Fashion companies do quite well, to be sure. At least as long as fickle fashion smiles on them. But that's not Tesla.

I'm still not sure where you're coming from with the idea that Tesla would be "compromising" to sell e.g., a truck with a fitting for a Honda generator under the bonnet, but whatever. One way or another, Tesla will need to appeal to rural America, not just cityfolk, if they want to be a serious automaker. Maybe battery tech improvements will get them there one day, but that day is distant at best.

Hee hee! Oh I like that. Press the button again. Wait until he's chewing that spoonful. Now, replace the ice cream with castor oil. Let me press it! Let me press it!

It's not like Song of the South is hard to find (though I supposed Disney will get around to flinging it into the nearest briar patch eventually). Why is the French animation hard to find? I mean, Netflix has nothing interesting for streaming so it's no surprise it doesn't have something so obscure .... or was that your point?

I blame amnesty - if we only built a proper fence, we'd keep out the illegal singularity!

More than that: fireworks go off early sometimes. I've seen them go off in the launcher, and go off at low elevation above the launcher. It's not a safety risk at all: it's planned for. (Also, these mortal shells aren't all that accurate to begin with, so hitting a drone on the way is probably noise in the safety margins anyhow.)

Very cool video. I actually saw a fireworks display once from the height at which the shells were bursting - coolest thing I've ever seen. Glad more people can see this!

Sometimes fireworks go off early. Sometimes they go off in the launcher. Shit happens, which is why professional fireworks shows aren't cheap: they take mishaps into account when planning safety. The mortar shells won't go farther after slamming into an obstruction.

You seem to be coming at this from some cultural perspective where "electric == win; anything else == lose". That really is a niche subculture. Apple found a valuable niche, to be sure, but could never be a dominant player. That's fine if you're selling fashion accessories (Apple's market), where exclusivity is what you're selling after all. But I just don't see that as Tesla's goal.

They've never said "we're making fashionable cars for rich kids, and we'll never make ordinary cars as that would ruin our exclusive brand" (there are quite a few niche carmakers who do just that). They've been aiming for mainstream from the beginning, with the high-margin cars only as the natural starting place. Can a pure electric car really be mainstream? Not soon, I don't think. We'll see how then next model does, of course, but there's a vast horde of rural buyers who love the idea Tesla (Murica!) but simply have no use for a car with limited range.

I doubt that - Tesla is there to be a successful US automaker. Musk had an itch to scratch with electric cars, and that's fine for a niche brand, but the roadmap for Tesla clearly isn't sticking to making 4-wheeled Segways for the rich. You can see they want to be mainstream, plus their stockholders have bid up the price to where they must be.

Tesla now has a market cap that's 40% of Ford. They will be making mainstream cars, and being appealing to the mainstream requires ending range anxiety, and making an actual truck. I suspect making the cars generator-friendly will happen, sooner or later, and I think there's be a real appeal to an electric truck with a built-in generator (with a power offtake) in the same space as the Jeep Grand Cherokee (still a rich man's toy, but a much bigger niche, and a half-step to the pickup market).

Cool! If only it weren't a frat-boy-M-W.

The Volt is a clusterfuck (it's a parallel hybrid, you know, with a stupidly complex gearbox), but trains are very cost and maintenance sensitive. A true serial hybrid car can be quite simple, with the generator being a small, (relatively) lightweight, replaceable unit (unlike a train, it could be full electric 95% of the time).

A Tesla Model S with a 30 HP genny up front would eliminate all range anxiety and still be a perfectly usable car if the gas engine broke. But that's the key, it needs to be an electric car with a generator for emergencies, not a gas car with an electric motor for short trips.

The best part of which is that hydrogen is, technically, a metal! (It doesn't act like one in water-based chemistry, but it does in some other contexts.)

Hehe, astonomers, they're in their own world.

"Right or just" has little to do with running a business in any country. There are a vast host of things that you are forced to do that are not right or just. That's business. The test is not "right or just" (unless it's a legitimate religious issue or somesuch), the test is "unduly burdensome". If you can cheaply deal with the requirement, add it to the cost of doing business and move one.

It doesn't matter - that's why you pay for insurance. It's crazy nonsense - that's why you pay for insurance. It's outright harmful BS. That's why, well, you get it. I have $1 M in personal liability protection, just in case someone break into my house, injures themselves in the process, and sues me. Silly? Happens all the damn time. But that insurance costs me next to nothing because the insurance companies are skilled at fighting nonsense suits efficiently.

If I ever publish any software under my own name, I'll add the business insurance. Not as cheap, but as long as you're not in the kind of business where customers enter your property, it's still nothing as far as business expenses go. (OTOH, I can't imagine what the guys who run martial arts studios for kids pay, eesh.)

If you're wondering why responses seem like non-sequiturs, it's because you are blindly and repeatedly asserting that a NC is nothing like slavery. You're not actually arguing for your position, so all anyone can do is simply assert the contrary.

A NC is very much like an indentured servitude contract. Sure, it's not identical, as you can still flip burgers, but it's pretty close: you can't earn a professional living in your field.

I understand the reasoning, but the reasoning was horribly flawed, as MS simply didn't have the power they though they did to force such a change. That kind of strategic mistake leads to termination for executives and general managers, and the fact that the Chairman, CEO, Division VP, and a couple levels below that are all gone or reassigned to somewhere harmless is a sign that maybe MS has a future after all.