Not criticizing your decision, but I went the opposite way, deciding that I was ok spending a certain extra amount initially in order to encourage a non-Chinese manufacturer. But I understand not everyone has this luxury.
I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.
It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.
So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!
In hindsight, I would have been happy to spend more if I knew the quality of what I was purchasing would be high.
My Ender that I had purchased years earlier sat in the closet gathering dust because of how much of a pain it was trying to dial in the bed to level, etc. I took a second chance at 3D printing on the Bambu, but might not have if it were costly.
If someone now tells me a Prusa (or whatever) is as good as and simple as the Bambu, I would not hesitate to spend even double.
I suppose that means the museum is doing its job then: educate people totally ignorant of the history of computing. Next time that younger person sees a floppy disk they will know what it is.
All the above above in itself sounds like propaganda. You forget other political (authoritarian system making massive mistakes), demographic (1.0, probably less in reality, birth per woman), psychological (disillusioned young population), and geographic (food and other imports) aspects, among other things.
In particular, the IBM 1401 (two of them actually) that you can see demonstrated at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View are transistor-based and were very successful computers.
> The US and Switzerland are the only two countries that use the same colors for all of their various bills.
Factually absolutely incorrect for Switzerland, and easy to verify. Swiss bank notes are and have been some of the most colorful (and pretty, I should say) around, and all have different sizes.
One of the interesting aspects of the Altair was that it was based on a bus called the S-100 bus. You would have a CPU card and a memory card at least, but everything else was optional. The serial board was separate, and strictly not absolutely necessary to play with the computer, since you could enter simple programs directly from the front panel.
I remember S-100 from when I was a kid. Never was hands-on with that hardware but there were all kinds of ads for cards in Byte magazine and others. Seemed like you could get a card for almost anything in S-100 protocol.
That's right. There are still S-100 enthusiasts who are maintaining and developing S-100 cards, see http://www.s100computers.com/ (does not seem to respond correctly to HTTPS right now).
True or not, be aware that "The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective." (Wikipedia)
This sounds like official Chinese propaganda. This was truer at some point, but things have started turning bad for China with the advent of Xi Jinping. 20-25 years ago, the country was hopeful, developing fast, opening up. Foreigners started moving there, seeing it as a new land of opportunity. Much of that is gone. The economy is in bad shape, youth unemployment is massive, the country is a dictatorship, nobody wants to move there (and China doesn't want you to anyway). I'll quote the Economist: "When Mr Xi took over in 2012, China was changing fast. The middle class was growing, private firms were booming and citizens were connecting on social media. A different leader might have seen these as opportunities. Mr Xi saw only threats."
Go to any top-N American University, pick a random STEM faculty and count the number of Chinese (nationality) post-grads, post-docs and faculty. Alternatively, look at the trajectory of science publications coming out of Chinese universities vs the US. Underestimating China's brain-trust is doing oneself a disservice.
I don't need to be convinced that China has lots of bright, hard-working individuals. I just want to point out that China faces immense challenges and that we should see beyond, and push back against, the propaganda. There is a massive asymmetry between China and democratic nations in this regards.
This is a fair assessment. However, I think there is propaganda or self-delusion in the west that leads some people to believe that free markets and/or democracy are preconditions for any number of desirable outcomes like creativity, economic success, product innovation, etc. That may have empirically been true against the Eastern Bloc/Soviet Union during the cold war, but is not obvious to me regarding China today. AFAICT, China has produced companies that can go to to toe with the best in the west - occasionally winning outright[1]. We can argue whether that's because of subsidies, espionage, innovation or fundamental research
> China will surpass USA from a GDP Point of view in 2035.
Don't be so sure, this has become much less clear. For example, in this article: "The Centre for Economics and Business Research, which in 2020 predicted that China would overtake the U.S. by 2028, revised the crossover point two years later, to 2036. This month, the British consultancy said it will not happen in the next 15 years."
I'm in germany and i'm pissed. I will not go on holiday in USA and thinking proactivly how to boycot USA.
And i'm not even a company. A company wants stability, predictability and not chaos every 4 years. And this president is in office for only a few month.
Whatever strategy companys currently try to do is either sitting it out or starting to adjust. The adjustments might not just go back when USA is more stable again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfReqcUJfBU