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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • The iPhone was the first smartphone that hot insanely popular. It launched the app store model that’s now used on every mobile platform including Android. Those apps have gotten hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in India and China who are doing e-commerce and opening small businesses from their phones. That’s food on the table for the working class. They can earn money while looking after their children because they’re not chained to a desktop computer for internet access. People in remote areas can know instantly about natural disasters and the news, educating them and making them active citizens in a democracy.

    People across the world can chat with each other for nearly free using messaging and social media apps, and won’t have to send letters or pay extra fees for long-distance calls. The iPhone got more people onto what formerly only Blackberry-owning business executive had.

    It’s such a first world thing to belittle the impact of smartphone (an industry which the iPhone shaped tremendously), when it has so much tangible impact, especially to working people.






  • The article in fact says this:

    Hamas has said all four were killed in Israeli airstrikes while Israel had previously said it had ”grave concern” for the lives of the Bibas family.

    Nowhere in the headline does it say who or what killed them, so you were never misled. It is you yourself who added new meaning to the headline by asserting without basis that it suggests Hamas was responsible. And you ended up having a strong emotional reaction to that meaning you invented.

    If you have read the article past the headline before engaging in ad hominem, you would’ve known that the writer makes clear who said what on the responsibility for the deaths.




















  • That’s not correct. This is the origin report under the Biden administration from the Intelligence Community. This is the summary:

    […] the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.

    After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.

    • Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.

    • One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These analysts give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.

    • Analysts at three IC elements remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely.

    • Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications and intelligence and scientific gaps.

    The IC judges they will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of COVID-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged.






  • concrete_baby@sh.itjust.workstoWorld News@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    6 months ago

    This is more circlejerk from Von der Leyen. Before Trump became president, she was talking about de-risking from China, reducimg economic reliance on other countries, including Russian energy, and now somehow, all of a sudden, she is boasting the EU’s ability to trade with Mexico and China?

    Seriously, the EU can’t compete with the US because it cares about its people. Its superior economic, human, social, and civil rights come at the cost of strictly regulating businesses, which kills off innovation and profit making by big businsses. The American syatem rewards monopoly, the lack of labor rights, and increasing wealth inequality by not regulating enough. That breeds big tech, big pharma, big tobacco, big oil, and Wall Street, but that’s what’s driving the American economy. The EU is too ethical for that.