If rust were an issue before the steel became exposed, then they would use galvanized steel to reduce the problem. A quick search indicates that galvanized rebar is often used. Concrete is porous, so water and oxygen can permeate it to reach the steel.
There are many kinds of cement, so don't assume that Portland Cement is the only kind out there. It's just the most common. We've been making concrete for thousands of years. I believe some Roman concrete was designed such that it gained strength in water over time instead of breaking down (I don't remember the details).
One issue with modern concrete is that adding steel increases the strength, but it also causes stress during temperature changes.
I believe there's lots of room for improvement in concrete, and I'm under the impression that it's an area of research that is still wide open. I would expect the concrete we use in construction in ten or twenty years will be significantly better than what we use today.
They were optimizing the routes. Which bus picks up which kids in which order was part of the analysis. Yes, the school start times were also part of the analysis. And "optimal" doesn't mean the shortest routes, it means the routes that meet the optimizing criteria, which in this case was cost.
For every district there are optimal bus routes. Being optimal has nothing to do with being convenient. It has everything to do with having the best solution for the given input criteria.
Of course, it gets more complicated because if you optimize for the kids you have today, next year the routes and start times might not be quite optimal as you add a new stop here and take away one there.
What it boils down to in Boston is that they didn't have enough factors in the optimization. They didn't recognize that change is bad. I'm not clear on if they recognized that early start times are increasingly bad as kids get older.
What about providing optimal bus routes without changing start times? Or what about factoring in a cost for changing start times to only do so when the new start time makes a huge difference in the bussing cost? They just need to take into account the political cost of moving start times as another set of parameters.
Yup. I haven't bought one yet, but I like what I've seen how it selects different inputs. I just wish it had more connections, as if I have to use a receiver to do the switching, I lose the nice single interface for everything.
I don't know what they're going to do, but suppose they came out with an offering very similar to TCL, but allowed users to decide whether they wanted a FireTV, Roku, or non-smart interface? Wouldn't that be cool? I doubt that's where they're going. I would guess that TCL is the model they're going to try to emulate. TCL has Roku, so they'll go with something else.
I wish them luck, as I want to see more competition in the TV market. I hope they find some combination of features that are missing right now and push other makers to improve their offerings.
I'm not sure that's true. If you look at a vendor's 4K TVs, for example, you'll find a range of models. (I've been thinking about buying one, so I've been looking.) The cheapest may be sold barely above cost, but the price difference for improved features clearly indicates a healthy profit margin, and I think they do a pretty good job of upselling the value of the better models.
TCL has made big waves in the US TV market in recent years, so it's not surprising that another company would see an opportunity to move into the market as well. This has been made possible in large part by Amazon, as an electronics company doesn't have to deal with hundreds of electronics chains or dozens of distributors to get their product out. Now they just have to deal with one company.
That's a great, well-reasoned disagreement. Thanks!
You're right that plugging in is just as fast as fiddling with the phone to get it in the right spot to charge, but time isn't the only factor. I can do that fiddling for wireless charging in the dark (and I often do). I can pick up my phone to check something without having to unplug it, and that's a win. Also, having wireless charging pads around encourages you to charge if you would be setting your phone down anyway, but wouldn't have bothered to plug in.
Ultimately, though, it's something that some people love and some don't care about, and that's fine.
I started with wireless charging when my phone got wet and refused to charge through the USB port for several days. I don't know if Apple phones will do that, but my S7 did, and I've seen my S8 refuse to charge briefly. (off-topic: My employer upgraded me to switch carriers; I wouldn't normally upgrade one generation.)
The one last thing I'll say about wireless charging is that I've had a number of charging cables fail, but never the one used for my wireless charger because that one doesn't get any stress.
I switched to wireless charging for my phone a year ago, and I really like it. You're wrong on several points:
* It's not much slower than regular charging.
* Not having to plug and unplug the wire really is a convenience.
In my case, I have an Android phone, and my one big complaint is that my phone turns on the screen when the charging is complete, which can wake me up since the charger is on my nightstand. Since it won't wirelessly charge through the screen, I either have to put something else on top of the phone or put the phone up-side-down with the charger on top, which is really inconvenient.
Yes, stories of corruption in large Massachusetts transportation projects are legendary, and that's another aspect that has to be taken into account in any reform.
As people switched to cars, mass transit agencies cut service to save money instead of expanding service to compete.
If we want to make mass transit really work, we need to invest in it. In Boston, the infrastructure is ancient, many of the trains are extremely old, the service schedule is awkward, and the subway lines don't go far enough.
After all these years of neglect, making a system that people really use is going to take a huge amount of money. That means new taxes, probably focused on car drivers, such as a tax on parking and a tolls for driving. That's not going to be popular, so the plan needs to have significant public support.
Offhand, the changes needed would include expanding the various lines to run through several more towns. (The red line should go out to 128 and possibly then split to several routes heading out towards 495.) Consider new subway lines such as one running along 128 (meeting up with the green and red lines among other connections). The commuter rail needs to have more frequent trains so that people can just use it and not have to carefully plan travel around the train schedules. The user price of all this needs to be kept under the price of driving; I would argue that it would be worth considering making it free to use.
Of course, the above outline for fixing the existing system might not be the right approach. Perhaps we should scrap the current system and build an entirely new one based on the Boring Company's model.
I haven't studied the issue extensively, but there are plenty of solutions. The only question is whether we as a society value fixing the problem highly enough to pay for it.
Yes, it will be quite expensive. They're looking nearly 12,000 satellites. Even without the launch costs (which SpaceX is driving down), that's expensive.
The question is how many customers will they get. It could be a financial disaster or a cash cow.
Good point. A quick look at Google Maps suggests around 66 degrees north. I'm not the best a geography, and I had thought Iceland was a bit further south. I didn't realize it was north of the southern tip of Greenland. That could well be outside the range of satellite Internet, depending on the orbits involved. I have no idea what the plans are.
We may only be a few years away from Starlink or something similar providing practical high-bandwidth Internet service globally. So they may hold back the tide a bit longer, but the reality is that modern communications will become a fact of life everywhere for anyone that wants it. Yes, that will mean some significant changes to the lifestyles of the people living there, and yes, it won't all be for the better, but I don't see the point of fighting it now.
But they aren't losing money on every car sold. They are making a marginal profit. They are losing money due to overhead and fixed costs. So as sales increase, the overall financial picture changes from loss to profit.
They're worth a lot more than GM if they sell the same number of cars as GM but at a significantly higher profit margin, which is completely possible. Combine that with their energy business, which could be another multi-billion-dollar business, and the valuation makes more sense. Of course, at some point the growth does slow down, and then it may become an issue, though that's happened to Apple, and their stock is still going up.
I'll agree that the Solar City buyout doesn't appear to have been worth the money. Unless the solar roof business turns out to be a runaway success over the next few years, they won't make back their investment. But at this point, it's a sunk cost that has nothing to do with today's valuation; it's just a historical artifact that partially explains the number of outstanding shares. (Though it does say that Tesla isn't always making the right business decisions.)
Yes, Tesla is priced like a tech company. Or more specifically, it's priced like a growth company. Automakers are like the weather: the best forecast for tomorrow is that it will be the same as today. Sometimes they do better, sometimes the do worse, but people don't generally expect them to make huge changes in their market share.
Tesla is growing rapidly. While traditional auto makers are constrained by sales, as evidenced by factories operating below capacity and massive marketing campaigns, Tesla is constrained by manufacturing, as evidenced by massive reservations and no significant marketing efforts.
Tesla also has their energy business, which is also constrained by capacity. They've proven the value of utility-scale battery storage in Australia and elsewhere. The potential growth here is huge.
The Tesla solar business is less clear. Personally I think the visual stigma with traditional solar panels has passed as home solar has become more common, so most people who want solar are happy with regular panels. Outside of historical districts and the like, I'm not sure how large their solar roof market will prove to be once they reach full production.
But back to cars, they're looking at a production rate of 500,000 Model 3s next year. They're also going to be starting production of the Semi and announcing the pickup and Model Y next year. Their growth could easily reach over a million vehicles a year as quickly as they can build the factories, probably two million or more.
And don't ignore their Supercharger network. Tesla is the only option for road trips. Independent charging networks are focusing on the higher-density markets (i.e., California), though that may improve a bit over the next decade, but without support from auto manufacturers, they price charging well above what Tesla charges. In short, most people are happy buying an electric car as a second vehicle, but only consider Tesla if looking for an electric vehicle as their first car.
I don't see any other manufacturer providing serious competition for Tesla in the next five years, which will let them continue to grow rapidly to become a major player in the industry.
The short story seems to boil down to "Elon Musk is lying about Tesla being profitable for Q3 and Q4 this year." If they are profitable, then the story that they're going to run out of cash before being able to expand as described above falls apart.
Has the short interest in Tesla decreased? If so, then shorts have cashed out, having a much better position than a week ago. But I'm not under the impression that the shorts have been exiting. It seems that there is a large contingent that really expects Tesla to outright fail, and they want to ride the stock down to zero.
There is a contingent that deeply wants to see Tesla fail because they view it as part of the environmental movement, and they see the whole movement as a leftist attack on free enterprise and their way of life. A company like Tesla being successful is counter to their worldview, and they desperately want to see electric cars fail. I have no evidence to prove that there's a connection to the Tesla shorts, but I suspect there is. I suppose that's part of the reason I so desperately want to see the shorts get bankrupted.
In related news, students do not retain any copyright ownership of their work that they turn in to a school. The school can post it online without compensation to the student or permission.
Thanks! Stock buy-backs should have reduced the outstanding shares, while employee stock options would increase it. Anyway, it's good to see the explanation as to why Google had the wrong information.
Strange. I see it listed as having a market cap of $957B with a share price of 206.28 when I Google it. The number shifts slightly as the stock changes price, so it's not just old data. I wonder what Google is missing? Is there another $50B in another class of shares that isn't being taken into account?
Slashdot Mirror
If rust were an issue before the steel became exposed, then they would use galvanized steel to reduce the problem. A quick search indicates that galvanized rebar is often used. Concrete is porous, so water and oxygen can permeate it to reach the steel.
There are many kinds of cement, so don't assume that Portland Cement is the only kind out there. It's just the most common. We've been making concrete for thousands of years. I believe some Roman concrete was designed such that it gained strength in water over time instead of breaking down (I don't remember the details).
One issue with modern concrete is that adding steel increases the strength, but it also causes stress during temperature changes.
I believe there's lots of room for improvement in concrete, and I'm under the impression that it's an area of research that is still wide open. I would expect the concrete we use in construction in ten or twenty years will be significantly better than what we use today.
They were optimizing the routes. Which bus picks up which kids in which order was part of the analysis. Yes, the school start times were also part of the analysis. And "optimal" doesn't mean the shortest routes, it means the routes that meet the optimizing criteria, which in this case was cost.
For every district there are optimal bus routes. Being optimal has nothing to do with being convenient. It has everything to do with having the best solution for the given input criteria.
Of course, it gets more complicated because if you optimize for the kids you have today, next year the routes and start times might not be quite optimal as you add a new stop here and take away one there.
What it boils down to in Boston is that they didn't have enough factors in the optimization. They didn't recognize that change is bad. I'm not clear on if they recognized that early start times are increasingly bad as kids get older.
What about providing optimal bus routes without changing start times? Or what about factoring in a cost for changing start times to only do so when the new start time makes a huge difference in the bussing cost? They just need to take into account the political cost of moving start times as another set of parameters.
Yup. I haven't bought one yet, but I like what I've seen how it selects different inputs. I just wish it had more connections, as if I have to use a receiver to do the switching, I lose the nice single interface for everything.
I don't know what they're going to do, but suppose they came out with an offering very similar to TCL, but allowed users to decide whether they wanted a FireTV, Roku, or non-smart interface? Wouldn't that be cool? I doubt that's where they're going. I would guess that TCL is the model they're going to try to emulate. TCL has Roku, so they'll go with something else.
I wish them luck, as I want to see more competition in the TV market. I hope they find some combination of features that are missing right now and push other makers to improve their offerings.
I'm not sure that's true. If you look at a vendor's 4K TVs, for example, you'll find a range of models. (I've been thinking about buying one, so I've been looking.) The cheapest may be sold barely above cost, but the price difference for improved features clearly indicates a healthy profit margin, and I think they do a pretty good job of upselling the value of the better models.
TCL has made big waves in the US TV market in recent years, so it's not surprising that another company would see an opportunity to move into the market as well. This has been made possible in large part by Amazon, as an electronics company doesn't have to deal with hundreds of electronics chains or dozens of distributors to get their product out. Now they just have to deal with one company.
That's a great, well-reasoned disagreement. Thanks!
You're right that plugging in is just as fast as fiddling with the phone to get it in the right spot to charge, but time isn't the only factor. I can do that fiddling for wireless charging in the dark (and I often do). I can pick up my phone to check something without having to unplug it, and that's a win. Also, having wireless charging pads around encourages you to charge if you would be setting your phone down anyway, but wouldn't have bothered to plug in.
Ultimately, though, it's something that some people love and some don't care about, and that's fine.
I started with wireless charging when my phone got wet and refused to charge through the USB port for several days. I don't know if Apple phones will do that, but my S7 did, and I've seen my S8 refuse to charge briefly. (off-topic: My employer upgraded me to switch carriers; I wouldn't normally upgrade one generation.)
The one last thing I'll say about wireless charging is that I've had a number of charging cables fail, but never the one used for my wireless charger because that one doesn't get any stress.
I switched to wireless charging for my phone a year ago, and I really like it. You're wrong on several points:
* It's not much slower than regular charging.
* Not having to plug and unplug the wire really is a convenience.
In my case, I have an Android phone, and my one big complaint is that my phone turns on the screen when the charging is complete, which can wake me up since the charger is on my nightstand. Since it won't wirelessly charge through the screen, I either have to put something else on top of the phone or put the phone up-side-down with the charger on top, which is really inconvenient.
Yes, stories of corruption in large Massachusetts transportation projects are legendary, and that's another aspect that has to be taken into account in any reform.
As people switched to cars, mass transit agencies cut service to save money instead of expanding service to compete.
If we want to make mass transit really work, we need to invest in it. In Boston, the infrastructure is ancient, many of the trains are extremely old, the service schedule is awkward, and the subway lines don't go far enough.
After all these years of neglect, making a system that people really use is going to take a huge amount of money. That means new taxes, probably focused on car drivers, such as a tax on parking and a tolls for driving. That's not going to be popular, so the plan needs to have significant public support.
Offhand, the changes needed would include expanding the various lines to run through several more towns. (The red line should go out to 128 and possibly then split to several routes heading out towards 495.) Consider new subway lines such as one running along 128 (meeting up with the green and red lines among other connections). The commuter rail needs to have more frequent trains so that people can just use it and not have to carefully plan travel around the train schedules. The user price of all this needs to be kept under the price of driving; I would argue that it would be worth considering making it free to use.
Of course, the above outline for fixing the existing system might not be the right approach. Perhaps we should scrap the current system and build an entirely new one based on the Boring Company's model.
I haven't studied the issue extensively, but there are plenty of solutions. The only question is whether we as a society value fixing the problem highly enough to pay for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yes, it will be quite expensive. They're looking nearly 12,000 satellites. Even without the launch costs (which SpaceX is driving down), that's expensive.
The question is how many customers will they get. It could be a financial disaster or a cash cow.
Good point. A quick look at Google Maps suggests around 66 degrees north. I'm not the best a geography, and I had thought Iceland was a bit further south. I didn't realize it was north of the southern tip of Greenland. That could well be outside the range of satellite Internet, depending on the orbits involved. I have no idea what the plans are.
We may only be a few years away from Starlink or something similar providing practical high-bandwidth Internet service globally. So they may hold back the tide a bit longer, but the reality is that modern communications will become a fact of life everywhere for anyone that wants it. Yes, that will mean some significant changes to the lifestyles of the people living there, and yes, it won't all be for the better, but I don't see the point of fighting it now.
But they aren't losing money on every car sold. They are making a marginal profit. They are losing money due to overhead and fixed costs. So as sales increase, the overall financial picture changes from loss to profit.
If you listen to the more public shorts, they're talking about the company failing, not about it being overpriced.
They're worth a lot more than GM if they sell the same number of cars as GM but at a significantly higher profit margin, which is completely possible. Combine that with their energy business, which could be another multi-billion-dollar business, and the valuation makes more sense. Of course, at some point the growth does slow down, and then it may become an issue, though that's happened to Apple, and their stock is still going up.
I'll agree that the Solar City buyout doesn't appear to have been worth the money. Unless the solar roof business turns out to be a runaway success over the next few years, they won't make back their investment. But at this point, it's a sunk cost that has nothing to do with today's valuation; it's just a historical artifact that partially explains the number of outstanding shares. (Though it does say that Tesla isn't always making the right business decisions.)
Yes, Tesla is priced like a tech company. Or more specifically, it's priced like a growth company. Automakers are like the weather: the best forecast for tomorrow is that it will be the same as today. Sometimes they do better, sometimes the do worse, but people don't generally expect them to make huge changes in their market share.
Tesla is growing rapidly. While traditional auto makers are constrained by sales, as evidenced by factories operating below capacity and massive marketing campaigns, Tesla is constrained by manufacturing, as evidenced by massive reservations and no significant marketing efforts.
Tesla also has their energy business, which is also constrained by capacity. They've proven the value of utility-scale battery storage in Australia and elsewhere. The potential growth here is huge.
The Tesla solar business is less clear. Personally I think the visual stigma with traditional solar panels has passed as home solar has become more common, so most people who want solar are happy with regular panels. Outside of historical districts and the like, I'm not sure how large their solar roof market will prove to be once they reach full production.
But back to cars, they're looking at a production rate of 500,000 Model 3s next year. They're also going to be starting production of the Semi and announcing the pickup and Model Y next year. Their growth could easily reach over a million vehicles a year as quickly as they can build the factories, probably two million or more.
And don't ignore their Supercharger network. Tesla is the only option for road trips. Independent charging networks are focusing on the higher-density markets (i.e., California), though that may improve a bit over the next decade, but without support from auto manufacturers, they price charging well above what Tesla charges. In short, most people are happy buying an electric car as a second vehicle, but only consider Tesla if looking for an electric vehicle as their first car.
I don't see any other manufacturer providing serious competition for Tesla in the next five years, which will let them continue to grow rapidly to become a major player in the industry.
The short story seems to boil down to "Elon Musk is lying about Tesla being profitable for Q3 and Q4 this year." If they are profitable, then the story that they're going to run out of cash before being able to expand as described above falls apart.
Has the short interest in Tesla decreased? If so, then shorts have cashed out, having a much better position than a week ago. But I'm not under the impression that the shorts have been exiting. It seems that there is a large contingent that really expects Tesla to outright fail, and they want to ride the stock down to zero.
There is a contingent that deeply wants to see Tesla fail because they view it as part of the environmental movement, and they see the whole movement as a leftist attack on free enterprise and their way of life. A company like Tesla being successful is counter to their worldview, and they desperately want to see electric cars fail. I have no evidence to prove that there's a connection to the Tesla shorts, but I suspect there is. I suppose that's part of the reason I so desperately want to see the shorts get bankrupted.
In related news, students do not retain any copyright ownership of their work that they turn in to a school. The school can post it online without compensation to the student or permission.
I fixed the subject line for you.
At least with Gentoo Linux, you can decide whether you want systemd or not. It works fine either way.
Thanks! Stock buy-backs should have reduced the outstanding shares, while employee stock options would increase it. Anyway, it's good to see the explanation as to why Google had the wrong information.
Strange. I see it listed as having a market cap of $957B with a share price of 206.28 when I Google it. The number shifts slightly as the stock changes price, so it's not just old data. I wonder what Google is missing? Is there another $50B in another class of shares that isn't being taken into account?
So what if (like my wife) you don't have a smart phone?