My science teacher and I were the guests of Bell Labs in, I think, 1965, before I graduated high school. Still remember the computer memory with a gas laser burning spots on a chilled slab of material. Might have been a great place to work if my life had let me go down that path. Still have the pictures someplace their publicist took. Memories...

An effective open market depends on accurate and reliable information being available to all participants. The myth is that exists in a form accessible to all -- the reality is that insider information is not publicly available to all, why using it to profit is still (mostly) considered a crime. Quarterly earnings reports are marketing products, not an audit. It is the rare company that does not fine tune what it reports. And emotion rather than analytics drives most investment decisions. My initial reaction to this was 'oh good, maybe they can focus more on growing the business'... but that seems unlikely. Just buys more time for the regretable sacrifices to making the numbers to show up. The spin will continue regardless.

This is increasingly like a cartoon I saw years ago. Kid telling his Dad that when he grew up he wanted to go into organized crime. Without missing a beat his Dad asked 'which... government or private sector'? Makes one wonder if the Chinese are playing catchup with the other big players... Russia, USA, Israel, etc. Everybody seems to be doing it and there is, sadly, no authoritative place one could turn to discrimiate the real from the fake. Thought is that how can any organized society, economy, etc hold together without reliable information?

Remember my Cobol class -- first program failed to compile due to a missing period. All the rest compiled and ran correctly first time. 'perform unnatural-act varying position until husband comes home'... Was a fun thing to code in. And the rigid structure made it easy to parse when a few years later I had to write a tool that would parse embedded SQL expressions in it for conversion to another DML.

Glad that the products of combustion are declining thanks to EVs... We will ignore the effects of the occasional thermal runaway. But EVs, from what I have read, are much heavier than their ICE equivalents and as such have much greater tire wear. And tire particulates are a major contributor to the fine particuates that are a significant driver of urban health problems. So... fixed one problem, made a different one worse. Personally, I would rather take the train -- but in North America that option has been largely eliminated, unlike elsewhere in the developed world.

Reminds me of a prototype laser storage system I saw in 1965 during a guided tour of the Bell labs in Murray Hill. It used lasers to burn spots on a slab of optical material, dont recall any performance or capacity specs -- been a long time. Sure any patents are long expired, but then so is the Murray Hill labs.

For a short while, sure. But who will be available to replenish their wine cellars?

History is well populated by traces of civilizations brought low by climate change, possibly including the moment when the entire human population was reduced to perhaps 1000 individuals (i.e., we almost didn't make it). So it is interesting thatthere was much rejoicing that almost the entire collection of climate change efforts, such as they were, have been eliminated by the current administration. Strange that -- almost as though MAGA meant 'make america go away'. Now I have never been one to think that a move towards electric cars and houses was going to do much to move the climate change needle into reverse. But over time there was the hope that moving away from hard hit areas and other defensive moves would moderate the impact. But refusing to do anything until the crisis is upon us does nothing but maximize the costs of survival -- sort of what has happened to FEMA. These sorts of weather extremes are already part of reality, even in the US. With the melting of the polar ice, permafrost thawing and signs that the atlantic current that warms Europe is diminishing, unpleasant new realities seem inevitable. Wonder if the species will survive this time?

There is a famous quote from early last century where a Supreme Court judge observed that he did not mind paying taxes because that is how we buy civilization. The money to pay for war, welfare and education has to come from somewhere. And if the superrich are given a free ride then it is the working poor (the rest of us) that are told to sacrifice to pay for bombing Iran... or Minneapolis. That everything seems to be falling apart from neglect and chronic underfunding should underscore the problems of letting the fox supervise the hen house. Trickle down has never ever worked... since it was first proposed by Hoovers economic advisors. But we still seem to believe them. Meanwhile, the old child killers and cripplers are staging a comeback...

Maybe so, but the king has little regard for any agreement he made previously. Thats the problem -- business needs predictability to make long term investments. And agreements as zero sum games are not appealing to any thoughtful leader. Why Carney refers to this as a rupture -- under Trump the US is pulling back from pretty much everything constructive it ever did. As for the vehical plan, it makes sense to recognize that moving from one technology to another will take time and require a bunch of infrastructure investment. Besides, doubt that the current crop of EVs represent mature technologies. Charge capacity, recharge time, cold weather behavior, etc... lots of loose ends.

wish this overcapitalized moron cleaned up after himself instead of pretending that space junk doesnt matter. Getting pretty cluttered up there and some suggest it is already at a critical level.

Needs alcohol and a good snack table to approach a Mensa gathering... (long time member here)

Nice that someone has been investing in the future. No stealing from it...

It is always an acceptable risk if no one you really care about is on board. Remember some of the early debates about the amount of shielding for nuclear reactors... amazing how the calculus changed when the execs were told that one of their kids might be working in the compartment... Not like the shuttle disasters... or the Apollo capsule fire. It is said that the Romans would have the designer stand under an arch when the forms were taken down -- solved two problems if the structure was not sound. We seem to have learned nothing.

I would imagine that mass migrations to leave places no longer cool enough or wet enough to sustain life, or where rude neighbors routinely shoot up the area, will still happen in his best of all possible worlds. Besides, there is a good chance that the next Carrington event could wipe out the technology his fortune depends on... And maybe, just maybe, I want to move because I really want to see mt.Fuji or mt.Rainier out my window instead of the backside of a factory...