“During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi’s regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115m to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country’s intelligence. Since 2007, 2 bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, 1 killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7m constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields.
Month: February 2014
Mass Gay Migration
Americans for a Gay Arizona has already received commitments from 1M gay Americans to move to the state within the next 2 months, with a target of enlisting over 6M gays to move there by the end of the year.
Tesla Energy
A fitting memento on the day when Tesla announces plans to bring 50 GWh / year of li-ion battery online (current world production is 27 GWh): The Tesla induction motor has been called one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time.
2015-03-10: Check out this site visit at the first Gigafactory. When complete, it will be the largest footprint manufacturing building in the world. The scale can be deceiving; this 2-story structure is 24m tall.
2016-10-28: The powerwall is extremely impressive. The difference between wantrepreneurs like “secret” and actual ones is off the scale
Musk didn’t waste anybody’s time. He used that time to present a problem of critical importance (eliminating humanity’s use of fossil fuels), explained how it can be addressed, and offered a plausible solution in the form of a new product — one that’s priced within reach of a lot of people and available to order. Amazingly, all of those things are actually pretty rare to see in one show. Tesla’s presentation was inspiring, and Musk wasn’t selling some fancy scifi trinket that has the benefit of Star Trek nostalgia. Dude was selling a battery.
2019-06-07: Tesla has a big lead for dry batteries
Tesla cars have been able to last for 1.6M km but starting in 2020 the battery packs will be able to last for 1.6M km. Currently, the battery packs last for 500-800K km. Most non-electric cars only can last 160-320K km. Tesla will start using battery domination in 2020 with significantly longer lasting and higher energy density batteries. This will enable Tesla to use a mix of better prices and higher performance to win electric cars, electric trucks and with electric taxis.
2019-10-15: They’re investing in their battery manufacturing
Tesla bought Hibar Systems, a world leader in the development of battery manufacturing technology. Hibar is truly unique in its capability to provide the world’s leading manufacturers with innovative advanced automation solutions that are engineered specifically to suit their production automation requirements ranging from simple single station bottle filling systems to sophisticated high-speed assembly systems running in excess of 1000 parts per minute. This unique capability is made possible through Hibar’s vertically integrated structure.
2019-11-30: Over time, their batteries can get 3x cheaper
Lithium Ion batteries can get 3x cheaper than current average prices of $180 per kwh to $50-60 per kwh.
2020-10-02: By doing all this, they’re speeding up the industry by decades.
If Tesla achieves the goals of Battery Day then they bring forward the electrification of transportation and energy by decades. BloombergNEF projected lithium-ion batteries to halve their cost by 2030. Tesla plans to halve the cost by 2023. Half of what Tesla would do in 2030 and 2031 would surpass the cumulative projection of energy storage installations by 2040.
2020-10-21: They’ve, as of late 2020, achieved 5m km lifespans. This is enough charge cycles to last 25 years, longer than the cars, so the batteries can be reused for other applications, and can do other functions like grid storage.
If batteries become 2x cheaper over 7 years and 120 Gigabattery factories are made then combustion engine cars are replaced and Tesla is worth 50x more than today.
Peak fish
you’ll want to go easy on that sushi and switch to sea weed. 20% of fish stocks have collapsed, and 60% are overexploited. there are no reserves left.
Principia Mathematica
newton’s masterpiece philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica which is available online in a translated edition with the original pictures. the principia is justly regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science.
Offshore wind farms tame hurricanes
wind turbines could disrupt a hurricane enough to reduce peak wind speeds by up to 148 km/h and decrease storm surge by up to 79%. the way to get this done is to tie relief funds to turbine permits, so that people insisting to rebuild in flood zones can’t pull NIMBY maneuvers.
Sharing Finances
what happens when you have a shared account with one person 10k in the black and the other 10k in the red. good times.
New Apple compromises
you’ll want to update all your apple products. really. on that note i wouldn’t be surprised if all the apple tvs and airports and other peripherals were vulnerable too. good luck
I don’t want your fucking app
i give the “app” model 1-2 years. single purpose, shitty apps that really only just wrap a web view clogging up your phone. some genius added “folders” but that buys you only so many additional apps per phone before the cognitive load is too much. things are already quite broken, with 50% of apps being used a grand total of 5x or less.
Polymer
you’ll want to make time for learning polymer this year if you do web development of any kind.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 