@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-30 20:57:22
Sources: Intel is in early-stage talks to acquire AI chip startup SambaNova, with a deal likely valuing SambaNova below its $5B valuation in 2021 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-30/intel-in-talks-to-acquire-ai…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@pgcd@mastodon.online2025-07-31 14:16:34
I agree that ruff and uv are very good tools but I feel uneasy with the whole Python ecosystem deciding to rely on a private company for tooling.
@ErikUden@mastodon.de2025-08-28 23:34:53
I still can't get over the fact that ⇓ of men admit to doing rape if you simply don't call it that. If you say “are you willing to force a woman to have sex with you?” 31% of men would agree.
If you ask “would you rape a woman?” only 13% of men said they would.
Not only is 13% of men outright saying they'd rape a woman terrifying, but it also goes to show that 18% of men would rape a woman, but are uncomfortable with being called a rapist. Additionally, those are just…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-28 03:45:51
Sources: data integration company Fivetran is in talks to acquire data management company dbt Labs in a deal valuing the combined entity at between $5B and $10B (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/data-startup-fi…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-29 02:01:54
Sources: Francisco Partners is in talks to acquire Jamf, which provides remote device management tools, taking it private; Jamf has a market cap of ~$1.5B (Milana Vinn/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/francisco-partners-buy-jamf…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-28 20:26:46
Democrats see themselves as the opposite of Republicans, but the fact that this is wrong becomes obvious during a government shutdown. Both parties agree that violence and cruelty are essential functions of the government. Neither believe that services outside of terror are essential.
The truth is that Democrats recognize that services are useful for keeping the poors from revolting, while Republicans believe that they can simply murder away any resistance. Republicans have been trying to end food stamps for longer than I've been alive. They've always believed that anyone who needs support should either die or become a debt slave. (When snap doesn't come back, just wait for companies to start offering pay day advances backed by police collection.)
The longer benefits are stopped, the more they can "cull the unproductive." Cruelty has always been the point, and Democrats are not ideologically prepared to oppose them.
No, the actual opposite of Trumpism is anarchism. We want to specifically shut down the infrastructure of violence. That's what we mean when we're talking about opposing the state. The other stuff, the stuff Democrats see as optional, we see as so essential we can't trust it to the whims of politicians.
We want all services to be directly democratically controlled, preferably at the most local level possible. We want it to be impossible to shut down the things we share, water services, sewer, internet, mass transit, childcare, public media.
When we talk about "community self defense" we don't mean cops protecting businesses from the consequences of their actions, from those who oppose their use of slave labor or their environmental destruction. We don't mean border patrol kidnapping people so their bosses don't need to pay them, or just straight up carrying out ethnic cleansing. We don't mean organized terror against people escaping environmental or political crises created by, or with the help of, the government attacking them. No, "community defense" means doing what people are doing every day to protect their neighbors against this shit... Shit that Democratic politicians agree is "essential."
Republicans want to destroy every good thing the government does and rule by terror alone. Anarchists want to destroy all institutions of oppression and terror so we can build all the good things together. Democrats are a compromise between the two.
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-27 05:15:53
eBay agrees to acquire Tise, a social marketplace for secondhand fashion and interior design items that has raised $45M in funding, for an undisclosed sum (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/22/ebay-to-acquire-social-marketplace-platfor…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-08-28 05:06:10
Sources: the $550B US-Japan investment framework, central to the trade agreement, was heavily influenced by Masayoshi Son, with the Stargate Project tied to it (Akira Yamashita/Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/inter
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-09-26 03:20:51
Microsoft launches Microsoft Marketplace, combining Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource in a single destination for cloud tools and AI apps and agents (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack)
https://thenewstack.io/microsoft-launches-a…
