Left nationalist, if that makes any sense.

He also has opinions on the EU and those happen to be quite of the kind Putin approves.

It must be great to have all that freedom, like the freedom from having universal health insurance:

It always happens that all those super correct and honest politicians get corrupted by corrupt and evil Brussels. Happened to the former interior minister of Austria as well, as soon as he became an MEP. /s

It really depends where you are and also if you are in a dense city or on the countryside. Climate Change has made an impact on that as well.

Because they can. It really is just a cartell. Especially institutions pay a fortune for bundled access.

Welcome to the world of scientific publishing, long before AI. Except authors even have to pay for creating “content”, and reviewers are expected to work for free. Yet article access is sold at astronomical prices.

It has to be shipped to the US as well. Shipping isn’t a meaningful extra cost. But you have to compare netto prices with US prices. The Euro price is lower than the USD price.

AAA titles work just fine at 1080p, possibly even on 1440p at optimised settings (and games come with optimised settings on Stream). The 4k claim was a lie.

A 5070ti mobile is not a 5070ti. the makor thing is 4GB more VRAM, performance wise hiw much stronger is it at 60W GPU TDP? Maybe 25%?

That laptop is also 25% more expensive with an inferior and louder cooling system. The screen is redundant for the living room, 16GB RAM on Linux are still ok for gaming, this isn’t Windows. SSD capacity is inconcenience but not a oerformance issue.

So yeah, I would say, the laptop is certainly comoetitive performance wise but it is not a rrpkacement for a compact silent living room PC.

Weather forecast currently is 12-18C in a week ;p

I am going to fly to Finland ;)

What off the shelf part is less expensive and can deliver that performance at 110 W TDP (CPU+GPU) in this form actor?

A system with CPU+GPU TDP of 110W at comparable (or better) performance, at this size, at comparable silence under full load? This thing is designed for the living room so this matters to more than a few.

This isn’t really a mass product like a (subsidised) PS5. Have a look at what a Ryzen Max 385 with 32 GB board costs. RAM is only a part of that SSD is another one (both went through the roof). They aren’t doubling the price but they certainly pushed it beyond 1000 USD/ EUR. They are also probably the reason why much less of the thing will be available than planned. Before the madness started, maybe Valve targeted 700-800 USD or so.

Full price at 0 EUR shipment on 1EUR order? By which magic can that cover shipment across the world, no matter how it is done?

Wrong. The micro orders via Ali Express standard shipping to Austria are distributed on their last leg by the Austrian Post, the same company sending any other letter.

Yet shipping can cost as little as nothing, on a 1 EUR order. You still maintain this is not dumping and instead cost covering?

I am talking about Austria because to compare it with other parliamentary democracies it helps to chose one concrete example, you can chose another one if you like. How about Germany, the largest member state. There Parliament’s position in this regard is actually weaker than in Austria.

I have no idea where you are coming from but you seem to lack knowledge how parliamentary democracies work if you hold the completely outlandish view that they are on the same level as the Chinese system in terms of democracy.

Back to the EU Commission. Its election is obviously a system where both, the Council / member states and the EP hold power. (“election” is the word in the treaties btw) This is by design. Power is not centralised. It is common in parliamentary democracies that parliaments elect/consent on members of the government but don’t choose them. However government with members that are not to the liking of a majority in Parliament won’t be elected/voted into power. The same is the case in the EU and there is precedent for that as well. The vote on VdL yielded a paper thin majority im the EP and only because VdL was giving the EP concessions in return. If the EP targets candidates as not acceptable they will not make it into the Commission. Again, there is precedent for that.

If that sounds like Chinese “democracy” to you, half the democracies (ie all parliamentary democracies) on earth are in reality a Chinese style “democracy”. Seriously?

The EU commission is elected by the directly elected European Parliament based on suggestions by the Council/member states. The Commission can be voted out of office anytime when it loses support in the European Parliament.

The Austrian government is elected by Parliament based on suggestions by the Chancelor candidate (the latter chosen by the President). The parliament can vote the government out of office anytime.

According to you the one thing is utterly undemocratic while the other is not. ok.

The EU Commission is not the EU, but it is its executive and administration. I f you just kill that, you let everthing derail. Bureaucracy is a dirty word but there without it political entities implode.

“Materially speaking is more expensive to send a letter next town than a packet from something like aliexpress.”

That is wrong, in many cases quite obviously. Microdeliveries are commonly sent as letters within Europe. So they are literally a letter(coming commonly from another European country) + a consolidated flight freight from the other side of the globe. The last leg alone creates more costs than the entire product plus shipment is purchased for.

Sorry, but if you think this can be done for 0-1 EUR (the latter if we assume the 1 EUR product is worth exactly 0 EUR) I can’t help you.

Of course this change will incentivise larger but fewer orders. If the platforms would care about that, 1 EUR products with free shipping wouldn’t even exist. They aren’t stupid or incompetent. If there is economic incentive for that, they’ll do it. Removing the advantage of <150 EUR orders, removes the incentives for smaller more frequent orders. This will do a lot to remove a lot of stress from logistic infrastructure, even if total amount of stuff bought in China remains the same. That’s the point. That and systematic mislabeling of shipments that lose their incentive to some extend as well.