Americans care about the cost of the change vs the benefit. The cost, on signage alone, is in the billions. The benefit is warm fuzzies from Europe.

People in the US are taught both systems, and anyone who needs to use metric does. Its really a non-issue for anyone living here.

I wouldn't really say that. Mayer inherited a failed business and failed business model death-spiral company. Staying the same was a death sentence, competing directly with google et. al. was a death sentence. I think what they're doing now, trying to find a niche with a shotgun scattershot approach to different strange endeavors, is the only move that they had to make. Carly, on the other hand, inherited a very successful business and completely destroyed it through management+profit > product methodology.

Nothing new in that regard. They've been doing this for almost 8 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if those little hamstrung netbooks are where Google got the Chromebook idea.

Buzzword bingo, perhaps, but applicable in this case. What I see him doing is leveraging the specific techs of some businesses that are successful and applying them to other industries. The in-home battery business benefits from the success of Solar City, and the in-home battery business reduces the price of Tesla batteries and reduces the risk of a bad year decimating Tesla. SpaceX reduces the price of satellite launches, but requires constant launches to remain stable. So how about creating a satellite business? It creates a floor of launches that will always be with SpaceX, and because of reduced launch prices, has a high chance of success.

This approach isn't without risk though. My business group was like this for a while, but the dependencies became so strong that one business' bad year became everyone's bad year. The core businesses have since become more focused on individual success instead of group success since then, and it has made them more robust and stable as a result.

The point of offering home energy storage is to be able to build a Gigafactory earlier for the economies of scale benefit. The reason they are offering home energy storage isn't because of high margins, its to be able to build a bigger Gigafactory earlier and become a leader in the battery market. Competing on home energy storage is just a way to ensure high utilization of the factory. Without the factory, home energy storage only takes away from your main product line (car batteries) which are much more profitable.

Understood, thanks for the clarification. The way you explain it, it sounds as if there would be a massive charge difference...could you use this difference as a sort of battery or solar panel then? Obviously, there isn't enough information to determine practical use of said application, I'm just curious if it would be possible.

But this might have higher fuel efficiency, for example, how combustion engines don't have to carry oxygen because they grab it from the air intake. In this case, we're grabbing electrons from sunlight and using them for propulsion. Yes, you still have to carry something to neutralize the charge, but that payload can *also* be used as a propellant. Double bang for your buck.

Hah! Excellent way of putting it. Atheists and Theists care way too much. Most agnostics simply don't give a damn.

All outputs are not created equal. First, most consoles target 30 FPS. Second, like the old consoles at 1080p, this output is likely just an upscale. They simply do not have the horsepower to render content at that resolution. Equivalent GPUs can be had for $100 or less in computers.

I hadn't thought of that, its a really good point. Calculus for me was very engaging because real world examples were used of its application when it was taught to me. I don't think skipping a year of math for programming is worth it though, I think they would be better taught side by side. Maybe name the class 'Applied Logic' instead of math or programming, and merge pre-algebra and beginners coding into one class?

While it may be like learning a second language, I personally feel learning to code in elementary school would be like learning a second language without understanding the concept of punctuation. Now, before getting all flustered, hear me out.

Using a programming language successfully means using math concepts that elementary school students usually haven't been introduced to yet and requires strict formatting control, something they're still working on in elementary school with their primary language. Assigning values to an abstract variable is first introduced in algebra, and order of operations arrives late in grade school and weeks are spent on its mastery. Requiring specific words for a program to work when kids may still be struggling with spelling is another thing that comes to mind. If there is a language suited specifically for the youngins, great, but teaching a programming language to grade schoolers to me is like taking physics before algebra.

The only thing I can think is a cultural barrier here, how far does Australia's elementary school go? Where I'm from, elementary school is up to grade 5, or 10/11 years old.

I'm not a fan of this 'cogresses' ratings for death counts. It immediately evokes the exact opposite reaction that I would normally receive by death counts.

It all boils down to one thing: money. As a short-sighted capital-driven economy, R&D has been relegated to a governmental and academic endeavor. The only way to change the cutthroat hard resarch environment would be to increase demand, either via government/taxation or via private investment. The latter will only really work if someone creates something like a R&D corp that shows clear long-term ROI, so for now we only have science industries like the chem/pharm companies providing those types of positions.

Personally, I think hard sciences being so heavily coupled to the academic framework harms the opportunities in the hard sciences. The university funding system and their internal positions/rewards systems are a perverse divorce from reality. While it is important to expose young minds to these innovators, the grant politicking and nonsense really bright people get bogged down with limit their real research and progress. On the flip side, separating hard science funding from education would make it an easy target for politicians, possibly making the situation worse.

I wish there was an easy answer, but like all things in life...

Everyone is doing flat for one reason: touch. Look at a beveled button vs a flat button of the same size. To the layman, and you'll notice this if you ever have to help a PHB with a computer problem, they don't realize they can click the bevel and think only the center of the button is pressable. This is a natural reaction to something that looks that way. Something flat, on the other hand, gives the impression that pressing the corner will have the same effect as pressing the center.

If you look at the evolution of touchscreen keyboards on smartphones, you'll notice the bevels started wide with gaps on keys, and the bevels slowly faded away with the gaps getting smaller / non-existent to more accurately portray the acceptable key-press area to the user. This isn't done because of some industry-wide UI conspiracy, its done because they tried several options and users liked the flat style more. Apple and Google pay big money to study what people like more, as does Microsoft. The flat UI is just the logical extension of these previously discovered preferences.

Passenger cars don't effect road maintenance much, but they are one of the big drivers for capacity. Higher capcity needs greatly impact the road budgets, and higher capacity needs increase maintenance costs regardless of vehicle-induced damage (weathering is a significant factor in road degradation).