AeroHorn

Yes, being a TSMC is very different than being an Intel. One is a services company and the other is a product company. Being a service provider means you are necessarily market following and at least one level below the product company in the food chain, which it is reflected in margins, brand, product roadmaps, business dealings, etc. Intel providing foundry services automatically means they have accepted defeat. Intel's mistake is not due to integrating design with manufacturing, but sticking with x86, or more correctly, not developing new alternatives with enough enthusiasm. Their only other serious product different from x86 that I recall is Itanium (XScale doesn't count). It also shows how monumentally difficult changing philosophies is when even Intel with near monopoly power over their customers could not ram through a new product (x86-64 won). nVidia may be a one trick pony too, but they were visionary enough to see beyond polygon pushing and have been beating the "GPU is a better multi-thread processor than CPU" drum for many years. They worked with scientific community and developed parallel computing solutions from workstations to supercomputers. So, they were in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the current machine learning and crypto mining craze. AMD is the small and sometimes abused sibling of Intel, where Intel will take the whole dining table and leave scrapes. Very hard to compete and develop when you are starving. Credit to them (despite couple of dumb leadership phases) for hanging on. Coming back to Intel, they are seriously in trouble. They are the apex predator and hence need the whole jungle to do well to thrive, otherwise they become just another component provider. But that is what is happening with new ecosystems that are vertically integrated. Apple/Samsung don't need them, they need Apple/Samsung. Google/Amazon/Facebook will/are making their own chips. Microsoft has rediscovered their identity as software first company with hardware as enabler of software development. If they feel like they need a Surface-like product line for chips to do selective AI/ML stuff, they will do it. They have already done many chips for Xbox, Hololens, etc. That leaves only system aggregators (HP/Dell/Lenovo) and tier II (HTC, Huawei, etc.). So this means only Xeon servers are real money-makers, and how this market will be with big guys bringing chip design in will be interesting to watch. So, Intel desperately needs a hit. They are investing heavily in ML/AI and have acquired many companies. Can they come up with a solution when the big vertical guys have far more ammunition (algorithms, customer data from photos to shopping history, etc.) to develop better systems? The same question largely applies to Qualcomm too. I think this is what is driving Broadcom to swallow giants whole to somehow become big enough to survive.

We can remain as pacifists and effect change. Thankfully, the situation hasn't deteriorated to that extent. We have to force these discussion outside of CNN/Fox and into each home and cubicle. American politicians are the most spineless and gutless beings. They are the flotsam that requires a wave to go anywhere. We have to be the wave.

Yep. The last real movement, at least to the lowered American standards, was the one against banks after the loan debacle (Occupy Wall Street). Before that was protests against the 2003 Iraq war? We are a very docile people. People riot if you take away one vacation day in other countries, and we willingly turn any and all cheeks.

Of course. The real (cultural) wall is along the Red River.

Yep. Instead of dividing California, they should aggregate less populated states. 1. Californiwai (2) 2. Washiregonidaka (4) 3. Nevarizotahado (4) 4. Montadakoming (4) 5. Minnenbowakanouri (5) 6. Oklarkamissalana (5) 7. Texasico (2) 8. Flocarolitennegiarico (5+1) 9. Wisillindikenohigan (6) 10. Virgimaryania (4) 11. Yorkerseyware (3) 13. Massahamainerhodicutont (6) We get back to 13 states with Puerto Rico accounted for.

I haven't watched/played Cricket since I was a kid growing up in late 70s/80s. The speed of the ball for fast pace bowlers is similar to baseball, about, 100mph. The distance is 67 feet between the stumps (the white sticks in the image below), which is slightly longer than the mound to home plate distance in baseball (60.5 feet). But in cricket, the ball pitches on the ground before reaching the batsman. This creates a lot of variability and control in how the bowler presents the ball to the batsman. Besides the obvious bouncing on the ground difference, other major differences are the age of the ball (same ball is used in cricket until 300-450 "pitches"), the nature of the physical ground (the non-grass area in the picture above) whether it is hard and fast, soft and breaking, patchy, etc., the distance from the batsman the bowler targets to bounce the ball at ranging from a large distance with rising ball to the shoulders/face level to almost bouncing at the feet of the batsman (think of tennis overspin kicker where you have to rise to your toes and a slice where you have to dig the ball out), the type of spin from mid-air swing on fast balls (similar to slider in baseball) to in or out cutter spin balls after bouncing on the ground, etc. Here are couple of videos showing slow spin bowling and fast swing bowling. Regarding fast bowling, when I was growing up, the West Indies team had a devastating set of fast bowlers (Marshall, Holding, Garner, etc.). This video shows the classic strategy and field setup to defend. The batsman has to be ready for a yorker (ball bouncing at his feet) to a bouncer (ball rising to his face). The pace is so fast that with a slight swing, the batman usually edges the ball, hence the array of fielders behind the batsman to catch him out. For spin bowling, the pace is much slower and the aim is to play with flight of the ball to keep the batsman guessing and hence make him play on his back foot. This allows for the bowler to bounce the ball closer to the batsman and hence give him almost no time to react to the spin. Regarding batting, I don't think I can summarize it since there are a variety of shots across near 360-degree placement. Also, with the advent of one day and 20-over matches, it is fundamentally evolved into something quite different from the classic form (straight bat, bat and pad close together, head down, etc.)

What does the above sentence from the letter mean? Do the interests of "both parties" contradict those of "the world"? The rest of the letter is breathtaking in its extreme Mano-a-mano narcissism. Regarding the coin, I repeatedly get the "504 Gateway Time-out" message.

😀 I see now, it is "the fleek shall inherit the earth". Gutenberg made a typo.

Lot of what used to be old commercial buildings are disappearing and replaced with 4 story blocks. For example, all old stuff along Montague in Milpitas and El Camino Real in Santa Clara is being replaced. Spin around in street view and you can see. Milpitas: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4087045,-121.8953833,3a,75y,265.13h,69.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUQBD0e2BnZrGE4rUyf1Naw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 Santa Clara: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524835,-121.9734904,3a,75y,303.19h,85.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXrnU7kQNbgDkIUiPtI0uvw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Regarding payback: Solar for southern states makes a lot of sense, with payback in 8-10 years. It makes more sense in California due to high PG&E rates. I have solar (4.25kW system) and it amply covers my needs. Regarding mooching off non-solar homes: I pay a minimum bill every month ($12-13?) even when my meter is spinning backwards. The net balance is paid out yearly, but not at a retail rate (I wish) but at wholesale rate, which is a pittance. I have produced about 15% more than what I have consumed, apparently a gift to PG&E. Regarding grid: PG&E implores us to temper our AC usage. They even paid me $50 per AC unit to install a governor to automatically switch it off when their grid load is high. This is reflected in their peak rates period (2pm-8pm). Guess when my solar is producing the most to help out PG&E, and hence my neighbors to enjoy their ACs uninterrupted? Despite higher day usage in summer, I contribute power May-September when it is needed most. Regarding warranty/repairs: The solar panels are guaranteed by the manufacturer and the installer for 25 years. The inverter is 10 years, I think. I can open an app and look at all the metrics live right now. Something is wrong, I can see it, and SolarCity (Tesla) can also see it. Till now it has just been pressing the reset button couple of times. Regarding construction: I am in south bay of the bay area. There is lot of dense housing construction everywhere, especially in San Jose, Milpitas and Santa Clara. I would say that easily >10k homes (condos) have been added. It is reflected in traffic, unfortunately.

I think the main detriment is actually the consumer economy, where creating new forms of consumption and increasing the number of consumers is seen as the way to increase GDP and improve individual way of life. Many advanced countries have maxed out on individual consumption within and are exporting the same to developing ones (China, India and others). Imagine the horror when a typical Indian or African reaches anywhere near the consumption rate of an American or European. I think we really need to deeply think about what is development and progress, and what is real upliftment of people. For instance, it is quite paradoxical and sad to see severe depression/opioid abuse among people that are still orders of magnitude better materially than world average. In this day and age, there is absolutely no excuse for us as species to not work cooperatively in making our lives objectively better without relentlessly driving consumption, which disproportionately profits the 1% in the current multinational corp. setup. There are so many attainable goals of removing hunger, disease and violence across the world, which in turn will stabilize population and greatly reduce adverse effects of resources. Instead we insist on lining up against imaginary lines with guns drawn intent on spreading destruction and misery.

Wow, you guys use a lot of power. I installed a 4.25kW system (13 panels) last June. Over 11 months (6/17 to 4/18) it has produced 6.3MWh, or average of 570 kWh/month (SF Bay Area). It cost $17k (SolarCity) - 30% tax credit - $500 Tesla credit = $11.4k, which is about 10 years of electric bills. I have a credit of 570kWh right now, and May being a big producer, I'll end with a credit of about 0.9MWh, for which I'll get practically nothing (PG&E wholesale rate). I need to switch on my AC a bit more in summer to not give PG&E free power.

Don't give them ideas. Singing of national anthem when there is no relevance, as opposed to during Independence Day ceremony for instance, is akin to a misplaced religious ritual to generate a vacuous sense of pride and belonging. 5 day cricket is where it's at. You haven't watched sports until you have watched the teams take multiple drinks (10-10:15), lunch (12-1pm) and tea (3-3:15pm), and overnight (5pm-8am) breaks, along with a rest day (3 days, 1 rest day, then 2 days), of course; anything less would be uncivilized. During the drinks and tea breaks, a cart rolls onto the field and players (both teams) gather around to have their biscuits and scones along with tea, of course. The funny thing is that many of these 5-day games end with no decision. (The two teams couldn't finish playing 2 innings each).

A question. My wife was asked to wear a CPAP. But she doesn't wear it because she says it feels like the air pressure is too high. I think it always auto-sets to 4 out of 10, and there is no manual adjustment. Is this just a matter of getting used to the feeling of air being blown up the nose? She used it for a month about 6 months back and hasn't used it since.

Graduate school is the engine that keeps the University at the leading edge, through a virtuous cycle of leading edge research that attracts money that builds facilities that establishes programs/specializations that builds out the faculty pool that attracts top grad students, which makes a great University for undergrads to explore and achieve. I loved my graduate studies in Aerospace, and I think (likely biased) the undergraduate program offers best theoretical/experimental grounding compared to other engineering disciplines, due its very nature (from aerodynamics and structural mechanics to orbital mechanics and control theory). But I am most conflicted when someone asks me for my opinion on studying Aerospace. Just the last couple of weeks, two kids that love Aero talked to me and I reluctantly had to tell them that they will love studying it, but will find very few career options, and will be frustrated watching even the few Aero-focused entities such as Boeing, NASA, etc. advertise and hire students from other disciplines over them; whereas in actuality, it should be the other way around since going through Aero really prepares the students to handle most other engineering tasks from first principles.

Comparing Q1 numbers with Q4 is not appropriate. Q4 is generally strong for auto sales, especially electric, with Q1 being a slow one. Tesla did better Q1 YoY. Actually, I expected quite a bit of cannibalization of S and X by 3. Either due to low availability of 3 or, more likely, there being a steady market of 100k/year for S/X, it didn't happen. I think Tesla, with its supercharger network and brand has shown that they are a formidable player in the 80-100k+ car market now. What I find very disturbing is the Autopilot failure. Multiple people have tested it and have been able to reproduce the exact failure, which is Tesla cars happily plowing into a barrier when on Autopilot. The first video below is at the same exact location where the accident occurred (101S and 85 in Mountain View, bay area). If I were Elon, I would immediately disable Autopilot on all cars for anything greater than 35mph or something similarly severely limiting until I figure out what is going on. It is easy to understand the logic behind the way the software is acting; hence I don't this is a bug as much as a design flaw.

That doesn't mean that the other 70% are cancelling their orders and taking their deposits. I think most of them are waiting for other options to be available, such as AWD, smaller battery, non-black interior, etc. For example, my preferred configuration is smaller battery with light color PUP, neither of which is available. If other car companies were offering viable alternatives now (Audi, Jaguar, etc.), then many would have comparison shopped and bought other cars. Right now, the only competition is Bolt, which the reservation holders already know about.

Yep, you can be the first in line for 3 when you buy S/X. Couple of weeks back, I took my kids to the Tesla showroom to see the 3, but they saw the S and X and their ranking is X, S, ......, 3. S and X look so futuristic and are so well designed. Regarding towing, X with its mass and its torque beats the pants off any other vehicle. Have appropriate tires and others are toast.

I don't know how much automation exists at Tesla. Elon has talked about designing and building the machine (factory) that builds machines (cars, toasters, etc.). But Elon is part science fiction story teller so his projections of factories that look like alien dreadnoughts have to be treated accordingly. But what remains true is that every layer of automation adds to complexity, not removes it. The Wall-E future of us being lazy bums while being served by robots is unimaginably complex world. Anyone trying the second level automation has to first master first level and then spend orders of magnitude more time and resources to get there. I think Tesla is just trying to (I hope) be like Toyota in building machines and not trying a half-baked 0.1version of Elon's dreadnought fantasy.

Interesting last 2 days for Tesla. Stock dropped by >15%, with multiple bad news, from potential autopilot related crash to Model 3 delays, which was supposed to be 2.5k/week now but probably isn't. Tesla is a fascinating study with a caricatured Silicon Valley philosophy (optimism in tech so release beta version, boldly go because failure is not a failure per se, etc.) combined with charismatic/conjuring leader (do-everything CEO is engineer who sleeps on the floor and answers your questions on twitter, cultish following, etc.) that has definitely achieved its top objective, which is shake up the energy/transportation industry, but lacks enough discipline to put its survival at risk. The cars are great, battery driven world is still TBD (imo) due to materials needed, and I have real concerns with traffic where daily transportation is not mass transit based. Continue talking about Tesla cars. Just wanted to reinstate Tesla thread here.

There is a good chance that the "flat earth" messaging is just an excuse to keep his steampunk hobby in the news. It must be pretty gratifying to him to have national news covering his antics, which otherwise would have been completely unknown. If that's true, I am impressed with his backyard engineering, and more so with putting himself in an elaborate firecracker.