I've been looking at the stock market reporting for the last couple of years, and to make it interesting I bought some Tesla stock awhile ago.
My take is that all of the "important insightful" news reports we see about companies boil down to the following:
1) Reporter picks some stock to report on 2) Plugs the numbers into an algorithm that spits out a recommendation 3) Writes an article justifying that recommendation
Notably, reporters don't write about a stock because something happens or because it's a particularly good investment, and they don't muse any personal skill at analysis for the article - they basically take whatever is happening at the moment and use it to justify whatever is going on with the stock.
Daily market reports are always "Dow is down x% due to *this* thing happening in the world", as if the world incident is driving stocks. (As I write this, one of the top stories is "Dow posts best week since March as traders shake off G-7 trade jitters". The two linked points of information are unrelated.)
In the case of Tesla, the company is taking all their profit and borrowing extra to invest in manufacturing facilities. From the viewpoint of the algorithms, Tesla is burning through cash with no hope of recovery, as the chart on this page shows.
Any other company with Tesla's numbers would be a lousy investment. We see this all the time in other companies - burn through VC cash over a couple of years and then go bankrupt (or get bought out). (GitHub anyone?.)
Looking more closely at the chart shows a different story. Tesla takes several quarters to tool up, then releases a model and goes profitable for a while. They've done this twice now and are on the verge of a 3rd round. Once the Model 3 production is fully ramped up they will be positioned to *own* the car manufacturing industry in the US.
Tesla is a great opportunity to "go against the groupthink with reason", and Bruce has it exactly correct: Tesla stock will be closely held, making it ever more expensive to cover the short positions. Expect a temporary meteoric rise in value as the short holders fight each other trying to get out of their short positions.
Oh, and Tesla isn't one of the most shorted stocks in the US. It's the *most* shorted stock *ever*.
GitHub aligns really well with Microsoft's position as a development tool company. Unless you want Embarcadero or Oracle to buy them, the best big dev tool company to buy them was Microsoft on that front.
How long until the E-mails from GitHub saying "our terms of service have changed"?
I'm betting this happens "before the end of summer".
He's referring to "opposite phase", which is common in the US. You get two 120-volt phases that are 180 degrees apart.
You can go across the two phases to get 240 volts for high-power appliances such as stove and clothes dryer, but that's all you can do without special equipment. Three phase requires three sources 120 degrees apart, phase-to-phase.
This was an administration openly elected to inflict cruelty on those that expected anything meaningful from shared governance.
Uh... not it wasn't. Grow up.
Fake information to support absurd lies is kind of their "thing".
This is not specific to the current administration, and in fact there's a move afoot to remove, or "drain", the current situation, or "swamp", of people who abuse the system. Especially of people who abuse the system for political gain.
Outrage SHOULD be expected, but we're being trained to turn off all our mental alarms against everything important we used to care about.
And of this I agree. This is a serious breach of trust in government, and while I've generally been giving Ajit Pai a pass because of TDS, this is where we can reasonably be outraged and call for his removal.
1) First order of business: Is this report true? There need to be an unambiguous case of intentionally misleading the public, exposed by the E-mails and with no reasonable other explanation.
(I somehow doubt that this is the case, since it's so obviously easy to uncover, but it would be nice to get some consensus analysis, and maybe an admission and apology from some people at the FCC.)
2) Secondly, who actually did the lying? It's entirely possible that this was done at a low level and not reported to Ajit Pai. It's entirely possible that this was done by appointees from another administration/FCC chairman, and so on.
It's also possible that Ajit Pai knew and condoned it, but let's find out the facts.
3) Thirdly, assuming we have actual people and actual infractions (possibly including Pai), what steps can we take in response?
FCC policy is not the biggest issue on everyone's minds right now, immigration is. Using this to bring down the president is a non-starter, and backing anyone who is also against the president's immigration plan is a planned failure.
With that in mind, what concrete steps can we take in order to yank the FCC's leash?
I've never felt that Change.org petitions are worth anything, but with enough support they do get a response from the WH.
Give me a break. People don't invest based on Slashdot stories. TSLA stock is down 15% in the past year, and the NASDAQ is up 20%. But at least you get those sweet TSLA dividends!
You're right.
The smart move is to put your money elsewhere while the rest of the market rises, then switch to Tesla just barely before the stock shoots up again.
When will that be, exactly?
Also, Tesla is up 200% from 5 years ago. I don't want to spend the time and sanity tracking day-to-day stock prices, so purchasing and just waiting long-term is a valid option. I think the market in general is only up 30% over that same period.
Democrats have been slowing down the confirmation process, so that Trump has many fewer people in place than other presidents at this point in their term.
Admittedly, it's within the rules and an aspect of Democratic resistance that is actually succeeding.
It's hurts the country but it does slow down Trump's agenda, and that's what matters most.
This gives many, many people an incentive to trash-talk the company, so that the stock tanks and they can make money.
"Oh, but wait: if you look at the numbers this way, it shows that Tesla will crash and burn any day now."
or,
"Musk is a serial liar, literally nothing that comes out of his mouth is true. The company is run by incompetent nincompoops and Musk is one bad day swsy from a psychotic break"
Tesla will either crash and burn, or be completely out of the woods, in 3 months. Call it 6 months just for some wiggle room: by the end of the year, Tesla will be either gone or a rock solid investment.
What you are seeing is a bunch of last-ditch efforts to try and crash the stock so people can make some money from it.
Fortunately, many Tesla investors have realized that news reports about Tesla don't matter (I read one report that said exactly that, but can't find it ATM). They're going to wait out the summer storm and see a stronger, better company in the Fall.
Stock prices have dipped *slightly* over the last month, but have largely recovered.
Investors are keen to wait out the storm. Check back in 6 months time.
That depends entirely on the line of questioning. If it is something along the lines of "we have reason to suspect this may pose a risk to patients due to[...]
The FDA is a bureaucracy responsible for the safety of patients, but bears none of the costs of that safety.
It is in the FDA's interest to make the safety bar so high that medical progress is stifled, so long as safety is its primary goal. Medical companies are always at odds with the FDA, trying to negotiate more sane procedures and reliances.
Taking this article as an example, the patients are completely cut out of the equation. The patients might have a terminal disease with a projected survival of a few years, or might have an awful quality of life - and yet, they cannot choose to try this treatment. They cannot bear the risks from their own choices. The FDA lets patients die rather than have the possibility of an unsafe treatment.
It's ridiculous.
(And for a suggested alternative, let the FDA regulate *products*, not tests. Let the companies do studies and experiments on people willing to take part, and only step in when the treatment becomes publicly available. Add in a bit of legal protections and a standard value of human life - $5 million, say - and medical treadments would advance very quickly.)
For all the people who wail and gnash their teeth about climate change, somehow they never want to get behind Tesla and see it succeed.
Bull-fucking-shit.
See, when people point out the fact that Tesla has some serious financial problems and is burning cash and losing money and the fact that it has had some serious manufacturing problems - most of them because of sheer incompetence of the Tesla senior management; TTBs (Tesla True Believers) call them "haters" and say stupid shit like "they don't want Tesla to succeed."
Here's an opportunity to do a scientific experiment.
We have your model, that views Tesla with sheer incompetence of senior management.
We have my model, that views Tesla on the precipice of "owning" the automobile market and becoming one of the biggest companies on the planet.
I predict from my model that the precipice is about 3 months away, and that Tesla stock will shoot up and Tesla will be profitable before the end of the year.
I gather from your post that your prediction is that Tesla will crash and burn in that same timeframe.
Let's do an experiment. Let's see which model is the better predictor of future results.
And 99% of those Chinese EVs have a range less than 50 km. Now, let's look at the ~1.3 BILLION ICE vehicles on the road. Electric is 0%, rounded to the nearest 0.5%...
Let's not forget Tesla in this assessment. They're currently making about 3.5K cars/week, soon to be somewhat larger (they say 6k/wk, but have always overpredicted. Maybe 5K/wk is a reasonable belief?)
That's roughly 200,000 cars/year, they'll ramp up production even more, so in 4 years we might see an additional 1 million EVs on the road. After that the doubling rate for EVs would probably be some small number of years - number of EV's on the road doubles every 8 to 10 years.
For all the people who wail and gnash their teeth about climate change, somehow they never want to get behind Tesla and see it succeed. Here's a company that could put a significant dent in the amount of CO2 the US produces, followed by similar gains in China and the rest of the world.
And yet, everyone wants to see Tesla fail in the next 6 months.
Tesla is a solution (one, among a number of solutions) to the problem, the benefits far outweigh the risks, this is the company the US should be giving energy credits to.
(And as an aside, if you think climate change is a pressing issue, putting money into research should be one of the arrows in your quiver. Somehow the global warming community seems to avoid this as a solution - research into new technologies is not something they generally recommend.)
The good news, is that with the current administration's descent into kleptocracy
WTF?
we can literally shoot them in the middle of the street and face no legal consequences as there's absolutely zero authority of law and justice anymore.
WTF?
Remember, Trump himself has personally declared that government by brute force is his preferred means of action, that he endorses terrorism and coercion,
WTF?
that he will bend anybody to his will.
I realize being a liberal comes with a big dose of cognitive dissonance, but the "he's literally Hitler" thing was dropped months ago. Take a moment to consider our situation:
We're currently enjoying peace and prosperity, for the first time in decades.
Is there any point or purpose in making shit up about the administration?
I know that's not a popular thing to say, but that doesn't make it less true. We have an administration who's stated goal is less regulation and who's people keep getting caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar with no consequences. Is it any wonder why ISPs think they can get away with more?
A more nuanced observation is to note that the problem stems directly from local administrations granting a monopoly to a single provider, eliminating any chance of competition.
But hey - if trashing the administration is your thing, then go for it.
This commentary published by The Wall Street Journal, written by Fred Singer, claims that warming (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) has no effect on global sea level rise. Although Singer concedes the physical fact that water expands as its temperature increases, he claims that this process must be offset by growth of Antarctic ice weasels.
Scientists who reviewed this opinion piece explained that it is contradicted by a wealth of data and research. Singer bases his conclusion entirely on a cherry-picked comparison of sea level rise 1915-1945 and a single study published in 1990, claiming a lack of accelerating sea level rise despite continued warming. But in fact, modern research utilizing all available data clearly indicates that sea level rise has accelerated, and is unambiguously the result of human-caused global warming.
I think what we are seeing is the start of a new strategy for the religion climate change.
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
Expect the "costs" of global warming to get ever more expensive, dire, and immediate... until that's seen as not working and they transition to something else.
There are many examples where the transition from paid employment in climate research to retirement has been accompanied by a significant change of heart away from acknowledging the seriousness of global warming. It seems that scientists too are conscious of the need to eat, and like everyone else must consider the consequences of public dissent from the views of the powers-that-be. One example was Dr Brian Tucker. He was the Director of the Australian Numerical Meteorology Research Centre, and subsequently became Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research. He was heavily involved in the development of the IPCC. During his time with CSIRO he was the ‘go to’ man for journalists and radio programmers seeking stories on matters to do with climate change. On retirement he became a writer and speaker for the Institute of Public Affairs, and greatly surprised his former colleagues with his very public change to an openly sceptical view on the subject.
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job. Surprised you didn't go with "fake news"... is it because Trump himself admitted that what he calls 'fake news' is simply anything that portrays him in a negative light?
Scott Adams has an interesting insight on the two views of Donald Trump: one view has him as stupid and incompetent, and the other one has him as brilliant and capable.
His point being: each of these is a model of reality, so which is the better predictor?
Look at the predictions made about Trump using the "stupid incompetent" model:
Trump will never win the presidency The economy will tank if Trump wins Trump will get us into a nuclear war Trump will start WWIII End of the world Numerous Hitler-like situations
There are even specific things that people have said about Trump:
"Every taunt back and forth between Trump and Kim Jong Un maked deescalation and diplomacy less possible" -- Ben Rhodes, via twitter
"Poll: What one thing will work with North Korea? a) Military strike (9%), b) Embargo or blockade (1%) c) A grand bargain w/China (4%) d) Trump has no idea (86%)" -- Bill Kristol, via twitter
So we're scientists here, we know that science works by making models and predicting outcomes, and when we have two models we throw one out and keep the one with the better predictions.
Which model is the better predictor for Trump?
If you still believe in the "stupid and incompetent" model, what future predictions can you make based on that model? And what specific criteria can we agree on to determine when those predictions have failed or succeeded?
Bit deeper then that. I don't know what group of people are driving it but I can describe it. The more I look at especially some of the "synergies" between laws in countries that would otherwise be completely opposite, the more it becomes obvious there has been a serious push for globalization. It's to the point we don't have one, but MANY draconian laws straight out of batshit crazy countries, being passed with little to no discussion. It's like we're being prepped for habitation by the "royal families".
I've been thinking about that, and have a possible answer.
For context, I started thinking about this when I heard that London is now 42% foreign born. (Here's info from 2011.) England used to be predominately white and very conservative, but it's now peppered with no-go zones and full of foreign workers. Germany and Sweden are even worse, and are *still* importing refugees.
Why is this happening in Europe?
My best guess has to do with WWII, and the genocide of various peoples: Jews, but also Gypsies, Poles, Afro-Germans, homosexuals, Jehovas Witnesses, and others. Hitler made WWII essentially a war on other races.
That incident (WWII) has become so abhorrent in the collective psyche that people will do anything to escape the barest hint of being associated with it. The people of Europe are killing themselves trying to prove that they aren't racist.
We now have British police choosing not to prosecute Muslim rapists, while threatening prosecution for the fathers (of the raped girls) for Islamophobia for speaking out. We see the police suppressing reports of Muslim crime, but going after "hate speech" crimes from regular citizens.
We're seeing a little bit of that here in the US, where putting our own citizens first is called out as racist.
There's an old saying about democracy being "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch".
The point being, the republic was set up to aspire to higher goals than can be achieved by pure democracy alone. We have people in power who are not bound by the will of the people, they can vote their conscience based on what they think is right. We take guidance from a bunch of enlightened people 250 years ago who set up basic guidelines to do this.
The idea of a bunch of like-minded people getting together and trying to "nudge users into alignment with their goals" is the same thing, it's "two wolves and a sheep" writ large.
We're seeing this today with the changes in user policy. YouTube used to be a bastion of free speech, everything that wasn't explicitly illegal was allowed... until that changed, and you can no longer talk about guns, or have conservative views, or cast aspersions on certain races or religions. (But it's OK when those races or religions cast aspersions back.)
Their goals are well-meaning today so that people will get behind the efforts and help, tomorrow their goals may be different.
Even when you agree with their goals, not everyone agrees with their proposed solutions - and yet they still try to influence public debate. Climate change is one of these issues, where a lot of people would agree that it's a problem and something should be done, if only the solutions weren't politically motivated.
What they are proposing is control over social thought. Unlike PACs or advertising, it's done without oversight or transparency. We complain about PACs not having enough transparency, and not knowing who pays for political ads - are we going to allow Google to be similarly opaque?
Next election it won't be "Russians hacked the election", it'll be "Google hacked the election".
Nudging behaviour like this is insidious and evil.
Or, by asking a question similar to yours, how do you calculate the pressure on an electron? Which dimensions would you choose to calculate the required area? Or do you consider that you cannot apply pressure on electrons? Or that electrons don't have area? Please, illustrate me.
If the universe is computable (a strong requirement, since being "uncomputable" puts it outside of normal mathematics), then position must be quantized in some way. If position were a (mathematical) real number, then each position would require an infinite amount of information, and any interaction would be uncomputable.
If position is quantized, then you can have a particle that occupies 1 quantum point and nothing else. It would be similar to having a computer game on a finite 3d grid of points - at the macroscopic scale everything would appear to be 3 dimensional, but when you get to the quantum level you could have particles that occupy one quantized point and no more. At that scale, for a particle occupying one quantized point, the concepts of surface area and volume lose their meaning.
The universe is apparently quantized. Not in the simple way of the computer game mentioned above, but still quantized.
So far as anyone can determine, an electron is a point particle. It has no volume and no surface area.
In thought strong force refers to the force that binds the protons inside the necleus.... Do quarks even need a force holding them together? Like does opposite spin quarks repel each other?
The color force holds three quarks together in a proton or neutron. Protons have charge, so there's significant repulsive force among them inside the nucleus.
A quark inside a proton can be bound (by color) to the two other quarks in that proton, but it's also physically near the quarks of a neighboring proton. It can "look outside" it's own particle and see other nearby quarks, and feel the color force from those as well. That's what we call the strong force, and it keeps the nucleus together.
If heavy nucleii were composed completely of protons, the aggregate electromagnetic repulsion would overwhelm the strong force and the nucleus would fly apart. Adding a few neutrons to the mix allows the same sort of neighboring-color-attraction without the EM repulsion, and makes the nucleus stable.
Not that any of this will matter to you, no matter what is presented when Mueller actually reveals his findings, you'll still think he's innocent, it's a witch hunt, Trump Did No Wrong, it's all a partisan hit job, and on and on to protect your boy.
I'm actually good with believing he's innocent, until there's evidence.
I absolutely *hate* it when some police force make a flashy claim about someone - all the guns confiscated during the search, all the electronic devices taken from the home, nebulous "tip from an informant" - everything is being tried in the court of public opinion nowadays. None of that is evidence of a crime.
Let's not forget that after 9/11 someone was sending anthrax letters to people (remember those?) and Mueller - the lead investigator - ignored a tip about Bruce Edwards Ivins (the perpetrator, from one of Ivins' colleagues) and focused on Steven Hatfill. Mueller went before congress and swore under oath that Steven Hatfill was the person responsible, when in fact there was no evidence implicating Steven Hatfill whatsoever. Among other items, Steven Hatfill had no access to anthrax. The FBI didn't bother to explain this fact, and didn't seem to care.
Steven Hatfill went through several years of hell, having his life turned upside down, condemned in the media, death threats... and was eventually exonerated and sued the government for (IIRC) 5 million dollars.
That's the history of your "unimpeachable, honorable" Mueller.
Remember the indictments of 13 Russian nationals and 3 corporations recently released? It turns out one of the corporations didn't exist at the time of the purported crimes. Mueller indicted the proverbial "ham sandwich".
I like to think everyone is innocent, until proven guilty. and this thing about the court of public opinion is bollocks. Show us the evidence.
I sometimes ask a *question* about how someone appears to have broken the law. For example, Trump is widely believed to be obstructing justice for firing Comey, despite having a memo in-hand recommending it, but the Oakland mayor can warn illegal immigrants of an upcoming ICE raid... and that's not?
Or how Michael Flynn can be charged under the Hatch act for meeting with a Russian diplomat (as a member of the incoming administration, opening dialog and not specifically making claims or policy) while Kerry can negotiate with Iran and European countries to save the Iran agreement... and that's not?
I like to think everyone is innocent, until proven guilty.
Show me the evidence. What you have so far is nothing.
If visibility has to be earned by sustained niceness and if bad behaviors are remembered and suitably penalized (with reduced visibility), then the social environment would be greatly improved.
That sounds suspiciously like the suppression of free speech.
Instead of enforcing some nebulous universal value-of-people, why not let individuals choose what they would like to see and hear?
That way I can listen to whoever I want, and you don't have to concern yourself with whether the person I'm listening to has good social standing or not.
Will you all still be excited about giving Trump a Nobel Peace prize when some terrorist settles the Jerusalem problem once and for all by detonating a dirty bomb outside the new embassy, rendering all of Jerusalem uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years?
Probably not, but they said the same thing about North Korea.
I'm willing to let the situation play out and see what the outcome is.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been looking at the stock market reporting for the last couple of years, and to make it interesting I bought some Tesla stock awhile ago.
My take is that all of the "important insightful" news reports we see about companies boil down to the following:
1) Reporter picks some stock to report on
2) Plugs the numbers into an algorithm that spits out a recommendation
3) Writes an article justifying that recommendation
Notably, reporters don't write about a stock because something happens or because it's a particularly good investment, and they don't muse any personal skill at analysis for the article - they basically take whatever is happening at the moment and use it to justify whatever is going on with the stock.
Daily market reports are always "Dow is down x% due to *this* thing happening in the world", as if the world incident is driving stocks. (As I write this, one of the top stories is "Dow posts best week since March as traders shake off G-7 trade jitters". The two linked points of information are unrelated.)
In the case of Tesla, the company is taking all their profit and borrowing extra to invest in manufacturing facilities. From the viewpoint of the algorithms, Tesla is burning through cash with no hope of recovery, as the chart on this page shows.
Any other company with Tesla's numbers would be a lousy investment. We see this all the time in other companies - burn through VC cash over a couple of years and then go bankrupt (or get bought out). (GitHub anyone?.)
Looking more closely at the chart shows a different story. Tesla takes several quarters to tool up, then releases a model and goes profitable for a while. They've done this twice now and are on the verge of a 3rd round. Once the Model 3 production is fully ramped up they will be positioned to *own* the car manufacturing industry in the US.
Tesla is a great opportunity to "go against the groupthink with reason", and Bruce has it exactly correct: Tesla stock will be closely held, making it ever more expensive to cover the short positions. Expect a temporary meteoric rise in value as the short holders fight each other trying to get out of their short positions.
Oh, and Tesla isn't one of the most shorted stocks in the US. It's the *most* shorted stock *ever*.
GitHub aligns really well with Microsoft's position as a development tool company. Unless you want Embarcadero or Oracle to buy them, the best big dev tool company to buy them was Microsoft on that front.
How long until the E-mails from GitHub saying "our terms of service have changed"?
I'm betting this happens "before the end of summer".
He's referring to "opposite phase", which is common in the US. You get two 120-volt phases that are 180 degrees apart.
You can go across the two phases to get 240 volts for high-power appliances such as stove and clothes dryer, but that's all you can do without special equipment. Three phase requires three sources 120 degrees apart, phase-to-phase.
This was an administration openly elected to inflict cruelty on those that expected anything meaningful from shared governance.
Uh... not it wasn't. Grow up.
Fake information to support absurd lies is kind of their "thing".
This is not specific to the current administration, and in fact there's a move afoot to remove, or "drain", the current situation, or "swamp", of people who abuse the system. Especially of people who abuse the system for political gain.
Outrage SHOULD be expected, but we're being trained to turn off all our mental alarms against everything important we used to care about.
And of this I agree. This is a serious breach of trust in government, and while I've generally been giving Ajit Pai a pass because of TDS, this is where we can reasonably be outraged and call for his removal.
1) First order of business: Is this report true? There need to be an unambiguous case of intentionally misleading the public, exposed by the E-mails and with no reasonable other explanation.
(I somehow doubt that this is the case, since it's so obviously easy to uncover, but it would be nice to get some consensus analysis, and maybe an admission and apology from some people at the FCC.)
2) Secondly, who actually did the lying? It's entirely possible that this was done at a low level and not reported to Ajit Pai. It's entirely possible that this was done by appointees from another administration/FCC chairman, and so on.
It's also possible that Ajit Pai knew and condoned it, but let's find out the facts.
3) Thirdly, assuming we have actual people and actual infractions (possibly including Pai), what steps can we take in response?
FCC policy is not the biggest issue on everyone's minds right now, immigration is. Using this to bring down the president is a non-starter, and backing anyone who is also against the president's immigration plan is a planned failure.
With that in mind, what concrete steps can we take in order to yank the FCC's leash?
I've never felt that Change.org petitions are worth anything, but with enough support they do get a response from the WH.
Is that the logical next step?
Give me a break. People don't invest based on Slashdot stories. TSLA stock is down 15% in the past year, and the NASDAQ is up 20%. But at least you get those sweet TSLA dividends!
You're right.
The smart move is to put your money elsewhere while the rest of the market rises, then switch to Tesla just barely before the stock shoots up again.
When will that be, exactly?
Also, Tesla is up 200% from 5 years ago. I don't want to spend the time and sanity tracking day-to-day stock prices, so purchasing and just waiting long-term is a valid option. I think the market in general is only up 30% over that same period.
Democrats have been slowing down the confirmation process, so that Trump has many fewer people in place than other presidents at this point in their term.
Admittedly, it's within the rules and an aspect of Democratic resistance that is actually succeeding.
It's hurts the country but it does slow down Trump's agenda, and that's what matters most.
Tesla is the most shorted stock in history.
This gives many, many people an incentive to trash-talk the company, so that the stock tanks and they can make money.
"Oh, but wait: if you look at the numbers this way, it shows that Tesla will crash and burn any day now."
or,
"Musk is a serial liar, literally nothing that comes out of his mouth is true. The company is run by incompetent nincompoops and Musk is one bad day swsy from a psychotic break"
Tesla will either crash and burn, or be completely out of the woods, in 3 months. Call it 6 months just for some wiggle room: by the end of the year, Tesla will be either gone or a rock solid investment.
What you are seeing is a bunch of last-ditch efforts to try and crash the stock so people can make some money from it.
Fortunately, many Tesla investors have realized that news reports about Tesla don't matter (I read one report that said exactly that, but can't find it ATM). They're going to wait out the summer storm and see a stronger, better company in the Fall.
Stock prices have dipped *slightly* over the last month, but have largely recovered.
Investors are keen to wait out the storm. Check back in 6 months time.
FDA once in a while does its job, amazing
That depends entirely on the line of questioning. If it is something along the lines of "we have reason to suspect this may pose a risk to patients due to[...]
The FDA is a bureaucracy responsible for the safety of patients, but bears none of the costs of that safety.
It is in the FDA's interest to make the safety bar so high that medical progress is stifled, so long as safety is its primary goal. Medical companies are always at odds with the FDA, trying to negotiate more sane procedures and reliances.
Taking this article as an example, the patients are completely cut out of the equation. The patients might have a terminal disease with a projected survival of a few years, or might have an awful quality of life - and yet, they cannot choose to try this treatment. They cannot bear the risks from their own choices. The FDA lets patients die rather than have the possibility of an unsafe treatment.
It's ridiculous.
(And for a suggested alternative, let the FDA regulate *products*, not tests. Let the companies do studies and experiments on people willing to take part, and only step in when the treatment becomes publicly available. Add in a bit of legal protections and a standard value of human life - $5 million, say - and medical treadments would advance very quickly.)
For all the people who wail and gnash their teeth about climate change, somehow they never want to get behind Tesla and see it succeed.
Bull-fucking-shit.
See, when people point out the fact that Tesla has some serious financial problems and is burning cash and losing money and the fact that it has had some serious manufacturing problems - most of them because of sheer incompetence of the Tesla senior management; TTBs (Tesla True Believers) call them "haters" and say stupid shit like "they don't want Tesla to succeed."
Here's an opportunity to do a scientific experiment.
We have your model, that views Tesla with sheer incompetence of senior management.
We have my model, that views Tesla on the precipice of "owning" the automobile market and becoming one of the biggest companies on the planet.
I predict from my model that the precipice is about 3 months away, and that Tesla stock will shoot up and Tesla will be profitable before the end of the year.
I gather from your post that your prediction is that Tesla will crash and burn in that same timeframe.
Let's do an experiment. Let's see which model is the better predictor of future results.
Are you a scientist, or a troll?
And 99% of those Chinese EVs have a range less than 50 km. Now, let's look at the ~1.3 BILLION ICE vehicles on the road. Electric is 0%, rounded to the nearest 0.5%...
Let's not forget Tesla in this assessment. They're currently making about 3.5K cars/week, soon to be somewhat larger (they say 6k/wk, but have always overpredicted. Maybe 5K/wk is a reasonable belief?)
That's roughly 200,000 cars/year, they'll ramp up production even more, so in 4 years we might see an additional 1 million EVs on the road. After that the doubling rate for EVs would probably be some small number of years - number of EV's on the road doubles every 8 to 10 years.
For all the people who wail and gnash their teeth about climate change, somehow they never want to get behind Tesla and see it succeed. Here's a company that could put a significant dent in the amount of CO2 the US produces, followed by similar gains in China and the rest of the world.
And yet, everyone wants to see Tesla fail in the next 6 months.
Tesla is a solution (one, among a number of solutions) to the problem, the benefits far outweigh the risks, this is the company the US should be giving energy credits to.
(And as an aside, if you think climate change is a pressing issue, putting money into research should be one of the arrows in your quiver. Somehow the global warming community seems to avoid this as a solution - research into new technologies is not something they generally recommend.)
Don't forget fuzzy logic.
Also theorem proving machines (proving all possible theorems), formal logic, and cybernetics.
Semantic nets, svms, ... the list goes on.
The good news, is that with the current administration's descent into kleptocracy
WTF?
we can literally shoot them in the middle of the street and face no legal consequences as there's absolutely zero authority of law and justice anymore.
WTF?
Remember, Trump himself has personally declared that government by brute force is his preferred means of action, that he endorses terrorism and coercion,
WTF?
that he will bend anybody to his will.
I realize being a liberal comes with a big dose of cognitive dissonance, but the "he's literally Hitler" thing was dropped months ago. Take a moment to consider our situation:
We're currently enjoying peace and prosperity, for the first time in decades.
Is there any point or purpose in making shit up about the administration?
I know that's not a popular thing to say, but that doesn't make it less true. We have an administration who's stated goal is less regulation and who's people keep getting caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar with no consequences. Is it any wonder why ISPs think they can get away with more?
A more nuanced observation is to note that the problem stems directly from local administrations granting a monopoly to a single provider, eliminating any chance of competition.
But hey - if trashing the administration is your thing, then go for it.
This commentary published by The Wall Street Journal, written by Fred Singer, claims that warming (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) has no effect on global sea level rise. Although Singer concedes the physical fact that water expands as its temperature increases, he claims that this process must be offset by growth of Antarctic ice weasels.
Scientists who reviewed this opinion piece explained that it is contradicted by a wealth of data and research. Singer bases his conclusion entirely on a cherry-picked comparison of sea level rise 1915-1945 and a single study published in 1990, claiming a lack of accelerating sea level rise despite continued warming. But in fact, modern research utilizing all available data clearly indicates that sea level rise has accelerated, and is unambiguously the result of human-caused global warming.
I think what we are seeing is the start of a new strategy for the religion climate change.
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
Expect the "costs" of global warming to get ever more expensive, dire, and immediate... until that's seen as not working and they transition to something else.
It's getting so bad that climate scientists are giving science a bad name. (Here's an easier-to-read digest of that essay.)
From the linked articles:
There are many examples where the transition from paid employment in climate research to retirement has been accompanied by a significant change of heart away from acknowledging the seriousness of global warming. It seems that scientists too are conscious of the need to eat, and like everyone else must consider the consequences of public dissent from the views of the powers-that-be. One example was Dr Brian Tucker. He was the Director of the Australian Numerical Meteorology Research Centre, and subsequently became Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research. He was heavily involved in the development of the IPCC. During his time with CSIRO he was the ‘go to’ man for journalists and radio programmers seeking stories on matters to do with climate change. On retirement he became a writer and speaker for the Institute of Public Affairs, and greatly surprised his former colleagues with his very public change to an openly sceptical view on the subject.
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job. Surprised you didn't go with "fake news"... is it because Trump himself admitted that what he calls 'fake news' is simply anything that portrays him in a negative light?
Scott Adams has an interesting insight on the two views of Donald Trump: one view has him as stupid and incompetent, and the other one has him as brilliant and capable.
His point being: each of these is a model of reality, so which is the better predictor?
Look at the predictions made about Trump using the "stupid incompetent" model:
Trump will never win the presidency
The economy will tank if Trump wins
Trump will get us into a nuclear war
Trump will start WWIII
End of the world
Numerous Hitler-like situations
There are even specific things that people have said about Trump:
"Every taunt back and forth between Trump and Kim Jong Un maked deescalation and diplomacy less possible" -- Ben Rhodes, via twitter
"Poll: What one thing will work with North Korea? a) Military strike (9%), b) Embargo or blockade (1%) c) A grand bargain w/China (4%) d) Trump has no idea (86%)" -- Bill Kristol, via twitter
So we're scientists here, we know that science works by making models and predicting outcomes, and when we have two models we throw one out and keep the one with the better predictions.
Which model is the better predictor for Trump?
If you still believe in the "stupid and incompetent" model, what future predictions can you make based on that model? And what specific criteria can we agree on to determine when those predictions have failed or succeeded?
Cell phone towers broadcast an ID, and there are only about 215,000 of them in the US.
Can this be fixed in software, by having the cell phone only communicate with known towers?
(Yes, the towers change slowly over time, but not frequently enough to be a problem. It'd be like upgrading the maps on the GPS device in your car.)
Bit deeper then that. I don't know what group of people are driving it but I can describe it. The more I look at especially some of the "synergies" between laws in countries that would otherwise be completely opposite, the more it becomes obvious there has been a serious push for globalization. It's to the point we don't have one, but MANY draconian laws straight out of batshit crazy countries, being passed with little to no discussion. It's like we're being prepped for habitation by the "royal families".
I've been thinking about that, and have a possible answer.
For context, I started thinking about this when I heard that London is now 42% foreign born. (Here's info from 2011.) England used to be predominately white and very conservative, but it's now peppered with no-go zones and full of foreign workers. Germany and Sweden are even worse, and are *still* importing refugees.
Why is this happening in Europe?
My best guess has to do with WWII, and the genocide of various peoples: Jews, but also Gypsies, Poles, Afro-Germans, homosexuals, Jehovas Witnesses, and others. Hitler made WWII essentially a war on other races.
That incident (WWII) has become so abhorrent in the collective psyche that people will do anything to escape the barest hint of being associated with it. The people of Europe are killing themselves trying to prove that they aren't racist.
We now have British police choosing not to prosecute Muslim rapists, while threatening prosecution for the fathers (of the raped girls) for Islamophobia for speaking out. We see the police suppressing reports of Muslim crime, but going after "hate speech" crimes from regular citizens.
We're seeing a little bit of that here in the US, where putting our own citizens first is called out as racist.
There's an old saying about democracy being "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch".
The point being, the republic was set up to aspire to higher goals than can be achieved by pure democracy alone. We have people in power who are not bound by the will of the people, they can vote their conscience based on what they think is right. We take guidance from a bunch of enlightened people 250 years ago who set up basic guidelines to do this.
The idea of a bunch of like-minded people getting together and trying to "nudge users into alignment with their goals" is the same thing, it's "two wolves and a sheep" writ large.
We're seeing this today with the changes in user policy. YouTube used to be a bastion of free speech, everything that wasn't explicitly illegal was allowed... until that changed, and you can no longer talk about guns, or have conservative views, or cast aspersions on certain races or religions. (But it's OK when those races or religions cast aspersions back.)
Their goals are well-meaning today so that people will get behind the efforts and help, tomorrow their goals may be different.
Even when you agree with their goals, not everyone agrees with their proposed solutions - and yet they still try to influence public debate. Climate change is one of these issues, where a lot of people would agree that it's a problem and something should be done, if only the solutions weren't politically motivated.
What they are proposing is control over social thought. Unlike PACs or advertising, it's done without oversight or transparency. We complain about PACs not having enough transparency, and not knowing who pays for political ads - are we going to allow Google to be similarly opaque?
Next election it won't be "Russians hacked the election", it'll be "Google hacked the election".
Nudging behaviour like this is insidious and evil.
Or, by asking a question similar to yours, how do you calculate the pressure on an electron? Which dimensions would you choose to calculate the required area? Or do you consider that you cannot apply pressure on electrons? Or that electrons don't have area? Please, illustrate me.
If the universe is computable (a strong requirement, since being "uncomputable" puts it outside of normal mathematics), then position must be quantized in some way. If position were a (mathematical) real number, then each position would require an infinite amount of information, and any interaction would be uncomputable.
If position is quantized, then you can have a particle that occupies 1 quantum point and nothing else. It would be similar to having a computer game on a finite 3d grid of points - at the macroscopic scale everything would appear to be 3 dimensional, but when you get to the quantum level you could have particles that occupy one quantized point and no more. At that scale, for a particle occupying one quantized point, the concepts of surface area and volume lose their meaning.
The universe is apparently quantized. Not in the simple way of the computer game mentioned above, but still quantized.
So far as anyone can determine, an electron is a point particle. It has no volume and no surface area.
In thought strong force refers to the force that binds the protons inside the necleus.... Do quarks even need a force holding them together? Like does opposite spin quarks repel each other?
The color force holds three quarks together in a proton or neutron. Protons have charge, so there's significant repulsive force among them inside the nucleus.
A quark inside a proton can be bound (by color) to the two other quarks in that proton, but it's also physically near the quarks of a neighboring proton. It can "look outside" it's own particle and see other nearby quarks, and feel the color force from those as well. That's what we call the strong force, and it keeps the nucleus together.
If heavy nucleii were composed completely of protons, the aggregate electromagnetic repulsion would overwhelm the strong force and the nucleus would fly apart. Adding a few neutrons to the mix allows the same sort of neighboring-color-attraction without the EM repulsion, and makes the nucleus stable.
You are wrong about quarks being 3D objects
Every single existing bit (with mass) has 3 dimensions. Any other number of dimensions is only possible in our imagination, not in the physical world.
Apropos of nothing, what are the dimensions of an electron?
Not that any of this will matter to you, no matter what is presented when Mueller actually reveals his findings, you'll still think he's innocent, it's a witch hunt, Trump Did No Wrong, it's all a partisan hit job, and on and on to protect your boy.
I'm actually good with believing he's innocent, until there's evidence.
I absolutely *hate* it when some police force make a flashy claim about someone - all the guns confiscated during the search, all the electronic devices taken from the home, nebulous "tip from an informant" - everything is being tried in the court of public opinion nowadays. None of that is evidence of a crime.
Let's not forget that after 9/11 someone was sending anthrax letters to people (remember those?) and Mueller - the lead investigator - ignored a tip about Bruce Edwards Ivins (the perpetrator, from one of Ivins' colleagues) and focused on Steven Hatfill. Mueller went before congress and swore under oath that Steven Hatfill was the person responsible, when in fact there was no evidence implicating Steven Hatfill whatsoever. Among other items, Steven Hatfill had no access to anthrax. The FBI didn't bother to explain this fact, and didn't seem to care.
Steven Hatfill went through several years of hell, having his life turned upside down, condemned in the media, death threats... and was eventually exonerated and sued the government for (IIRC) 5 million dollars.
That's the history of your "unimpeachable, honorable" Mueller.
Remember the indictments of 13 Russian nationals and 3 corporations recently released? It turns out one of the corporations didn't exist at the time of the purported crimes. Mueller indicted the proverbial "ham sandwich".
I like to think everyone is innocent, until proven guilty. and this thing about the court of public opinion is bollocks. Show us the evidence.
I sometimes ask a *question* about how someone appears to have broken the law. For example, Trump is widely believed to be obstructing justice for firing Comey, despite having a memo in-hand recommending it, but the Oakland mayor can warn illegal immigrants of an upcoming ICE raid... and that's not?
Or how Michael Flynn can be charged under the Hatch act for meeting with a Russian diplomat (as a member of the incoming administration, opening dialog and not specifically making claims or policy) while Kerry can negotiate with Iran and European countries to save the Iran agreement... and that's not?
I like to think everyone is innocent, until proven guilty.
Show me the evidence. What you have so far is nothing.
If visibility has to be earned by sustained niceness and if bad behaviors are remembered and suitably penalized (with reduced visibility), then the social environment would be greatly improved.
That sounds suspiciously like the suppression of free speech.
Instead of enforcing some nebulous universal value-of-people, why not let individuals choose what they would like to see and hear?
That way I can listen to whoever I want, and you don't have to concern yourself with whether the person I'm listening to has good social standing or not.
Will you all still be excited about giving Trump a Nobel Peace prize when some terrorist settles the Jerusalem problem once and for all by detonating a dirty bomb outside the new embassy, rendering all of Jerusalem uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years?
Probably not, but they said the same thing about North Korea.
I'm willing to let the situation play out and see what the outcome is.
The whole act was a charade, Trump was just the only President dumb enough to do something that only manages to achieve a useless outcome.
So you're saying that a Democratically controlled congress and a Democratic president got together and *agreed* to pass a law but not enforce it?
And that subsequent presidents were "in" on it, and agreed to abide by the decision?
In that scenario, how many people would have had to get together and agree to this secret pact?
Or is there a simpler explanation?
(I'm curious to hear your views on the moon landing, the assassination of Kennedy, and what actually took down the 9/11 towers. Care to enlighten us?)