NM's blog

It is a recommended long read , but subject to subscription access. Volkswagon's driverless car, a forerunner to completely driverless cars, has taken the German company about 18 months to develop, test and now commercially deploy — all in China. It is the fruit of a 700-person research and development team comprised mostly of Chinese software engineers with masters or PhDs and more than five years’ experience.  produced in China. Asked how long it would have taken to deliver something similar back home, Hafkemeyer, who worked with Audi, Chinese state-owned auto group BAIC and tech giant Huawei before joining VW in 2022, sighs with exasperation. Typically, he says, the technology development cycle in Germany is a slog of around four to four-and-a-half years, where ideas are bogged down in endless internal debate and commercial negotiations with suppliers. For decades, China has been the world’s factory and companies have tapped into a low-cost labour force with few protections and ...

Inequality in Chile  is 43 in the gini index. It is higher than the world average of 38. It is lower though than in Brazil or Colombia (around 45), for example. Contra la violencia– gathering of music, dance and speeches in front of Palacio la Moneda. It was in that palace that Salvadore Allende ‘was killed’ by a US-backed Pinochet's coup in September 1973.  A chat with a middle-aged Chilean man: Gaza, genocide, the US, Chile, the left, the right and far-right. He seemed a progressive man. A street in central Santiago should be named Street of Opticians. Tens of opticas shops line up the street. I have never seen such a number of opticians in one street.  A chat with a Venezuelan man. A vet by profession, but is not allowed yet to work in Chile, for he has been in the country for only two months. He is doing some illegal work as celebrations decorator and sells some handicrafts he makes. He thinks that Maduro of Venezuela is an authoritarian who wrecked the country and th...