VW is good at making cars, but bad at software. They’ve had to delay the introduction of new models (Golf, ID.3) because of software issues. Rivian has sort of the opposite problem: their production lines sit still often because of problems in the supply chain.

Volkswagen has the expertise to solve Rivian’s production and supplier problems, and the cash they will need to survive and develop some cheaper models (the EV market is stagnating right now for a lack of budget options, and Rivian only sells trucks and SUVs). And they’re hoping Rivian software engineers can help them fix their software woes.

Yup, just like that

Apologies. I’m from a country where the meaning of the period and comma is reversed compared to the US, so I did it this way out of habit.

Honestly, I think it may be possible to build entire roads with enough crushed metal elements in the asphalt/concrete and a slight low power charge throughout the entire surface would be able to keep any vehicle battery at a steady charge.

You might be underestimating how much power a car consumes while driving. For example, a Tesla model 3 has an efficiency of about 130 Wh/km in mild weather at highway speeds. Assuming that on the highway you’ll travel 100 km/h, that means you’ll use 130*100 = 13.000 Wh/h, a constant power draw of 13kW. That’s enough to power perhaps 8-12 houses on average.

A km of road could have, let’s say, 200 cars on it (4 lanes, 20m per car). That means you’d need to pump about 2.6 megawatts of power into every kilometer of road to keep them all topped up.

EDIT: fucked up math

All well and good, but the term dictatorship here still refers to a situation where the state apparatus has complete control over the means of production, in other words a total centralisation of power. Indeed in Marxism-Leninism the dictatorship takes the form of a vanguard party forming a single party state. Whichever way you look at it, practical power resides with a very small group of individuals.

The contrast with the eventual stateless communist society, in which power would be completely decentralised, is quite striking. It’s not quite clear to me how Marxist-Leninist theory envisioned the transition from one to the other, although it seems to me there was a general feeling that central economic planning and industrialization would fairly quickly lead to the end of scarcity altogether, which in hindsight seems… very optimistic.

If you ask me, the ideals of communism mostly died around the same time as Lenin. Pretty much all communist states that have existed (and currently exist) are mainly interested in maintaining their own power structures rather than actually working their way towards the idealised communist society. Which pretty much just makes them dictatorships in the classical sense.

Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦

One of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism is that a dictatorship is required to guide the proletariat to communist society (which would be completely stateless). So the dissonance is inherent in Leninist dogma 🤷

ANC is based on playing a “negative” of a pressure wave picked by the microphones in phase with the original wave.

That’s the theory, but it’s almost impossible to do in practice. Your microphone and speaker are imperfect at capturing and reproducing sounds. The phase timing is incredibly sensitive. You only have milliseconds to do the processing and generation.

That’s why practical noise cancelling relies on feedback loops. A second microphone inside captures the result of the cancellation, and based on that adjustments can be made to the negative signal. This allows you to correct for lots of sources of error and achieve quite a good result. Of course, for a sudden noise like a gunshot, by the time the feedback loop can really kick in, the noise is already over.

Bose also makes really nice ones. It’s been a while since I tried a Bose but the QuietComfort 35 II were really solid headphones. Little bit less bassy than the Sony (which is a question of taste), very comfortable, and the noise cancelling is quite good.

I haven’t tried the apple ones. Knowing apple products, it’s probably really good but way overpriced.

The noise cancellation is good for constant noises but not sudden ones.

This is kinda the nature of active noise cancellation, unfortunately. Blocking out sudden noise is just technically very challenging. Works great for airplane noise, not so much for crying babies.

Sony’s XM line is in my opinion just about the best ANC headphones money can buy, in terms of noise cancelling and sound quality combo. I can understand your point about them getting sweaty. Part one of blocking noise is good sound insulation, which tends to hold in heat as well. I live in a colder climate so that works out well for me. You could get in-ear ones, although obviously they don’t block out noise as well.

And the upside down flying is simply due to gliding mechanics, no?

Not sure what you mean by this. But planes still generate lift when flying upside down. Wings with a symmetrical curve can also generate lift. Flat wings with no curve at all can also generate lift.

Pressure differences are definitely involved. That’s the only way air pushes against things, after all, so the fact that there is a lift force implies a pressure difference. However the cause of the pressure difference is rather complicated.

Some things to think about: symmetrical wings, with the same curve on bottom and top, can fly perfectly fine. Flat wings, with no curve at all, don’t fly quite as well but with the proper angle of attack can also generate lift. Additionally, planes fly perfectly well upside down.

If this curve explanation were complete, how could those things work?

Do you guys get DAB+ in the US?

“Theoretically” is worth very little. It is pretty much the same for every concept NPP, that once construction starts on an actual practical plant, ugly problems start coming up all over the place that were not considered or thought of in the concept stage. Corrosion is one of the biggest ones.

See also the Rickover memo.

Is it safer to stay inside without AC or go outside in shade? Isn’t the ambient air temperature still too dangerous in the shade?

Humidity is a big factor, if humidity is low then evaporative cooling (e.g. sweating) is quite effective. Even more so in a breeze.

xAI just finished up a funding round worth $6bn, he doesn’t need to use his own money. It’s the usual bunch of VC funds: Fidelity Sequoia, Kingdom Holdings (that’s a Saudi fund).

True but disingenuous. This statement is often used to mock blue origin for just going 100km straight up into space and then back down, which is very far from reaching orbit. But the flight profile of IFT-3 was so close to orbital velocity, it’s not a significant difference.

Pharmaceutical companies just aren’t interested in it.

It’s not so much about where it goes, more so the fact that it doesn’t stay in America. This is about saving the American auto industry. Whether it’s for the jobs that would be lost or the profits of the shareholders.

What if I leave the bowl of cereal for a while, extracting the flavours of the cereal into the milk? Boom, it’s broth now.

But you’re just here arguing about semantics anyway.

Well duh, this is a post about the meaning of soup. We’re all here arguing semantics. Anyway, if you can justify the meaning of “vegetable” by its culinary use in the kitchen, then we might as well shortcut this chain of thinking and use that argument directly for soup.

Clearly cereal is not a soup, going by its culinary use in the kitchen.