aesch

The main point is that BYD is an existential threat to Germany and Japan. Per Wikipedia (List of countries by exports + List of countries by vehicle exports, latest available data):

- US: ~$144B vehicle exports / ~$3.23T total exports → ~4.5% - Germany: ~$280B / ~$1.99T → ~14% - Japan: ~$151B / ~$922B → ~16%

Even if you treat US states as separate 'countries' and balloon the US export denominator further, the ratio doesn't move into the same league. Autos are roughly 3x more important to Germany and ~3.5x more important to Japan as a share of foreign-earned revenue than they are to the US.

BYD taking the US auto export share is an inconvenience for a few states. BYD taking Germany's or Japan's is regime-altering for the whole national economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports

It seems like BYD is a much bigger threat to Europe (specifically Germany) and Japan. The auto industry is big in the US but an insignificant amount of total exports. Germany and Japan could both lose their cash cows if the Chinese auto industry dominates international sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e...

I don't know if America has done anything quite like this. The example I'm looking for is where a company starts in the US but leaves and incorporates outside the US and then the US attempts to block acquisition by a foreign company. Also, the enforcement mechanism while vague seems un-American. America might tax the company upon exit but it wouldn't hold the founders hostage in America. If you have examples I'd be curious.

It's not meant as a slight against Iranian engineers, I believe Iranian engineers can be as talented as any engineers in the world. I just imagine they may be resource constrained. So the question is more about geo-politics, who stands to gain by transferring technology to the Iranian government that allows them to surveil the Iranian population and maintain absolute control?

Props to the teacher for putting in the work to thoughtfully grade an AI transcript! As I typed that I wondered if a lazy teacher might then use AI to grade the students AI transcript?

One could ask, who is giving Iran and North Korea this technology? Most of it they aren't developing themselves.

Yeah, I agree there is some manipulation of the narrative in the use of pain tolerance to describe China's citizenry. It is in the CCP's interest to convince their population that pain tolerance is a virtue, rather than allow an alternative narrative that China's citizens must suffer the decisions of the autocrats because they have no ability to influence change.

I'd be interested to hear about your experience working with suppliers. How did you go about finding suppliers and haggling with them?

While I don't think this will ship in time. There is a global online hackathon using these robot arms on Hugging Face June 2025, 14-15. https://huggingface.co/LeRobot-worldwide-hackathon

It is unfortunate and confusing that copyright and patents are described as intellectual "property" because intellectual property is fundamentally different than other property rights. Property laws as originally formulated applied to rivalrous goods where consumption by one consumer prevents consumption by others. Copyright and patents apply to non-rivalrous goods.

Rivalrous goods are relatively easier to protect and monetize without the assistance of the state. Non-rivalrous goods are pretty much impossible to protect/monetize without the assistance of a state.

Are we entirely sure that energy and information aren't the same thing, or if they aren't the same thing they are both highly overlapping echoes of some more fundamental concept? Or maybe they are two sides of the same coin?

Sounds like an extension of the second law of thermodynamics.

I read a fascinating article on this dam removal last week! https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-other-side-of-the-wor...

The article tells both sides of the story of the dam removal in as fair a way as I think is possible. Many of the locals were against it and there was a strong advocacy group that fought for it, including a tribal constituency.

I came away from the article feeling I understood both sides better but with less certainty about what was the right choice.

I'm glad you mentioned 'perceived' loss in quality of life. I think that is what is being argued, does the perception meet the reality?

It could be that the major reason for 'college kids perception of loss in quality of life' is that the rise of ad-driven media, as opposed to the previous generation's subscription model, leads to more sensationalized news to drive clicks. Combine that with online forums (echo chambers) that make it easier to complain to a sympathetic audience. College kids are also more susceptible to recency bias, they didn't live through previous times of uncertainty and have no memories of cold wars or the turbulence that previous generations lived through.

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g.

Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic hydrocarbons.

There was a recent Kaggle competition with the goal of developing a small molecule - protein model hosted by Leash Biosciences: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/leash-BELKA.

China is currently cornering the market on solar panels and batteries and some would say "flooding" the global market to lower costs. If the West doesn't figure out an alternative source for the solar+battery supply chain they could be at the mercy of China in 30 years.

I wonder about the first point. As you explain in another comment the value of pi, 3.14159, can be derived from number theory alone but magically it plays a huge role in shaping the physical world we know.

Would a different universe have a different number theory or is number theory something that is True regardless of the universe? What would an alternate number theory even look like?

Look at the influence of sampling in hip hop. Sampling is literally taking music from different time periods, genres, cultures and making something new from it. If the mothers and fathers of hip hop had respected cultural ownership hip hop would never have been born in the first place.

For any piece of culture to stay culturally relevant it must be "taken" and "used" and evolve.

I agree that we should respect and acknowledge the founders of the culture, but once it is set free in the world it has to be shared to grow and thrive.

It's cool seeing the map of the cable he writes about, FLAG: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/flag-europ...

It depends on the state-space over which you are optimizing. When they say sub-optimal, I think the state-space they are referring to includes only the pieces on the board. However, if you include your opponent's mind in the state-space, a move that appears sub-optimal may actually be optimal.

Reciprocity is necessary but one of the best strategies for iterated prisoner's dilemma is tit-for-tat or "equivalent retaliation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

You always start out by cooperating but if someone defects on you, you defect on them.

The Vital Question discusses Nick Lane's hypothesis on how the first cell came to exist in Part II: The origin of life. Energy at life's origin ; The emergence of cells

He was just on Sean Carroll's podcast Mindscape, good listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IZ_CVu2M68

I haven't read that one but after reading The Vital Question I will recommend anything with Nick Lane's name on it. There are very few people who have thought about the origin of life as deeply as he has.

Evolution doesn't take millions of years for fast reproducing microbes. Another example is Covid, we've already seen half a dozen evolutions (that we know about) within the past several years.

Why would your benchmark for intelligence in the human brain be something that less than 1% of humans are capable of achieving? To me that type mathematical proof is an example of a very specific type of intelligence rather than general intelligence.

Do you remember the name of the book and the author?

Coconut oil is very high in saturated fats which some people may want to avoid.

Not an expert, just a gardener. Short answer: just letting leaves fall on your lawn for a period of time is unlikely to provide fertilization, in fact it may hurt your lawn, because the leaves will not break down fast enough and will instead cut off your lawn's access to air and sunlight.

Long answer: You need to break down the organic matter in the leaves through composting. To speed up composting you want the right proportions of both brown (carbon - your leaves) and green (nitrogen) matter, the right moisture levels, and access to oxygen, usually in a large pile to create the perfect environment for the microorganisms that break down the matter. Your leaves are a great base for your compost, I always use mine, but you will probably need to put a little sweat equity into it, as well as kitchen scraps, lawn cuttings, etc. to get the right proportion of greens.