SirEDCaLot

You're right on unsprung weight, this is going to add quite a bit, especially if you fill the thing with oil.

Not sure how you still need a CV though, as this performs that function. Watch the video, there's a good animation. Basically this is a reduction gear and CV joint in one unit.

The funny thing is, it's compatible with capitalism, just people are either afraid of change or invested in the old ways.

Amazon would love a 1% increase in employee productivity, unless it means $500MM worth of lease breaking fees and shareholders grilling them for why they signed those leases in the first place. Or worse they bought the building, and now have to sell it at a big discount.

Everyone's invested in commercial real estate because it was a cash cow. Now the party's over, and rather than acknowledge that lots of people (and cities) have a financial incentive to try and keep the party going.

Of course the shitty thing is the big losers in all this are the individual people. The workers in a city lose when property values (and cost of living as a result) are so high they can't afford rent. The workers in a company lose when they have to waste time and money commuting. But nobody seems to give a shit about the little guy...

Oh yeah I hear ya. You'd like a big SUV like a Tahoe or Suburban, you don't need fancy leather seats and big touchscreen and a little motor that massages your butt while you drive (and you don't want to pay for that stuff).

Not much in that regard available these days...

Okay I can do that.

Pre-pandemic- Amazon says offices are important. Signs 25 year leases for lots of office space.
Pandemic hits. Everyone goes WFH. Data shows people work just as well from home. Company publicly announces that they are running at full productivity. Shareholders love it.
Now we're here. Employees are WFH and loving it. Middle management is chafing because they like being able to manage their employees by walking to desks. Upper management is unhappy because they like having a big corner office at the top of the building humming with workers. Workers are happier than ever.
Upper management says 'if we embrace WFH, we'll have way too much office space and leases that will cost a fortune to break. If we do that and take the hit, the shareholders will ask why we didn't have the vision to do that in the first place, before we signed for this expensive office. The managers we listen to all hate WFH too. So we'll push RTO.' And in the grand scheme of things, a few % employee productivity doesn't mean that much...

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin

A manager who thinks physical access to employees makes him an effective manager is going to push for that, even if the data says otherwise. We see this in every industry. During pandemic the headline was 'productivity is flat or increasing with WFH', now it's 'time for RTO'.

It's also not just about management, it's about real estate. Companies including Amazon have paid billions for office space, including long term leases that will be very costly to break. So if they say WFH is the future, they'll have to explain to their shareholders why they signed for (apparently unnecessary) office space that's hurting the bottom line.

Amazon monitors and logs and analyzes everything. As a company they are all about data. If they find something that will get the package out the door one half second faster, they'll spend millions rolling it out everywhere.

If he doesn't have the data, there is zero chance that means the data doesn't exist. That means the data paints a very different picture and he has chosen to ignore it.

Strong disagree. Let's say Tesla stock collapses. They are still a very profitable company with a product that sells well. So unless they're finances are structured in such a way that makes a stock price collapse catastrophic, they would continue to sell cars. They're charging network is actually one of the most valuable things they have. It's taken them a decade plus to get that infrastructure installed, there are more stations and stalls than all other charging networks combined in the US. That's why just about every automaker has pledged to adopt the Tesla charging connector. They recognize that pinning their EV future to Electrify America's shitty unreliable network is not a success strategy, and part of the reason their EVs aren't selling is because public charging on road trips is a nightmare.

So no, those stations aren't scrap. They're insanely valuable. Even if you assume something horrible happens to Tesla and everybody decides not to adopt that connector, the stations can be easily retrofit to use the CCS connector that other automakers use currently.

Oh for sure. There's a whole industry of them, and they all milk Uncle Sam for everything the taxpayers worth with little need to produce real result. Look at SpaceX versus SLS. Well it's true that SLS design was handicapped by Congress requirement to use old shuttle parts, the result is still a giant boondoggle that is very late, tens of billions over budget, and best case is going to cost $2 billion for each launch (which can only happen once every year or so). Meanwhile, all SpaceX expenditures to date including development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Starship, Super Heavy, Merlin, Raptor, and construction of an entire spaceport in Texas, have cost them by most estimates less than Boeing took to design one rocket. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9 twice a week. And to compete with SLS, once Starship is online it could theoretically launch once a day for $20 million rather than once a year for $2 billion.

Private sector can be efficient, but only when their own bottom line depends on efficiency. When there's cost plus contracts involved, it really doesn't.

You're not wrong. A model X would also fit your bill, but last summer they were stupid expensive. Prices have come down a bit. I would suggest buying any car consider the total cost of ownership, not just 'stretch a bit to avoid gas'. Gas cars need oil changes, tune-ups, belt replacements, and various other maintenance. EVs require very little. Also, if you need more than 5 seats, don't shun the 'humongous' SUV. You're literally in that market.

But for someone in the market last year, you were pretty fucked even I will admit.

I do wish somebody was making an electric minivan. Closest I'm aware of is Chrysler has a Pacifica plug in hybrid. And now there's the ID.Buzz coming out soon.

That's great. Build it. Until this hits the showroom floor, I don't care. Electric cars have been consistently 10 years away for the past like 30 or 40 years. For every other automaker, electric cars are now here today. Except Toyota, where they are still 10 years away. And for me, The electric car isn't 10 years away, it's parked in my driveway. So as far as I'm concerned, this is all just press bullshit to try and discredit current EVs and buy Toyota time to continue pushing gas and hybrid.

And as for the whole thing of people not buying EVs, that's twofold. One, people are hurting right now, and people in bad economic condition get really price conscious. The second gas prices go up they'll all be trading their gas guzzlers for EVs. Second, the simple fact is a lot of EVs on the road kind of suck. And other than Tesla, the public charging infrastructure is awful so if you like road trips you're going to have a bad time. Given that in another year other automakers will mostly be switching to Tesla charge ports, unless you're buying a Tesla there's some logic in waiting.

Altman may not be an AI engineer. But he does appear to be an effective leader of an AI team, and he obviously has the loyalty of an awful lot of his employees. That could be because they are personally loyal to him, or because of their own self-interest with equity, but the situation remains. He put together a solid team once, he can probably do it again. But he also may not have to.

If Microsoft can vacuum up a majority of those 500 employees, if those people join Microsoft because they want to keep working for Altman, then whatever they are paying him is money well spent. And while Altman may not know the nitty gritty, those people do. Collectively they are probably worth more than he is.

Either way, Microsoft has successfully bet on both sides of the coin. Whether they build their own successful AI department, or whether OpenAI continues to succeed, or both, they're going to come out on top.

The big question mark to me though why exactly the board chose to fire him in the first place. It's been a good few days, and so far there's not even a hint. That is strange to me. If whatever he did is awful, the board would want to justify itself. If whatever he did is benign, he would want to redeem his own image. The fact that there's not even a leak is odd.

Good points all around. There was a headline a day or two ago suggesting Microsoft is ready to put $50 billion into AI. If they are truly as all-in on AI as Meta is/was with VR, then something like this would make sense. OpenAI is of course at the front of things, but Microsoft still owns less than half and still has to answer to other investors.

But while OpenAI has valuable tech, the real value is the researchers who are building the next golden goose. Microsoft seems to understand that.

Look at that open letter. 500 out of 700 employees signed it and are threatening to leave. I think the key there is their equity compensation- many if not most of those 500 people were getting equity, and if OpenAI loses its place at the front of the pack that equity loses a lot of value. And the board just essentially killed their golden goose. So those 500 people are worried about the future of their stock. If it looks like the company is going down, the rats will dessert the sinking ship faster than you can snap your fingers as there will be no shortage of very lucrative offers.

I bet Microsoft is offering a very attractive life preserver for those who jump ship. Wouldn't be surprised if, if a bunch of those people defect, the AI division get some sort of quasi autonomous status or perhaps even its own corporate entity for those employees to own stock in.

Point being- there's a very good chance Microsoft will essentially buy OpenAI for mere pennies by simply hiring the majority of their employees.