As others mentioned, unfortunately the last bill allowed for some large loopholes and emboldened underground growers (also due to more lax state laws) to grow and flood the market with sub-par or even poisonous product. It’d a billion dollar market that state actors and cartels alike are using to launder money (and ruin lives). Very informative video on this: https://youtu.be/3qC4c-zNxTg?si=oy4ab6kuo27fJqcx
Great summary of what's going on from Saager on Breaking Points. You can search for "Fauci CAUGHT Funding Lab Leak Research, Culprit AGAIN" on YT or direct link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEEjeG6Xls
For those who only need a few boards, rpilocator has been a great resource. Adafruit typically releases a handful every week on Wednesday I believe. (Check out rpilocator's Twitter feed as they typically give folks a heads up before the Adafruit drop: @rpilocator) They do limit 1 per customer per month though..
Also backordered a 4GB version on Digikey and it came through only a week later. (Good timing on my part I guess!)
It took a few months to get to this point so patience is the name of the game for sure until the market cools off a bit.
https://bastillebsd.org is a great tool if you want to deploy tiny container-like Jails on FreeBSD. I've been using it in production for a while and it's been a great tool.
And clearly China wants to do much more than incorporating Taiwan, given their more assertive foreign policies, both within the current international frameworks (United Nations, World Health Organization), and outside of those frameworks (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Belt and Road Initiative).
For a very very brief overview of some goals announced by China (dominate production of key technologies by 2025, build a world-class military by 2035, be a superpower by 2049), see a short summary in Section 3 of the Introduction of this proposal:
Overall, the proposed strategy to counter China suggests working with other democracies to out-compete China in military and innovation, while cooperating with China on common interests (public health, climate change).
> the rabbit hole goes pretty deep on this one..
(In the rabbit hole right now. Eye opening. Would recommend.)
On a related note, while some may think that this is a consequence of China's one-child policy, a reasonable argument can be made that the policy was actually completely unnecessary: the fertility rates had already started plummeting for the 15 years prior to it being announced due to urbanization and other factors:
> How do China's ambitions stack up with their upcoming demographic changes?
Personal take: As long as Xi is in power, China’s ambitions are unlikely to scale back (at least on the surface), for otherwise it would be his failures.
For example, after Xi set the goal to clear poverty in China by 2020, even after COVID, China did not give up on the goal, ignoring if achieving the goal on surface is sustainable:
Who's saying that? The Biden-China things which seem to be being explored is a conspiracy theory, as in an unsubstantiated theory about an alleged conspiracy, but I don't think anyone is under the impression that the Chinese getting up to stuff is a conspiracy theory.
Wow. Looks like he learned his lesson. On the other hand, we American consumers haven't.
I'll echo what most have said here already: the moment this crisis is over, we'll be overseas trying to find the cheapest possible price. We don't care about keeping the local guy in business. We care about our margins.
I'd hate to say it but what made us great, could very well be our downfall...
I've been involved in many (failed) startups. I'm actually going through the same situation you're going through right now. We have some pilots but the money isn't raining from the heavens yet.
I definitely agree with the suggestions here to take some time off. Sometimes, especially when you've been living and breathing this stuff for 9 months, you need some time away to rejuvenate. I did that a few years ago with a trip to Nicaragua when I felt like I couldn't ship the product I was working on. After a week of not thinking about it we went on to shipping the product and moving our production line to China. The startup still failed in the end (for other wonderful reasons) but that introspection time is 110% worth it.
One thing that resonated with me recently was to keep your network up. If you fail you fail but you'll have a group of people willing to help you out if and when it happens. If you continue and then thrive you'll still have a great support network when the stress hits hard.
Also, remember sometimes the failures are great insights into what is working and what isn't working. If you have had this many potential clients at this point nothing says that there aren't more out there that you can surprise, delight and serve.
