It's sort a "broken clock right twice a day" thing, but I agree with not doing offshore wind in the US.
The divergence immediately follows in that I wish they would just push onshore wind.
It's sort of a circular issue, it's madly expensive because we haven't built a lot and aren't super good at it, and we don't get much of it built because we aren't great at it and it always is ludicrously expensive.
The US has a uniquely underdeveloped maritime sector, we don't build a lot of the massive turbines you use offshore.
You drive through central and west texas, it feels like there might be more wind turbines than people.
We've kind of already made the decision based on what works.
I said accused mainly because the big 3 won their last antitrust suit in the US, sort of "what have you caught me for, lately?" approach.
For all I know, maybe they are dumb enough to try and actually coordinate again, my hunch would be no, or they've tried something new and inventive.
Like Matt Levine talked about how so many landlords were using the same software to set prices, that one was pretty shady.
But it is interesting where it is popping up at the moment, like power transformers is another area. These companies have lived through these cycles before, and know there is no one to save them if they overleverage and get it wrong.
I struggle to think of a line of business as cyclical as DRAM, maybe like certain kinds of mining would be my only thought.
The DRAM fabs have been on a roundabout for 40 years going from getting accused of price fixing and cartel behavior, to struggling to keep the lights on.
And imo it's not really their fault, it's all the lead time of advanced semiconductors, combined with the commodity dynamics of oil.
And the goal is to match that supply to the demand of everything from consumer electronics to more datacenters than you can shake a stick at.
It's maddening to try and solve that, so at this point I really don't fault them for prioritizing survival.
yeah this seems to be the catch 22 to me.
the laws are out there to limit the e-bikes to speeds and power.
i want an irresponsibly powered one because i have an endorsement and
want a non-sketch electric motorcycle that isn't mad expensive compared to petrol bikes in north america.
but because that would indeed kill their market because most people don't have motorcycle licenses,
no one gets them approved, or countries won't allow them.
I agree, or at least I would stress that people should be allowed to consent to that.
I don't know what the prevailing medical ethics of doing that kind of thing in consenting patients
in that state, but my uninformed intuition is I would disagree with it.
Though one thing that I might think researchers might not want is people may be too sick to recover even if their cancer disappeared tomorrow.
jeez 8-18 years, is that a record or is it one of those things they don't know enough about them to narrow down?
that's another thing to think about when my ignorant self is eating my sushi.
i used to assume that farmed salmon was marginally better than wild,
but given how much wild fish gets fed to farmed fish, not sure that is even a plus on top of the ecological effects of fish farming.
Dang that 6k is pretty prohibitive not for the overall level, but because it's 4 hobs or nothing. Hardly a "give it a swag" kind of level.
I assume they are probably somewhat comparable to the Breville Control Freak, so at a single hob you'd be competing against $1500.
But the battery is a nice philosophy, similar to hybrid/mild electric cars. You don't need all the power forever. You just need more than a 120V circuit can provide.
Not sure if any of my anecdata when I was a contractor are relevant anymore given current circumstances,
but among all the NASA facilities I worked with, JPL really seemed to be doing its own thing, mostly for better. They were a bit quirky to work with though, because they did seem to do so much more in-house than elsewhere.
So I don't know if it's that independence or their zip code that has made them such a target, but I wonder if it has been that they have less political capital from moneyed interests keeping them off the chopping block.
But any gutting of JPL is probably irreplaceable damage.
I can add a minimal anecdote. I got some support from a couple engineers on a telecom project, and it wasn't even that big of a thing, but they were more than decent to work with.
I did say to one guy, "you guys are a lot cooler to work with than some of the stuff you see in the news"
and matter-of-fact he was just like
"oh, yeah that's legal"
my vision of them is that the engineering side can be great to deal with when they want to be (and my personal experience is they want to be).
but the other part of their business is like set the standard, and then enforce it.
With immigration are unquestionably tough decisions, tradeoffs, philosophies on the issue, and demographics in general. It gets heated, fast.
I know I'm biased, but I wish trust had not degraded to such an extent you could believe people could deal with these topics in good faith.
But how can anyone support this kind of craven policymaking where uncertainty and cruelty are features and not bugs?
Just shock and awe and deafening silence.
That's what's so dishearterning. Is that who we are now, or is this just a timely excuse to be who we always have?
I always wondered how to gauge how effective Apple's Dialog carveout was, in terms of was it just instant PMIC department or even effective at building a foundation for them? Given their long relationship, I would think it might be pretty seamless.
I assume Apple probably do that more than I know, it is just interesting that their vertical acquisition history feels the most boring and the most interesting.
At least looking from the outside, it feels like relatively small pieces develop into pretty big differentiators, like P.A. Semi, Intrinsity and Passif paving the way to their SoCs.
I kind of empathize where they are coming from, my electronics version of "this meeting could have been an email" is "this fpga could have been an arduino".
I feel like we're constantly spoiled by the clock speed of computers, they are good enough for so many things. FPGAs can make simple things a bear to implement, and you will just get there faster.
But there's a bunch of things where FPGAs are like discovering fire, all the discrete digital logic you ever wanted in the palm of your hand (until you have to meet timing).
I think no matter how you feel about Elon Musk, I feel it can sort of be universally appreciated how insane of a pivot/second act he's had where being a part of paypal's early days is basically a footnote.
bloomberg had an article along similar lines late last year.
The main hypothesis isn't terribly controversial to me, amazon lowers logistics wages since it pays less than the traditional players, and has sort of the 'business gravity' to immediate move in and be a significant employer. I would not call that suppressing wages on its own.
Amazon's argument is that they aren't driving wages down, they are raising them up because their employees are not from traditional logistics, but most retail and service jobs, again, on its own, probably more right than not.
That's the thing I think is hard to separate, and I want to know more about. These industries feel threatened by amazon, so where is that coming from? Is it all just business muscle and monopsony, or is there genuine disruption (even in something that relies on amazon's scale)? Sort of a competitively 'legitimate' advantage. And I would say that you can definitely discuss if they are externalizing societal costs with how they treat employees.
It's not a direct comparison, but I think about the crafts that were overtaken by factories. I think it can't be that simple, but amazon clearly changed the labor dynamics, so what did it do and how did it do it?
It's sort of a circular issue, it's madly expensive because we haven't built a lot and aren't super good at it, and we don't get much of it built because we aren't great at it and it always is ludicrously expensive.
The US has a uniquely underdeveloped maritime sector, we don't build a lot of the massive turbines you use offshore. You drive through central and west texas, it feels like there might be more wind turbines than people. We've kind of already made the decision based on what works.