Computer Science is about the science of computing - algorithms and other things. It's the same as studying physics, chemistry, and other similar sciences - providing the future theoretical foundations. Here a Turing machine can exist properly.

Computer Engineering is the about application of science - and like other engineering like civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. You have to deal with real-world compromises - just like not all cows are perfect spheres, you have to consider actual aerodynamics of your bovine. You can't create a Turing machine here because you're dealing with real-world limitations. But you can come up with limited versions to do useful work.

Neither are vocational training - they are after all not trade courses. If you want programmers, you can go after the trade schools teaching programmers. These will be folks you can hand a requirement spec to and get code out.

Computer engineers generally tend to be people who can design systems - you hand them a product idea and they can break it down to stuff that programmers can code for, Computer scientists are the ones who you stuff into the R&D departments to produce the technology that the engineers will create and apply.

It's not just cheap cars. After all, in the 80s Hyundai released the Pony - a stupidly cheap car that sold big at the time. But anyone who's tried to start one on a rainy day knows, they weren't great.

Set back the Korean car industry for decades because everyone knows, knew, or had personal experience with the Pony.

BYD's cheap EVs, though, are really good. Quality is fantastic - something Tesla needs to take note of because there's no excuses for gap and paint issues on cars costing 5-10x more.

Even better - no spyware - BYD is too cheap to install a cellular modem in the car. So if you want infotainment, you have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

It should be telling that the Ford CEO refuses to return his Chinese made car because he's still learning things about it.

It's also not inherently safer. The problem with current Li-Ion isn't the chemistry - it's the charge density. That's why a discharged spicy pillow isn't. You can stab both a charged and a discharged battery, and only the charged one will catch fire. The discharged one does absolutely nothing.

The breakpoint is around 50% - below that and they're rather tame. Above that and they get spicy.

If the battery technology offers an equivalent charge density, well, it'll have the same problems. Storing that much energy results in fires. Doesn't matter if it's electrical, chemical or other - it's why batteries catch fire, gas-powered stuff catches fire, diesel, etc.

Yes, even LiFePO4 and sodium-ion batteries have been made to catch file as well. Same reason - it's not the chemistry, it's the stored energy.

While your points are good, this looks like negligence to me. So, yeah, our "justice" system needs reform, but that facility should be made to change it's practices. (Not that I'm sure this decision will cause them to do that.)

The problem is that TMI was NOT a really bad disaster. It was frightening, and could have been bad. Actually, though, it was quite contained. But the more reactors you have, the greater the chance of a really bad disaster. If one of these is small enough to be thrown around by a tornado, you have new possibilities of a really bad disaster. (I didn't check. I assume it's too heavy. But perhaps it could be broken open.)

OTOH, smaller reactors have a smaller "worst possible case". I'm not really convinced that they're a good idea, but I could be. (If it's intended for use in space, what happens if there's a catastrophic launch explosion? That might be a good use, if they can handle the heat, but I'd prefer that the fuel be mined on the moon.) Low probability accidents that are possible WILL eventually happen. (Or at least one should plan that way.)

It's a new model, so the only way to really know whether it's safe or not is to try. But modelling gives VERY useful indications.

WHY is it wonderful news? The reports I've seen say that small reactors are less efficient than larger reactors and have increased chance of dangerous results (though the size of the danger is smaller).

Just asserting that it *is* wonderful gives me no reason to believe you.

I "sort of" agree. But my estimate of this is low enough (cost-including-pollution vs benefits) that I don't think it should be subsidized including being granted favorable legal treatment. In fact I'd be in favor of eliminating bankruptcy protections for any damage it causes.

Well, I'm sure governments get better rates. But yes, it's likely a nationalism thing. Stripe, being American and Adyen being European. People are dropping American tech when they can switch, and I'm guessing the UK contract was up.

And while they may be expensive, it's probably cheaper since they can handle card payments online without having to do all the PCI security stuff.

Not just that, but subscriptions have probably hurt as well because it's a lot harder to audit when everyone is subscribing and now you're paying per user, not per computer.

After all, you can buy Microsoft Office outright for $400, and it's good on one PC. Or you can subscribe to M365 and now you can use it on 5 PCs - 1 of which may be a user's personal home computer, and 5 mobile devices or tablets. And 4 PCs is basically an IT department's allocation of computers for a person - they can have a desktop and a laptop. Their next desktop and laptop on replacement will consume 4 licenses temporarily and they have their home PC license. Then when the user returns their old desktop and laptop, those licenses are recycled and that user has 2 free computer licenses again.

And yes, Trump basically screwed over the US tech companies again because until then, thoughts to switch to altenratives were just murmurs and no one really did anything for decades. But now in the space of a year, everyone is switching to sovereign systems, or even worse, open-source. Everyone threatened it to get better licensing, but now it's actually happening.

I didn't mean to claim that I though trade secrets in code were a good thing, merely that they were a reason a company might not want to open their source code. Patents are not such a reason. (Also, I don't believe software patents should be valid. Copyright, yes. Trademarks, yes. Trade secrets, yes. But software should not be patentable. [And copyrights should have a much more limited duration.])

You left out "trade secrets". That would be plausible if the software were sufficiently innovative.

That's "tool using", not "tool making", but I wouldn't be surprised if dogs could to simple tool making. A cow was recently documented making a backscratcher.

If rolling a styrofoam ball is using a tool, adapting a towel to a flyswatter is making a tool. I'll admit that I've never met someone who was that limited. Everybody used to be able to whittle something, if not something fancy, but I think that knives are now generally not used that way. I don't even know if rubber bands are still used to launch folded paper (which is multiple instances of tool making).

No, they are not too depleted. Cars are very power hungry - the average 4 banger with 150 horsepower has over 100kW on tap - which would drain the vast majority of EV batteries in somehwere between half an hour and an hour. Meanwhile, the average house consumes about 1-1.5kW on average per day.

Even the largest grid scale storage only really capable of doing 1MW. And those installations are much larger than 10 EV batteries.

Just because a used EV battery can't supply its 100kW peak doesn't mean it can't be remade as a grid scale pack where it can peak at 10kW. That's why used EV batteries are being reused as grid scale or home scale batteries - 10kW is plenty for peak household in many instances, and even home scale batteries are usually only 20kWh or so (which is less than 1/5th of a large EV battery pack).

Used EV batteries simply can't supply the peak power anymore - their internal impedance increases as they grow old. But they can supply lower power levels for a number of years after. This could mean an EV battery pack gets 30+ years of use - the first half as an EV, the second half as grid scale or home scale battery.

It's actually why battery recycling is in its infancy - there's simply very little in the way of getting sufficient batteries for recycling.