Robotbeat

I bet that happened for no reason at all, just like how the US went into Afghanistan for no reason in 2001.

(Sarcasm aside, there obviously are big problems for how these 2 nations responded to the massive terrorist attacks. But I kind of think it’s questionable to pretend there was no big terrorist attack that triggered the response...)

Neither? Competitive academic researchers are susceptible to exaggeration and self-aggrandizing, and CEOs are that and also mostly psychopaths. I tend to think there isn’t systematic spying on researchers looking for breakthroughs. A lot of people are looking for the same things using similar approaches.

I think people are just incredibly bad drivers when drunk, but they do it because they don’t want to hire a cab or leave their car at the bar overnight, etc. Having FSD handle driving would be way safer.

Things require resources regardless of “capitalism” or some other system.

It is, at least in a place like LA. Fares are like less than 10% the actual total cost of an average bus ride. https://www.reddit.com/r/LAMetro/comments/1orftnt/should_you...

Now if you’re ONLY serving high density and high passenger volume times, buses are incredible.

That’s a really difficult problem to solve with the built environment being the way it is. Buses get the closest, but to make it usable at times other than rush hour, they have to run empty or nearly empty, which drives the cost very high (although this is often hidden by subsidies). The way to deal with low density transit is automation.

I believe Tesla’s FSD is already better than such unassisted drivers. Particularly with the current FSD limitations which require monitoring driver attentiveness. If every drunk who attempted to drive was using FSD, deaths due to drunk driving would be virtually eliminated. Heck, even advanced lane keeping and smart cruise control from other manufacturers, while much more crude, would still help tremendously.

Unions.

This is an inaccurate simplification

French Guyana is part of the EU, actually, in spite of being in South America. (Colonialism!)

In Nigeria: Lithium totally irrelevant compared to oil. I think people have this really weird idea that lithium is to electric cars as oil is to regular cars, but it’s literally like a factor of 50 less.

I mean, in the real world, people will just vote out politicians who raise their gas prices.

Some Cantons require all sorts of hoops to jump through in order to get an air conditioner.

CS Lewis was pretty influential on the YA fiction, Harry Potter type of literature. And his other works also have broad influence beyond fiction.

I kinda feel like this is mostly irrelevant. Europe can stop fossil fuel emissions entirely right now and it’d have very little effect. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t decarbonize! But… Europe needs to act. Global Warming is real, it’s happening, and it going to continue happening for decades regardless. So mitigations must be done. Improve fire fighting capabilities. Prepare for changing weather patterns and sea level rise. And yes, even install air conditioning to prevent the elderly and disabled from dying very preventable deaths. Letting the misfortunate die by under-resourcing climate mitigations isn’t going to help reduce climate change by any measurable degree.

If only there was a short little text file that websites could use to keep track of the setting...

What about encrypted ultrasound modems?

Technical ceramics would have survived.

So long as you don’t live in India, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, South Korea… or maybe even the countries Russia their ally is antagonistic with, like Ukraine, Turkey, all of Europe.

FWIW you can get a kit Core One+ for $999 USD in the US. I actually prefer to get the machine as a kit as assembly helps with understanding the workings of the machine for maintenance.

I don't even think it's corrupt self-interest. Just idiotic bravado and wanting to settle long held grudges.

America does that for aerospace & some defense stuff. But the reason not to is that the industrial policy needed to do it like China does has the effect of reduced wages, longer work hours, and lower quality of life.

In general, I do think the East Asian nations have over-prioritized work for export and industrial policy at the expense of the well-being of their citizens.

Not as much as their East Asian neighbors, who had increasing democracy and fewer deaths to starvation…

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico.

Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.

People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).

Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)

The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.

I’ve physically touched the materials being used for solar sails and the lightweight mirrors.

I agree with all that. Many times I see someone Vagueposting about stuff, and I wish I could see their feed.

X posts have a permanent url.

I know for a fact because I’ve dug deep into the field, colleagues work on it every day, and I’ve met and talked to the founders of Reflect, saw material samples of their mirror tech.

I know for a fact it is gossamer thin. It does need structure, but there’s a fundamental limit to how small your spot size is anyway due to Conservation of Etendue, so small deformations aren’t a huge problem.