#export control

[astronauticalaspirations]

You know you're having a rough day as an engineer when export control laws start to feel logical.

[chickadeeee]

tags I use

#:) genuinely makes me smile, #(: hot, #XD makes me laugh and yes it’s cringe on purpose

#export control is stuff I want to share with friends outside tumblr, #industry plant is jokes related to my job, #political career is kink or related to my experience with kink, #dream home is house/decor inspiration, #moodboard is either cute human interactions or uplifting stuff

#tag party is for when I say a lot things in the tags, #my post self-explanatory

[smalltofedsblog]

Department Of Commerce Finalizes Rule Incentivizing Industry To Disclose Export Violations

“We want [companies] to come tell us that [a violation] happened, and we provide incentives for companies to do that,” Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary of commerce for export enforcement, said t 'Knock On Our Door Before We Knock On Yours"

[essektheylyss]

To no one's surprise, I have more thoughts on Ashton's feelings about faith and begging for divine intervention and never receiving it, because... well, look at what's in their head.

I tend to take the view that the Luxon as a divine entity does not necessarily have conscious intent in granting divine favor; it is closer to a foundational force of reality, with the rather nebulous thought that might accompany a living entity associated with that kind of force. So not inert matter, but not exhibiting the will and motivated action that the Pantheon or even the Primordials do. The Primordials are closer, in that they are active, but I think they are less willful. This isn't particularly relevant to this discussion except as evidential comparison, though, so I digress.

What this view of the Luxon results in, in practice, is the bestowing of power by seemingly random chance. The beacons are where they are, and any movement of their worship or use is in the hands of mortals who convey that—whether that's the expansion of dunamantic arcana in Aeor and possibly the larger world in the Age of Arcanum, or the missionary efforts of the Kryn Dynasty, or simply one person passing it to someone with ill intent who exploits another worker to expand its use and turn it into a weapon instead.

And what happens is that these smaller exchanges create ripple effects, and the path of this force being conveyed continues, which is how it has come to Ashton—by a series of circumstances that, when looked at individually, look like mundane random chance, but taken as a whole, are so unlikely that they seem meaningful in the end.

I think this gets to the heart of what the Luxon seems to rule—the world may be governed by chance and circumstances, but when those circumstances are accumulated—into an event, or a nation, or a life—they create not destiny but meaning.

Ashton's circumstances are a series of misfortunes that feel almost fated in how perpetual they are—when he spells out the course of his life, and says that he can count on his fingers how many genuinely good days he's experienced, the weight of that misery feels like an oppressive fate.

But within the amalgamation of that misery, they've also happened upon—one might say were bestowed with—power. This is the power that lets him decide to be a hero and decide to save his friends. And, by some accounts in Exandria, it would've been granted to them by a god, without even asking anything in return. It's not verbal, so it's not a concession or meant to be placating, which wouldn't do much in the long run—it's the means by which Ashton has been able to wield control over his own destiny.

So if there's any meaning to circumstance, maybe it means that when Ashton prayed, something already answered.

[staarcaake]

made a song ^-^

beepbox link

[porterdavis]

Nosiree. Not suspicious at all.

[rabbiteclair]

step 1: build a professional-looking, ad-free site that will perform formatting and validation on a wide variety of file types used for configuration and data transfer (.properties, YAML, .config, JSON, etc), and decrypt file contents if people will just paste in their handy dandy private key/shared secret/etc. Yes, there are already sites for this stuff, but they're fairly scattered and ad-infested.

step 2: perform whatever SEO skullduggery is needed to get your site to the top of the Google search rankings.

step 3: once your site has established itself, pass every single thing that gets pasted into it to a backend service. If you wanna be coy about it, continue doing the validation in Javascript and pretend that the backend calls are metrics. Listen, if you make the URL something like https://admin.yourhosthere.com/datadog-agent then 90% of devs are gonna go 'yeah that seems legit, it's just my good friend Datadog :)' and investigate no further.

step 4: parse every message for strings like 'username' and 'password'.

step 5: now that you have production credentials for about 40% of international corporations and governments, hold the planet hostage.

step 6: rule the world from a flying volcano lair staffed with jumpsuit-wearing henchmen.

(traditionally the henchmen would come before the world conquest, but like most things, supervillainy has gone through massive changes thanks the internet)

[giddydelphiresearcher]

The tool wheel! Finally, good smooth tool switching! I also fixed the scalpel's collision; no matter how fast you move it, everything in its path will get hit now! I also encountered an issue where gel puddles would remain on-screen across organ transitions, so I added a function to clear out all the Stuff spawned by tools, such as gel puddles and scalpel trails. Added polyps too. And also put a little surprise at the end...

[nyxi-pixie]

american purity culture and its effects on fandom..........

[astronauticalaspirations]

[chickadeeee]

parents: what were you doing out all night?

me: learning about control theory 👁️👄👁️

[essektheylyss]

Once again raging about shitty research standards and the methodology and ethical decision-making of like, a significant majority of my peers. This is why I can never change my blog title, it's too accurate to my soul.

[indizombie]

Last year, the German government authorized arms exports worth a total of €326.5 ($355.3 million) to Israel. Of this amount, €20 million was earmarked for weapons of war while the remaining €306.3 million was reserved for defense equipment. According to media reports, the supplies include 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons, 500,000 rounds of ammunition for fully and semi-automatic firearms as well as other fuses and propellants. Much of the over €300 million was spent on armored vehicles, military trucks and safety glass. Until the fall of 2023, only €38.5 million worth of military exports to Israel had been approved in Germany. That figure rose sharply after October 7. In November, the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, which overseas arms exports, stated that as a consequence of the attack, "applications for the export of military equipment to Israel" would be decided upon according to priority. The share of weapons of war amounts to nearly 6% of the total volume — in 2022, it was 2%. As a result of the significant increase in arms exports from Germany to Israel, the latter now ranks seventh among the prime recipients of Germany military technology. Ukraine tops the list, receiving over €4 billion worth, while Norway and Hungary fall in second and third place respectively, both receiving over €1 billion.

Andreas Noll, ‘War in Gaza: Germany supplies 30% of Israel's arms imports’, Deutsche Welle

[elbiotipo]

The 5th Corporate War in Cyberpunk, but it's Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo fanboys

[xtruss]

Zimbabwe’s ‘White Gold’! Critical Minerals Law Favors China

Harare has Africa’s largest lithium reserves and Beijing is poised to benefit, despite an export ban.

— By Nosmot Gbadamosi | Foreign Policy | August 16th, 2023

A foreman looks on as an earth mover works on the slippery road at Arcadia Mine on Jan. 11, 2022 in Goromonzi, Zimbabwe. ​Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images

The world’s clean-energy transition will be impossible without African minerals—and a degree of resource nationalism from African countries is benefiting China, which has for decades invested in the African Green-Energy Market and accounts for 59 percent of the world’s lithium refining. Chinese companies run the majority of Zimbabwe’s mines and are better positioned to expand domestic processing there.

Lithium, often referred to as “White Gold,” is essential to producing Solar Panels and the Rechargeable Batteries that power electric vehicles; and in 2022, demand pushed prices up by more than 100 percent. Africa could supply a fifth of the world’s lithium needs by 2030, but to best serve citizens, African leaders are demanding that miners go beyond extraction and add value by locally processing the raw mineral.

Last December, Zimbabwe 🇿🇼, which has Africa’s Largest Lithium Reserves, imposed a ban on raw lithium ore exports, requiring companies to set up plants in the country and process ore into concentrates before export in order to boost local jobs and revenue. Those seeking to export and not process domestically would need to provide proof of exceptional circumstances and receive written permission to export raw lithium ore.

Zimbabwe’s ban, called the Base Minerals Export Control Act, will stop the country losing billions in mineral proceeds to foreign companies, officials said. Namibia 🇳🇦 has followed suit; and in 2020 around 42 percent of African nations, excluding those in North Africa, had implemented restrictions on raw exports, including the Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩, Ghana 🇬🇭, and Nigeria 🇳🇬.

Traditionally, “mining companies after extraction enjoy all the benefits [while] leaving communities in their catchment areas to bear the brunt of life-threatening dangers associated with their operations,” Edmond Kombat, research and finance director of Ghana’s 🇬🇭 Institute for Energy Security, told ESI Africa. “It is time to stop that practice.”

However, China, which controls the world’s critical minerals supply chain, is ideally placed to reap benefits in these situations, because several Chinese owned companies have recently completed processing plants in the country. Chinese-owned Companies have Spent more than $1 Billion acquiring and developing lithium projects in Zimbabwe, which in contrast has seen Very Little Western investment.

Last month, Chinese minerals giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt opened a $300 million lithium processing plant at its Arcadia Mine in Zimbabwe, which it bought last year from Australia-based Prospect Resources for $422 million. The plant currently has the capacity to process around 450,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate annually. Under Zimbabwean law the refined lithium can then be exported for further processing into battery-grade lithium outside Zimbabwe.

In May, another Chinese company, Chengxin Lithium Group, commissioned a lithium concentrator to produce 300,000 metric tons per year at the Sabi Star mine in eastern Zimbabwe. And China’s Sinomine Resource Group said last month it had completed a $300 million lithium plant, after it bought Bikita Minerals, one of Africa’s oldest lithium mines, for $180 million.

Zimbabwe hopes to satisfy 20 percent of the world’s total lithium demand when it fully exploits its known lithium resources. “If we continue exporting raw lithium we will go nowhere,” Deputy Mines Minister Polite Kambamura told Bloomberg last year. “We want to see lithium batteries being developed in the country.”

New rules stipulate that a 5 percent royalty rate will be payable on lithium exported, due half in cash and half in processed final products so that the country can build cash reserves it could use for government-backed borrowing.

U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe 🇿🇼, imposed since 2001, have impacted the country’s access to borrowing and investment, leaving few options but China. Last year, Zimbabwean Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube claimed the country has lost more than $42 billion in revenue as a result of Western sanctions. The Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency reportedly received 160 lithium investment applications from investors based in China in the first half of 2023 compared to just five from the United States.

Even among Zimbabwe’s regional peers, U.S. companies have been left on the backfoot. Nigeria Rejected Elon Musk’s Tesla in favor of Beijing-based Ming Xin Mineral Separation to build Nigeria’s first lithium processing plant in Kaduna State, in the country’s northwest region. Nigerian officials reportedly rejected Tesla’s proposal because it did not align with the country’s new policies. “Our new mining policy demands that you add some value to raw mineral ores, including lithium, before you export,” Ayodeji Adeyemi, special assistant to Nigeria’s mines and steel development minister, told Rest of World.

For decades, African economists complained that foreign companies extracted minerals without benefit to citizens. In 2015, Zimbabwean researchers estimated the country had lost $12 billion due to illegal trade involving multinational companies in China 🇨🇳, Canada 🇨🇦, the United States 🇺🇸, and the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 —enough money to pay off Zimbabwe’s foreign debt.

Africa holds more than 40 Percent of Global Reserves of Key Minerals for batteries and hydrogen technologies. Yet it’s predicted that, by 2030, more than 80 percent of the world’s poor will live in Africa, and about 75 percent of them in resource-rich countries.

It makes sense for African Nations to step up efforts to increase quality jobs. “The United States and Europe must ensure that the partnerships they are building in Africa are mutually beneficial and non-extractive,” Theophile Pouget-Abadie and Rachel Rizzo recently wrote in Foreign Policy. “Otherwise, they will run headlong into the walls erected by an increasingly dominant Beijing.”

Washington in January signed a memorandum of understanding to help the Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩 and Zambia 🇿🇲 develop an electric battery supply chain. But China is going beyond this in terms of thinking about what African nations need. Beijing, for example, with support from the United Nations 🇺🇳 Development Program, is facilitating a joint research center in Ethiopia 🇪🇹 to fast-track access to renewable energy in the country.

Experts warn that more African countries banning critical raw minerals exports will impede global decarbonization. Zimbabwe’s ban is perceived as unrealistic because the country lacks skilled workers. Some countries (Kenya 🇰🇪, Tanzania 🇹🇿, and Zambia 🇿🇲) have implemented policies requiring mining companies to train locals, according to a recent World Bank report. The report suggests national export bans alone can make countries worse off because investors simply move their business elsewhere, but that training requirements could ensure retention of investment and the creation of a skilled workforce.