Tesla has some self-driving attributes, and is likely capable of switching to full autonomy well before Ford could produce 50k cars per year with the technology. What Tesla can't do is handle things that would require 5-10 different models to be in parallel development. They don't do "platforms" that let you cheat that development and just make a new body and interior for each version.

Tesla has not seen saturation levels yet for their $100k automobile; their very real challenge is in sustaining that production while rolling out the Model X and ramping up production there. Frankly, I am significantly more worried about the longshoremen and ports impacting Tesla than Ford, Apple, Google, or Microsoft.

Speaking as a generalist and fast learner, it is not an attribute that is easy to interview for, just something that builds success over time. I have been mis-led by plenty of people I have hired over the years that are clearly smart, grounded, and can pick up and apply an abstract concept in the course of an interview. I have decided they (we) are all con men; I usually have to fire them after 6 months.

It is the actual, concrete skills that tell an employer how quickly you can come up to speed, which is generally why they are more highly valued in an interview phase. If you have that foundation, the other skills are what make you stand out and succeed.

My advice is to be able to speak to the specifics, but also explain how deeper skills apply them; that highlights the best of both.

In areas where there is already a gap, it gives a huge leg up. In areas with both telephone and cable high speed options it is less of an issue at the moment. But, if you wanted to build a gigabit municipal or coop network, this would give you some reprieve.

Yes, I would wish that there was a longer period of lock-out, but it does at least price in the costs for the deal.

Exactly. It makes it quite easy, at least in relative terms, to start a competing local carrier. The five years gives you time to build business and fund your own backbone over time.

Right now, today, if you have an area in California without FIOS or Uverse this makes it possible to secure pockets of interest, build things out at a small scale, and develop a long term business.

While I don't think all the consolidations are in consumer interests, at least ensuring that new competitors aren't locked out of the market is a huge start.

I bought a Schlage cipher lock and took it apart to decide if I was comfortable with it security-wise. I was disappointed to find out you could horn the door with nothing more than an x-acto knife. I wish there was something with the electronics reasonably well protected, and better integration with secondary locks and sensors.

At a certain level you have grid stability issues with highly variable and unpredictable loads; this necessitates system designs that can be fast response-- effectively batteries at the generation level. The traditional approach to grid stability was called "Spinning Reserve;" the grid would have about 10% excess capacity online and running such that load pickup could be quick. With things like solid state voltage regulators and more precise engine control-- and due to economics-- spinning reserve today is down closer to 4-5%.

Wind power is very hard on the grid. For an off-grid solution, you need to have a "load dump" resistor to burn up excess energy; with grid-connected systems you just assume the grid can buffer it.

For solar to work effectively as a high percentage of base load, you need to be able to have local energy storage. This energy storage can handle shifting load towards periods of peak consumption. Batteries tend to not be cost-effective for 100% offset. In addition to that, you need to have means to reduce your building demand when capacity is low. The cheapest way to do this is to cause discomfort-- turn off the air conditioning, reduce lighting levels to minimums, etc.

I use Atomic Browser for ad-heavy sites. It has some nice features and could do several things Safari couldn't. You can also download pages if you are going to fly or want a ready reference.

You might want to google "adaptive comfort."

Comfort is a function of temperature, humidity, air movement, radiant temperatures, clothing, and metabolism. There are a fair number of variables to play with, enthalpy is just the easiest to look at.

The other interesting thing about deserts is monsoons. Swamp coolers don't do much good then.

Logically they would go for something around 4%O2/96%N2. SF6 is ozone depleting and controlled by epa even for medium voltage switches.

You can survive with low exertion levels down to around 2.5%; with a non sealed mask an oxygen or even compressed air bottle would be plenty to get you to a comfortable PPO2 at 8,000 feet.

2002. They saw what we preached and acted on it. They did it with fiber because of the nature of their governments rather than the utilities.

10-100Mb wasn't uncommon in Sweden then in the cities, although rural may have taken longer.

Technically SCBA like the fire department uses, unless they use rebreathers.

The cash is in cassettes inside the vault, so the ink needs to be in the cassette. I don't think the cassettes are physically large enough to do that, but if they are due packs are already integrated.

But, other factors are going to limit how successful the attack is in a modern bank in the US. There are a number of defense in depth features that should get people caught. Surprised it works in Europe.

I think you have that wrong. They will connect via an encrypted tunnel over port 443 to an AWS cloud instance to log all your activity and provide an "interface" for you to use anywhere you want. Should you decide not to use that interface, your Thing is a Paperweight. But they might still be able to display advertising on it...

Part of it is where you use the device rather than how. This morning, I was quite happy to be able to use my phone to VPN to the office and SSH to a server to check out why someone else was having problems on the VPN... while still lying down in bed. Right now, I am happy to be able to type this on my tablet while taking a dump. Had the tablet been bedside this morning, it would have been much easier and faster to use it to check server logs. But, the laptop would be less useful lying in bed.

I have a few great apps that make fantastic use of the tablet, and I am always happy to have access to them. I much prefer going to meetings with a man-purse than a laptop bag, so I take a little performance hit on taking notes. The cellular access makes up for it though, as I can access the samba server and bring up documents remotely to display in the meeting.

At home, I only reach for my laptop if I need word, excel, or sketchup. My wife in contrast usually "works" from her desk, so she is more comfortable with the laptop, even when on the couch.

You can make a group of 10-15 40,000 square foot floor plates operate with a substantial amount of recirculated utilities-- bring up just natural gas and you have a source of electricity, heat, and water; just send down black water or even sludge from sewage. It starts to get cost effective today at about 1MM square feet, but when you factor in the cost of risers and pumping it might start to scale down. The linear motor elevator concept, with multiple independent cabs in directional hoistways (up/down) reduces that impact, and currently ultra tall buildings do not plan on evacuating everyone to the ground via stairs, so that isn't an impediment.

Structurally, much over 800 floors would be quite difficult as the concrete to support the gravity load of the building would start to take up half the floor area at the base, but stepped buildings can assist with that-- 10x floor area at base might give you a reasonable useable area. Wind or seismic loads would need to be dealt with by active systems... Not sure how well that would go over though.