For those of you not up on any of this, the data is extremely odd as the blockage started at the start of the Trump administration. Trump is under investigation for collusion with a foreign power, bribery by a foreign power, being compromised by a foreign power. Russia, specifically Putin. The ongoing investigation is pretty much a slam dunk. Trump has been acting extremely oddly towards Putin; giving public warning of an attack, giving special attention to relieving him of sanctions both active and in legislation, being active in removing the oil-drilling block of Exxon-Mobil that's worth a trillion bucks through Tillerson, the CEO turned Secretary of State. If it turns out the FISA application denials are primarily about Russia, we have a serious national security issue. We need to find out how, or if, the President or his people put their hand in this process and why and who the FISA warrants were about. If he's covering for the Russians again, as seems totally in keeping with his behavior, it's one more impeachable offense, if not criminal.
I remember, years back on Slashdot and other sites, being lectured about my naivete and ignorance when I argued we were opening our veins by making everything operable by computers and RFID and cards. I am arguing the same now with automating driving, making car controls computer-based rather than mechanical, and linking cars together wirelessly. A half-dead termite can see what's coming. We can't give up profits and convenience even in the face of certain hacking and disaster. (It's a disaster when it happens to YOU).
The future is autonomous cars. (it ain't gonnna happen. This is tech bro hubris, we can't make people-level AI now) 100% robot factories are possible. (Nope. Elon figured that out.) The free market fixes all problems. (facepalm Pickety's Capital, Klein's Shock Doctrine) The Singularity is coming. (bad science fiction by people who grew up on movie sci fi) Everyone needs to be retrained in _______ and all will be well. We've had tech employment disruptions before and people recovered fine after; progress goes on.(Many died and will die in poverty and no one cares to notice; that's why the "data" is so optimistically skewed)
All are not supported by anything but mutual belief and constant reinforcement.
Oh, gawd damn it. 2 and a half billion. Do not use your head for a calculator. Still, that's conservative. Call it 3-4 billion because most of those cars will cost more than 50K.
Cash burn is utterly irrelevant. Tesla can't go broke, so it can't go bankrupt. They've a half million cars on order at at least 50K each. That's 25 billion in gross sales, and that's *past* orders. Present orders are being held back because they can't make cars fast enough to immediately deliver.
At 25 billion coming in, they have all the lines of credit and investor interest they will ever want.
China just let them own their own factory there. That's...enormous news.
Cash burn is a concern if you can't pay your bills, make product, or invest in plant. Tesla does all of that. This is cost accounting 101. They will sink money in plant - not "burn money" - and operations, one of which is an asset and the other manufacturing the product. Nothing is "burnt". The money is being converted into other kinds of asset.
A corporation is not a Duncan Donuts franchise. It doesn't have to make cash surplus to fund the owner's new marriage. It just keeps going, growing, adding capability. Tesla is cars. Virtual power plants. Powerwalls. Rooftop solar. Solar power plants. A giant charging network for its cars. It has the best and cheapest batteries on earth and go that way by spending money on R&D and plant. Tesla is ten years ahead of everyone else and will stay that way.
The Koch brothers declared war on electric cars and solar/wind last year. I expect some of the the current coordinated howling about Tesla is in fact a single front in their war. The Russians didn't invent this kind of thing. They just copied it for their own use.
They do not degrade to uselessness. It's never happened. There are 13 year old RAV4s with nickel-metal hydride batteries that work just fine. Jay Leno's 100+ year old Baker Electric works perfectly with the original battery. Lithium batteries in Tesla Roadster autos are still working fine 10 years on, though they have lost a good 10-40% or so of capacity, which is due to overheating or overcharging. Tesla figured out, and now others are too, how to intelligently manage the charging to avoid forming dendrites in the cells. Better every year.
And I believe Toyota and Nissan both recycle their car batteries into power brick installations for utilities and such, A bit degraded is still a lot of battery.
Ah, Bloomberg "news", throwing shade on the idea that many cars could ever be electric. Mad, mad! I tell you! Gods and Monsters! Of course the idea will work. It can't not work. There ain't no "if" involved. Electric cars will lower our power bills, aid grid overload, and walk the dogs while powerwashing the sidewalks. Blackouts will lose their terror all over the world. The upsides of electric cars are now obvious and I can't wait for a VW Beetle cheapie version for the Rest of Us.
Wages up 2.7%? Not that I can see. That is an *average*. The well-paid have rising salaries, the crap-paid wages are shrinking, the average being a bit up. You also have to factor in that the poorly-paid have rents that are rising way faster than their 8.50 up to 9.05 bucks an hour, just about everywhere now. Housing for the poor and merely cash-strapped ain't being built, and probably never will be.
When California goes full solar and has enough juice to desalinate the ocean of water it sits next to, the place will have the mother of all economic booms. That's assuming the graphene oxide passive water desalinization tech doesn't pan out - if it does, all California has to do is stick a hose in the ocean and inhale.
Pumping rivers of desalted water inland won't be a bad idea either. Flood the desert valleys. We have to put the rising waters somewhere, anyway.
California racked up debt because of a majority Republican government that cut taxes and intentionally ran the state into the ground to break social welfare programs, same as the federal government and the state governments of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin. The debt is caused by refusing to pay the bills. Now Brown and a majority Democratic government raised taxes, pay all the bills, have a six billion dollar surplus and the state is booming again. Don't elect Republicans. If you don't want to pay your bills, go to Louisiana or Oklahama. They're doing *great*.
You are a literal idiot or targeted troll to call someone an idiot for pointing out we are in the surveillance state we always feared. I notice this always happens when someone screams "fire". I suspect that people are employed to troll the big sites to psyop-out people who say something is terribly wrong. We are IN something worse than 1984. Benign today is not benign twenty, thirty years from now. We have the framework in place for a hellish, and eternal, series of authoritian hells. How the hell can it be shut off once evil people take the wheel? They hear and see everything they care to, they know who you talk to, where you go, what you do. It's happened in China, in Russia, in Egypt, and it is spreading.
Ah, Destiny and the March of Progress. Nothing is inevitable, and nothing happens naturally. This happened because of cultural complacency and sheer lack of imagination on the parts of almost anyone. Many, many cultures have fell into this trap the last hundred years. The Boiling Frog Syndrome: by the time you notice something's wrong, there's no one left who can tell something's wrong.
A flood of false data for the security state is a huge red flag that will get you noticed real damned quick. People who disappear from the Big Eye will be especially searched for.
Big operational setup, write it down, for avoiding the security state:
Maintain a real trackable identity, and make the data they obtain as bland and uninteresting as possible. Perhaps throw in one strip club visit or something, because no one believes anyone's totally innocent - pure innocence is suspicious. Have alternative untrackable modes for when you need them.
SpaceX won't be making many Block 5 Falcon 9s. They're reusable up to a hundred times with refurbishment, ten times without, they hope. They are already deliberately dunking the Block 3s into the ocean - they don't need them anymore, and they're out of storage room.
I agree that havng the factory next to Boca Chica makes more sense, but they said they're shipping them via the Panama Canal. I guess the talent doesn't want to relocate from LA to Brownsville Texas.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fake news" is a Fox News flag.
Funny thing: the term was coined to describe Trump and Fox News. They coopted it and turned it around.
For those of you not up on any of this, the data is extremely odd as the blockage started at the start of the Trump administration. Trump is under investigation for collusion with a foreign power, bribery by a foreign power, being compromised by a foreign power. Russia, specifically Putin.
The ongoing investigation is pretty much a slam dunk. Trump has been acting extremely oddly towards Putin; giving public warning of an attack, giving special attention to relieving him of sanctions both active and in legislation, being active in removing the oil-drilling block of Exxon-Mobil that's worth a trillion bucks through Tillerson, the CEO turned Secretary of State.
If it turns out the FISA application denials are primarily about Russia, we have a serious national security issue. We need to find out how, or if, the President or his people put their hand in this process and why and who the FISA warrants were about. If he's covering for the Russians again, as seems totally in keeping with his behavior, it's one more impeachable offense, if not criminal.
I remember, years back on Slashdot and other sites, being lectured about my naivete and ignorance when I argued we were opening our veins by making everything operable by computers and RFID and cards.
I am arguing the same now with automating driving, making car controls computer-based rather than mechanical, and linking cars together wirelessly. A half-dead termite can see what's coming. We can't give up profits and convenience even in the face of certain hacking and disaster. (It's a disaster when it happens to YOU).
The future is autonomous cars. (it ain't gonnna happen. This is tech bro hubris, we can't make people-level AI now)
100% robot factories are possible. (Nope. Elon figured that out.)
The free market fixes all problems. (facepalm Pickety's Capital, Klein's Shock Doctrine)
The Singularity is coming. (bad science fiction by people who grew up on movie sci fi)
Everyone needs to be retrained in _______ and all will be well. We've had tech employment disruptions before and people recovered fine after; progress goes on.(Many died and will die in poverty and no one cares to notice; that's why the "data" is so optimistically skewed)
All are not supported by anything but mutual belief and constant reinforcement.
Also a good time for the "analysts" to buy cheap, so the drumbeat goes on to drive the stock price as low as it can go.
Oh, gawd damn it. 2 and a half billion. Do not use your head for a calculator. Still, that's conservative. Call it 3-4 billion because most of those cars will cost more than 50K.
Cash burn is utterly irrelevant. Tesla can't go broke, so it can't go bankrupt. They've a half million cars on order at at least 50K each. That's 25 billion in gross sales, and that's *past* orders. Present orders are being held back because they can't make cars fast enough to immediately deliver.
At 25 billion coming in, they have all the lines of credit and investor interest they will ever want.
China just let them own their own factory there. That's...enormous news.
Cash burn is a concern if you can't pay your bills, make product, or invest in plant. Tesla does all of that. This is cost accounting 101. They will sink money in plant - not "burn money" - and operations, one of which is an asset and the other manufacturing the product. Nothing is "burnt". The money is being converted into other kinds of asset.
A corporation is not a Duncan Donuts franchise. It doesn't have to make cash surplus to fund the owner's new marriage. It just keeps going, growing, adding capability. Tesla is cars. Virtual power plants. Powerwalls. Rooftop solar. Solar power plants. A giant charging network for its cars. It has the best and cheapest batteries on earth and go that way by spending money on R&D and plant. Tesla is ten years ahead of everyone else and will stay that way.
virtual upvote this.
The Koch brothers declared war on electric cars and solar/wind last year. I expect some of the the current coordinated howling about Tesla is in fact a single front in their war. The Russians didn't invent this kind of thing. They just copied it for their own use.
Hammer, meet screw.
Elon *believed* robots were better than humans, thanks to Singlarity thinking, and that delusion is biting him in the ass.
LiFePo batteries are the usual choice for electrical car conversions. I wish we could use SCiBs, but those aren't really available for general use,
They do not degrade to uselessness. It's never happened. There are 13 year old RAV4s with nickel-metal hydride batteries that work just fine. Jay Leno's 100+ year old Baker Electric works perfectly with the original battery. Lithium batteries in Tesla Roadster autos are still working fine 10 years on, though they have lost a good 10-40% or so of capacity, which is due to overheating or overcharging. Tesla figured out, and now others are too, how to intelligently manage the charging to avoid forming dendrites in the cells. Better every year.
And I believe Toyota and Nissan both recycle their car batteries into power brick installations for utilities and such, A bit degraded is still a lot of battery.
" -- and it's a big if -- "
Ah, Bloomberg "news", throwing shade on the idea that many cars could ever be electric. Mad, mad! I tell you! Gods and Monsters!
Of course the idea will work. It can't not work. There ain't no "if" involved. Electric cars will lower our power bills, aid grid overload, and walk the dogs while powerwashing the sidewalks. Blackouts will lose their terror all over the world. The upsides of electric cars are now obvious and I can't wait for a VW Beetle cheapie version for the Rest of Us.
Wages up 2.7%? Not that I can see. That is an *average*. The well-paid have rising salaries, the crap-paid wages are shrinking, the average being a bit up. You also have to factor in that the poorly-paid have rents that are rising way faster than their 8.50 up to 9.05 bucks an hour, just about everywhere now. Housing for the poor and merely cash-strapped ain't being built, and probably never will be.
When California goes full solar and has enough juice to desalinate the ocean of water it sits next to, the place will have the mother of all economic booms. That's assuming the graphene oxide passive water desalinization tech doesn't pan out - if it does, all California has to do is stick a hose in the ocean and inhale.
Pumping rivers of desalted water inland won't be a bad idea either. Flood the desert valleys. We have to put the rising waters somewhere, anyway.
California racked up debt because of a majority Republican government that cut taxes and intentionally ran the state into the ground to break social welfare programs, same as the federal government and the state governments of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin. The debt is caused by refusing to pay the bills. Now Brown and a majority Democratic government raised taxes, pay all the bills, have a six billion dollar surplus and the state is booming again.
Don't elect Republicans.
If you don't want to pay your bills, go to Louisiana or Oklahama. They're doing *great*.
And he gets in his car and drives away on his free road.
You are a literal idiot or targeted troll to call someone an idiot for pointing out we are in the surveillance state we always feared. I notice this always happens when someone screams "fire". I suspect that people are employed to troll the big sites to psyop-out people who say something is terribly wrong.
We are IN something worse than 1984. Benign today is not benign twenty, thirty years from now. We have the framework in place for a hellish, and eternal, series of authoritian hells. How the hell can it be shut off once evil people take the wheel? They hear and see everything they care to, they know who you talk to, where you go, what you do. It's happened in China, in Russia, in Egypt, and it is spreading.
Ah, Destiny and the March of Progress.
Nothing is inevitable, and nothing happens naturally. This happened because of cultural complacency and sheer lack of imagination on the parts of almost anyone. Many, many cultures have fell into this trap the last hundred years. The Boiling Frog Syndrome: by the time you notice something's wrong, there's no one left who can tell something's wrong.
A flood of false data for the security state is a huge red flag that will get you noticed real damned quick. People who disappear from the Big Eye will be especially searched for.
Big operational setup, write it down, for avoiding the security state:
Maintain a real trackable identity, and make the data they obtain as bland and uninteresting as possible. Perhaps throw in one strip club visit or something, because no one believes anyone's totally innocent - pure innocence is suspicious.
Have alternative untrackable modes for when you need them.
Nuts don't build manned steam rockets. He's eccentric.
Can't wait for the Ctr / Print Scrn key combo to be disabled.
I'll keep my old boxen around as long as I can. The internet is a cable TV system now.
Dad da da da da daaaaaa da.
RIP Internet.
SpaceX won't be making many Block 5 Falcon 9s. They're reusable up to a hundred times with refurbishment, ten times without, they hope. They are already deliberately dunking the Block 3s into the ocean - they don't need them anymore, and they're out of storage room.
I agree that havng the factory next to Boca Chica makes more sense, but they said they're shipping them via the Panama Canal. I guess the talent doesn't want to relocate from LA to Brownsville Texas.
That factory is gonna build spaceships.