powerbroker

Something is terribly broken in the software release process that constantly allows a worse user experience (including autonomous) as Tesla 'matures' its operations. I'm driving a Tesla, that recently added a 'warning' over a center-display showing the three rear-pointing cameras.

1. The cameras only show while operating in reverse;

2. The warning entirely obscures 30-50% of the view in one or more cameras;

3. The warning tells you that there is dirt or debris on the camera.

So, you are warned, that your vision, via the cameras could be better -- by deliberately worsening the view.

Genius.

I recall Ping being late to board his sailing vessel, and took a countermeasure to his backside.

To Wit:

*Excellent, heart-warming tale of exploration and discovery. Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix’s most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.*

https://diffendoofers.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/the-story-abo...

How long before Wall Street moves to Dallas? The traders. The advisors. The lawyers. The TV finance shows.

This seems the beginnings of a 'New Detroit'.

clankstar

The people on the bottom half of the 'K-shaped recovery' outnumber the people on the top half. This bias likely skews the Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey [1], and accordingly leads to record low optimism about the future, despite historically low unemployment.

Add to that, the rapid expansion of automation -- both in white collar and blue collar settings -- and it isn't hard to see why few can take solace in an extended recovery and expansion.

[1] https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsh.pdf

Hang gliding. It's good if you are in an area with some hills and consistent winds. There are maybe a dozen well-established launch sites around the U.S. Sadly, I broke down my glider around 2001 -- and did a post-mortem on it to discover it had a minor dent in it.

Recommendation -- don't stall the glider at heights between 10 and 25 feet from the ground. Also, avoid barbed wire fences.

Oh wait, I meant also "... over considerably longer timescales". (Minor technicality).

That movie with "I know Kung Fu" -- we do that too.

I Robot?

The vehicle, so evil, that it cannot be named. Life imitates art, and not in a good way.

As both a lawyer and a programmer, I tend to agree with the above. However, I've noticed among other lawyer/programmers, some further traits: easily bored, and extraordinarily focussed.

A quirky features of lawyers: can be unusually petty.

Quirky features of programmers: can be remarkably correct and still be very opaque.

I was driving the Model X a few years ago and ended up T-boning a minivan at ~45 MPH. Minivan rolled over. Our airbags deployed. Post accident, I discovered my glasses remained on my face and it seemed that the airbag did not even reach my body -- with the webbing taking the bulk of the impact. Car took months to repair and ~$30,000.

Not bad when you consider we were driving to the hospital at the time, and the accident prevented us from reaching the hospital as well as preventing us from calling on an ambulance.

3 'assists' that the car gave us:

1. Crumple zone is bigger;

2. Battery made our vehicle heavier;

3. (speculatively), the 'crumple parts', crumpled more and costed more -- leading to less (none) bodily injury.

ditto.

1. I've paid electric bills in four different cities. Rates haven't been increased at more than 1x annually in any of them.

2. California is getting what seems to be two overhauls: a) replacing/upgrading lines and vegetation practices to harden them against sparking fires; b) massive electrification of cars, data centers, appliances. The capex has to be paid somehow... and interest rates are a drag to that.

This would improve efficiency if the number of electric vehicles on the U.S. roads was on a downward trajectory as they were in the early 1900s. But now the technology is quite different than the lead-acid used back then, and broadly accepted standards are in place. Moreover, the proportion of EVs to ICE vehicles has been growing, albeit more slowly, of late, but growing nevertheless.

That said, removing infrastructure for a growing portion of the fleet seems an odd choice.

Taking a more utilitarian approach, however, where the highest priority is to reduce federal spending, then this can make sense.

  1. Must reduce spending;
  2. Must reduce perks and credit cards among the U.S. employed workers;
  3. Parking is a necessity if we are to avoid WFH... and improve productivity;
  4. Giving free 'perk' to one group, without giving it to another, is a) unfair; b) costly.
  5. Therefore, remove the discriminatory perk, and satisfy goal #1.

A signal that an AI is better than a 5 year old is being able to respond to the following query: "What are your terms and conditions?".

For now, it is failing.

I have broken a collarbone; gotten a bruise 18 inches long; destroyed (one at a time) almost every part on my bicycle; hit an armadillo and ridden to 90 miles with a 20 mile head-wind in the final 10 miles. I've been happy pretty much every time even through some of these incidents, often because I had other riders with me.

I don't intend to live forever.

These hyperventilating videos are so cherry-picked that I've long given up hope that a not-fatal FSD will appear in my lifetime.

The constant explosions in four different compartments might have something to do with it feeling wrong. I wonder if anyone can tell us how many mounts support the engine and give it some opportunity to dampen the explosions -- and through what apparatus.

I bounce back and forth between hang gliding and kiteboarding.

Typically, the battery cells that are formed into packs are rigidly arranged. So far as I know, they are arranged to have a common positive cathode by being connected as a single node with a conductor. In other words, they are wired in parallel.

I'm not a chemistry major, but everything I've seen suggests that the parallel arrangement allows them to drain concurrently and maintain a near-identical charge. Now, I'm oversimplifying, because there must be some modest isolation cell-to-cell, that lets these batteries be balanced to get to a near-identical charge level at charge completion.

That said, depleting some batteries, while others remain freshly charged (or adding freshly charged cells) can cause some problems, which I'm sure someone smarter than me will explain. But, for so long as these batteries need to hold a near identical volatage, it is going to be rather challenging to have a partial swap of some of the batteries.

Unfortunately it these batteries are unable to multiple gigawatts over many hours of excess wind energy. It will be at least a decade before the battery energy storage systems are close to big enough to absorb the oversupply of wind energy that happens a few times a week.

Don't get me wrong. The BESS helps with frequency, synchronization and voltage issues. They just do very little to flatten the wind spikes without turning off 10-20% of the wind fleet.

Electric grids typically lose up to 5% of electricity to heat during the transmission stage. Putting the data centers at the nuclear power plant, accordingly, adds 5% more electricity than placing it at the end of the public grid. Seems like a win to all involved.

So given the following:

The ruling comes just days after President Biden created a new program essentially easing a path to permanent residency for spouses of U.S. citizens who are in the country illegally.

...it appears that the undocumented spouse simply has to be in the U.S. illegally, for all his U.S. citizenship problems to disappear. So 'nonreviewability' has been defused, with a quick trip across the Rio Grande.

Having spent a big part of my career writing technical papers, I found myself exhausted by lengthy prologues concerning the problem space, and then referencing a bunch of 'objects' that were largely tangential to the 'punch line' the author alludes to.

Now that I spend every other week making a pitch for a start up, I can just start off with: "We are stopping hurricanes. And you can join us."

It is so much more fun this way. And, OK, getting to talk it out, lets me add a lot more pizazz than the dry technical writing. One thing is certain, people are not caught napping.

Its even cooler if the pet has fleas that are organized as a cellular automata that plays the game of 'life' on the body of the pet.

This seems the most straightforward of explanations. I know that a planet tends to loose its heat (and visibility in infrared) quickly after formation -- and might be hard to spot as a rogue planet.

But, the Zwart explanation seems to suggest that the pairs are still potentially drawing stuff in, and might not be the final form that the planet-pairs will take once they exist (or consume) the nebulae. Nothing seems to be stopping these pairs from evolving into stars themselves (aren't binaries far more common than solitary suns, like our own?).

It is possible to do well, even with insufficient information. Look at jet aircraft that are routinely landed without the ability to see the runway -- long before GPS was available. This is called flying with instrument flight rules.

Everyone only has a fraction of all the information. And you have to be satisfied with big returns in which you wonder, "how much of that was luck?" And, the occasional big losers. I can say I don't have 'the formula', but I'm returning 15% for over 20 years... knowing there is a ton I don't know. Which is something you find out when you are a patent attorney, and innovations come out of nowhere while MOST 'innovations' also lead nowhere.

Just. Have to be. OK. With. Not knowing.

ERCOT is generating 28.6% from wind in 2023. It is getting so high, that for the late night hours, demand is so tiny that some 5-10% of the wind energy goes nowhere -- a phenomenon called 'curtailment. The occurs because the baseload nuclear and the combined heat and power thermal generators are already operating at minimal levels, and supply way outpaces demand (usu. early in the wee hours of the morning). EIA indicates that this curtailment will likely increase. For now, its about as much as a typical nuclear power plant generates.

https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2....

Frankly, if Tesla continued in this way, it would soon raise antitrust issues. Would you want all your gasoline coming from the same company? Standard Oil was trust-busted a century ago for something similar.

Expect the Supercharger team to reconstitute itself with funding from several automakers and/or VC. It seems to me that the 'just works' feature that we love about Superchargers is going to get some level of competitiveness/innovation soon... like who thought it was a good idea to expose these chargers to rain (awnings seem like a big plus for a competitor to grab share).