>Before the optimization, the game took 113 seconds to startup1. After the optimization, the game only took 30 seconds. The script takes 230 seconds to run, much higher than the time taken for the game to load probably because the game only loads parts of the files whereas the script always loads the entire file contents into RAM.
Basically, if you want just play:
Time to play - Your script - 230s + 30s = 260s total
Time to play - Filesystem - 113s = 113s total
For permanent speedup, lets make Factorio fly with ZFS and ARC/L2ARC:
I typically power on my PC, attend to other tasks, and by the time I return, the system would have completed the boot process. While the script may take 260s, it runs in the background.
I think RAG actually refers to something like a chatbot that gets web results behind the scenes and then uses them in its generation context.
I think “semantic search” is a term that I have heard people use regularly for what the OP is talking about.
And then “neural retrieval” which I think only I have used on this page could probably also refer to when they use llms to make ranking decisions for results that were retrieved with a notmal keyword search.
If you ignore the military ambitions of China and the fact they’re openly sharing technology with Russia, perhaps.
I don’t see anything but regret for Europe several decades from now if they decide to start providing China with the technical expertise they’re currently lacking in this space.
This is all about China trying to find a way to escape the pressure of sanctions from Europe and the US.
The EU has to start working more with China, for better or worse.
Not as friends or allies, but there aren't a lot of those left anyway. It's only rational in this multi polar world to have some level of engagement with all parties.
Most of the sanctions Europe have on China were just to please the US anyway.
"This is all about China trying to find a way to escape the pressure of sanctions from Europe and the US"
Is this supposed to be a nefarious Chinese activity?
I read the sentence as the US is the nefarious one, putting pressure between two groups to not work together. It’s only natural for China to act in its own self interest.
"Ask HN: How much would it cost to build a RISC CPU out of carbon?" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41153490 with nanoimprinting (which 10x's current gen nanolithography FWIU)
> Called nanoimprint lithography (NIL), it’s capable of patterning circuit features as small as 14 nanometers—enabling logic chips on par with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors now in mass production.
I've always thought of 'continental Europe' as meaning 'mainland Europe'. In other words excluding the disconnected parts like the UK. Regardless, the UK is in Europe.
The EU was established in 1993. Arm was founded in 1990.
For that matter the UK is composed of islands and parts thereof and nothing in "continental Europe", a term which refers to just the contiguous landmass. (Gibraltar is owned by the UK, but not part of it.)
Luckily Europe is not defined by the EU or sea levels, and the UK is very much in Europe the continent.
Technically true, which as we all know is the best kind of true. Note, however:
“The United Kingdom (along with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar) was a member state of the European Union (EU) and of its predecessor the European Communities (EC) – principally the European Economic Community (EEC) – from 1 January 1973 until 31 January 2020.”
Compare the start of this subthread: “Didn't ARM start in Europe?”
Whatever point it is that subsequent responders were trying to score by mentioning continental europe is moot: Britain was part of Europe in more ways than merely its location.
Your attention to detail is admirable. I feel like if we allow in the EEC we should also give recognition to Acorn of Acorn RISC Machines which was founded in 1978. So really OP should have asked,
"Was Acorn founded in part of a decendant of the European Coal and Steel Community, notwithstanding certain (disputed) conditions of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713)?”
If people start being pedantic, I feel responding in kind is entirely fair.
TBH I'm still not quite understanding why people feel it is so important to clarify that Britain is only in Europe geographically; but I wonder, does it make a difference that Hermann Hauser is actually Austrian? ;)
(I'm really not interested in squabbles about national identity and EU membership, but I do think it's fun to examine claims carefully, especially when it undermines ideological talking points.)
Chinese firms have been moving in that direction for some time now. One early adopter was GigaDevice, which started offering RISC-V versions of their microcontrollers (e.g. GD32VF103 - a RISC-V adapted STM32 clone) around 2019.
That may be in part to their 'president for life'. Leaders are not immortal though and transitions between them have seen large and sometimes catastrophic changes. China designed its modern political system to avoid that, only for Xi to undo it and purge younger potential challengers.
For life and is 71 in arguably the most stressful job in the world. The risk of mental decline cannot be ignored, particularly as he has now served longer than any US president in all of history.
Although I say that and then I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find which individual had the longest tenure of presidency and vice presidency combined. It seems like it’s either Nixon, HW Bush, or Biden.
As the US president is more or less in the same position as the monarch in the UK -- the main *official* task is to approve or reject legislation already passed by parliament -- you should perhaps look at the 63 years 216 days Victoria reigned, or 70 years 214 days of Elizabeth II, both far exceeding any recent US, Chinese, or Russian supreme leader.
I recently noticed with horror that my birth is now closer to the end of Victoria's reign in 1901 than it is to today.
If not exactly hostile then definetly untrustworthy, they certainly show that they are willing to blackmail their partners. No one can be surprised that others want to get rid of influence over critical products. I strongly support it.
It's like with russian gas once again, even the root of the problem is the same.
One man with infinite power and no accountability for his actions.
Just for clarification. I don't blame Americans, but at least from my perspective, this electoral system is very radical and gives almost "absolute power" to a person or party that almost always has marginally more support. You do not need to compromise by creating coalitions etc.
In the end, it is the fault of us Europeans who blindly believed that any successful candidate would be in our favour and perceived as friendly. Although everyone understands how fragile elections are, this was naively ignored.
You mean the history of enshittification by the monopolistic US companies with the lack of any regulation in their country? Also, forcing horrible IP laws on Europe. More details: https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/
And the history of NSA spying on the whole world, see PRISM.
"right now" being the key phrase here. On what length of time due you judge stability? The last 75 years or so in China... well amoung other things they killed over 50 million of their own people with a man made famine. The question is if the institutions that produced USA can hold. China on the other hand lacks the self correcting mechanisms that USA has built in.
China has a tendency to self-destruct every 300-400 years. The interesting thing is that many regions of the globe have a tendency to self-destruct every 300-400 years. Europe had major continent-wide cataclysms with WW1/2 in the 1900s; the Wars of Religion in the early 1600s; and the Hundred Years War + Black Death + Mongol Conquests in the 1300s. The Holy Roman Empire lasted from about 900 AD to around 1300 AD. The Roman Republic lasted about 500 years; the Roman Empire lasted another 400-500.
I think the logic might be that China just had their civilization-ending cataclysm, and so they're on the upswing now. Ditto Europe. This is probably not the end of the United States either, more like the Crisis of the 3rd Century. But it's just as logical to look back on the 400-year cycle and think "Better invest in the countries that have already had their crisis and dealt with it than ones that are starting to decay internally" than to look back on the last 75 years and think "Wow, that was chaotic, the next 75 years will be equally chaotic."
I'm not disagreeing - I think it's important to see China as the undemocratic, illiberal, authoritarian regime that it is. And it is foolish to think that China is interested in a rule-based world order because they believe in the same values many key post-war figures in Europe and the US believed in.
It's that China's economy is heavily dependent on exports - and dependability and the appearance of stability is generally good for trade. Obviously, this is helped by political stability, which means less scope for the kind of outward-facing destructive populisms we see in the US or parts of Europe. But with China's economy in trouble, that might very well change.
> The last 75 years or so in China... well amoung other things they killed over 50 million of their own people with a man made famine.
Such an event is also one reason India got my grandparent's generation to leave.
And the one about 175 years ago in Ireland probably contributed to both the (eventual) Irish home rule movement and the writing of the Communist Manifesto.
While the Great Leap Forward's famine was avoidable in theory, I think that the historical examples of so many others having similar experiences during the transition from agrarian to industrial, shows that in practice the mistakes are very easy to fall into.
I sincerely doubt much is left of those self-correcting mechanism in the US. They are being deconstructed at high pace currently, and not even in secret, and apart from a delay by a judge here and there, it's crickets.
We will see what man made disasters the current (and future) US adminstration will cause. By every measure it looks like they are determined to find out the hard way.
It would be a mistake to work with China for several reasons.
The EU needs to be in a position where it can decide what is best for Europeans and not be strong-armed or overly dependent on allies that clearly don't share the same concern.
It took 3 months for the US to shift from actively supporting Ukraine’s defense to actively undermining it. China is more ambiguous, with a neutral stance, the US is now actively going against Ukraine and Europe’s interests by siding with Putin.
So if you have a choice between a schizophrenic, antagonistic US, and a China who doesn’t care much about human rights but wants to keep stable international trade relationships, I’m really not shocked if you pick the later
Most authoritarian states are 'stable and predictable'. When you meet a lion on the savannah the beast is stable and predictable in that it will most likely try to eat you unless it isn't hungry. Step on a snake and the outcome is stable and predictable in that you will get bitten.
It is good for Europe to learn to stand on its - our - own legs, to become less dependent on the USA for territorial defence and probably also to learn the hard way that peace and tranquillity is the exception rather than the rule. Si vis pacem, para bellum. It is not good for Europe to swap dependence on the USA with dependence on China, we're more than 500 million people with access to most of the resources we need to stand on our own legs so let's get crackin'.
Also, let's drop the silly panic around Trump, the man is doing what he was elected to do which is put America first. We should do the same, in a serious way. Not in an isolationist way but sensibly. Stop importing the world's problems, stop with the silly self-chastisement around 'climate' and 'colonialism', stop the import of islamism and make serious work of getting rid of the islamist factions which have been allowed to establish themselves or Europe as it once was - the birthplace of the enlightenment - will succumb to the sectarian infighting which destroyed Lebanon after they invited Arafat and his PLO.
So, 'Europe first' in the sense that the ideas which formed the continent are worth defending and so are people who subscribe to those ideas no matter where they come from. Those who want to get rid of these ideas to replace them with their own intolerant society - whether that be an islamic caliphate or a Chinese-style fascist [1] surveillance state - are not welcome. I realise this includes a number of EU bureaucrats who are enamoured of the latter system and I would be pleased to see these individuals removed from power, preferably by truly democratic means.
[1] Fascism and Communism are closely related so it is not that odd to call the current government form in China by the former name even if they claim to be the latter. See https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism for a definition or read what Mussolini had to say about the subject and you'll see the parallels.
You're going well off-topic here and into inflammatory territory. This whole debate should probably best happen somewhere else.
But just one thing: while I personally share your take on the political and societal issues, I do think it's unfortunate that you lump "climate" in there, in scare quotes. The climate issue is informed by hard science. America's tendency to politicize everything will have terrible outcomes if climate gets completely caught up in the culture war. Whatever we think about the solutions, we have to find a way to agree that this particular problem is bad and needs to be addressed urgently.
Still, again, here is not the best place for this whole discussion.
For secular and democratic nations, multiculturalism isn’t inherently dangerous if there are principles and ideals around which newcomers to any nation can assimilate and integrate. America attempted that to some degree of success with its melting pot ideals till the 90s, but there wasn’t enough emphasis on civic duty, from either the commoners or the elite. The US founding fathers included everyone in their vision, btw, including Muslims. The failure in any integration and assimilation goals from the past few decades result from enabling unjust narratives which pose America as the only country with the social ills and issues it’s being criticized of, when there isn’t any other country in recent memory with a more socially diverse congress.
That’s not a fair or reasonable thing to point out given that few countries at that time gave slaves or women voting rights. The U.S. was one of the first majority White countries to give Black men voting rights in 1870, after France did some time in late 1700s. Haiti was the first country to give all people, regardless of race, voting rights in 1804. I agree that the U.S. was really late to enter into women’s suffrage compared to other majority white countries.
So the vision included a tiny minority of land owners.
General suffrage in 1789 was about 1 in 20 people, almost entirely white land owning men.
20 years later the vote was actually taken alway from many of the few black men who had it. White men still needed property. In parts of the US this property requirement lasted until the 1850s, and after that the requirement to be rich enough to pay taxes survived well into the 20th century.
I’m not criticising anything other than this idea that america was a government of the people by the people - at least until the 20th century.
I don’t dispute anything you’re saying, I just don’t understand what frame of reference any leader or policymaker at that time could have used to do anything differently. What country at that time was some paragon of social justice or progressivism? I think the US founding fathers did pretty well for their time, when most countries in the world were part of empires, or were monarchies.
People are more socially progressive now because of the passage of time, and the accumulation of sociopolitical observances it allowed. The average person now is only less of a brute because of the cultural training they’ve experienced, but it’s not something to be taken for granted.
In general, there are very few people (sages) who are more moral, ethical or curious than the average person of their own time. Often times their behavior makes them look like a loser or a weirdo to their contemporaries or society.
I am judging it from today—if the founding fathers developed that framework today, Enlightenment ideals would rationally lead them to include everyone based on the progress of social thought up to this point. I won’t hold their lack of social progress against them because they were pioneers for their time.
> It is good for Europe ... to learn the hard way that peace and tranquillity is the exception rather than the rule
I don't know if you're being serious here, but this (Ameri-centric? C21-centric?) view is laughable. Europe is well-acquainted with war and never saw lasting peace for much of it's history until the second half of the 20th century.
> Europe ... saw lasting peace [in] the second half of the 20th century.
Which happens to coincide with the lifetime of the majority of Europeans. War was mostly something which happened to other countries, in other places - not in 'civilised' Europe, surely?
So yes, I am being serious - deadly serious. Most European countries neglected national defence after the fall of the Soviet Union in the expectation that Fukuyama was right when he claimed we were at 'The end of History' [1]. There is a good Swedish term for this condition: fredsskadad which translates to 'peace-damaged', the opposite of 'war-damaged'. It is the condition of a people who have gotten so used to peace being the norm that they assume that everyone everywhere else also considers peace to be the goal and thus no longer need to consider the possibility of ending up in a conflict.
> So, 'Europe first' in the sense that the ideas which formed the continent are worth defending and so are people who subscribe to those ideas no matter where they come from. Those who want to get rid of these ideas to replace them with their own intolerant society - whether that be an islamic caliphate or a Chinese-style fascist [1] surveillance state - are not welcome. I realise this includes a number of EU bureaucrats who are enamoured of the latter system and I would be pleased to see these individuals removed from power, preferably by truly democratic means.
Predictable to an extent. President Xi has effected a number of rather drastic changes internally; it's possible that external policy changes may follow.
Yup, relying on sadistic, communistic regime that puts people into concentration camps is a great idea! What can go wrong!? For instance trading with Russia, Nord Stream, didn't have any bad results...
Oh, crap, no, we have some full scale war going on in Europe now, because Putin thought he keeps Europe on the gas & oil leash (and he was almost right).
Because RISC V results would be something the Europeans could produce?
We are reliant on the US as only 2 companies can make the x86/64 chips. I don't think Europe would be completely against working with a US or Chinese company like Hi Five/Star Five, as long as we weren't dependent on them, and could pull ties if they abused their position of control.
Isn't the supplier of lithography machines for TSMC Dutch?
While that's not the entire process, and it would be a 20 year endeavour, it seems like funding the development of local capability here would be eminently doable.
Europe is also the current heavy hitter for fundamental physics research, so attracting talent and maintaining an ecosystem should be much more achievable.
Most of the machines for the rest of the process also come out of Europe. Building the factories wouldn't be all that hard. Actually developing and running a full production sub-10nm process is a different beast entirely.
Manufacturing the processor itself is different issue from what architecture that processor will be. If Europe produces any consumer processors like that it wont be x86. It will be Risc-V (maybe arm? its UK but owned by Softbank so nope)
Just because SoftBank own it now, do you really think if Europe went to it and said "can we buy half, if so we'll buy $X amount of licences otherwise we'll start (effectively) a serious competitor in risc-v.
Again why to fight for ARM where Softbank will want a huge payoff. When you can instead put this money into RISC-V. I guess i am comming from viewpoint that what EU really needs are independent chips that don't have to be the most cutting edge. I think performance few years behind is fine for majority of needs and that would make europe much more independent. So chips for AI no but for everything else it would be a great start.
STmicro is producing chips at around 14-18nm. ASML is the one producing the leading lithography machine, and we are not talking about ARM, Infineon or NXP. Europe has the capacity to produce their own processors if needed.
ARM is owned by SoftBank, and you need to deal with them for licensing. While SoftBank is not based in the US, the amount they have invested in the US and US based companies means they are very coupled with US. Investing in ARM technology would have a stronger coupling than investing in RISC V.
This wouldn’t be true if Europe was more willing to abandon international copyright laws, but given the amount of IP they own they are unlikely to.
The US and the Soviets were able to cooperate on space missions in spite of their enmity. It's not unreasonable to think that Europe could work with China on a scientific mission, even if the EU or its member states want to keep China at arms-length otherwise. There's an interesting moral quandary there, as to whether cooperation with a totalitarian regime helps diminish or consolidate the regime's power, but this daylight savings thing here in the US is throwing me for a loop so I'm going to have to leave that unanswered for now.
There's an interesting moral quandary there, as to whether cooperation with a totalitarian regime helps diminish or consolidate the regime's power, but this daylight savings thing here in the US is throwing me for a loop so I'm going to have to leave that unanswered for now.
To be honest (I say this as an European), we have tougher nuts to crack the worrying whether cooperation with China will diminish or consolidate it's power. Our focus is now on defending peace and democracy in Europe (and on a larger scale non-US NATO). To say that China has its issues is an understatement (everyone has), but they are too far away to be a threat short- to midterm. Plus China also values international trade stability. So it would be silly not to look where we can (cautiously) cooperate.
Ideally we would like to continue to work with the US. But the US is less interested in Europe now and that creates a vacuum that will lead to new trade alliances.
It is what it is, IF the USA is now europe's enemy, and aligning with Russia (cutting off ukraine from satellites, disabling F16s, hummilaiting the leader in press confrences, calling him a dictator in the press and JD calling us "random countries that haven't fought a war in 30 years" are all indicating that's true).
We will forced to look for other friends, I'm not sure we have the luxury of complete ideological alignment, instead a pragmatic but considered strategic approach shall have to do. I for one think we've bigger fish to fry, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that.
While it's important to steer clear of political debates, it's also crucial to acknowledge that the European Union, like any other political entity, has its strengths and weaknesses.
Because if the US are aligning with Russia and shunning Europe, then it makes sense for Europe to partner with China and break them off from Russia/USA
Well. I have worked quite a bit with Chinese businesses and let's just put like this: It does not matter much whatever license you think the SW or HW has. Whatever is available will be used and modified to the liking of the customer.
It is common for new employees to walk in with code bases of previous projects they have worked with and there is a great deal of administration involved in ensuring that no one else gets to work with more code than they absolutely need. Local builds and copying binary archives is common practice!
> It does not matter much whatever license you think the SW or HW has. Whatever is available will be used and modified to the liking of the customer.
yeah, china is just not playing the stupid licensing and copyright game. chinese companies infringe trademarks and break licenses all the time. doing so boosts their business/economy overall so the state just doesn't bother with enforcing anything.
the annoying thing is that we're not really playing the game either, or at least, we have laws that get enforced "randomly". it was recent news that meta torrented some 80 terabytes of stuff (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...) and essentially nothing happened. back in the day aaron schwartz was driven to suicide over a way smaller chunk of scientific papers downloaded.
I hate to break it to you but it’s extremely common for Western employees to do the same. I had to investigate what seemed like a new employee attempting to begin an exfil of our source code only to discover what looked like all of EMC’s core code, the new employee’s last employer, in a gdrive folder.
Again, if it’s open source there’s nothing illegal in it.
The point of closed source is that it allows the people doing the research and engineering to recoup and profit off their investments.
Which I’m in favor of.
However, considering currently the disproportionately overwhelming majority of the value is being captured by American firms, and the US has proven to be an unreliable partner, it’s in both the EU and China’s interests to eliminate the profit from this industry entirely in order to promote competitiveness with the US based front runners.
Simple: China is only totalitarian in western propaganda. "Yellow Peril" is a tired trope, it's a democracy. It's difficult to characterize the U.S. as a democracy, and our social progress is rolling backwards.
I'm very impressed and fascinated by the Chinese society and their progress. I love the country and it's rich history. But is it a democracy? No not according to my idea of what that word means.
It's a great country nonetheless, people are free in China, they have their own system and it works for them, good! Why pretend it's a democracy?
The Chinese would say the point of democracy is to translate the will of the people into action, it's to efficiently solve problems that people have, it's in their understanding neither liberal nor representative. In fact they'd likely turn your question around, if democracy is merely a set of procedures or rituals without concerns for the will of the majority, the demos which is in the name, why do you pretend to be one?
There's currently a deep crisis of legitimacy in Western democracy so brushing off criticism as hogwash seems to me pretty ignorant.
The core of democracy cannot be, in the words of the current American president, to be "good television". If all your democracy does is exhaust itself in staging content for social media, television and election campaigns you have inverted what the point of it is. People don't need governments so bad that ridicule becomes a daily norm, they need it to solve material problems and put food on the table. Anything else is simply decadence.
Criticize to what end? Overturning the entire order? Questioning the legitimacy of the state? That is not allowed. But the ideological diversity within the CPC is broader than US Democrats and Republicans combined. And if you actually had a chance to challenge the real legitimacy of the US state, you would quickly find all your rights disappearing as well. No state actually tolerates that. The US just allows a facade of 'discourse'.
It depends on what kind of criticism. Criticism intended to overthrow the government? Maybe not. Criticism about various procedures and goals within the context of the socialist system, very much yes.
Deciding the best course of action in the interest of others is different from letting go of power and allowing people to collectively make decisions that might go against your own view of what is in their best interest. Without making a judgement I'd call the latter democracy but not the first.
In this distinction there were no references to procedures or rituals, so it cannot only be a question of that.
Friends is a big word, the EU has a vested interest in getting cheap gas from as many sources as possible at this point and a direct oil and gas pipeline to Europe would definitely be helpful.
Russian presence in Syria prevented this but they're gone now.
In the future we can balance Russian cheap gas with Qatari cheap gas to not be held hostage by either party.
It would be a mistake to build dependencies on China when it's possible to avoid having dependencies at all.
At UN votes when voting about Ruzzian invasion China abstain while USA voted with Ruzzia and other most despicable dictatorships. Still waiting for a MAGA explain this 5D chess move and explain what the USA citizen won from this.
"MAGA" voted in the manchurian candidate. Dismantling oversight, accountability, throwing out old alliances and siding with the global aggressors. The US government is rapidly turning into a kleptocracy.
I mean a negotiated peace. The alternative is a drawn out conflict that either wipes out Ukraine’s male population or significantly weakens the economies of Europe and America or both. Avoiding those things is taking the side of Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans. Does it mean a dictator (Putin) gets some land? Sure. But I don’t think that’s the reason to seek peace.
This kind of reasoning made sense before the 1938 Munich agreements.
By now, we have to assume that giving a dictator a victory will only fuel his next campaign. Especially since it's a campaign for which Russia has been preparing for 70+ years – including exercises shortly before the latest invasion of Ukraine.
If it's Georgescu you're referring to (because you don't seem to want to say so): the annulment was upheld by the ECHR.
We cannot tolerate democracy threatening extremism any longer, nor Russian interference. If anything, the EU is too soft. Orban, and to a lesser degree Fico, are a disgrace, also to their own population.
The EU certainly called for the Romania elections to be annulled and almost certainly interfered with the democratic process by pressuring the court. See these comments by Thierry Breton who was until recently a high ranking EU leader:
“We have to prevent interferences and make our laws apply,” Breton said, referring to the alleged Russian involvement before admitting actual EU interference. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary.”
Is there “good” dictatorships?
My personal opinion is there is no good dictator (ok, in HN context, BDFL in a SW project)
I like no totalitarian regime. No one.
A benevolent dictator is the best form of government. Unfortunately though power corrupts and they have a habit of becoming self serving, and very much not benevolent.
I'm not just talking at the nation-state level, but at community, company, sports and so on. There's no shortage of Open Source projects run using the Benevolent Dictator approach.
Compare that to companies run by committee (or governments run by dead-locked congresses) which preport to "represent the people" but just turn into "nothing gets done" factories.
So yes, there are good dictatorships. They're especially good at getting stuff done.
The analogy between projects/companies and governments is missing big components though.
- "Benevolent Dictators" of companies or projects have to obey the law
- They can't forbid competition or alternatives
- Every participant can leave at any time
- If they burn the organization to the ground, the worst case scenario is the organization get replaced and people move on
I think it shows that we're using the word "dictator" way too casually in that case.
> So yes, there are good dictatorships. They're especially good at getting stuff done. There are also obviously bad dictatorships.
All dictatorships, by definition, are better at getting things done than organizations that require non-unilateral assent.
Instead, the difference between a good dictatorship and a bad dictatorship is that in a good dictatorship, dissidents are eliminated quietly or, if not quietly, then with enough spin that everyone considers their elimination to be a good thing.
In other words, what good dictatorships are good at is PR.
Also you can look at the history of the Nazis and it becomes apparent that they weren't good at much of anything except that: so successfully that "efficient Nazis" became a trope for decades after the war despite all the evidence lying around to the contrary.
How is a dictatorship different from a monarchy? There have been plenty of good monarchies throughout history. Frederick The Great, created the Prussian State. Stuart’s were well loved that they ended parliamentary democracy to restore the Stuarts. Victorian, Elizabethan era were also prosperous and well known. Ceasar was the final monarch who united the enmity between the nobles and plebs.
The problem is we look at those states and all we see is the existence of slavery (that existed in all societies till at least 1800AD), women being relegated to a different social role etc. But it is wrong to assume that any of those were due to monarchy and that a monarchy in the modern age would not rule based on modern values. Just look at Singapore, for a small example of a monarchy ruling based on current social mores. Unfortunately since WW1, monarchies throughout the world have vanished, and all we have are liberal democracies, so we can’t say either way.
I'm going to assume that you're speaking of monarchies in which the monarch is the actual ruler, rather than UK, Belgium, the Netherlands or Canada for instance, right?
In that case, I'd say that a monarchy is essentially dictatorship + a (usually) clear line of succession.
There's a little fear in France, because the head of the far right party is the daughter of the former head, and the aunt of the rising star. Since that party seems not unlikely to win the next Presidential elections, we might end up with a monarchy in France.
Xi is not all powerful; no one person is. The state is powerful, not an individual. And all states are ultimately authoritarian. The only question is what form and to what end.
