Liberty

Here's a movie idea for Hollywood, rather than more super-hero sequel, how about a real-life hero: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/obituaries/joachim-ronneberg-dead.html Joachim Ronneberg, Leader of Raid That Thwarted a Nazi Atomic Bomb, Dies at 99

CEO of AWS also asking for Bloomberg to retract Chinese hack story, after Apple did it:

https://www.amazon.ca/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 I'm 50% through the audiobook of 'Why We Sleep' (Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep & Neuroimaging Lab). It makes a pretty convincing case for the multi-faceted powers of sleep. I came in thinking it was *really* important, but it's even more important than that. Huge demonstrated effects on physical performance, mental performance, health & diseases of aging, mood/happiness, memory, etc. Kind of obvious when said like that, but as I said, I also would've said this was all obvious, but it's more matter of degrees than anything else, and learning about the science has recalibrated my views and - hopefully - it helps me make sleep a higher priority in my life.

It's the iMac that first saved them. It was about focus and making better products first, not only going into non-personal computers.

https://semiaccurate.com/2018/10/22/intel-kills-off-the-10nm-process/

This looks promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2u4nCtyBCo Premiere is January 20. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7406334/

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/apples-tim-cook-calls-for-retraction-on-chinese-spy-chip-story.html Edit: Original source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-tim-cook-bloomberg-retraction

I think you're in the 2% I was talking about. Hybrid drivetrains are a transitional phase and will go away. It's very inelegant, because in EV mode you're lugging around the weight of an ICE, and in ICE mode, you have a small under-powered engine. On top of that, you have more mechanical complexity than either a pure EV or ICE. Even if you're taking long trips 10 times a year, you're lugging an ICE powertrain, using more electricity than otherwise needed, the remaining 345 days of the year. The Chevy Volt is fine, but it's not the final destination of this technology. Batteries are getting better on power/weight, and costs are falling. Fast charging networks will be everywhere and their charge rates are going up... No reason to burn gasoline in passenger vehicles when the transition is complete.

Range anxiety is psychological for 98% of people, not an actual real-world range problem. If you have 300 miles of range, that's over 4 hours of driving even at 70 MPH. If you don't feel like stretching your legs and eating something and using the bathroom after 4h+, you're in a very small minority of people (certainly not people with kids). If you're frequently driving hundreds of miles a day, you probably do that for work, which is a specialized case, or you need to move closer to the things in your life because you're wasting your life driving, which is bad for your health, wallet, and the environment. And for most people who will only drive hundreds of miles in a single day maybe once a year, maybe less, trading having to stop at a fast-charging station once a year for all the benefits the other 364 days isn't much to ask for. I'd certainly take that over having to go to the gas station 40 times a year or whatever. People compare the gas tanks of ICEs with the battery capacity of EVs, but that's a flawed comparison. ICEs are designed so that you don't have to go to the gas station every day. The idea is that you drive multiple days and then when you're maybe at 1/4 or 1/6 of the tank, you go to the gas station. EVs are designed so that every morning you wake up with a full charge. This means that one average, EVs probably have as much if not more range capacity as an ICE (unless you're weirdo who fills up the gas tank before hitting 1/2). Only in rare instances of driving all day does the range dynamic change.

A coal power plant's production of electricity and transmission of that electricity to your home is still a lot more efficient than an internal combustion engine where a lot of energy is lost to heat, vibrations, etc (ignoring all the energy it took to get that crude out of the ground, refined, and transported to the gas station). An electric car, even if powered solely by a coal power plant, is a lot more efficient in CO2 emissions per mile driven than an ICE vehicle. Now add the fact that many regions use natural gas (which is much cleaner than coal), hydroelectric (Vegas), nuclear (NYC among many), renewables like wind and solar (midwest/West) to derive a good chunk of power and driving an EV only gets cleaner. This is is true, and there's more. The comparisons between EVs and ICEs are usually partial and cherry pick facts. Fact is, ICE get dirtier as they age. EVs are likely to get cleaner as they age, as the grid becomes cleaner over time. As you said, even when charged in places where the grid is dirty, EVs have big benefits because they're way more efficient than ICEs (thermal efficiencies in the real world ranging from 20-40%, so 60-80% of the energy in a gallon of gas is wasted as heat), but also the location of the emissions isn't right next to people (no millions of tailpipes in urban centers and next to people's homes). The batteries used in EVs can be recycled, and made from recycled materials. When you extract a gallon of gas or a ton of coal from the earth, it is then destroyed by use and cannot be recycled. Over time as EV markets mature, a large portion of battery materials will come from recycled battery packs. EVs have fewer moving parts, don't need oil changes (more pollution) and brake pads last orders of magnitude longer because of regen braking (lowering the amount of brake pad dust in the air of urban areas, another pollutant that gets overlooked). Etc etc.

For things without engines they move surprisingly fast. Those hippie Tesla owners must be pedaling like crazy. 8)

lol is that a bull case? their products are shit? haha It's only funny because it's sad: Everybody's products are shit. How many bug patches and security vulnerabilities are all of the big software and hardware vendors constantly patching with OS/app/firmware updates? I don't know if Supermicro's worse than anyone else, I haven't followed them except for the alleged hack story, but I know that security is extremely hard, especially if it's not designed from the ground up and part of the culture at the manufacturer (which is why Apple does pretty well -- they've made it a priority for a long time).

Video of Munro teardown of Model 3: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-17/tearing-apart-teslas-to-find-elon-musk-s-best-and-worst-decisions

The last part of this podcast (the last 20 mins? Not sure, just estimating, I didn't look at the timer) talk about the supposed chinese hack at supermicro: https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2018/10/16/ep-231 Their theory is the one that sounds most plausible to me. It's a bogus story, probably created by government people as a psyops operation to tilt public opinion in the trade war with China. Otherwise, a lot of the technical things in the story are fishy, and the fact that with thousands of boards out there no security expert has yet come out with proof seems very suspicious. Of course it doesn't mean that there isn't all kinds of spying going on, but this specific story seems bogus. But it's just a theory, since it's hard to prove a negative...

Achievement unlocked for you! Interesting vertical: "a global leader of software solutions for the Paper & Board, Plastic Films & Flexible Packaging, Nonwovens, Metals and Converting industries." Video about the company:

Many people have sad lives when spending a lot of money. Not wasting money doesn't magically make people better at living. But it can certainly free those who do want to do things with their lives to have the ability to do so.

Whether it's a risk factor for dementia or not, air pollution certainly isn't good for any of us. But this may be one more piece of evidence on the mountain that should already be pushing us to cleaner technologies. The World Health Organization has already concluded a few years ago that diesel emissions cause lung cancer... And I've seen things about how bad it is for cardiovascular health. Every time I see a big diesel truck spewing black soot every time it accelerates from a traffic light, I can't wait for diesel to go away. https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/visa-mastercard-amex-india-data-law.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-evidence-builds-dirty-air-causes-alzheimer-s-dementia

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/google-will-stop-bundling-its-apps-on-android-phones-in-response-to-eu-fine.html Good job EU, now Google will "charge a licensing fee to device manufacturers that want to pre-install its suite of apps like Docs, YouTube, and Gmail."

Vela just disclosed 5 acquisitions (probably doing it at the end of the quarter for things that closed during the Q): http://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-infocouncil/ http://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-spectra-qest/ http://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-epic-loan-systems/ http://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-cross-advertising/ http://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-nems-as/ Via

https://www.wired.com/story/wired-25-sundar-pichai-china-censored-search-engine/

I agree. He also provided the sole funding for SpaceShipOne. I know he died young, but to say he was first diagnosed with cancer in 1983 he got to live a relatively long time. And it seems he made the most of it. Ben Thompson quotes from Allen's book, Idea Man:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/judge-approves-elon-musks-settlement-with-sec.html

Sad news.. He was a generous man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen#Philanthropy