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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Safer, very high power to weight ratio, better self discharge stability and good temperature range performance are the advantages. The most important one is of course the lack of massive environmental impact of water hungry lithium mining in dry environments and the geopolitical challenges evident in lithium sourcing.

    There are a few electric vehicles with this chemistry and I predict it will replace lithium based chemistries in lower cost, smaller vehicles.











  • I think this is actually one of the more clever points Banks makes, although not explicitly.

    Fundamentally, the Culture believes that living things (and their definition in this regard is remarkably broad) have a moral right to exist. Therefore, as a society they are not expansionist. In order to remain non-expansionist, the population must be kept stable and this has implications either in childbearing or lifespans. The average Culture human mothers about one child but that means they can’t, on average live forever. Why they choose to have children at all perhaps also boils down to the future generation’s moral right to exist, but also because they recognize that a renewing population means a renewing culture and Culture.

    In this light, I believe it’s easy to see immortality as a sort of childish self-aggrandizement comparable to wanting to become the ruler of some backwards planet. Skaffen-Amtiscaw (an artificial entity and citizen of the Culture) even remarks on Zakalwe’s immortality as childish in Use of Weapons.

    The Culture never appeals to nature – how could they, they are ruled by their Minds!

    (Mind is a sort of very powerful artificial intelligence).

    There is a lot of similarities between the Culture and Trek, they are both visions of post-scarcity humanity made impossible by the simple fact that humans could never be that nice.






  • This is interesting. I agree that stealing isn’t the right category. Copyright infringement may be, but there needs to be a more specific question we are exploring.

    Is it acceptable to make programmatic transformations of copyrighted source material without the copyright holder’s permission for your own work?

    Is it acceptable to build a product which contains the copyrighted works of others without their permission? Is it different if the works contained in the product are programmatically transformed prior to distribution?

    Should the copyright holders be compensated for this? Is their permission necessary?

    The same questions apply to the use of someone’s voice or likeness in products or works.




  • Depending on the explosive that should not help. Shaped charges are most effective if they explode a little distance away. It might help if it is a shrapnel based explosive.

    Still you wouldn’t probably need a shaped charge to penetrate the armor on a BMP-2 which may explain this approach.

    Edit: looking at it more, there is some kind of external armor assembly on the sides, but it doesn’t look like ERA tiles.