Some commenters on this post are clearly not aware of PTX being a part of the CUDA environment. If you know this, you aren’t who I’m trying to inform.

There seems to be some confusion here on what PTX is – it does not bypass the CUDA platform at all. Nor does this diminish NVIDIA’s monopoly here. CUDA is a programming environment for NVIDIA GPUs, but many say CUDA to mean the C/C++ extension in CUDA (CUDA can be thought of as a C/C++ dialect here.) PTX is NVIDIA specific, and sits at a similar level as LLVM’s IR. If anything, DeepSeek is more dependent on NVIDIA than everyone else, since PTX is tightly dependent on their specific GPUs. Things like ZLUDA (effort to run CUDA code on AMD GPUs) won’t work. This is not a feel good story here.

The term “rice burner” originated in the Anglo-American context, and the word “ricing” cannot be divorced from the way people use “rice” as a versatile and generic racial epithet in varied context outside of the software world. As in people going, “haha, rice” something when being racist against Asians. It’s a long and ignominious American tradition to demean racial minorities with food. As in insulting Mexicans with “bean”. Anecdotally, some older Italians still remember being made to feel bad for eating pasta, when Italians weren’t white yet. The term “ricing” will certainly remain racist due to the way anti-Asian racism continues to work. Hence my point that the term must be abandoned, if one wishes to not be racist. Just find a different word for it. it ain’t that hard. It is certainly not possible to use an American word with racist origins without divorcing it from the cultural context from which it came.

It is clearly racist. “Ricing” comes from a derogatory term for Asian racing vehicles. You cannot excuse the racism inherent to it by personal ignorance. It’s the same logic as black face being racist, whether you’re personally aware of the history behind it or not.

Though I no longer live in the US, as an Asian computer scientist, I am quite aware of how it is clearly perceived as a racist term by many Asian Americans. To me, it will also never stop being offensive. So, please, stop with this “ricing” stuff.

I liked the UI of Evolution when I used it, but there were some usability issues which made me switch to Thunderbird in the end. There’s a good extension in Thunderbird for markdown support when composing emails, which I could not use on Evolution. And Evolution failed to attach .eml files when I tried that (as opposed to including previous emails inline). But if your email use case is very basic, it should be fine.

I don’t see a fundamental difference, only that “reactionary” is favored more by leftists, and “regressive” more so by liberals. I myself would use the two interchangeably, depending on the preference of the person I’m talking to.

I do not assume that the US will continue to be a reliable trade partner going forward. Your logic works in a world with rational actors, where trade between Europe and the US is desirable. However, with Trump as President, the US is clearly ceasing to be a rational actor. It is desirable for the EU to cut back its dependence on the US. It would be bad for the incoming administration to be in a position to coerce Europe through economic means.

Also, by failing to control its monopolistic enterprises, many US tech companies are trampling over the rights and privacy of EU citizens. It is desirable for us to cultivate homegrown options, rather than continuing to let American megacorps walk all over us. Reducing trade volume is a rational choice, despite the short term economic pains.

There are political arguments for tariffs. I don’t think your economic arguments are likely to persuade too many. In a more rational world, I’d agree with you. And I do very much regret that it has come to this point where I’m in favor of protectionism from the US.

And I thank you, Norah. As an Asian woman, any Linux space can feel pretty unwelcoming sometimes. Most of the time it’s the sexism, but this insistence on saying “ricing” is just another reminder that many in this space enjoy a bit of racism on the side, too.

I don’t usually say anything; I’m personally too afraid of being dragged into an endless “debate”. Perhaps a bit cowardly on my part. So, I appreciate you pointing it out first.

It’s still racist when you make it an acronym. We know the term originally came from a racist term for Asian vehicles.

Very nice! I wish I could use an AMD GPU, but sadly machine learning keeps me on the CUDA platform. Gotta make a living. That said, recent NVIDIA drivers got better on Linux. I can finally use Wayland problem free now. Games on proton also work just fine.

However, this only works well on Arch, BTW. Really wish I could just use Debian. I’m a computer scientist, but I also get tired of an avalanche of software updates every couple of days; I don’t need all the latest and greatest software. My German internet commection also means I wait up to half an hour sometimes.

Machine learning pays my bills, and I never had a choice on my graphics card brand. To be sure, I wanted an AMD for the open source drivers, but CUDA remains essential to me. RocM support from AMD is a joke, and isn’t anywhere close to an alternative. Reseachers release code that only runs on CUDA for a good reason. To say that I don’t get to complain is going too far