Depends on how you look at the efficiency of the solution: in terms of time all these Elon musings are more efficient; in terms of resource utilization, mass/rapid transit is more efficient. The caveat is you need walkable communities on either end for mass transit to work, and Elon isn't too close to a metro station.
I live in Los Angeles and don't own a car, but I have to rent one to drive ~100-250 miles per day a few times per month. Last week I was twice stuck driving at odd hours and struggling to stay awake and focused on the freeway. While I "powered through" it, having just automatic lane keeping and car following operational would have made the trip much less stressful, and likely improve safety by reducing event risk to ~5% per 100 miles to ~0.01%, on par with a non-fatigued driver.
So then you get into the question of it causing an accident. The most likely scenario is the car deciding to stop and be rear-ended, assuming it has accurate positional/rate of change information on its surroundings. I have to think that it is no worse to a human driver in that regard, at least with dome lidar.
If they are doing this to independent contractors they are opening themselves up for all kinds of issues, at least in the US. You pay a 1099 for a product not "productive time." This kind of thing would open them up to employment taxes, penalties for not withholding, and potentially overtime, breaks, and lunch.
I have one remote employee that bills 4h/week to training due to lack of project assignments, and while I would love to have a better sense of his efficacy (in order to review his compensation), it quickly goes down the rabbit hole.
Why would you want to launch horizontally, regarding (presumably) a second vehicle under development? It just doesn't seem like you make any meaningful improvements, unless you are small and being dropped from a plane at 50,000 feet
It makes a huge difference for a lot of people in the first 5 years of the loan; it's significance declines after that. The problem is that the affordability equations all factor it in, so even if you aren't making yourself house-poor you have a direct incentive.
Tax code simplification should be about making itemized deductions unnecessary for the vast majority of people, and to limit how much people can game their taxes.
You sir win the internet! Most insightful comment I have seen in a while.
Planning and zoning by far offer the best opportunity for a lower cost of government andbetter quality of lives... while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. They can even help with childhood obesity and adult diabetes problems, not to mention alcohol related auto accidents!
Worth reading about Porsche's concerns with migrating to electric cars. One could argue that the Model 3, designed from the ground up for automated assembly, is a more sustainable manufacturing platform than most traditional assembly lines.
EVs need baseload power to charge at night! EVs are really a coal subsidy!
Social engineering through the tax code is exactly why we have a tax code! If you want to eliminate that incentive, the place to start is mortgage interest and property tax deductions. Also, get rid of the child credits, retirement funds, and deductions for medical insurance premiums!
You also need the frigging Christmas Tree at each station, a pendant of lights that shows everyone on the bridge who has what controls. Say Red for throttle and Blue for steering or whatever, and white for offline.
The firing was pretty much justified; that was clearly violating NDAs and security policy letting your adult daypughter take a video of a "secret" space.
As for splitting Apple... are they "too big to fail?" Are they monopolists, dominating a sector? Are they a national security risk? Moreover, for shareholders, are the parts worth more than the sum?
My take is that they have some solid segments, but nothing that dominates. They are extremely weak in some areas that could be a problem in a few years compared to their competitors. This makes them stronger as a large entity.
Some good points, but there is a difference between a door's fire rating and the fire resistance of a structure. Biggest issues is what happens when it fails.
The wood they are using is generally thick heavy laminated structures that are fairly well inherently protected; this isn't assembling 2x4's on the 10th floor (or for that matter placing TJI joists). Most will have gypsum [board] supplemental fire protection, not to mention fire sprinklers, and columns will be heavily protected.
With thick structures, you char the wood, you don't burn through it. This provides a supplemental level of protection. You also don't have the temperature driven deflection issues.
Not sure I would want to be in a 30-story wood tinsegrity structure, but so far what is being proposed is pretty rational.
Apparently the vendor that was building the power packs in the Gigafactory had an automation system that didn't work. Tesla had to hand-build the modules after firing them, and it will take time to ramp up.
None of this stuff is really a surprise. Tesla expects a break-even status on the Model 3 in Q4, with margins improving in 2018. Yeah... it might push back a quarter... judging by history. At the same time, they are stabilizing the PV business and growing the energy storage business significantly, which now represent 20% of revenue.
They will start 2018 with about $2.3B in cash, and likely be positive cashflow soon after.
It just takes a Raspberry Pi; it isn't rocket science. You can't trust the electronic files, but you can print or PDF safely enough. Of course you eliminate networking...
I don't know how the big houses do it, but one of the common tools is multi-dimensional spreadsheets which can let you easily run sensitivity analysis on various permutations. I wanted to get one of the programs to simplify a task I was doing, but they were simply too expensive given the core market they served. Ended up cobbling together a perl script to manage/mangle the data.
The problem is most of the research today is geared towards "slightly above/below average" companies. The exceptional companies (both sides of average) use a different approach.
There are correlations that are significant though. I remember when one of the first social network mining bots was used to predict stock price moves. We had seen it here on/. for several months at least-- plug for Corel led to a stock bump. It was great; you could easily double your money in a week.
(The real meaning though of those findings was that we were in the proverbial bubble where the bellboy is giving stock tips.)
Right now most of the research documents are produced in India by people who are effectively little better than the AI you speak of; there is little insight and mostly just rote data. (This isn't because of the people doing it being Indian, but because the institutions don't value the data the same way they once did.)
Basically, every chance they get, big money goes for easier ways to profit. HFT was one of those things, but there is more.
It looks like they have very competitive rates and minimal initial payment, and were one of two bidders on the contract. As much as I thought there was a scandal there... it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know how they are getting linemen at less than $400/day plus accommodation... but they have 300 in place and more on the way. (They are one of many contractors working on different parts of the project to restore power.)
People don't seem to understand the magnitude of the problem when complaining.
"At least 3,000 workers, 62,000 poles, 338 towers and 6,500 miles of wire will be needed to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric grid, which a month after Hurricane Maria is at only 20% capacity. If everything goes right—and that’s a big if—most of the island’s 3.4 million people should have power by the end of May."
First response though it is the only option. A few designated shelters could be planned with solar roofs from flexible thin film PV and batteries to cover air conditioning and first-round needs... but that requires planning.
Very little will survive intact with 150mph winds; much over 120 and the economics go to hell. It seems like the monocrystaline thin film/flexible systems are the only ones that have much of a chance of surviving, but the economics of them seems to have gotten worse over the years.
And, for the great grandparent post, these little doodads are great for emergencies... but they don't do much to help with air conditioning needs in PR.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on how you look at the efficiency of the solution: in terms of time all these Elon musings are more efficient; in terms of resource utilization, mass/rapid transit is more efficient. The caveat is you need walkable communities on either end for mass transit to work, and Elon isn't too close to a metro station.
I live in Los Angeles and don't own a car, but I have to rent one to drive ~100-250 miles per day a few times per month. Last week I was twice stuck driving at odd hours and struggling to stay awake and focused on the freeway. While I "powered through" it, having just automatic lane keeping and car following operational would have made the trip much less stressful, and likely improve safety by reducing event risk to ~5% per 100 miles to ~0.01%, on par with a non-fatigued driver.
So then you get into the question of it causing an accident. The most likely scenario is the car deciding to stop and be rear-ended, assuming it has accurate positional/rate of change information on its surroundings. I have to think that it is no worse to a human driver in that regard, at least with dome lidar.
If they are doing this to independent contractors they are opening themselves up for all kinds of issues, at least in the US. You pay a 1099 for a product not "productive time." This kind of thing would open them up to employment taxes, penalties for not withholding, and potentially overtime, breaks, and lunch.
I have one remote employee that bills 4h/week to training due to lack of project assignments, and while I would love to have a better sense of his efficacy (in order to review his compensation), it quickly goes down the rabbit hole.
Why would you want to launch horizontally, regarding (presumably) a second vehicle under development? It just doesn't seem like you make any meaningful improvements, unless you are small and being dropped from a plane at 50,000 feet
It makes a huge difference for a lot of people in the first 5 years of the loan; it's significance declines after that. The problem is that the affordability equations all factor it in, so even if you aren't making yourself house-poor you have a direct incentive.
Tax code simplification should be about making itemized deductions unnecessary for the vast majority of people, and to limit how much people can game their taxes.
You sir win the internet! Most insightful comment I have seen in a while.
Planning and zoning by far offer the best opportunity for a lower cost of government andbetter quality of lives... while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. They can even help with childhood obesity and adult diabetes problems, not to mention alcohol related auto accidents!
Worth reading about Porsche's concerns with migrating to electric cars. One could argue that the Model 3, designed from the ground up for automated assembly, is a more sustainable manufacturing platform than most traditional assembly lines.
EVs need baseload power to charge at night! EVs are really a coal subsidy!
Social engineering through the tax code is exactly why we have a tax code! If you want to eliminate that incentive, the place to start is mortgage interest and property tax deductions. Also, get rid of the child credits, retirement funds, and deductions for medical insurance premiums!
You also need the frigging Christmas Tree at each station, a pendant of lights that shows everyone on the bridge who has what controls. Say Red for throttle and Blue for steering or whatever, and white for offline.
The firing was pretty much justified; that was clearly violating NDAs and security policy letting your adult daypughter take a video of a "secret" space.
As for splitting Apple... are they "too big to fail?" Are they monopolists, dominating a sector? Are they a national security risk? Moreover, for shareholders, are the parts worth more than the sum?
My take is that they have some solid segments, but nothing that dominates. They are extremely weak in some areas that could be a problem in a few years compared to their competitors. This makes them stronger as a large entity.
Some good points, but there is a difference between a door's fire rating and the fire resistance of a structure. Biggest issues is what happens when it fails.
The wood they are using is generally thick heavy laminated structures that are fairly well inherently protected; this isn't assembling 2x4's on the 10th floor (or for that matter placing TJI joists). Most will have gypsum [board] supplemental fire protection, not to mention fire sprinklers, and columns will be heavily protected.
With thick structures, you char the wood, you don't burn through it. This provides a supplemental level of protection. You also don't have the temperature driven deflection issues.
Not sure I would want to be in a 30-story wood tinsegrity structure, but so far what is being proposed is pretty rational.
That, and the source for the "slashing" seems to be based on round number projections for 2017 annual production volumes.
Stock is down ~8% though, FWIW.
Apparently the vendor that was building the power packs in the Gigafactory had an automation system that didn't work. Tesla had to hand-build the modules after firing them, and it will take time to ramp up.
None of this stuff is really a surprise. Tesla expects a break-even status on the Model 3 in Q4, with margins improving in 2018. Yeah... it might push back a quarter... judging by history. At the same time, they are stabilizing the PV business and growing the energy storage business significantly, which now represent 20% of revenue.
They will start 2018 with about $2.3B in cash, and likely be positive cashflow soon after.
Please don't learn the difference between principle and principal, as someone who invests in one is unlikely to earn the other.
It just takes a Raspberry Pi; it isn't rocket science. You can't trust the electronic files, but you can print or PDF safely enough. Of course you eliminate networking...
I don't know how the big houses do it, but one of the common tools is multi-dimensional spreadsheets which can let you easily run sensitivity analysis on various permutations. I wanted to get one of the programs to simplify a task I was doing, but they were simply too expensive given the core market they served. Ended up cobbling together a perl script to manage/mangle the data.
The problem is most of the research today is geared towards "slightly above/below average" companies. The exceptional companies (both sides of average) use a different approach.
There are correlations that are significant though. I remember when one of the first social network mining bots was used to predict stock price moves. We had seen it here on /. for several months at least-- plug for Corel led to a stock bump. It was great; you could easily double your money in a week.
(The real meaning though of those findings was that we were in the proverbial bubble where the bellboy is giving stock tips.)
Right now most of the research documents are produced in India by people who are effectively little better than the AI you speak of; there is little insight and mostly just rote data. (This isn't because of the people doing it being Indian, but because the institutions don't value the data the same way they once did.)
Basically, every chance they get, big money goes for easier ways to profit. HFT was one of those things, but there is more.
My source, although I think it is low. The $400/day for accommodation is likely where they cover O&P.
Separate article, same source.
That is also where the day rate came from.
It looks like they have very competitive rates and minimal initial payment, and were one of two bidders on the contract. As much as I thought there was a scandal there... it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know how they are getting linemen at less than $400/day plus accommodation... but they have 300 in place and more on the way. (They are one of many contractors working on different parts of the project to restore power.)
People don't seem to understand the magnitude of the problem when complaining.
source.
Point taken... but it just takes a tiny bit of debris at 150mph to change the picture.
First response though it is the only option. A few designated shelters could be planned with solar roofs from flexible thin film PV and batteries to cover air conditioning and first-round needs... but that requires planning.
Very little will survive intact with 150mph winds; much over 120 and the economics go to hell. It seems like the monocrystaline thin film/flexible systems are the only ones that have much of a chance of surviving, but the economics of them seems to have gotten worse over the years.
And, for the great grandparent post, these little doodads are great for emergencies... but they don't do much to help with air conditioning needs in PR.