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Comment Gran Turisimo (3) taught me how to drive (Score 1) 79

I say this without sarcasm. I played through that game's entire progression and learned a lot about the physics of a car. Playing the harder races and difficulties taught me how to corner properly before I ever took the wheel myself. While I can't stand racing as entertainment, it also gave me a bit more appreciation for those guys that have to do so many laps.

Comment Re:$2b / 9m users (Score 1) 80

I doubt the valuation is based purely on user count. Maybe moreso critical mass - unless they do something monumentally stupid, I can't see any situation in the near future that replaces GitHub as the go-to. I said the same thing about facebook during its IPO, and apparently I was wrong as hell.

Comment Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score 2) 637

The facts are the facts regardless if those facts take 25 years, 100 years, or 200 years to catch up to us. It's going to happen.

Timeframe matters more than anything in the climate change debate. 50% of the world's current population centers being underwater matters if its going to happen in 25 years, but it doesn't mean shit if its going to happen in 200 years. Our society can handle change quite easily, unless it is abrupt and drastic, then we can still handle it but with a bit more pain. How fast current climate change is in relation to previous geologic events means absolutely nothing, all that matters is are the species on this planet able to adapt to the rate of change that appears to be on the horizon. Based on current projections, the answer to that question is yes, and that's why a lot of people don't really give a shit. 1C over the next 100 years is manageable, 2C over the next 20 years is not.

Many that are labeled as 'skeptics' are not in debate over whether climate change is real, but over how fast its happening and if we should take drastic measures to stop it.

Comment Re:Social mobility was killed, but not this way (Score 1) 1032

Really, it boils down to student loans surviving through bankruptcy. That's the only problem because it completely voids all risk of student loans for the lenders. I understand their intentions when it was enacted, but its simply not working the way that they likely hoped it would, unintended consequence being a loan bubble/tuition hyper-inflation.

If you want to fix that law without completely abolishing it, the best way would be to cap the bankruptcy-immune debt. Tie the immune debt to say 60% of non-private university tuition. This means students can't bankruptcy-void reasonable obligations while forcing 'prestiguous' universities to eat huge losses if their graduates don't find reasonable levels of success after graduation.

Comment Re:and the beer is really good (Score 1) 528

There tends to be a very large variety. In my city, there's about 3-4 local breweries that are so appealing they're sold at almost every restaurant in a 60 mile radius, and do quite well. On top of that, you have 50-100 eclectic small breweries and you'll find 3-10 on each restaurant menus. Then, if you go to a BWL store, there's almost as many beer options as there are varieties of wine.

I live in North Carolina, which you may have learned in history was a heavy Tobacco state during the colonial period. As tobacco has crashed over the past hundred years, it's been replaced with wineries and beer. There's a very large selection in my state, but I can't speak specifically for other states.

Comment Re:Melissa Mayer (Score 1) 176

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.

Comment Portfolio Diversification (Score 1) 50

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.

Comment Re:Gigafactories don't start out as Gigafactories (Score 1) 116

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.

Comment Re:Even More Thrust (Score 1) 265

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.

Comment Re:Even More Thrust (Score 0) 265

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.

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