Poor Charlie's Almanack is a good one; it is quite a mix of stories, advice and wisdom that you can read in parts here and there when you have a moment.
So doesn't MB own part of Tesla? (Edit: yes) I wonder what the overlap is here.
And I wonder if the Spanish Gov would ever let this in...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#History "On May 19, 2009, Germany's Daimler AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz, acquired an equity stake of less than 10% of Tesla for a reported US$50 million,"
I don't know, I live in Alicante (15 years now) and know many working folks and professionals who take 2-5 off, though in the summer they will go until 3 and call it a day.
Okay, I'm a Canadian living in Spain and can tell you, from 1200 - 1900 in the summer the sun hurts, and yeah, a lot of stuff is done locally = walking or biking (usually walking).
It is much easier in local towns and villages to walk around and get what you need rather than take a car, often a more difficult thing to do given parking scarcity, and really not necessary given that there are many options for going local. I have two supermarkets within a KM of my home, 16 (!) cafeteria/bars/restaurants, and most other services are covered (banks, dry cleaner, gas station etc). In larger cities (Barcelona, Madrid and smaller cities) the neighborhoods tend to have most things. You really only do the long drive to hit larger supermarkets or to go to a mall or something.
Wow! What a throwback, I was on that CSS list and Philippe and I would do a lot of css writing and testing together, along with 'Big John'. I recall a day when this 'Dave' guy came by asking for people to check out his garden...
Many years ago I worked as a geologist and watched as a very low-yield gold mine went thru cycles of getting funded, building some infrastructure and then declaring bankruptcy, until finally there was enough infrastructure there to actually make something happen (and maybe the rising gold price helped in the end).
It seems this strategy can be applied in different scenarios/fields and with money, people, money and people... Opens your eyes.
I went thru a round of something like this, where I had been a developer+copywriter+editor+salesman for en early internet biz.
While I have a degree related to my field, I found that the network I had built up over the years, thru sales and communicating with people while editing and fact checking, was the path to my next bit of employment.
tl;dr: don't forget that 10 years of relationship building!
Yes, part of what I was trying to say is why not get that handful of folks together and go to Japan, to the source. Logistics? Ego? Funding? Perhaps a trip is in the cards...
I remember at university how, when attending the few multi-disciplinary meetings or get-togethers, I would marvel that these people - on the same campus! - didn't get together more often in order to share and stimulate growth or share strategies, which inevitably occurred during these meetings.
I wonder why a handful of qualified mathematicians couldn't get together and go to Japan to sort this proof out...
I kind of took that to be like how Musk talks about needing to know first principles. In the article you can see that he was humble about what he thought he knew, took jobs here and there and eventually confirmed that he was at the cutting edge, that he knew 'everything there is to know' about this special area.
That's when he realized that he was qualified to try this. IMO, anyway ;)
That only lasts so long until the client figures out they are being fleeced. My wife hawks those businesses that are way overpaying for their web hosting and the like (maintenance each month to keep sites live).
Sure, I don't think they have ever hid the fact that they play the game, what they are trying to do is play it in a responsible manner. Yvon Chouinard's book is worth a read, it's a fine line to tread and, in my opinion, lazy to take the cynical way out. (Not that I think you are!)