They use the 8HP for the M5 because a DCT can't handle the torque (more than an Aventador S lol). Clutches are rather limited in that respect, unless you want to be rebuilding/replacing them every few K miles. Not such a big deal for a supercar that's going to sit in a garage most of the time, which is probably why the 8HP doesn't come in an MR package, but for a car that's actually meant to be driven, like an M5 or $350,000 715-hp DBS Superleggera, it's kind of an important feature. Oh, and just by the by you're wrong – the RS6 and RS7 are both "8-speed automatics", I'll leave you to guess which one :-)

I'm transmission-agnostic, I don't care whether it's a torque converter, wet clutch, dry clutch, hydraulic coupling, or anything else that anyone's ever dreamed of so long as it's efficient and fast. You're free to be a grouchy old boomer and whinge about Clutch Superiority (though, if you really wanna get into it, a single-dry-clutch automated manual is the absolute best), and there's certainly applications where the compromises of a DCT are more acceptable than the compromises of an 8HP, but there's a reason it's fast becoming one of the most popular boxes for some of the highest-performance and highest-power vehicles on the road.

If BMW is fine with a slushbox in the M5, and Alfa is fine with it in the Giulia CF, and Aston Martin in everything they sell, and Maserati in the Quattroporte, and Toyota in the Supra, and Lamborghini in the Urus, and and and, I'm fine with it, and so it seems are the majority of autojournalists.

I've driven plenty of cars with one and I have zero complaints, even if it does have the dreaded torque converter. Slushies have come a long way from the Hydramatic.

As an avid pleasure driver, with a little bit (one weekend class, I do mean a LITTLE) of formal performance training and track experience, what you say is absolutely true but it's not entirely why true three-pedal manuals are desired. A flappy-paddle gearbox is the optimal solution for your argument, as it's entirely manually controlled but also has electromechanical perfection; you control the shifts but the black box executes them absolutely perfectly every time, never a missed gear or blown rev match.

A three-pedal, clutch-and-stick gearbox has an intangible extraI guess "connection" to the car is the best way of putting it. You don't just flick a lever and magically get a Senna-perfect gear change, you have to have a feel and a rhythm, to be in tune with the car and the road. Sometimes you do want to hammer the shift, a quick stab at the pedal and whack the lever, but sometimes you need a little more finesse, and that's before you even get into the fun stuff like double-clutching and heel-and-toe. My current car is flappy and I'm fine with it, it's definitely faster and smoother than I could ever be on a twisty backroad, but the pure, visceral pleasure of slamming a 5-3 downshift to get a good highway pass in my old 240SX is not a feeling anything without a clutch pedal can ever even come close to.

While you're probably right about EOs needing to be erased from existence, GP's rather astute observations about the eternal partisan/sectarian gridlock in Congress and the resultant legislative paralysis of that body means they're oftentimes the only practical way to get anything done.

Of course, whatever doesn't get overturned by the Courts usually gets rescinded the next time a Shia president takes over from a Sunni, sorry I mean Republican/Dem, so they're not even very effective at legislating.

God, I can't wait for this country to split. I don't inherently hate it, but we simply can't survive this way.

Assuming the mirrors (specifically their quality) are the valuable part, changing the focal length of a Cassegrain telescope (like the HST or the Keyholes) is simply a matter of moving the distance between them.

Of course, they have to remain in alignment, but that's a trivial job compared to the mirror construction.

"Similar to Hubble but newer and better" describes to a T the two unused spy satellites the National Reconnaissance Office donated to NASA in 2012; at least one of them is currently being developed and refitted as a space telescope.

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

I didn't change any goalposts. As I said, what you, and Apple, misunderstand is that Garmins are not smartwatches. They are not meant to manage your emails/texts, or be a Dick-Tracy-style wrist chat machine, or display fireworks when you meet a goal, or whatever is is the Apple Watch does.

Garmin watches are purpose-built equipment, the same as their flight decks. They are very sophisticated hardware (the specs on new Garmins make Apple look crap) that's designed for a specific purpose, tracking and managing physical activity, and they do that very well. I don't expect or want my Garmin to play videos, show photos, or really even do more than display messages. I just want it to be my "flight deck" when I'm exercising, and they do that incomparably.

It's a simple concept, I don't know why you don't get it. Apple will *never* get into the Garmin market, Tim Cook cannot understand specialization.

No, it wasn't a direct sequel with the same writers and directors, but IMHO it was a very good followup, with an aesthetic that was actually more unabashedly (albeit modernized) Neuromancer than the original. Then again, Ridley Scott very deliberately turned away from that lest he be accused of copying, seeing as how the book came out pretty shortly before the movie.

The company that makes flight decks for commercial aircraft, where well-managed and effective display of relevant information is literally life-or-death, needs to "fix their UI"?
 
...can I buy some pot from you?

Garmins aren't smartwatches, they're connected watches. They display notifications, allow pre-set responses, and control your music, that's about it. That's all incidental to their purpose, to track and manage physical activity. Every "app", a tracker for a specific activity, allows you to customize the display down to the number of fields and the data shown in each one, which you can do over multiple screens. I like to see my distance, current pace, average pace, and heart rate when I run, and I can do that on my Garmin. On my LG, I'm stuck with what the runtracker app shows. Basically, Garmins are professional toola, with all the advantages but accompanying specialization. I don't see Apple eating much market share from them.

Right there in the introduction, before they even get into any difficult-to-understand sciencey gobbledygook, they say they're studying pure cannabis joints:

New Zealand represents an ideal country in which to study the association between cannabis and respiratory tract cancer. New Zealand has a high rate of cannabis use,[20] and it is rarely mixed with tobacco within the joint [21] as is the custom in the United Kingdom.[22]

Really sucks if you have asthma or have to do any aerobic activity.

If a K/N95 or worse yet a fabric mask makes it physically stressful for you to inhale and exhale, you have serious pulmonary dysfunction (far beyond asthma) and need immediate medical intervention.

I have no problem doing a tempo run at ~7:30m/mi pace, pretty fast by most metrics, huffing and puffing away in a full-blown 3M 8210 N95 respirator. Shit, I actually *prefer* it in the winter as my mask warms and humidifies the inhaled air.

When I read the summary, and the article, I was wondering how showing an error in Riemannian geometry would only be a "oh, our model of color perception is wrong" rather than a massively fundamental change in physics, given that Riemann's techniques gave Einstein the tools to whip up General Relativity - an error in those rules would be infinitely more significant than mere color spaces.

No no, once you get to the actual paper, it merely turns out that color perception can't be adequately described by a Riemann manifold.- "We show that a Riemannian metric overestimates the perception of large color differences because large color differences are perceived as less than the sum of small differences. This effect, called diminishing returns, cannot exist in a Riemannian geometry."

  Interesting, and definitely useful, but there's no flaw in the underlying mathematical framework. The usual sensationalist bullshit.

White people in America are the overwhelming majority of people born into a family where your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents et al. all had access to wealth, and have let it accrue over those generations. The vast majority of my wealth (it's not much, I couldn't even buy a Ferrari with it) isn't what I earned, it's what I inherited, and that's true for most White families even if the wealth is "just" the now insanely valuable house Pap-Pap bought with his favorable loan after the War.

I hate feeding trolls, but I'm feeling masochistic tonight. You really need me to define "equal access to resources"? It's a pretty fucking simple concept. It means that minorities have historically been, either through quiet prejudice or open laws, denied the same access to things such as home loans, housing itself, lines of credit, or business assistance, among other things, that us Whites have had access to. Look up "redlining" and/or how the GI Bill excluded Blacks - but you'll probably argue with me on that one too.

I'd wager if you were born to a minority family, with no generational wealth, or entrenched family, or equitable access to resources such as housing loans, education, or even banking, you wouldn't have come nearly as far as you have in life.

Sure, not all WyPiPo are legacy admissions to Harvard with 8-figure trust funds, but our grand/parents simply having been able to secure a low-cost home loan post-WWII and take advantage of the GI Bill is a hell of a lot more important than your pea brain seems to understand.

White people like you who believe blacks are so inferior they don't stand a chance unless you loosen standards for them.

No, you ignorant plum. Well-meaning folx of all colours realize that with America's 250-year history of viciously subjugating and dehumanizing any and all non-Whites, any non-White deserves that the pendulum actually swing in their direction for a bit, rather than it just be stopped in the properly neutral middle. Non-Whites have very little generational wealth, entrenched family lines, and historical access to resources (saying this as a very deeply entrenched White with enough generational wealth I'm not sweating retirement).

Imagine a marathon runner who had 20# of ankle weights strapped on, but removed at mile 16 - even if they're the best in the world they can't catch the leaders without a ride in a car.