u/Old_North9055

In the latest Q&A, Rory said that Taiwan was historically under China as a 'contiguous island' or something of similar nature.

I think this statement is factually and dangerously incorrect from my knowledge unless someone who is more knowledgeable can educate me.

To my understanding, Taiwan (or Formosa) was historically an island settled by indigenous people from at least 2,000 years ago. Only few centuries ago starting with the migration of Japanese and Chinese peoples and several colonial periods only it became non-Indigenous. Indigenous populations were removed to the central mountain ranges where they concentrate today.

Simply, it is not a country of exiled Kuo Ming Tang members.

If I'm correct, hope this is just an oversight and is not something that is believed by the wider Western thought leaders.

The game looks interesting, but the price seems ridiculous for a non-AAA game by a first time developer.

Those who played, did you enjoy it and consider worth it for the $70 price?

I hope TRIP has this discussion on Leading as well because this discussion is more nuanced and knowledgeable, both from the guest and Ezra. There are few questions I have towards Rory's AI/tech maximalist stance w.r..t. UK policy.

• Rory has a conservationist view as a conservative towards climate policy and environment. Does Rory think climate change is an existential and acute crisis? If he does, how does he tally his conservationist view with his data centre stance? 1) Is it the case that he thinks AI will solve climate change? 2) Or does he think we have more time and buffer to emit more CO2 than experts predict? 3) Or does he think that climate impacts will be localised to specific parts of the world and UK would not have to worry about it? 4) Or does he think that UK losing edge as a world power is more acute concern that current hike in climate anomaly events?
• I appreciate Rory's push back regarding a previous video regarding data centre use of resources where he compared water usage in AI vs YouTube playback. Even though the source of that original statistic is not universally accepted ( https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines ), he needs to expand his stance. All data centres are not AI, so is the policy to rely less on US compute and on-shore more such compute to UK? That makes a more palatable argument because then he is not talking about increasing aggregate ccompute, but more of a decoupling.
• After listening to this discussion, I'm very impressed how much Ezra as a "smart laymen" knows about specifics of AI than what we have seen discussed on TRIP. Like the specifics of recursive self-improvement and the ability to differentiate between different topics within the wider AI conversation. Rory talks too much about AI without going into specifics which is very dangerous. There are differences between AI, AGI, superintelligence, LLMs, transformer models, etc. and different areas require difference risk profiling. DeepMind AlphaFold was revolutionary - but it did not have an existential risk associated with it in non-alignment because it was a narrowly trained AI model on protein folding. If Rory only wants AI to do is to use AI to cure cancer or solve climate models, etc., you do not need the huge compute buildup done by OpenAI or Anthropic which is targeted towards building a superintelligent AI system. The specific parts of the economy and the state he wants automated can be done by narrow AI systems that do not require as much training (hence resources) like ChatGPT or Claude or Kimi, etc.
• But China will do it is not a position that is inherently explainable, unless you are in West. As a person in third-world ("global south"), I am yet to understand why I should be worried about Chinese AI models while US and its allies has invaded or attacked many countries (Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan), threatened others (Greenland, Cuba, Eritrea) and in Iran's case is actively deploying AI in a military capacity to attack Iranian infrastructure. For a country in Sinosphere, China threat will be a valid concern but as a person who is not, US is more of a threat to our regional stability and economies than China ever was.

I currently have a budget 27 inch 1440p VA panel monitor and I find it too small for my preference - both gaming and office work.

I was contemplating buying a 32 inch monitor. 4k models available will work well for office work but I would have to anyway game in a lower resolution because my system is low/mid tier. Other problem is, 32 inch 4k monitors do not come in high refresh rates within my budget (< rs 200k).

So now I'm comparing 32 inch 1440p monitor vs a 34 inch ultrawide 1440p monitor for purchase.

- Is 1440p in the larger screen size (32 inch) result in noticeable larger pixels?

- Is the performance hit in UW gaming (due to more pixels) + those games that do not support UW aspect ratio will result in bad experience?

Any recommendations?

I have been gaming on my creator laptop (i5 12th g, 24GB RAM, RTX 3050M 4GB) for 2 years and have been bottlenecked due to the VRAM constraints. I am thinking of building a gaming PC.

I play a lot of sim games: MSFS 2020 (maybe 2024 if upgraded), Snowrunner/Roadcraft, ETS2, TF2, TSW5, Dirt Rally 2, Assetto Corsa, FM26; strategy games: CK3, Anno 1800 (117 if upgraded), and casual titles like FH 6. I can live without playing latest AAA titles in high specs. All of them in 1080 Low/Medium settings now - happy to play at 1080 high settings.

I was looking at the prices for the following AMD build (high level spec). Without monitor/peripherals.

• Ryzen 7
• RX 9060 XT 16GB
• 24/32 GB RAM
• 1TB SSD

I checked most prices from Nanotek. For AM5 build, I got a price of ~675k, while for AM4 build, I got a price of ~550k.

I am considering AM4 because of it being significantly cheaper with the RAM pricing. Is it a mistake to build this, especially being so late in AM4 lifecycle and considering upcoming game requirements?