There might be public displeasure about it, but I think behind the scenes India buying Russia oil is expected and at least to some degree accepted (or possibly even wanted).
The bigger thing is Russia not generating profits from those sales, which I am speculating is not the case at the prices India is buying at. The upside of Russian oil still being available to the world market is keeping the prices lower, something Europe is very much interested in.
This is their best chance to escape their coming economic trap. They control so few actual resources beyond labor.
Is that actually the case? I am not sure how many resources china has in their own country (I assume there are a few with it being this vast), but I think they are tackling the resource problem more so with their investments in Africa and other poor countries. And because of the war Russia also has fewer countries to sell to besides China.
I think the true longterm problem is actually with the cheap labour force you mention. As the standard of living rises, so do wages. And more importantly they’ll experience the same demographic shift other developed countries are currently experiencing with an aging population. With the difference that it’ll be worse for them due to the one child polic.
I guess marketing getting rolled into that number, as opposed to movie budgets where it is usually separate could make up for it. Or it includes lots of long-term investments similar to the huge stage surrounded by screens (“the volume”) that they used for the mandalorian. Although I am not aware that acolyte did something like that.
Countless examples of movies and shows with way smaller budgets that end up looking a lot better than most of the recent Disney slop.
Yeah, but that just goes to prove that money doesn’t solve every problem. It didn’t fix the writing either. The spending part is easy enough.
And yet it carried a $180m budget, more than something like dune part 1 (and slightly less than part 2).
Star Trek is probably a better comparison, than what i was thinking of. My mind was more on things like El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie that got a very, very limited release and serves as an epilogue. Or maybe the Psych movies that are probably more like an episode in movie form (havent seen them).
Guess we get to see how this format works out nowadays.
But those aren’t usually big budget movies, right? Probably more in line with the cost of a few episodes. And how often do they get a theatrical release?
I’m obviously just speculating here, but i assume the Star Wars Mandalorian movie will get a proper release with a marketing campaign and all the jazz. Doubt they’ll just make something cheap and drop it straight on D+.
For me the reason it took a while to come around and watch Andor was that by the time it released we’ve had quite a bit of mediocre Star wars content recently released. So there was some fatigue setting in.
Yeah the marvel comparison comes to mind. And if I remember correctly that was just a single season of WandaVision. So much less compared to the 3+boba Fett crossover in this case.
There definitely is a good amount of overlap between movie and tv audiences, especially for something like Star Wars, but they definitely aren’t completely the same.
Yeah, no doubt that it was the most popular one, but I think it’s still a potential limitation to the target audience. Especially because it’s not even just a season limited season, but 3 with some crossover to another one.
It’s good that you mention that it might not need as much previous knowledge, but they better communicate that. And even then I feel like some might feel like they miss out not having seen the series, while at the same time not wanting to be forced to watch it.
I’ll assume for the mandalorian movie to make sense you’ll need to have seen the full series? And for that one might also want/need to watch some of the boba fett one?
That would feel like a lot of homework for a movie for anyone, who is not a huge fan.
Right, totally forgot about that step.
Haven’t used it myself, but similar to casa os there is also cosmos os, which looking here seems to offer some build in storage management options. Maybe this could be worth looking into?
openmediavault is ok for raid, but the containers aren’t one click wonder like in other NAS OSes
Since OMV also uses docker compose with a build in GUI to manage them, I don’t assume this would be what OP is looking for either? Unless trueNAS also comes with some repository of preconfigured compose files.
I am currently using Openmediavault for my NAS and can confirm that with an official plugin so far I havent had any issue with my ZFS pool (that I migrated from trueNAS scale since I didn’t like their kubernetes use and truecharts, but as someone mentions they seem to switch to docker).
Otherwise I am happy as well, but I am far from a poweruser.
Well i aswell hope that this isn’t just my bias speaking :)
Unlike France or GB, which recently had elections substantially changing majorities, here in Germany it’s still the exact same people in charge since the start of this war. With the only major change being the defense minister, and that was for the better. So the people deciding here are the same that (based on this article) doubled this years support budget. And as far as i am aware there really hasn’t been any major event that would have shifted the sentiment in foreign politics from what we’ve experienced until now.
On the side of internal politics as mentioned it is basically a self-inflicted struggle to balance the budget and limit new debt. Because for some reason we chose to write that into our constitution, restraining our options. So everyone is fighting for their share and by the looks the winners are the usual: more money to secure pensions for old people and the automotive industry. While not only the budget for Ukraine is on the chopping block, but also other stuff like a reform of welfare for children or infrastructure projects for railroads.
Might sound bad, but it’s nothing really new and so far lack of funds hasn’t been an issue delaying German support. So i don’t expect it to be going forward either. We’ll just keep moving in lockstep with what others provide, slowly build out capacity and react to new developments. Which would be no change to how we’ve seem to have handled it so far, and not like “the slashing the budget by half” would imply.
And as mentioned above i am sure there are plenty of additional ways to support Ukraine that don’t hinge on the budget. Like telling Ukraine to direcly purchase through the manufacturers and giving security assurances for loans. Might be a worse deal on paper for Ukraine, but in the short/medium term wouldn’t make a practical difference. And things can get sorted later.
But regardless of how this plays out we won’t have any type of deadlock like the one delaying US aid until recently. And the largest party in the opposition is also in favor of supporting Ukraine, despite taking any opportunity to take shots at whatever the governing parties decide.
Personally as a German. while disappointing at facevalue, i wouldn’t read too much into it in respect to any shifts in the commitment to supporting Ukraine (but i might also be wrong here).
To me this very much is an internal self-inflicted struggle about balancing budgets and we’ll only be able to tell whether it actually affected things in retrospect (if it’s even possible).
In the end maybe more purchases will be directed through EU funds (of which Germany pays a substantial share) or instead of direct aid things are financed through low interest rate loans (that later might even get forgiven). Or you have some other kind of schemes where aid indirectly goes towards Ukraine.
And who knows how the conflict will change, promting adjustments in deliveries. Like the recent airstrikes probably leading towards more air defense systems being delivered than originally anticipated (with a single Patriot system being worth as much as 1 billion if i understand it correctly)
For the US maybe, but I don’t think it is profitabel for Europe.
Refugees aren’t cheap (even though ukrainian people might integrate easier than others and later add value), a good part of money for weapon purchases flows towards America since they have more immediate capacities, and long term we do want to integrate Ukraine, which means Europe will ultimately bear a significant chunk of rebuilding costs.
deleted by creator
Agreed. And in a unique form factor like this with plenty of restrictions software and specific optimizations matter even more than usual.
Thanks for the link. That is certainly a frustrating development, since they had to sell it for a much steeper discount before as the article mentions.