YaBoyMax
Sorry, I wasn't looking at the original context of the comment chain - you're right that the picture changes a great deal if Taiwan is complicit.
Somewhat ironically, this article reads a lot like it was written by a generative AI.
I don't have exact numbers, but there is some increase in power draw associated with refreshing the screen more frequently. It's certainly nowhere near as impactful as rendering at 50 FPS vs 25, but it's non-zero.
The US wields immense geopolitical power; of course they get a say. That's not to say that it could prevent an annexation if the CCP wanted it badly enough, but Washington has no shortage of levers to pull to make it as unattractive an option as possible.
On the contrary, I think that totalitarian states are moreso the exception than the rule in this day and age. Hell, I wouldn't even group Russia in the same class. There are varying degrees of autocracy and the US president certainly wields more power than heads of state/government in many European countries, but it's just a bad faith argument to try to draw a comparison to it when speaking about a regime such as the CCP.
Hey, that sounds familiar!
The ROC has undergone a pretty big shift in its form of governance and general culture in the last ~50 years. Yes, their current claims are a remnant of their past as the government of mainland China, but given that changing their official stance runs the risk of provoking the PRC they're effectively immutable for the time being.
A disfunctional system isn't the same as a totalitarian one. Both are bad, yes, but they're not one and the same.
The Asus BT500 dongle works quite well in my experience as long as you're running a kernel from the last 1-2 years, it's only BT 5.0 though.