What's happened to good old TreasureHunter, he has gone all quiet on this thread for a while now, hope he is ok?. Has he gotten tired of waiting for the collapse, or has he found his treasure and retired to a tropical island with some nice young woman? On the local scene, one of my local Woolworths supermarkets is closing down after 15 years because sales have dropped off so much that it is not profitable to keep it open any longer. You know things are getting desperate when supermarkets selling food start to close down!
Looks like demand for automotive minerals, both electric and ICE are falling off a cliff. Is the deflation death spiral starting? If so will CB's try and fight it? Makes me wonder how Liontown Resources recent pump is justified? Everyone is drinking the electric car kool-aid. Electric cars are probably the most environmentally harmful product ever created.
Malware and machine learning: A match made in hell We’ve been developing machine learning-based cybersecurity systems for many years and began developing automation for analysis in our labs in 2005. These early automation projects have since evolved into full-blown machine-learning frameworks. Since then, we’ve been waiting for our enemies to make the same move, and after 18 years, the wait is over – malware with artificial intelligence has arrived. -- SPTH’s self-replicating code is called LLMorpher. SPTH recently wrote: “Here we go beyond and show how to encode a self-replicating code entirely in the natural language. Rather than concrete code instructions, our virus consists of a list of well-defined sentences which are written in English. We then use OpenAI’s GPT, one of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems publicly available. GPT can create different codes with the same behaviour, which is a new form of metamorphism.” This piece of code is able to infect programs written in the Python language. When executed, it searches the computer for .py files and copies its own functions into them. However, the functions are not copied directly; the functionality is described in English to GPT, which then creates the actual code that gets copied. This results in an infected Python file, which will keep replicating the malware to new files – and the functions are reprogrammed every time by GPT – something never been done before. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/04/03/machine-learning-malware/
All kinds of revenue is declining in China which means all industries are collapsing. How long can the Chinese keep putting out those false GDP figures before they are caught out? I think they will start a war with Taiwan sooner rather than later to divert the public attention of the collapse. The Chinese Ministry of Finance has released the revenue figures for Jan & Feb, with consumption tax down by 18.4%, personal income tax down by 4%, import and export consumption tax, and value-added tax down by 21.6%, customs duties down by 27%, urban maintenance, and construction tax down by 10.5%, vehicle purchase tax down by 32.8%, stamp duty down by 31.3%, securities stamp duty down by 61.7%, resource tax down by 10.6%, real estate-related tax including deed tax down by 4%, land appreciation tax down by 22.4%, property tax down by 2.9%, state-owned land transfer fees down by 29%, and urban land use tax down by 7.4%, environmental protection tax down by 11.1%.
China has encircled Taiwan! But no invasion yet... China is boiling the frog right now. The exercises are slowly getting larger and more complex. It started as 2 or three planes, maybe one ship, now each one has more. They are normalizing these excursions, until one day, when no one expects it, “BOOM” a total blockade is suddenly in place. Xi may have concluded that he won't have a better opportunity than now to take Taiwan. Russia/Ukraine conflict ongoing. A full and sustained blockade would force an attempt to 'break' it.
Mmm...... The 1962 Cuban Misslie Crisis between USA and Russia involved a blockade of Cuba by the US. According the Wikipadea, 'blockade' by definition is an act of war, so the term 'quarantine' was used .
For a whole bunch of financially astute people, political intelligence/awareness seems to be sadly lacking.....
https://apnews.com/article/russia-navy-drills-pacific-fleet-islands-9f2fdb38b1611d5655cef99118ccf47f The entire Russian Pacific Fleet was put on high alert on Friday for snap drills that will involve practice missile launches in a massive show of force amid the tensions with the West over the fighting in Ukraine. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the goal of the war games was to test the capability of Russia’s armed forces to mount a response to aggression. Along with the missile launches, the drills will also involve nuclear-capable strategic bombers and other warplanes besides ones from the Pacific Fleet’s air arm, Shoigu said. The Russian military has concentrated the bulk of its forces on the front lines in Ukraine, but also continued conducting regular drills across Russia to train its forces and demonstrate their readiness. Shoigu said the scenario for Friday’s maneuvers envisages a response to an adversary’s attempt to make a landing on Sakhalin Island and the southern Kuril Islands.
The other side of the coin..... https://www.italynews.it/notizia-di-copertina/2023/04/14/u-s-strategic-command-commences-annual-nuclear-command-and-control-exercise-107581.html and https://www.news18.com/videos/world...a-s-border-ukraine-short-of-ammo-7502293.html and https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/us-kicks-off-nuclear-war-games/
I was in Taiwan in December. Small-town Taiwanese are not interested in fighting any war. They are already accepting/expecting a soft handover (e.g. China slowly corrupts working-class officials, working their way up). Then, by the time it matters it’s realised that most of the power structure in Taiwan is already Chinese and won’t ask to be defended. Also, China is already the biggest customer for much of Taiwan’s trade. For example just on the day I arrived I was told China just ‘decided’ that day to ban seafood imports from Taiwan. They strategically put a choke-hold on random Taiwanese industries as a standover tactic. The military exercises are pure theatre for the West to focus on and ensure distance is maintained from the island.
Good "inside intel" - however, I can't help wondering if they'll regret that passive stance going forward. Think of the mass exodus from HK post China "take-over".
The last Japanese PM was assassinated right after this one took over as he had not been towing the globalist line. Now Japan is walking away from the dollar.... makes you wonder what is going on there, this is very uncommon for Japan. Device explodes near Japan's prime minister Fumio Kishida
True that. I suppose Musk figured that you can fight OpenAI only by having a bigger AI of your own. https://www.engadget.com/elon-musk-...rtificial-intelligence-company-012103279.html
Was it Japanese national? Or an outsider? I know that Chinese media revelled on Abe's death. I was in Sydney airport the other day and most of the ads are all in Mandarin, for Chinese banks. AU appears to be selling the whole country to em. If there's a war, imagine how many sleeper cells there would be. And once Gen Z are totally priced out of the housing market, and there are violent outbursts against enthic Hans, that would be their justification for invasion. Sydney's airports are such shitholes, IMO. Don't get me started about Qantas.
Well, firstly both planes were about an hour late. At the first flight they announced that they were having issue starting one of the engines. The pocket where you put your things in front of you had a massive dried coffee stain. And a young woman was seated next to me because her original seat was incredibly stinky, mouldy and wet. Luckily, she had a spare pair of trackies. Exhause fumes permeating into the cabin akin to the sickening smell of diesel fuel. I've had a few bad experiences on boats and i have an aversion to it. So late, I missed a connecting flight - some other customers were actually abusive at the departures area. Late to dock so they get put in a queue on the tarmac for 30 minutes. That's pretty much it. Oh, wait, I got my first confirmed case of Covid-19...
sounds like what the uneducated were saying about the Japanese 30/40 years ago when most of the advertising at the Gold Coast (and Cairns) was in Japanese.
