China is quietly pushing ahead with massive 50,000Mbps broadband rollout to leapfrog rest of the world on internet speeds

Obligatory reminder that the Third-of-a-Pound burger failed because people thought it was smaller than a Quarter Pounder, since it had a three in it instead of a four.

You get hundreds? I don't know anyone with that much. Although starting to see very expensive over 100Mbit options now, I use 4G as it's cheaper and more reliable which is somewhat amusing to be able to say.

Not like I actually need higher speeds anyway.

Because the way they write numbers is generally misunderstood in the west. Wan, the ten thousand character, and Yi, the hundred million character, are typically the crux of translating big numbers like this.

万 (wàn) comes up the most often and is the largest stumbling block for most people learning Mandarin numbers. In English, numbers are usually broken up into chunks of three digits. Because of 万 (wàn), it's easier to break numbers up into groups of four in Mandarin. In English, we split "twelve thousand" numerically into "12,000" (chunks of three digits). Split it the Chinese way, "1,2000," and the Chinese reading "一万两千" (one wan and two "thousand" = yīwàn liǎngqiān) makes more sense.

Not saying the figure isn't exaggerated, but holy shit it's obvious why it's translated this way in articles if you look even slightly beyond the surface.

Area? Try building. It's written into the lease of the apartment. Even if you want NO internet, you still gotta pay.

Ok. Forget price. A 2mbps connection does just fine for watching youtube. What is a 50,000mbps connection going to do for me when my internet activity is so minimal?

That is not a subtle deflection. The so-called great firewall is indefensible, as it would also be anywhere else it was implemented.

In other news….

Since the Two-State Solution post got deleted yesterday, I was unable to reply to your comment directed at me when I pressed Send, so I’ll paste it to you below. Ciao.

I’m under no illusions about Western imperialism in its various forms, nor about the slippage of rights Western societies have undergone over the decades, nor about the oligarchic tendencies baked into capitalism, because I have 20 years experience studying and writing about exactly those issues.

However, I live in a world of comparatives, not absolutes, and compared to those in the cities and especially countrysides of Russia and China, I’m incredibly free. Compared to Western billionaires, CEOs, and the politicians that they own, I’m not. When I say death to all tyrants, it’s a broad brush that knows no borders since the bastards can be found anywhere we look, including DC and China, among many others.

I protect no authoritarian regime no matter whether they pretend to espouse the myths of the free market or those of a worker’s paradise. They’re both excuses for a concentration of power, and having lived in various dictatorships as well as purported democracies, I know evil when I see it, and I see it all over.

And now comes the .ml ban. :)