I'm not in the car industry, but I am in the electronics industry and I have definitely felt the chip shortage. Some of my parts just aren't available, and lead times are 3-4 months. Seems to be the result of production stopping at the beginning of the pandemic and they still haven't caught up.
This is really exciting. I've thought about building a datapath on an FPGA that uses partial reconfiguration to synthesize new hardware blocks based on the math being doing at a particular instant, and it sounds like DARPA wants to do that on steroids. Server CPUs coupled with FPGAs are already being used for a lot of interesting things and I think it makes a lot of sense to integrate together even tighter. I'm also really happy to hear that they're funding new EDA software that is actually smart. The best we have right now is some whitelist based rule checking for schematics and layout. I want full simulation, a perfect, proven parts library with symbols, footprints, 3D models, non-ideal SPICE models, and a thermal model for every part in existence, smart rule checking that looks not only for things like unconnected nets, but logic level mismatches and clock edges that are too fast.
Little pieces of this exist already, but in my opinion, software for creating hardware is way behind software for creating software.
There's no evidence that nonionizing radiation like microwaves can cause cancer. I think that was probably more likely due to the fact that everyone back then smoked about 4 packs a day.
Now what if we add an Uber-like component to this and let people share/carpool together to reduce the number of cars above and below ground? Instead of tires that wear out, we could use steel on rails! Aaaand, we just re-invented the subway.
Conversational Navajo. It's such an interesting language with an amazing history. I don't know any other languages right now besides English and a bit of Spanish, and I didn't grow up around any Navajo people. Despite a relatively small speaking population, there seems to be enough information online to learn at least enough to hold simple conversations.
"If you think you know the answer, write it on the back of your classified one time pad key and send it to: NSA, Box 35 Fort Meade (our fair city) Maryland".
I always thought it would be cool to make a necklace or something with ferrite cores after they'd been "written" to, so you could keep a secret message with you (albeit a short one) without suspicion.