Aceticon

I think that more in general, from the change in the image of Elon Musk over the last 5 to 10 years the younger generations of Techies should've learned the vast chasm that is possible between perception and reality when it comes to those people who manage/own the companies making the Technology we love.

Maybe Gabe is a good guy, maybe he's neither good nor bad, maybe he's a bad guy - if you don't know the guy personally and well as a person, all you have to go by is the tightly managed public image you see, and as Musk so painfully demonstrated not that long ago, you can wrap an Nazi in a "nice techie pushing the world forward" managed public image which for decades the overwhelming majority of Techies (especially young ones) believes is real.

So, yeah, going back to your original post, its safer "not to worship companies" or the people who lead them.

As I wrote elsewhere, their support for Windows-Linux adapter technologies and even their games machines with Linux, are things which make total business sense as part of a strategy to try and move gamers away from Windows to manage the risk that Microsoft might use their control of Windows and ability to remotely update pretty much all consumer Window machines, to squeeze Steam as a games store for Windows games, for example via enforcing a requirement for Microsoft-signed applications and even a for usage of a Microsoft-store (no doubt justified as a consumer protection measure) like Apple does with iOS.

Steam isn't doing this because they're "nice guys", they're doing this because they're managed by competent managers with an outlook which is much longer term than the typical "next quarter" of publicly traded company and if you're looking at a 5 or 10 years period Microsoft doing this kind of thing is a real risk.

This doesn't mean that they're bad guys, it just means that from their support for gaming in Linux alone we cannot deduce that they're good guys since being managed by competent people who are trying to manage the risk of Microsoft turning Windows into what iOS is for Apple is an equally good explanation (probably an even better explanation, since "good guy" actions in business is a rare exception) for their support for Linux.

I would go further and say that all that they've done are """merely""" sound elements in a strategy to avoid that in the era of always-online remote updateable software, Microsoft successfully uses their position as the provider (and, more importantly, controller of some of what runs in pretty much all consumer instances) of Windows to squeeze out Steam as a games store.

Microsoft slowly transforming for Windows applications into the equivalent of Apple for iOS applications (and their move towards signed applications could be part of that) would be a nightmare scenario for Steam and it's a realistic possibility, especially if you notice that Microsoft is moving towards "everything must be cryptographically signed by Microsoft" to run in Windows.

So it totally makes strategical sense for Steam to invest into getting as many gamers as possible away from the Windows ecosystem, and one path is to get more games to as easily as possible run in the already existing and established alternative to Windows - Linux - the easiest way being to invest in an ever improved Windows-Linux adaptor layer (i.e. Wine/Proton) backed by a Steam store in Linux which just seamlessly uses that layer when needed, whilst another path is to sell their own game machines which do not run Windows and there again using Linux makes sense as the OS, both because it already exists and is mature and because using it on their machines has synergies with their investment in the "make games targeting Windows seamlessly run on Linux without needing changes".

This isn't Valve and Steam being nice guys doing nice things because they love their customers who use Linux, it's just good long term business planning and management of maybe their greatest external risk - Microsoft.

I mean, "Yay for choosing Linux!" and "Respect for their business sense", but lets not deceive ourselves into thinking they're good guys because of doing what just makes sense strategically to manage Microsoft as a risk.

in a marxist framework, the revolutionary period is something that cannot be extended or terminated at will, it is produced by material conditions, and the duration is not decided by any leaders, but rather by whether or not class antagonism persists.

societies develop through contradictions between productive forces and relations of production and when they become unsustainable, things intensify until the ruling class is overturned. marx would argue that such a state cannot legitimize itself forever by rhetoric alone, because political superstructures ultimately depend on material relations, and if the proletariat no longer exists as a class, the state loses its function and withers away, if the state persists, that indicates unresolved class structures, not a valid permanent transition, essentially eternal revolution is impossible under the correct material conditions

That logic defines the Revolution by its outcome rather than by how it's conducted, so it's one big No True Scotsman Falacy were the One True Socialist revolution is the one which yields a state were all class structures are resolved and there is no state, and you only know that's the case when you get that outcome: per that theory is perfectly possible to have a Revolution were the "rulling class is overturned" following a period of "contradictions between productive forces and relations of production" "becoming unsustainable" resulting in there being "no state" and yet there still being at least in part "unresolved class structures" and a "proletariat as a class".

In fact both the Soviet Union and "Communist" China both quickly showed that their "Revolution Of The Proletariat" wasn't really The One Socialist Revolution as after the initial period of "no state" during the initial stage a "state" once again arose (which is, for example, what managed how food was grown and distributed) and there were clearly people who worked and got some benefit alongside other people who "led" and even got greater benefits (i.e. there was a "working class" and a "ruling class") thus showing that the "no state" phase of the Revolution was reached with"unresolved class structures" hence was not the true Socialist Revolution.

All of this feeds into my original point: Socialism is not a plan to successfully reach Communism, it's more of a Manifesto which basically says that amongst many ways (possibly an infinite number of ways) which are not correct, there is a correct way to have a Revolution that results in Communism, though one has to somehow "resolve all class structures" including eliminating a "proletariat as a class", and how to do that is exactly the hard part to figure out which is left for others to do, which is such a typically way to "pass the hot potato" rather than address the devil in the details.

It's funny because I have a background in Science and one in Engineering and that stuff is like Alcubierre coming up with a Mathematical proof that one can travel faster than light and leaving the hard details (namelly how to transform a planet the size of Jupiter into energy to actually power said Alcubierre drive) to somebody else - yeah, sure, nice to know it's possible, but without the actual details of how to make it happen it's totally useless.

revolution is indeed fundamentally authoritarian in that way, do you oppose the american revolution as well? Do you oppose every revolution in history? I thought you were talking about the society post revolution, which of course is not. And is what dictatorship of the proletariat refers to.

Now we're getting somewhere.

The next part is this: what is there in Socialism to make sure that the period of Revolution is time-limited and if within that time limit the Revolution does not reach Communism, then the Revolution none the less ends?

Consider the following mental exercise:

• Imagine somebody who deep down is an evil person with selfish intent gains enough support to start a Revolution which they claim is to bring about an new system in a country which is better for everybody (a claim such leaders always make, as that's how they gather public support). They never exit the "Revolution" because that is actually the state which gives them power, whilst continuously claiming the Revolution is just the step necessary for a better future, it's just that they haven't got there yet.
• Now imagine somebody who deep down is an impeccably good person with good intent doing the same thing. They genuinelly want to end reach a better future but keep failing so are stuck in the Revolution stage because they are unwilling to let go of the dream and go back to the way things were before. Eventually the original good intention people are replaced as they die and there is no way to know for sure if those who replaced them are also well intentioned or are ill intentioned people who just sound truthfull when they claim to have good intentions.

If both cases started from a state of low freedom and during the Revolution the freedom is even lower, why would one situation be autocratic and the other not: they're both claiming to be Revolutions to reach a better system, they both never stop being in the state they call "Revolution" and in both the leadership can change and end up being people of ill-intent - they look the same, are both autocratic and both never end.

My point was never that Socialism has overtly or covertly ill intent or that it wants to create an autocratic state (I believe it's quite the contrary - it's genuinelly a political theory meant to produce the "greater good for the greater number"), my point is that de facto its a plan structured in such as way that the Revolution - which is as you admit a period of autocracy - it says is required to reach Communism never actually ends because it fails to reach Communism and has no mechanisms accept a less than perfect system than Communism after a while even if it's vastly better than the previous system) and end the Revolution. Meanwhile the power structures of the Revolution are captured by people with ill intent (who are the kind of people who seek power, especially the unrestrained power of a Revolution), which is how for example the Russian Revolution went from what it was under Lenin to the murderous psychopatic shitshow it became under Stalin.

Naive idealism in the original plan or incompetence in its execution, together with an unwillingness to let go create an ethernal state of autocracy called "the Revolution" - in other words an unending autocratic situation - just the same as ill intent claiming to be a Revolution does.

Absolutelly, all Revolutions are periods of autocracy. What makes some actual autocracies is that that stage never ends and there is no mechanism in place to de facto end it, even when the original intention was to end it but said end was conditional with reaching an objective which has never been reached in practice anywhere in the World.

If you can't exit Revolution in any what other than to reach a state which was never reached in the World, then de facto what you have is a process to create a neverending Revolution, not a process to reach a better state.

The "tax" part is what you pay above what the cost of a Product or Service would be if there wasn't a Monopoly, Cartel or legal structure forcing you to acquire that product or service.

The actual cost of making and/or providing that Product or Service (plus a bit of profit to incentivise somebody to actual do it) is the part that serves that purpose (and thus can be said to be "earmarked for a specific purpose"), anything above that is just money you are forced to put in the pocked of somebody for holding a dominant market position due to natural or artificial market barriers and/or even having bough politicians to tilt that market in their favor, killing the viability of alternative products or services or even legally forcing you to acquire that product or service.

That "above natural cost" part of what people are forced to pay for essentials like housing is not earmarked for anything (since it does not go into the costs of the other side to provide you that Product or Service or the profit margin needed to incentivise somebody to do it), plus unlike taxes payed to the Public it will never come back and provide you with any benefit and even in a Democratic system you have no control whatsoever over what it is used for unlike one's traditional taxes where theoritically (the more trully Democratic a nation is, the more it is so in practice) one has some influence in how it gets uses through the vote.

But sure, you can call the part that is used to actually pay the costs of the Products and Services plus a fair profit margin, to be a deduction if you want (personally I just think of it as natural cost of living). Personally I see that part as totally fair, so not at all an unfair burden, whilst more broadly politically I actually favor a system were life's essentials are take care of for all from the common pot which is the taxes paid to the public, in this specific point I'm restricting myself to a pure Trade logic.

Oh, I'm a member of a small leftwing party in my home country and there are plently of old people there who were once Communists and still are anti-Capitalists who fought against the Fascist Dictatorship and in the Revolution against Fascism in 74, who agree with me. It's only tankies and Chinese Propagand muppets who do not.

Your "it's not autocratic" interpretation is just you chosing to reframe the definition of property in such a way that confiscation by force of that which some people own doesn't count as the state taking their shit.

Sure mate, everything is naturally owned by everybody, hence those people controlling the "Revolution" deem to be the burgeouisie are people keeping everybody else from enjoying what is actually owned by everybody, hance taking the shit of those deemed the burgeoisie is not confiscation by force, rather it's "freeing" it and when those deemed the burgeoisie try to stop that "freeing" of those things they feel are theirs and end up killed by the force wielding structures of a government that calls itself the "Revolution", that's just Justice, not State Organised Theft.

Same circular logic as when America invades a country to take their shit and calls it "Bringing Freedom to that country".

That shit is even more convolutedly self-justifying through circular logic and redefinition of the meaning of words than most Religions.

It's pretty much a required upgrade to be able to protect yourself from dropped or balistic nukes.

Depends on the salt used.

If you check here on table 5 you'll see that common table salt (NaCl) melts at 801º C.

As for what's used, in Chapter 2 of that paper they say "Molten salts consist of alkali metal or alkali metal halides and oxygen-containing salts", so it's not actually table salt that's used in Generation 2 of those kind of power generators.

In all fairness, you need to install a magnet at the far end and keep constantly pluging and unplugging it to generate power...

Actually it does change, from what I read mainly in terms of what substance is used to capture the heat of the sunlight, which in turn has other implications downstream: for example, if you melt salt and the molten salt is used to generate steam (so a generation 2 system), rather than directly heating water with sunlight to generate the steam (generation 1), not only does the efficiency go up but you can keep on generating power during the night as long as there's enough heat left in the salt, and whilst the basic principle is the same a lot of the engineering of the system changes because you're circulating melted salt rather than steam, you want to store some of the heated salte for the nighttime and you need to concentrate more sunlight to reach higher temperatures so the area of mirrors is larger.

Here is a paper I found about this stuff.

I think that's what they called a First Generation generator.

The ones in use now will actually use sunlight to melt salt (than then is used to generate steam) rather than directly generating the steam which has way more capacity to store heat, so they have a solar conversion efficiency of between 38% and 44%, plus the molten salt can keep on being used to generate steam during the night until it cools down enough.