How much of that US military spending actually protects us, and how much is about projecting US power?

We have nukes in Europe. We have modern, powerful militaries. I'm sure if push came to shove, we could fund Ukraine ourselves.

While of course it's nice to be able to work with the US, I'm sure if you asked every social democracy would be keen to point out their independent deterrent. Some of them are on the front line with Russia, and their domestically developed weapons are world class.

The big difference is that there is immense pressure on women in China to marry young. By the time they are 30 they are considered "left on the shelf" and unlikely to ever marry or have children.

Having children is a very big deal, because the expectation is that those children will look after you in old age... Or after age 35, apparently.

Of course things are changing as young women want careers now, and are choosing to have only one or two children, but it's still a big source of pressure. One of the chief complaints of Western incels is that women have too much freedom and independence, meaning they are not forced to marry said incels.

China may get there eventually, but of course the other big difference is that the Chinese government is very likely to intervene if it ever becomes a serious problem. I expect they will start to push for more children soon.

A common problem the world over. As a Brit, I get it with British people written by Americans. Japanese characters written by Westerners get it a lot. It's quite rare for authors to do a decent job with more than one culture, it seems.

It works in reverse too. A lot of the criticise I see of the Three Body Problem novels is down to people not understanding how Chinese people think about things. Again, the same applies to Japanese stories, and even when the translator provides notes to try to help the reader, it's usually insufficient. I thought I understood a lot of stuff until I actually learned Japanese and stopped relying on subtitles, at which point I realized that the translators were giving a paraphrased and Americanized version of the characters and plot that was only superficially the same.

I always thought it was odd that it took so long for Linux to get a decent scripting language. Well, arguably it still doesn't... You have shell scripts, Python, and stuff like Perl.

Decades ago we had ARexx for Amiga computers. Powerful scripting that could interact with applications and automate them. There have been a few attempts to replicate it over the years, but nothing comes close.

The idea of using it as a mobile workstation with a MacBook was nerfed by Apple. You can only mirror your MacBook screen, not use the AVP as a second screen. It's larger, but also you need to have a heavy and hot brick strapped to your face to use it.

Try adding "before:2023" to your search query. That should tide us over until search engines get a handle on it.

Maybe, but if you want to carry a small return vehicle then you need a way to deploy it. With a Starship landed on its tail, they will need to robotically deploy a rover to collect samples, and carry a rocket large enough to return those samples to orbit, where presumably a second Starship would be waiting. And maybe a third tanker one, to carry the fuel needed to get home.

There is a lot of tech that needs to be developed. Meanwhile China is likely to focus on just getting anything back, to claim the first place prize. I think that's why NASA has recently said it wants to simplify the mission too.

I also doubt that Starship will be ready this year. It might reach orbit, but that's a long way from being able to perform the mission required of it by NASA for the Moon landing. It needs to re-fuel in orbit, and then get to the Moon, and perform an automated soft landing. Then they need to man-rate it, which means escape systems and the like. There is a lot more work to do.

That's how it works. It's basically a WinModem. Passes the raw sampled RF to the computer, and the CPU does all the decoding.

Fiction:

12 books from the Deverry series
The Three Body Problem trilogy
Monkey
Treacle Walker
Various books on Powershell

Non-Fiction:
Linux Administrator's Guide
Linux Network Administrator's Guide
Both OpenZFS books
Ansible
Terraform
Various books on Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL optimisation
C++ manuals
Various Cisco manuals
OpenPF manual

Thanks, I will look for one.

Is "China" claiming that? I don't see Huawei hiding the fact that it is an Android derivative, in fact they are keen to point out to developers that it is easy to port their apps because of it.

Thanks. Would you recommend any particular dongle? I have some cheap TV ones but they aren't very good.

When I bought an EV over a decade ago, part of the deal was that Nissan were helping to build the UK's first charging network. They ensured that the infrastructure was there. I understand that Tesla later did something similar in the US.

Toyota don't seem to have done that with hydrogen filling stations. I'd say that consumers had a reasonable expectation that they would. A buyback seems reasonable, with deductions for mileage.

If you are paying 40-50c per kWh, it seems like you must have paid a lot for the battery, or use very little, for it not to pay for itself in 12 years.

That said, you would be unlucky if it didn't last a lot more than 12 years. If the manufacturer set a 12 year warranty then they would expect the vast majority to last longer, otherwise they would be giving away a lot of free batteries.

In the UK, where electricity is actually cheaper than that, the payback time for a battery is typically 6-7 years. It can be even shorter if you have an EV, or work from home.