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Comment Doing OK. (Score 2) 313

Current Situation:

  1. 1. 2.415 million active reported infected
  2. 2. 7% infected death rate globally
  3. 3. 6% infected death rate in U.S.
  4. 4. Very high case-fatality ratios in Europe (France, Spain, and Italy, 12-17% infected die) -- has to be a combination of older people getting sick, overwhelmed health system, public transit, late lockdown.
  5. 5. Daily infection rates are stable at around 3,500 per hour (globally)
  6. 6. Daily death rates are stable around 200 per hour (globally)
  7. 7. Daily recoveries is increasing linearly and is around 1,700 per hour (globally)
  8. 8. The U.S. has 5% of global population but 30%+ cases/deaths of global COVID-19.

I am glad to see that you're referencing Johns Hopkins, a reliable source of data on the subject. Lots of other comments are quoting unreliable or questionable sources.

My Assumptions:

  1. 1. This will be with us for at least a couple of years.
  2. 2. Vaccine will be a year or more away.
  3. 3. Most everyone will be exposed or contract the virus.
  4. 4. This will cull the elderly and also low wage workers.
    1. 4.1. -- Food supply is already an issue and will get worse.
  5. 5. Fabric of Society will decay.
    1. 5.1. -- More shootings and then home invasions as people run out of survival options.
    2. 5.2. -- Local efforts have gone a long way to preventing this, but it seems inevitable to me on some level.
  1. 1. I agree. We're going to be dogged by this for at least a couple of years. Assuming we continue to isolate for a while, issues will be reduced to local and scattered flare-ups.
  2. 2. I am hoping that we'll see the first round of vaccines by year's end although it may be longer. Even if we see the first vaccines in late 2020, it will take some time to distribute and some people will refuse, leading to limited benefit in the shorter term.
  3. 3. I do not plan to be exposed if I can help it. We don't know what the long term effects of this virus are. Although not yet peer reviewed, there is evidence that exposure does not provide increased immunity so herd immunity may not be an option. Furthermore, there is some evidence that exposure may actually increase your chances of re-contracting the disease. For reference, please see: https://www.biorxiv.org/conten....
  4. 4. Agreed. It will also cull a percentage of the less careful and those that are unwilling to take precautions. There will be some impact on our food supply but we're not going to be starving. You just may have to make some compromises, give up on having your steak or similar on occasion.
  5. 5. The virus will not cause society to collapse. Political forces may weaken society for their own benefit but the virus will not cause that to happen. A small percentage of people may resort to violence out of fear or out of desire, using the virus and political rhetoric as an excuse, but I believe those will be exceptions rather than the norm. I'm more concerned about violence around election time due to political polarization than violence due to fear over COVID-19.

My Situation:

  • In net, I think we're better off now than we were before COVID-19, although cash flow is a bit of an issue.
  • I'm self employed and have been for some time. I have been working from home for roughly 3 years so very little change there other than using Zoom to talk to my business partner rather than just meeting him face-to-face.
  • Cash flow is a problem right now but I can weather the storm until at least the beginning of next year. I'm taking action right now to reduce my burn rate further.
  • Both kids are home during the day which slows me down significantly. My wife, who is now out of work, is keeping them going on their school work. My kids teachers have also been great about working remotely, checking in with the kids via Zoom and responding to our queries/requests. In net, the kids are doing better with their school work now than they did before the lock-down.
  • My wife's out of work and will be for some time. She's a massage therapist so I suspect she won't be working again for at least another year, possibly longer. This further hurts our cash flow but I note the reduced driving and other lifestyle changes have helped. She seems relatively happy as it's given her more time to do things she's wanted to do.
  • Started a garden so we'll have fresh vegetables during the summer and fall. Better vegetables and no concern that they've been spat on or sneezed on in the market. Also have chickens for eggs which gives us protein.
  • No "bug-out" location. Society will not collapse although there may be increased poverty.

Comment Re:Cars vs Smartphones (Score 1) 170

Here's a data point for you. My model S has about 60K miles on it. When the car was brand new, I could get 268 miles on a charge. Right now I get 260. That's roughly a 3% reduction over what I expect is between 1/2 to 1/3 of the vehicle's lifetime.

Assuming I keep the vehicle for more than 10 years and replace it around 200K miles, and assuming the batteries degrade linearly with time, which is pessimistic, I should lose no more than about 10% of the total range by the time I replace the vehicle.

Comment Re:Cars vs Smartphones (Score 1) 170

I have had my model S sitting in parking lots in sub-zero weather for extended periods of time at my last employer. Never saw any issue with the battery. I note that the car does limit dynamic braking and, to a lesser extent, peak power, until the battery has had some time to warm up but that's the extent of the impact that I've noted.

Comment Re:Cars vs Smartphones (Score 1) 170

Before I purchased a Tesla model S, I spent some time estimating the total cost of ownership. I assumed an inflation rate of 3.3% and 15K miles/year which is about what I used to drive. I worked up the numbers assuming that I would hold onto the car for at least 10 years. At the time I used my own gas and electricty costs, accounting for inflation, as well as data published by Tesla. Numbers indicated that the TCO over a 10 year period for the Model S, costing roughly $90K, was roughly comparable to my previous car, an Audi TT. When I purchased the Tesla, a new Audi TT ran about $55K.

With my previous car, I used to spend about $50 every week on gasoline. Equivalent fuel costs for the Tesla run between $7 and $8. I don't have to change oil periodically which knocks out an additional ~$160 year that I used to spend. Maintenance costs for the Tesla are initially higher due to the fact that I purchased a maintenance contract with Tesla's Ranger Service, necessary when one lives 300+ miles from the nearest Tesla service center. With that said the maintenance costs for the Tesla are flat due to the maintenance contract as opposed to the Audi TT which increased over time. In the end, it appears that the maintenance costs on the Tesla will actually end up being lower than what I spent on the Audi TT when amortized over 10 years. The Ranger Service also removes the hassle of having to take the car to a dealer for service.

After owning the car for 5 years, I've noted that my estimates for the Tesla were on the high end and total cost of ownership is, in fact, a bit lower than I anticipated. That is even taking into account the fact that the regressive Idaho government charges almost $500 rather than the normal $160 to register the car for two years.

In short, although the initial costs of an EV are, or were, more. The ongoing costs are much lower which makes the car less expensive than other cars in its class.

I haven't run the numbers for the Model 3 but I expect that the TCO for that car will also be substantially less than an equivalent gasoline car. If you can muster up a way to pay the initial costs, you may find that a model 3 or other similarly priced EV is, in fact, very cost effective over the life of the vehicle.

Comment Absolutely sold on the technology. (Score 1) 170

Bought a Model S about 5 years ago and have been thrilled with it ever since. I've driven cross country, Idaho to Colorado to Chicago and back, several times with it. I have found the car to be reliable, extremely comfortable, and very fun to drive.

At this point I am completely sold on electric vehicles, at least ones using an AC induction motor. Based on several test drives I've done, I am somewhat less impressed by EV's using synchronous motors as they have more moving parts and lose many of the advantages an EV can offer.

My wife still drives a gasoline car. I plan on replacing her car with an EV when it reaches end of life.

Comment Re:FPGA (Score 1) 97

If we're talking an ASIC with any modern process, then just producing the masks will run a lot more than $0.5M.

If you include the tools and the cost of producing the masks in the NRE, then you should be looking at an NRE of at least $5M, likely much more, depending on complexity. It's been about 5 years for me but the total NRE for the first generation ASICs I've been involved with in the past were over $30M. The projects I am referring to had between 10M and 40M gates depending on the market segment the products using the ASIC were going into.

The $30M included the masks, tool chain, FPGAs for limited system level testing prior to tape-out, in additional to UVM, and labor (architecture/modeling, development and pre-silicon verification).

Sounds like all this person has is an algorithm and perhaps a model used to validate the algorithm so they have only a portion of the first step in a long process completed.

Comment Three of four systems are shutdown daily. (Score 1) 304

My current work required that I bounce between three different desktop systems running different operating systems and I rarely use the same system for more than one day at a time. I also keep a MacBook Pro that I use mostly for notes, checking stuff on the Internet and documentation.

All the systems are at my desk. My office also gets hot in the afternoons, even in the winter due to large south facing windows and crappy AC. I have my coding environment setup such that setting up after a full reboot most often only takes a few seconds. While I *could* hibernate my systems, I find there's really no advantage in doing so.

So, with the exception of a small MacBook, I shut each system down when I'm not using it for any length of time. The MacBook is generally only shutdown when updating the OS.

When I am going to be away from my desk for several days, I also shutdown power at my UPS's.

Comment I've seen the reverse problem, it's much worse. (Score 1) 53

I worked for a place that was overly concerned with protecting it's IP, often IP that was of limited or no value. While companies may give too much access, too tightly controlling access creates much bigger problems. Trying to do your job when each tiny snippet of information requires several days to several weeks of effort and explanation with multiple levels of management is simply not productive.

IMHO, the correct solution is to have reasonable restrictions on information which means that managers have to understand the work their employees do as well as understand the actual importance and value, or lack of value, of information. Understand that employees often need information that is peripheral to their direct work just so that they can understand context and can interact with each other efficiently. For critical information, accept that there will need to be people with access, sometimes for reasons that are not initially obvious, hire people that can be trusted and treat those people well enough that they're not going to use their access to undermine the company.

Comment Re:Almost right (Score 2) 782

I fully agree with your assessment and find it to be true both with application software development and with mission critical embedded systems.

As someone who has been doing software and embedded development (as well as hardware development) either as a hobby or professionally since 1979, I find it disgraceful that kids leaving college are not learning the fundamentals of how a computer actually works and thus blame the schools churning out kids with CS degrees for the lack of science in computer science.

Kids studying computer science really need to learn at least something about microprocessor architectures, some basic assembly language, and building up from there to stuff like Javascript. Diving head-first into Java and UML may get you a job fast but it won't help you really understand what you're doing and why it works (or doesn't).

Comment screen real-estate ! (Score 2) 402

I have yet to see anyone comment on this...

One advantage of so-called stone-age editors like Emacs and VI is that they don't clutter the screen with useless junk like toolbars, menus, project side panels, etc. I've got Emacs setup on each machine I use such that each pane, running 2 across or 3 across, almost exactly fits the width of the code based on the maximum line length called out in the coding standard we follow (giving a few characters of margin). I want as much code on the screen as possible in as large a font as is reasonable (to reduce eye strain). I also remove as much clutter vertically so that I get as many lines of code on the screen as possible.

I definitely do not want my editor to clutter my screen with menu bars, tool bars, scroll bars, project side panels, cute little multi-line consoles, big status bars, etc. that take valuable space away from the actual code window. I use my editor 8 hours every day, if not more. I know the editor's commands. I use my editor to write code, I want to see the code, not screen wasting cruft.

Some GUI editors, such as JEdit, let you remove some of the clutter; however, I have yet to see any GUI editor let you remove all of the clutter to the extent possible (or default) with Emacs or VI.

Comment Leaf v/s Tesla (Score 1) 335

I bought a Tesla although I did look seriously at the Leaf. I also did some research on the upcoming BMW i3.

So far I've been amazed by the Tesla and in no way regret the decision to buy it. It's an incredible car.

The Leaf falls short on a number of fronts:

  1. Unlike the Tesla which uses an induction motor tied almost directly to the wheels, the Leaf uses a synchronous motor that drives a CVT. This is crazy for several reasons:
    • The CVT takes up space that could otherwise be used for cargo room or for more batteries.
    • The CVT adds weight, again why not use that for more batteries ?
    • The CVT makes the car a lot more complex. One of the most beautiful aspects of an electric car is the low maintenance due to the lack of moving parts. This is less true with the Leaf.
  2. Customers are reporting relatively rapid reduction in battery capacity in the Leaf, most notably in hot climates such as Arizona. At an effective range of 70 miles (based on what I've read from customer reviews), a 20% reduction in capacity makes the car almost unusable for me. Last thing I want is to spend $30K on a car only to have it become unusable for my daily commute after several years. I would much rather spend $90K on a car that I have confidence will last me 10 years.
  3. When I went to the local Nissan dealer to try the Leaf, I told them that I was going to buy an EV, a gasoline car was not an option. I told them that I was considering the Leaf or Tesla and while I could manage to pay for the Tesla, the lower price tag of the Leaf was very attractive. The dealer was relatively unwilling to show me the Leaf and only let me test drive it a short distance. He insisted on talking about Nissan's other car offerings, mostly the GT-R, even after I repeatedly told him I wasn't interested in a gasoline car. After spending only a few minutes with the guy it was clear that he had absolutely no interest in selling me a Leaf.
  4. I asked the dealer about whether Nissan could replace batteries in the Leaf and was informed that is was not really possible. I also asked about battery disposal at end of life and was told by the dealer that Nissan did not have any plan in place to deal with battery removal when the cars were scrapped.

While the BMW i3 is not on the market yet, what i've read makes me believe that it will use very similar technology to the Leaf with the only real difference being the additional of an optional small gasoline engine. Yet more complexity, more weight, and more maintenance. Exactly what I do not want to see in an EV.

If Nissan wants to compete with Tesla they're going to have to change both their mindset as well as the mindset of their dealers. I would argue that an electric car is not just a gasoline car with the gasoline engine and gas tank replaced with an electric motor + batteries. It really is a different type of vehicle that requires rethinking what a car should be from the ground up. Until Nissan, Ford, GM, etc., as well as the car dealers, figure this out, they'll be unable to compete on equal terms with Tesla in the EV market.

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