So horrible when this crap is used by all your family and friends

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5919925

...

Japan and Canada share critical interests that create natural opportunities for co-operation. Japan has focused on building partnerships with Southeast Asian countries ... Canada, similarly, is accelerating trade talks not only with Japan, South Korea, and the EU, but also with Indonesia, through the recently concluded Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

...

Canada and Japan should establish regular ministerial consultations on trade strategy and share intelligence on Chinese economic coercion tactics and the U.S.’s negotiating positions. Joint démarches at the WTO regarding both Chinese coercion and U.S. unilateralism could strengthen multilateral institutions. Enhanced bilateral economic agreements could include critical mineral partnerships, joint infrastructure investments in third countries, and co-ordinated approaches to Indo-Pacific economic frameworks. In addition, regular Track 2 dialogues between business communities could identify concrete co-operation opportunities.

...

There are some useful lessons in Australia’s ... experience with China’s economic coercion. In that case, the impacts of China’s retaliation proved surprisingly minimal, suggesting the costs of decoupling are lower than what had been assumed. In fact, most of the industries that were targeted successfully shifted to other markets, making China’s market matter less and thereby reducing the fear of trade weaponization and giving Australia more confidence vis-à-vis China.

...

As they say in Alberta, “When your neighbour’s barn is on fire, you don’t haggle over the price of water.” Canada and Japan, facing similar pressures from both East and West, would do well to remember that in times of trial, true friendship means standing together rather than cutting separate deals.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/world/p/1532799/new-zealand-man-accused-of-eating-faberge-pendant-inspired-by-bond-movie-as-police-wait

Update:

I want to thank everyone who weighed in in the comments. Based on your feedback, I've decided to hunt for good deals by searching for usff, mini pc, and/or thin client on used marketplaces. Looks like I should be able to nab something very serviceable for my purposes for around $50 no problem. Again, this is not for a production environment, just something I can throw on the corner of my desk and kinda forget that it's there except when I want to follow some random tutorial on the internet.

For those who suggested I use VMs for this, I hear ya. However, I'd like to get as close as possible to the real deal (bare metal if you will) so that I don't have to futz around w/ passing through graphics or networking or anything like that. Tbh configuring VMs properly is almost more difficult for me than just working on a spare bare metal unit.

Thanks again!

Original post:

In my self hosting journey, which is very much in its infancy mind you, many times I've longed for an extra machine I can use to try following tutorials on setting up samba shares, home assistant, what have you without having to worry about messing up my main machine and having to clean up after myself. As for acquiring such hardware on the cheap, I keep reading how the laptopocalypse w/ Windows 10 end of life will flood the markets w/ literally unlimited free e-waste bro!!! But my own experience hunting these EOL once in a lifetime deals has been more frownie face than happy face. Lots of $100+ listings and, idk that just seems like a lot to ask for something like that.

So just for fun I searched eBay for "raspberry pi" and came across this listing for a raspberry pi 3 w/ 1 GB RAM for $25. 1 GB of RAM seems like not very much, but then again I'm not trying to break the sound barrier here, I just want something that can sit on my desk basically unnoticed and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can switch to it from time to time, like whenever I want to try following a tutorial and not losing any sleep if I fail (and I fail often).

I've also kinda always had a little bit of envy from not being in the raspberry pi club, so this is my shot at getting into the club. I think I'm going to spring for this one, so my question for the audience is, but like honestly am I about to piss $25 down the drain? Would this be good enough for my purposes or is the 1 GB of RAM going to bottleneck me like a boss?

Sorry for the run on sentences, my brain's tired today.

I was reading about some local policy changes intended to make running a small business easier and that got me thinking. I go to restaurants and ethnic food stores which are usually small businesses, and maybe some of the gas stations I use are small businesses too. However, everything else I buy comes from big-box stores or the internet. These have replaced a lot of small businesses, but how is it that there are any little shops left at all? Sometimes I walk into a corner store because I don't want to go all the way to the big box store or wait for delivery but the prices are so much higher (often by over a hundred percent) that I walk right out again unless I need something very urgently.

I'm not making a moral judgement here. I just don't know how the economics work out.

A wave of cancellations and delays across the U.S. EV and renewable energy sector has wiped out over $29 billion in planned projects in 2025. High interest rates, supply-chain setbacks, and weak consumer demand triggered a collapse in factory plans, battery investments, and solar expansions. The pullback raises serious concerns about America’s clean-energy transition as global competitors race ahead.

• Description: Assassin's Creed, in Japan
• Price: $59.99
• Link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/assassins-creed-shadows-switch-2

Haven't seen much reviews for Switch 2 port yet, but according to Digital Foundry it's pretty good, there are some issues but they can be fixed with patches, and Ubisoft has already mentioned that they are working on patches.

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Today's headline US Senate committee clears Boeing lawyer's stalled NLRB nomination marks almost exactly 51 weeks since the Democrats alley-ooped the NLRB to the Republicans for a slam dunk. Here's a reminder of how that happened (under Biden, too). Republicans keep swallowing political institutions whole in the U.S., and anyone who has their faith placed in the Democrats must be completely delusional, especially after the recent government shutdown disgrace.

I would say that now the U.S. is officially under corporate control (yes, I know it was before but I mean now it's legally locked down), what with the NLRB and Supreme Court in the Republicans' pocket. Labor doesn't stand a chance anymore.

... Prove me wrong???