I used to have a printed sheet of paper on my wall at work; allegedly it originally came from Google, but who knows? And with the age of it, it was probably referring to processors from a decade or more ago, but I'm not sure that it's entirely irrelevant even at this point.

Anyway, it listed memory types by their "distance" in CPU Clock cycles from the CPU. Level-1 cache took about 3 CPU cycles to access; L-2 cache about 10, L-3 cache about 30, and Main memory about 100 CPU clock cycles to access. This backs up your contention that there is a bottleneck between the CPU and memory that we would benefit from breaking.

On the other hand, I've worked on custom single-chip MCUs. Normally "main memory" in such a system is a block on on-die fast FLASH memory. For this MCU, however, "main memory" was an off-die serial SPI Flash. It would seem that fetching instructions from a slow serial bus (one....bit...every...50 MHz....bus....clock) would drastically slow operations; but adding a small cache memory gave us 80% of the performance we'd get running from zero-wait state internal memory. I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that for most computing problems, the extensive cache architectures implemented in modern high-performance CPU's very nicely address the CPU-Memory bottleneck that you're concerned about. Sure, there are some problems that this doesn't solve, and that could benefit from alternative architectures, but that isn't our mainstream issue.

Well, nobody really gives a good goddamn whether a particular machine can do everything that your Dell workstation laptop can do.
What's important here is whether a particular machine can do what Ken Thompson actually does.

I'm sitting in front of my 12-core, 24 thread Ryzen 5900 with 64 Gb of RAM and PCIE-4.0 SSDs that I built last year. And you know what? 95% of the time it's just as snappy, just as responsive as the 12 year old AMD Phenom II X4 that it replaced. Sure, when I ask it to unzip a large source archive from work, it is remarkably faster as 7-zip farms all those unzip tasks out to 24 thread compared with 4 on the old machine, and some poorly written websites are a bit more responsive with a 4 GHz processor to service them compared with the old 2 GHz one, and once in a blue moon when I rip and compress a CD it shocks me with it's speed, But otherwise, it just ain't changed that much.

Now, if I was someone different, who wanted to spend my computer time running FEA on large complex structures, or running simulations and verificationsof an ASIC, or rendering Hentai animations as a side gig, the choice of hardware might be a bit more important. But the fact that a particular piece of hardware intended for me doesn't do the job that you want to do, is immaterial.

>>> They're capable of very high quality. However, if you want the cheapest, they'll cut corners and do that for you too.

If I had mod points, I'd give them all to you.

"Cheap Chinese Junk" became a thing in the USA because companies were on a race to the bottom, pricewise. They couldn't get American manufacturers to build shit products (well, even shittier than American manufacturers were already building) because of product safety laws, customer safety laws, and functioning Court systems, but they could get Chinese companies to do so - at least partially because there was zero accountability for making dangerous crap. Who are you going to sue when you buy a containerload of capacitors on the spot market from a Chinese company that doesn't exist when they start exploding two years later? Whose fault was it that the cheapest knock-off electrolyte got used in your capacitors.

China is capable of building Supercomputers that rank among the fastest, fifth generation Fighters, Space stations and moon landers. You can't do any of that by building cheap shit.

Blame American companies that outsourced manufacturing with no specifications and no quality control for the wave of "cheap chinese shit" that we're drowning in. Blame American consumers for looking at price, and only at price, when they make their buying decisions. Don't blame the Chinese for producing what people and companies were paying them to build.

>>> Keep in mind that this is just contingency planning
Absolutely. I'd imagine that NASA's contingencies look something like (in order):
1. Use the existing Soyuz to bring astronauts back, if analysis shows that the temperature will remain within reasonable limits.
2. Have the Russians launch an empty Soyuz to bring astronauts back
3. Leave astronauts on the ISS until #2 can occur, possibly with crew rotations. ...
9. Build suits for the astronauts based on estimated measurements, launch them in an empty Dragon to the ISS to bring them back. ...
99. Build suits for the astronauts based on estimated measurements, launch them in an empty Boeing Starliner to the ISS to bring them back.

Places like NASA are experts at having backup plans for the contingency plans for the main plans. Talking to the only human-rated launch provider in the USA is a pretty obvious place to start with contingencies.

There are huge areas of the United States where streaming and/or FM radio simply don't exist. I would postulated that there are probably as many square miles where that is true, as there where it isn't. Unfortunately for the few people in those areas, they represent perhaps 1% of the US population. Should we require Automakers to continue putting in AM radio to support that 1%? I kinda have a problem with that....

OK, I claim to not be a complete idiot, and I don't realize that. Have you ever driven a Tesla?

I've owned a Tesla Model 3 for 60,000 miles. It is perhaps the poster child for removing buttons and moving functionality to the screen. Here's my take.

tl;dr If done well, using the Model 3 as an example, eliminating all the physical buttons isn't a problem, and generally makes the vehicle more pleasant. I make no representations of how good an idea this is if not done well.

1. For 99% of my driving, I never touch the screen. The scroll wheels on the steering wheel have the functions that I'd normally use - music and cruise control. A few functions are accessed using the stalks behind the wheel - cruise control engagement, single-wipe (which also pops up the wiper control window on the main screen if necessary), turn signals.
2. The automatic climate control almost completely eliminates the need to touch the climate system for me. Sure, there are people who simply can't live without adjusting temperature, fan speed, etc., almost continuously, but that's almost a nervous tic rather than a necessity IMHO.
3. Every now and then, I need to touch the screen - normally to cancel a F****king annoying prompt from autopilot to change lanes to keep on my route. But, there's a big button that shows up on the screen to do that.
4. Every car maker in the world sucks at screen UI design. For at least the Model 3, however, Tesla did a good job - not perfect (their main clientele is older https://www.evunite.com/blog/teslademographics, a group for whom presbyopia is a real thing. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put some text in approximately 6 point dark grey font on a light grey background? Some 24 year old GUI designer, I'd guess), but as good as it gets.
5. Having a high-quality voice command system like the Model 3 eliminates a lot of the need for buttons also - "My butt is cold" is a fine way to turn on the seat heaters.
6. I have reservations about the Model S Yoke, where all of the stalks are removed and become physical buttons on the wheel. Feedback I've seen says that this doesn't work as well, mostly because the buttons on the yoke were implemented poorly making them more difficult to find. Of course, if someone gave me a Plaid I'd get over it.

From my perspective, the reluctance to eliminate buttons is twofold - partially, it's simply historical - it's what we're comfortable with because that's what cars have had since there have been cars. Partially it's because automakers suck at UI design (did I say that already?). That applies to button-centric design also, but screen-centric design allows them to screw up oh so much more.
As an example of bad button UI, my wife's car has a radio with a dozen buttons on it - and when I drive it at night, I have zero chance of finding the control that I want to use. It was far easier on the 1960's car that I drove in High School where there were limited buttons, which meant that there was space to make buttons humongous.

Well, it's a little worse than that. Management and Engineering didn't make the decisions; Congress did. Yup, when they provided money for SLS they wrote into law that it would be based on the Shuttle engines and solid rocket boosters. By doing so, they forced the choice of Hydrogen as a fuel because that's what the engines wanted to see.
Of course, that doesn't explain why, 60 years later, a moon landing is going to require TWO rockets larger than the Saturn-V, and anywhere between half-a-dozen and a dozen launches of those rockets.

Whether you find it hard to believe or not has no bearing on reality. I've never met the man, nor have I ever worked at one of his companies, but as a working R&D engineer I'll say that the informal interviews I've seen with him (especially the Starbase tours with the Everyday Astronaut) show that he is, without a doubt, the "lead engineer". Some of the interviews show SpaceX employees coming up to ask a technical engineering question, and show Musk considering, asking appropriate follow-ups, and making engineering decisions. They show interviewers asking all kinds of wide-ranging detailed technical questions, and Musk answering at a technical level that no CEO I've ever worked for would be able to answer at.

Yes, he makes ridiculous predictions. I'm still wating for my Tesla to drive itself across country, a feat he promised would occur almost 5 years ago. He also made the predictions that he could create a successful electric car company (See his "Secret Master Plan" from 2006, for crissakes: https://www.tesla.com/blog/sec... ), and revolutionize the space industry (see "History of SpaceX" on Wikipedia).

Don't let schedule slips blind you to the big picture.

This doesn't improve boiling, it does improve heat transfer from the hot surface to the water. So something like a liquid cooler for a CPU would see an improvement - more heat transferred (or the same heat transferred at a lower delta-T), keeping the CPU cooler.

New rocket, new launch facilities (well, at least significantly overhauled since the last launch there), new problems. It happens to all rockets, and isn't surprising here. It may take them a month, or two, to get things sorted out, but they're gonna light the candle and it'll be spectacular.
This, of course, is completely independent of the question of whether they should bother. Figure that the roar of the engine, and the thrust of the booster, is created from shoving $2,000,000,000USD into the combustion chamber and lighting them for every single launch. After spending $30,000,000,000USD, they have a magnificent rocket and a manufacturing facility that can build one a year. After spending roughly a third of that, SpaceX has developed a similar rocket that's REUSABLE, and a manufacturing facility that can build a dozen or so a year. After two years, you could have zero SLS rockets (two of them expended in the ocean, and one being built), or two dozen Starships - all of which could be on their second or third mission. After five years, you could have zero SLS rockets (five of them expended, one being built), or 60 Starships.
Sigh.

Uhh, someone with more credibility than you begs to differ:
"USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take between approximately 3,000-8,000 gallons (11,356-30,283 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request additional water supply early. If water is not immediately available, use CO2, dry chemicals, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available."

From "Model 3 Emergency Response Guide", Page 23, https://www.tesla.com/sites/de...

Remarkably, Tesla had a similar problem in their early Model S. Owners from back then have good stories about multiple replacements of drive units due to motor bearing failures - caused by stray induced currents in the rotor that would arc through the bearings to the case, causing bearing pitting and failure. Eventual solution (after many different attempts)? Ceramic bearings.

So your complaint is that the online world doesn't work precisely the way that YOU think it should?
Well, pucker up, buttercup, because I've got an unpleasant insight for you. Once you turn off your computer and go outside, you'll find that the entire world is made up of systems that don't work precisely the way that you (or I) think they should.
And to bring it back to the topic at hand, That, my friend, is the fundamental rule of the (real) Game of Life.

Well, it tells you that there IS cancer somewhere, which justifies spending time and money finding it. When all you have is a patient who's tired, it's hard to justify much more than another round of blood tests looking for increasingly rare conditions..