> Until DuckDuckGo separates itself from Microsoft and becomes truly independent, especially in its business model, you have to question why DDG even exists.
DDG exists to make money for itself. It doesn't exist to protect your privacy.
From google to github to mozilla to everything, you would think the tech idealism would have died already. People working in tech, especially the elite, are some of the slimiest and greediest people on earth. Where money goes, so go the greedy slimeballs. It's pretty much a law of nature.
> Downranking Russian state propaganda from the search results for people searching general news about the war in Ukraine is useful and makes the results better
Considering most propaganda we see are US/EU propaganda, wouldn't it be better to downrank US/EU 'news'? Why target one propaganda but not the others?
For independent study, get workbooks with exercises and solutions. Best way of learning is by doing. Solving problems is an invaluable way of proving to yourself that you understood the material.
> I'm always surprised how little interest there seems to be from the international muslim community in the Xinjiang situation
What international muslim community? And if one existed, why would the international muslim community care about US/European funded anti-china propaganda which has nothing to do with islam and everything to do with ethnic separatism.
We hate muslims. Killed millions of muslims. We hate chinese people. Killed millions of chinese people. But somehow we care about chinese muslims? How does that work? Why is it we are trying to pit chinese and muslims against each other?
> The actions of China seem at least in part aimed at extinguishing Islam as a religion in the region
Did china become zionist all of a sudden? Also, I thought it was a genocide? What happened to the millions of uyghurs that was "exterminated"? What happened to the death camps? What happened to the millions of organs? They are trying to extinguish separatism.
> But maybe any reactions just don't make mainstream news.
Because it's literally manufactured propaganda that nobody believes. There are vlogs of muslims traveling to china all over social media.
First it was a genocide. Millions dead. Death camps all over china. That proved to be nonsense. Then it was cultural genocide. That proved to be nonsense. Now it's religious genocide. Which is even more laughable. The ughyurs aren't even the largest muslim ethnic group in china.
If you ever doubted that the media/news/etc were truly propaganda, just look into the uyghur "genocide". The media with the government agencies invented a genocide.
Interesting. I thought "clean energy" generally didn't include nuclear. Also, is hydro really "clean energy"? In the US at least, biomass is the largest source of "clean energy". I'm betting it's even more for germany as they don't have the rivers we do to generate hydro power.
Depends a bit on the nature of the bio mass. If we are talking about the non-edible parts of groceries or the manure produced by raising animals for meat, that is quite renewable. However, I don't think explicit farming for energy production is a good idea.
> but I like to read a summary in something like The Economist.
What makes you think anyone at the economist knows anything or would know anything about chinese economic policy. Even if they did, what makes you think they wouldn't spin it or mislead? The only thing the economist is good for is revealing the western elites' political opinions of china. If the economist says nice things about china, it means our elites want to exploit cheap chinese labor for their financial benefit. If the economist says bad things about china, it means our elites want better deal on exploiting cheap chinese labor.
> I agree that reading the NYT headlines every day is a waste of time though. Depends what he called "news".
The economist is a greater waste of time. At least the NYT is well written. Arguably the best written "news" out there. Though at the end of the day, it's ultimately a waste of time as well.
Reading the news is like the blind leading the deaf. But we have to waste our time somehow.
> What makes you think anyone at the economist knows anything or would know anything about chinese economic policy.
I don't know enough to evaluate that, so replace it with whatever they are more versed in, like US economic policy. It's just an example.
> The only thing the economist is good for is revealing the western elites' political opinions of china.
But even their negative articles about China are two-sided. They usually don't catastrophise. I've read a lot of them and they don't fit with the Econ being a mouthpiece for "western elites".
If pipelines between russia and germany ( who had ties stretching centuries and pipelines for decades ) are such an issue for the US, any pipeline between russia and korea or russia and japan are non-starters. After fukushima, we allowed japan to buy lots of gas from russia. There was even talk about Japan and Russia building pipelines. But that got squashed real quick. Instead we forced japan to build LNG terminals for gas shipments by sea. Far costlier, more inefficient and much slower.
It's an example of politics trumping economics. Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far. Japan and Korea are relatively wealthy but energy poor nations. A pipeline between Russia and Japan/Korea makes all the economic sense in the world. You'd expect there be a bunch of pipeline already and more scheduled to be built in the future. But no. Not a single pipeline.
Unfortunately it also has the paranoid aggressive Russian security apparatus in charge that brought us to where we are, which for some strange reason you entirely omit.
Also, we have climate change, remember? We are supposed to not use up all the available fossil carbohydrates! The more we bring up the more even more large-scale issues we will have. Making fossil fuels cheap and easy does not lead us to somewhere good.
> It's an example of politics trumping economics.
Which is good especially in this case, so I don't understand your point.
One thing I don't understand is why nobody in German government (I'm German), not even the Greens, mentions that the kick in the rear that we get from the threat of Russia cutting gas is actually good for us, otherwise we would happily continue to rely on lots and lots of cheap natural gas and climate goals be damned because it's soooo convenient.
We would need to make big changes to our (German) economy to use significantly less fossil fuels even if Russia had a nice and peaceful government.
> Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far.
Which should remain where it is, underground! Or 50 °C will be the new normal in some heavily populated areas of this world, and other very inconvenient changes.
The plan for some seems to be to ignore the laws of thermodynamics and spend even more resources and energy on collecting carbon from the atmosphere and returning it underground using technology, instead of just letting it sit where it already has been sitting for several hundreds of millions of years. Funnily enough, this inefficient and leaky and destructive busywork adds much to GDP, compared to doing nothing (leaving the carbohydrates and not raising and using them).
DDG exists to make money for itself. It doesn't exist to protect your privacy.
From google to github to mozilla to everything, you would think the tech idealism would have died already. People working in tech, especially the elite, are some of the slimiest and greediest people on earth. Where money goes, so go the greedy slimeballs. It's pretty much a law of nature.