessica Lessin’s publication, where former employees have described the workplace culture as “a cauldron.” breakermedia.com/p/the-infor…

This hurts to write (let’s call it tough love), but I believe that in full transparency, in advocating for EVs one must also acknowledge the downsides. My company leases a BYD Sealion (and other EV’s on the fleet) - on paper, it’s great value for money. A Chinese car @BYDCompany leased via @santanderuk But then we had an issue with a door harness - took the car to Hartwell Bracknell; they can’t fix the car - it’s been off the road 71 days chasing faults around the car. Santander don’t want to answer the phone (2.5hrs on hold today) and BYD are unhelpful with a car that has a seemly a catastrophic fault. The cars a lemon (and frankly so are the leasing company and the dealer), the question really is, are all their cars lemons or is this a one-off? Clearly BYD aren’t ready for scale in U.K. and don’t have the dealer back up you’d expect of a mass brand - so as much as I advocate for low cost EVs, my advice at least in the short term, is steer clear of the BYD! The same might be said of Santander leases and Hartwell dealers! I will of course update you on any progress!

How much is 192 GB of RAM from a 2019 Mac Pro worth?

Interesting Substack site on the US midterms substack.com/explore/midterm…

Muse Spark Open, Meta + Apple, Thin and Thick stratechery.com/2026/muse-sp… via @stratechery "The second difference from Chinese models is that Muse Spark Open is not as good, but that’s to be expected. First, this is based on a six month old model that was a few releases behind when it came out in April. Second, however, I continue to think it is important to acknowledge the role of distillation"

@guilleflorvs and I asked @chrisbest how @substack got started. His answer: one writer, and a lot of manual work. In the early days, every new publication was created by hand. In Chris's words: "I had to go type it into the database to make the second one and the third one. It was very manual." Their first writer was China expert Bill Bishop (@niubi), and that single writer proved the idea. While they were in @ycombinator, they opened it up so anybody could get started. By the time we spoke, the platform had crossed five million paid subscriptions. ▫️ Paying customers can come before a polished product ▫️ Doing things by hand is a fast way to learn what people want Founders, what are you still doing by hand? Tell us in the replies. nitter.siddz.com/guilleflorvs/status/21…

Caixin - China Steps Up AI Investment With $9 Billion Fund Backing Model Developers caixinglobal.com/2026-10-20/…

Teen AI prodigy Nathan Chen said to be joining US start-up Discovery Loop sc.mp/olojy?utm_source=twitt… via @scmpnews hope he has already arrived in the US

OpenAI has pulled back from supporting AI chip controls, seemingly to appease Nvidia. Bad for US AI dominance and national security simultaneously. Grow a spine! politico.com/news/2026/10/20…

All that expensive memory going to PRC customers - ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent place over $35 billion worth of Nvidia chip orders reuters.com/business/retail-…

Good report by @Ivanklydz on a Chinese actor's facilitating AI supported operations to go after government targets across Asia 'The platform ran 116 unique worker containers and logged roughly 230,000 dispatcher events over twelve days, consuming an estimated 36.7 billion LLM tokens through a single gateway key' : vulone.com/blog/a-china-link…

TikTok staff raised child safety alarms. Court records show executives failed to act npr.org/2026/10/20/nx-s1-600… TikTok employees repeatedly raised concerns internally about the risks the short-form video app posed to children, including sexual exploitation and exposure to suicide content. Previously unreported court records show that the employees were frustrated with how the company's leadership responded to their concerns.

US Expert Again Raises the “Abandon Taiwan” Argument sinocism.notion.site/US-Expe… CCTV WeChat account on @jekavanagh call to abandon Taiwan "A think-tank report is not the same as official US policy, but it reflects the growing strength of restraint-oriented voices. Some analysts have noted that the increasing prominence of the “abandon Taiwan” and “nonintervention” arguments itself shows that US calculations on the Taiwan Strait are shifting from “how to defend Taiwan” to “how to avoid fighting for Taiwan.” For Taiwan, continuing to place its security entirely in the prospect of US military intervention while ignoring changes in the cross-Strait balance of power and in US awareness of strategic costs will only magnify the risks of being marginalized and treated as a bargaining chip. 智库报告并不等于美国官方政策，但反映出克制派声音已经在上升。有分析指出，“弃台论”“不干预论”升温本身说明，台海问题上的美国算盘正在从“如何保台”转向“如何避免为台而战”。对台湾而言，若继续把安全完全寄托于美军介入，忽视两岸实力格局与美国战略成本意识的变化，只会放大被边缘化、被交易化风险。"

the dumbest man

Extraordinary public spat between foreign apologists for the Chinese government. Laurent Michelon and Angelo Giuliano accuse the far more well-known shill Arnaud Bertrand of being a fraud.

Exclusive reporting by Korean media on Terafab: Terafab is excluding Chinese suppliers entirely. It wants to work with Korean suppliers because Japanese products are expensive. However, it is asking Korean companies to offer prices even lower than those of Chinese suppliers. Terafab decided in advance which companies to approach and which products to discuss at SEMICON West 2026, then visited their booths as soon as the show opened. Leading global semiconductor equipment suppliers Lam Research and Applied Materials have set up dedicated Terafab teams. The initial facility, with a capacity of 100,000 wafers per month, is expected to be completed before 2030. For logic chips, Terafab is working with Intel and is also in talks with TSMC. It is understood to be developing a separate manufacturing process for memory chips. A representative from an overseas equipment supplier said, “My understanding is that Musk initially explored acquiring production facilities from Intel, TSMC, and Micron, but shifted toward partnerships after being turned down. I have never seen this level of drive anywhere else in the semiconductor industry.” A representative from a Korean partner company said, “Even when we send inquiries in the early hours of the morning in the U.S., we get a response within 30 minutes to an hour. Their engineers have decision-making authority, so working with them is completely different from working with typical customers.” thelec.kr/news/articleView.h…

Japan ‘months’ from running out of critical rare earth as China squeezes supply ft.trib.al/4S9s4sy