If you haven't read it, I also enjoyed his book, 'House'. It has a similar theme to TSoaNM: multiple parties with the same ultimate goal, but conflicting approaches born out of self-interest.
I read it shortly after buying the house that would be (and is) our 'family home', of a very similar vintage (early 80s, East Coast.) Certainly not every home from the past was artfully constructed (or even well-built), but something just feels different with the modern, Fortune-500 homebuilders that rush an army of interchangeable subcontractors through cookie-cutter plans to maximize interior square-footage and stack as many units as possible on a tract of land.
I just hope there is something more serious but less than serious about building a computer such as the Nova. I went through Nand to Tetris and it was pretty fun.
We are trading partners for sure but the American model and Chinese model are fundamentally opposed. For the last 10-15 years, tensions have been getting hotter because Xi has been consolidating power and flexing his strength across the region and exporting censorship. You can look at Hong Kong as an example of this. It's clear China doesn't want to live under a Western hegemony and has been trying to get more power and the US sees this. Trump instituted tariffs and we've also banned Huawei 5G equipment and it's all in the interest of national security and China hasn't liked this. So things have been going back and forth. TikTok is just seen as a scary possibility in that they could influence American minds at a scale that is unprecedented. There's a law in the US that no foreign entity can own a large share of any US broadcasting company. This is just to prevent hostile takeovers and controlling media. This is pretty similar to that in that TikTok is a media company and the US wants to exert that same control. User data is a red herring and honestly the least of the concern if you think about the soft power they control with the TikTok algorithm. Even though we have a trading relationship, things have been heating up under the surface for decades.
It's also partially self inflicted due to the Jones Act which means boats to do the work need to be made by the US. A special boat that has legs that makes installation possible is required to do the work but we can't just use foreign boats which are already made and designed for this kind of thing.
I remember for a previous wind project in US waters they were using a foreign vessel in construction. That made it necessary for it to go to port in Canada adding hundreds of miles and a ton of logistic problems.
Yes, and so much could be addressed and fixed if the US Congress could commit to some acts of representative democracy. Laws could be written, laws could be changed, and many or all the seeming impasses could be legislated away-through acts of representative democracy. Something, something, people should politely write their representatives and otherwise fulfill their civic duties.
This sounds like a good thing. If we had more laws like this, we likely wouldn't be in the current situation where national security is threatened by squabbles between China and Taiwan.
Nah, Congress keeps shipbuilding alive like any other too big to fail shit show, making the navy buy and maintain ships they don't want and at exorbitant costs because the ships are flawed from day 1.
All the Jones Act has done is increase shipping costs in the country as every shipper is forced to use trucks and rail freight instead. It impacts everything, even the costs to build homes because heavy bulk goods more or less end up on trucks over long distances.
This rough idea is the basis of A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. It has this idea of "zones of thought" where there's basically a speed limit on the speed of thought and advanced civilizations move up into the higher zone with a faster limit. It's an incredible book and well worth the read.
It's one of my favorite books. For those of us that came of age during the golden age of Usenet, there are a ton of jokes related to the communication throughout the galaxy. Because communication is so slow, it resembles Usenet, with it's relays, etc.
The AI stuff in the book is also really interesting.
Also, let's not forget that Vinge coined the term singularity.
2023 made it very clear that China knows the stakes and also sees an opportunity with owning the clean tech future. They built more renewable energy just last year than has been installed in all of the United States in its history. BYD just passed Tesla as the biggest producer of EVs. The opportunity is there and with China's faltering economy that was propped up by housing, I expect Xi to do all he can to be the provider of the world with renewables.
You have to burn carbon to build renewable energy components if you don't have enough energy from existing solar + wind; I don't know what you expect. But now they have ~500GW of energy to build next year's >>500GW [1]. It's an investment and every year it pays off.
China's emissions peak wasn't supposed to happen this decade but that has been revised [2]
You haven't been following the recent developments in renewable energy and the deployment of clean tech then. We don't need new technological advancements. We just need to continue to produce more solar, batteries, wind and keeping existing nuclear plants afloat.
We have all we need. It is just a matter of upgrading the grid and building enough to transition.
It's infeasible and unreasonable to think that in order to criticize and advocate for a change in society, that person needs to be outside of it. Having an iPhone doesn't change any of what they are saying.
The impact of the plastic material for those products is a fraction of the energy required to make them and run our modern life. Clean power and getting rid of fossil fuels that are burned for energy is the most important thing here.
