Having seen and done this transition I can tell you that companies do very little for innovation compared to university researchers. Companies are exclusively focused on profit, they don’t do the five to ten year moonshot project unless they are already a massive corporation, not a startup, and even then the massive companies want the easiest thing to translate to a product and begin making money. At best they have engineers that make scaling up more practical, and while that is a fun and interesting thing, it is also very straightforward and is something a company has to avoid screwing up, not investing in massively to make it right.

I’ve seen several companies that did literally nothing except swap a couple things on their production line and call it a day. The only transition from research to industry was an IP agreement and a few meetings.

Large companies are not looking for innovation by buying startups, they are usually looking to secure monopolies. Sometimes they want the product and to work it into their own product offerings. This is often a way to vertically integrate more, not innovate. They bring in-house because they see a competitor emerging and want to hedge their bets or because they see a way to take over a market by just doing the same thing. Sometimes it is just a way to hire some employees that seem pretty competent and thereby deprive your competitors. Large companies operate with a monopoly mindset. This is also why Google kills every project that they declare won’t scale into a huge money-maker (they really mean take over a market).

Small companies are often started with the plan of actually making and selling their product long-term but run headfirst into the fact that their industry is dominated by just 3 companies that will gladly do the one-two punch of threatening to bleed you legally with nonsense lawsuits while offering to buy you up. Or, on the flipside, just copying your work and changing it just enough that they know they could bleed you legally even though they have broken IP law. Usually, they would rather just buy you out at less than you are worth but enough to make the VCs happy.

The source of their data says they were using it incorrectly, that it simply does not mean what they reported. I have not gone into exactly what their data is, just that it was reported as total new funded startups and the data provider says, “that’s not what this is”.

It also looks like these numbers might not even be accurate: https://nitter.privacydev.net/NuryVittachi/status/1834747250666508679

I would expect a decrease in VC startups based on the way China is tackling finsnce, though.

I think innovation will happen more through universities and existing large companies. Most research and innovation happens through universities anyways and China is currently having an academia boom.

Companies like Huawei are way up, and domestic consumption is slowly rising.

The metrics here are those most relevant to finance, which is not synonymous with innovation. Startups are notorious money sinks that are only invested in due to a promise of monopoly profits later, basically a gamble. They usually fail, and dramatically. Finance is necessary for private capital investment and liquidity but when it grows too large it becomes parasitic and also tries to dictate policy. The real estate bubble that China is now dealing with is a direct result of financialization and an expectation that it would be “too big to fail” and that real estare finance would get bailed out by government.

China is tackling this issue by limiting the impact of finance on its economy, changing its lending terms and what it guarantees, including not bailing out real estate finance. This has the direct effect of making startups and venture capital less common as they simply can’t make as much money from pure speculation. They don’t have a state-funded safety net for their worst gambles and interest rates are higher.

Overall, this is a good development. China’s finance sector absolutely needed to be limited and it is good for the state to take on a greater role in running companies.

It is virtually impossible to work individually against landlords. Instead, form or join a tensnts’ union. And maybe some orgs opposed to landlordism.

Italians are well-known for being sticklers about the right way to prepare their food, often implying it is ancient. Unless it is a low-oil focaccia or a salad (ancient Roman), it is surprisingly often the case that it is a dish that is 50-100 years old with a foreign influence.

Naples has been making pizza for about 200 years as a basic flatbread with tomatoes, mozarella, and basil. If you eat pizza with a tomato sauce… that’s an American change. Pizza was not often eaten outside Naples [Edit:whoopsie] until around WWII. The most common variations around the world are all based on the American version.

Carbonara was a WWII-era invention with tons of variations at first and an American origin. I’ve known Italians that get actually upset if you prepare carbonara with the “wrong” ingredients even though they were ingredients used on “original” carbonaras less than 50 years ago.

If you go back just a bit farther, every dish that needs tomatoes or potatoes or peppers is from the Americas, not Europe. And Europeans were not big on tomatoes for a looong time. It’s only been in much use there for about 250 years.

Tabasco is tasty and Italian food mythologies are fairly silly.

Recycle that plastic bottle that we will throw in a landfill anyways!

“Defense” has a long history of euphemistic use and this is no exception. JDAMs have no defensive use. They are bombs. They have been and are used to bomb essential civilisn infrastructure in Gaza. The US and Israel still call it “defense”. It is just a rhetorical trick. Same as " Israel has a right to defend itself", which is a thought-terminating cliche that provides a smokescreen for highly aggressive military actions with little care for civilians, journalists, aid workers.

Everyone in power knows how this works and what it means. It isn’t an accident or even particularly unwanted. Israel has been invading and destroying Gaza for nearly a year. Nobody thinks a bunch of JDAMs are for defending Israel or are a case of misuse. They are being used exactly as intended.

Pfft, they’re all the same, no difference between them really, not like either is going to actually change anything, why bother to vote at all?

I haven’t said anything like that. I have, however, said that you should oppose gemociders and not vote for them.

The “Left” at this time, specifically in Russia, was purging the shit out of everyone, and committing the Holodomor.

The SPD is German and the analogy was about voting in German politics enabling Hitler. What you’ve said is neither here nor there.

But the argument that both sides are the same is very clear: Hitler and Stalin […]

I thought the next paragraphs would return to the subject at hand, but they didn’t. I would be happy to discuss Hitler and Stalin in a different thread. Feel free to start one. But it doesn’t address anything here.

Pretty much, yes. The US system is fairly ridiculous so a lot is left up to judges and common law - e.g. whether rights can be stripped due to being convicted or a crime or oer a judge’s order. But freedom of speech and assembly in college campuses, especially by students, fits squarely in what is normally protected. Hell, outside right wing groups regularly try to hold rallies in a camlus near me. Cops never go after them, let alone judges.

They are not funding the genocide. They are funding the legitimate defense of Israel.

Oh they are most definitely funding the genocide. Here us one simple example: Boeing is the exclusive manufacturer of JDAMs, a system that retrofits bombs to make them missiles. The US provides direct funding to Israel for them to “buy” these systems. JDAMs are the most common bombs used in this genocide to target civilian infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, refugee csmos, bakeries, mosques, churches.

Plenty of other forms of funding and material support, this is just a particularly visceral example.

The Israeli leaders are mis-directing that funding into the genocide.

100% wrong, these are offensive weapons with only one purpose and they are provided with no strings attached. Funding and support has only increased and Israel has only escalated.

Minors are rarely protected and are given consideration based on which environment they are in and who would be coercing them.

Please see: everything I just said that contradicts overemphasizing “the problem” just being Netanyahu being obstinate. I wrote out two main points with many specifics to support and explain my meaning.

And the US knowingly funds the genocide in Gaza. It isn’t an oopsie. They have only increased funding since Oct 7.

Kopmala

The US military has a larger “carbon footprint” than most nations.

Universities are public property, UC receives federal funding, and first amendment protections apply legally to both federal and state institutions.

I’m holding out for titanium do I can add it to my EDC loadout and totally dunk on that loser Travis at the office.

Blaming Netanyahu is a copout that distracts from two salient facts:

1. The US hasn’t actually done anything against Israel, let alone withheld from actively supporting its genocide. It makes no sense to sat, “oh well I guess we could never make things happen due to Netanyahu”. Nothing has been tried! But it does place the focus for responsibility on a foreign leader over whom you have no expectation of influence, whereas every person in the US can fight against genocide supported by the Biden-Harris admin.

2. Israelis have, on average, incredibly dehumanizing attitudes towards Palestinians. Netanyahu isn’t even that far right in Israel. They broke that rapist out of jail and are parading him around on TV. This is typical of ethnic supremacist settler colonisrs, it has happened several times over the last 200 years, we know the pattern. The protests against Netsnyahu, and his lower approval ratings, are tied to sentiments about not being harsh enough on Gaza and not retrieving the hostages, not the genocide of Palestinians, who they call terrorists. Who they believe should not be shown on television in a sympathetic light, that it should be censored. All of this is to say that the genocide in Gaza is very popular in Israel. What is unpopular are the impacts to the settlers. Economic problems, exodus from the north, and an inability to return the hostages.

but that’s not the same thing as saying Harris is “pro genocide”, she’s not.

The Biden-Harris administration is supporting a genocide. That genocide depends on the consent and military support of the most powerful country on the planet. Both Biden and Harris are providing thus unconditionsl support. They are sending the weapons. They are sending the money. They are building the little pier that was used to land and extract military personnel. They are fighting the ICJ on Israel’s behalf. They are pressuring every country they can on Israel’s behslf. They are trying to undermine the Houthis’ blockade done in solidarity with Gaza. Faced with a domestic anti-genocide movement, they are refusing to pressure college campuses to not sic cops (et al) on protesters and feed into the bad faith rhetoric that to oppose Israel’s genocide is to be antisemitic. When corronating their new candidate, part of this genocidal administration, they brought on an Israeli speaker, pledged unconditional material support to Israel, and shut out a potential Palestinian soeaker.

Harris is not just pro-genocide, she has assisted this one and has pledged to materially support its continuation.