I imagine Apple is encouraging this to help make the developer's business sustainable. Unfortunately, for some of the apps that have never had meaningful upgrades over time, it is annoying to pay "rent" for the app, and would generally discourage me from buying more. When one of the weather apps I use asked for a renewal fee, it was just deleted. It just doesn't offer that value to me; I would argue that the model becomes less sustainable when people don't feel like they get any value-- why go with "apps" when you can just use a web page for free...
A 1% spike would not be likely to cause problems, but (specific to California) 3% would safely cause curtailment calls. Even for that though, you would need to go 3% below nominal first and then turn everything on at once.
The real vulnerability is in being able to game sub ~5-minute demand before the current systems can comfortably accommodate it. As we get more batteries on the grid, that risk dissipates pretty quickly.
If it could be done with 1% load variation, the markets would have figured out how to game it already.
$420 is less than 10% above the all-time high— the gain is nice, but not really a huge premium over what I see in the company.
The decision for me would all come down to the ownership structure— is the "fund” diversified, does it have management fees, will gains be reinvested or paid out as dividends, etc.
I'm not really sure if the volatility is bad for the company-- a distraction, maybe, but not really damaging in and of itself. Even from a marketing strategy, you build the company cult by being the underdog, and being exciting. I see a lot of parallels to Apple in many ways, 20 years later.
What really makes me want to vote no is the idea of a mutual fund making fees on already meager gains that are likely as Tesla moves forward. I can't see them having something like a high-value capital pool with low fees and a low value pool with higher fees. I am sure the company would subsidize the fees for employees.
Good way of looking at it as a marketing investment!
I'm long a meaningful number of shares (at least to me), and from where I sit, I'm not sure if I would sell or hold at $420. It really isn't a high enough price to meet my growth expectations, but at the same time I am not sure if they could keep growing at 10% per year with that as a baseline.
The closing price today isn't yet at arbitrage pricing levels, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.
Mutual funds can (and do) own privately held companies. Arguably it is one of the big reasons why companies are electing to stay private-- no shortage of capital available to do it, and few real disincentives to not do it.
It does make it much harder for risk-tolerant investors with less than $100k to invest in something they believe in, which is a shame. Maybe it will create more specialty mutual funds that focus on a small number of companies that give people a little bit of diversification in a common pool... but I have never really liked mutual funds.
While I used to like the Top-Two system, it isn't working as well as I would hope. It still has a preference for selecting "fringe" candidates-- you don't need to look any further than the next gubernatorial election to see that. I think instant-runoff is a more appropriate move for today, but it takes an informed electorate to work.
Gross margins are not net margins. They currently make positive gross margins on the S and X, and the 3 was supposedly positive at the end of Q2, but nowhere near 30%— they are targeting 15% at the end of the year.
On the energy division, I have not seen statistics, but from what I have seen it looks like it is primarily subsidizing battery production rates right now for the Model 3. I would expect them to be making 25-30% before long; they appear to be well ahead of more established players in the market.
Not really; it is high-gain antennas on the roof typically, and modern ones are well shielded.
On the ISP side, they have things like GPS sync and specialized chips to limit interference and congestion issues. Great solution for rural environments, different if not more challenging for urban locations.
Not cellular/satellite, but wireless ISPs. The current generation AC radios can comfortably support a few dozen subscribers at over 50Mb sustained transfer rate each. Terrain and vegetation limit it, but if you have the elevation to work with, it is a good strategy. Also effective as a link to bridge gaps between subscribers.
Fiber has become cheap enough that overhead/aerial service can be competitive pretty easily on a local scale with an average distance between passed homes of ~300' and 30% penetration, as long as the utility owning the poles will be cooperative. A 1-mile aerial "spur" is competitive with an $800 installation fee, using existing poles.
About the only people that cannot be competitively served are those that can't pool 100 customers in a 10-mile radius.
When there aren't utility poles that can be used, the density requirement generally doubles, and if you need to go underground (in a rural area), the cost doubles again.
And, wireless has gotten to the point that offering competitive "broadband" speeds works well if you have the terrain to support it.
Yeah... but if they did that, they would have less time to stall. By focusing on something a decade out, think of how many more quarters they can obfuscate their true performance...
And if those people are going to be satisfied with those specific competitors, it isn't hurting Tesla any. The $35k package will arrive in ~6 months. For now, as a stockholder, I am happy for the, to chase margin where they can and improve their cash position.
I don't think it is really an apples-to-apples comparison though; what Ford calls R&D is generally heavily focused on development rather than research, and is done so for tax treatment.
Ford likely needs to spend significantly more to actually develop a marketable product from this investment.
What exactly is this magical firewall you speak of? Most are simply stateful and port blocking, which means internally started communication is fine. When the device phones home (in what ever innocuous way, even with a hard-coded NTP request), they have full access. You can’t proxy the https traffic, so you really don’t have any of the easy means of control. You can try a few other tricks— but it gets to diminishing returns quickly.
It is easy to be vigilant at first, but when you are faced with a flood of this crap it is often hard for a human to know what to do.
Synology NAS appliance: do you let it do automatic updates, or block it from the internet completely? The same thing goes for each vendor you use— do they get a black hole, or effectively unrestricted access (since everything is encrypted)?
Not necessarily. If you drive 10 miles each way to pick up an item in a store, it is likely a wash as long as the delivery driver is going less than a mile out of their way for your delivery.
The extra packaging is a real issue and needs to be addressed, but delivery (beyond PrimeAir) isn’t the problem.
For SpaceX’s strategy, mass-producing and launching a couple hundred satellites each year might not be that big of a deal. It gives a way to continuously upgrade the hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine Apple is encouraging this to help make the developer's business sustainable. Unfortunately, for some of the apps that have never had meaningful upgrades over time, it is annoying to pay "rent" for the app, and would generally discourage me from buying more. When one of the weather apps I use asked for a renewal fee, it was just deleted. It just doesn't offer that value to me; I would argue that the model becomes less sustainable when people don't feel like they get any value-- why go with "apps" when you can just use a web page for free...
A 1% spike would not be likely to cause problems, but (specific to California) 3% would safely cause curtailment calls. Even for that though, you would need to go 3% below nominal first and then turn everything on at once.
The real vulnerability is in being able to game sub ~5-minute demand before the current systems can comfortably accommodate it. As we get more batteries on the grid, that risk dissipates pretty quickly.
If it could be done with 1% load variation, the markets would have figured out how to game it already.
No, it is tied to subsidies.
Shit... so does that mean fiber isn’t broadband?!
$420 is less than 10% above the all-time high— the gain is nice, but not really a huge premium over what I see in the company.
The decision for me would all come down to the ownership structure— is the "fund” diversified, does it have management fees, will gains be reinvested or paid out as dividends, etc.
I'm not really sure if the volatility is bad for the company-- a distraction, maybe, but not really damaging in and of itself. Even from a marketing strategy, you build the company cult by being the underdog, and being exciting. I see a lot of parallels to Apple in many ways, 20 years later.
What really makes me want to vote no is the idea of a mutual fund making fees on already meager gains that are likely as Tesla moves forward. I can't see them having something like a high-value capital pool with low fees and a low value pool with higher fees. I am sure the company would subsidize the fees for employees.
Good way of looking at it as a marketing investment!
I'm long a meaningful number of shares (at least to me), and from where I sit, I'm not sure if I would sell or hold at $420. It really isn't a high enough price to meet my growth expectations, but at the same time I am not sure if they could keep growing at 10% per year with that as a baseline.
The closing price today isn't yet at arbitrage pricing levels, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.
Mutual funds can (and do) own privately held companies. Arguably it is one of the big reasons why companies are electing to stay private-- no shortage of capital available to do it, and few real disincentives to not do it.
It does make it much harder for risk-tolerant investors with less than $100k to invest in something they believe in, which is a shame. Maybe it will create more specialty mutual funds that focus on a small number of companies that give people a little bit of diversification in a common pool... but I have never really liked mutual funds.
While I used to like the Top-Two system, it isn't working as well as I would hope. It still has a preference for selecting "fringe" candidates-- you don't need to look any further than the next gubernatorial election to see that. I think instant-runoff is a more appropriate move for today, but it takes an informed electorate to work.
I have used both (a very long time ago), but I remember always hating the film compared to fiche. Random access always wins in my book...
Gross margins are not net margins. They currently make positive gross margins on the S and X, and the 3 was supposedly positive at the end of Q2, but nowhere near 30%— they are targeting 15% at the end of the year.
On the energy division, I have not seen statistics, but from what I have seen it looks like it is primarily subsidizing battery production rates right now for the Model 3. I would expect them to be making 25-30% before long; they appear to be well ahead of more established players in the market.
Plus 13% fundraising expenses. Overhead is 25% total based on current numbers.
On the plus side, they have reduced their operating overhead.
https://www.charitynavigator.o...
Not really; it is high-gain antennas on the roof typically, and modern ones are well shielded.
On the ISP side, they have things like GPS sync and specialized chips to limit interference and congestion issues. Great solution for rural environments, different if not more challenging for urban locations.
Not cellular/satellite, but wireless ISPs. The current generation AC radios can comfortably support a few dozen subscribers at over 50Mb sustained transfer rate each. Terrain and vegetation limit it, but if you have the elevation to work with, it is a good strategy. Also effective as a link to bridge gaps between subscribers.
Fiber has become cheap enough that overhead/aerial service can be competitive pretty easily on a local scale with an average distance between passed homes of ~300' and 30% penetration, as long as the utility owning the poles will be cooperative. A 1-mile aerial "spur" is competitive with an $800 installation fee, using existing poles.
About the only people that cannot be competitively served are those that can't pool 100 customers in a 10-mile radius.
When there aren't utility poles that can be used, the density requirement generally doubles, and if you need to go underground (in a rural area), the cost doubles again.
And, wireless has gotten to the point that offering competitive "broadband" speeds works well if you have the terrain to support it.
Yeah... but if they did that, they would have less time to stall. By focusing on something a decade out, think of how many more quarters they can obfuscate their true performance...
And if those people are going to be satisfied with those specific competitors, it isn't hurting Tesla any. The $35k package will arrive in ~6 months. For now, as a stockholder, I am happy for the, to chase margin where they can and improve their cash position.
I don't think it is really an apples-to-apples comparison though; what Ford calls R&D is generally heavily focused on development rather than research, and is done so for tax treatment.
Ford likely needs to spend significantly more to actually develop a marketable product from this investment.
Alaska?
What exactly is this magical firewall you speak of? Most are simply stateful and port blocking, which means internally started communication is fine. When the device phones home (in what ever innocuous way, even with a hard-coded NTP request), they have full access. You can’t proxy the https traffic, so you really don’t have any of the easy means of control. You can try a few other tricks— but it gets to diminishing returns quickly.
It is easy to be vigilant at first, but when you are faced with a flood of this crap it is often hard for a human to know what to do.
Synology NAS appliance: do you let it do automatic updates, or block it from the internet completely? The same thing goes for each vendor you use— do they get a black hole, or effectively unrestricted access (since everything is encrypted)?
Careful... she might become an Amazon driver...
Good points on the lockers— Amazon really needs to keep improving on the packaging situation.
At least they are better than Jet.
Not necessarily. If you drive 10 miles each way to pick up an item in a store, it is likely a wash as long as the delivery driver is going less than a mile out of their way for your delivery.
The extra packaging is a real issue and needs to be addressed, but delivery (beyond PrimeAir) isn’t the problem.
For SpaceX’s strategy, mass-producing and launching a couple hundred satellites each year might not be that big of a deal. It gives a way to continuously upgrade the hardware.