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So you're just talking about the look of the car? Because BYD has been doing EVs far longer than Porsche, so if anyone is doing a rip-off of the tech, it would be Porsche.

As far as design goes, BYD's aesthetics in recent years has a lot to do with them hiring big-shot European designers like Wolfgang Egger. If they're pulling from the same talent pool as other top carmakers, it's not so obvious why you'd accuse BYD of copying others, and not vice versa.

Source? Or is it just a matter of "it has the same shape as a western car, and a steering wheel = omfg IP theft"?

There are valid commercial reasons not to go through a forced sale with a ticking time limit, which will inevitably carry a steeply discounted price. Rather than getting robbed, it makes sense to hang on to the company and take profits from the rest of the world.

Funny thing is, those Chinese drones are being heavily used by Ukraine, because they're more reliable than US-made drones. In 2023, Ukraine bought about 60% of the global supply of DJI's Mavic quadcopters.

It's gonna get pulled from app stores for "promoting antisemitism". You don't need to be the Kwisatz Haderach to foresee this.

As I understand, using VPNs to access will be illegal in principle, and the VPNs can be on the hook for stiff penalties.

In practice, it will depend on how zealously the government plays the cat and mouse game. Kind of the same situation as with China and VPNs that bypass the Great Firewall (ironic!).

I wonder how much of the aid to Ukraine shows up as money that Ukraine can decide for itself how to spend, as opposed to money that U-turns straight back into pre-determined US defence contracts.

I mean, you can use that approach to denigrate pretty much any activity people spend time on.

Vietnam is a pretty darn poor example for them to be bringing up. A much poorer country fights for its independence against bigger countries with seemingly insurmountable advantages (first France, and then the USA). And by dint of sheer national sacrifice, sustained over 20+ years of fighting, manages to outlast the enemy. Don't forget also that the Vietnamese started from a vastly poorer and more backward position compared to the Ukrainians.

How much of the coal in a blast furnace is actually necessary for the carbon impregnation, as opposed to supplying the heat via combustion? Steel contains only a few percent carbon by weight, so it doesn't seem like much carbon is needed (not to mention that the carbon in steel is essentially sequestered).

In a normal economy, balancing growth versus inflation is certainly an important issue. But when an economy is undergoing hyperinflation, getting that under control has to be priority number one.

Keynes, for example, wrote eloquently about this a century ago. Some of his passages apply quite eerily to the case of Argentina:

The preservation of a spurious value for the currency, by the force of law expressed in the regulation of prices, contains in itself, however, the seeds of final economic decay, and soon dries up the sources of ultimate supply. If a man is compelled to exchange the fruits of his labors for paper which, as experience soon teaches him, he cannot use to purchase what he requires at a price comparable to that which he has received for his own products, he will keep his produce for himself, dispose of it to his friends and neighbors as a favor, or relax his efforts in producing it...

The effect on foreign trade of price-regulation and profiteer-hunting as cures for inflation is even worse. Whatever may be the case at home, the currency must soon reach its real level abroad, with the result that prices inside and outside the country lose their normal adjustment. The price of imported commodities, when converted at the current rate of exchange, is far in excess of the local price, so that many essential goods will not be imported at all by private agency, and must be provided by the government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency.

I think those use normal VCSELs. To justify using PCSELs, maybe it would be lidars for long range sensing, like range finding over dozens of meters or something.