For those of you who are put off from trying the game by the category for today’s puzzle being sports, note there are other puzzles from prior days with more general topics.
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I don’t think the implication was that everyone can be a billionaire with luck - rather that virtually nobody becomes a self-made billionaire without some (and often a lot of) luck.
I think this makes the economic circumstances which allow for a billion dollar company to be created sound rarer than they are.
There have been numerous technologies that have emerged or hit the mainstream in my adult life that have spawned multiple billion dollar companies. EVs/charging, renewables, crypto/fintech, much of “modern” social media, same day/last mile delivery, drones, etc. Probably at least a few that I don’t know exist. Looking back across the history of business and innovation in the 1900s, this doesn’t seem that anomalous.
I think the actionable framing of this is -
- Build skills that are transferable between different industries that allow you to take advantage of the areas of greatest opportunity as they emerge.
- Build a network of likeminded people with complimentary skills who are willing to take a flyer on opportunities with you.
- Make friends with people with money who will fund these efforts, or build a resume that will make you an appealing founder or very, very early employee to VCs.
I do think that the situation of your birth has a major impact on your ability to put yourself in this position - I’m less sure about the timing aspect.
Yes and no. If consuming the lanes as much as possible was the goal, we’d be parked bumper to bumper with no available space to move at all.
We want the throughput of the road to be as high as possible. Broadly, that means maintaining the optimal (minimum) spacing to make the merge safely without changing speed, while maximizing speed.
You may get larger areas where speeds are disrupted, but on the average be going faster. Stop-and-go traffic introduces tons of inefficiencies since drivers need to be much more cautious than in a consistent traffic flow.
The big challenge is that it’s basically impossible to know what the optimal speed is, since it relies on knowing the detailed state of the road and traffic volume miles ahead of what you can see.
Self-driving cars are interesting here since they will open up new opportunities for all the vehicles on the road to co-regulate their speed near to the optimum.
As others mention it really depends on your use case.
If you can charge at home (ideally at 240v), and you don’t drive more than the range of your vehicle in a day regularly, it’s gas that has an inconvenience to overcome. I don’t have a gas pump at my house.
If you are an Uber driver and you do 2-3x the range every day, it’s a different story. But if you can charge for free - which isn’t hugely uncommon currently - you can save a lot of money on gas with an EV, so there are tradeoffs.
The daily drive isn't what people are thinking about when charging time is brought up.
They're thinking about visiting family, or short day trip vacations, or longer hauls through very rural areas.
Or, they live in an apartment complex that doesn't let them run extension cords out to their cars or have charging stations for everyone yet (though admittedly this is only a matter of time).
Anecdotally I just went on a 200 mile trip. Had to fast charge once but I was able to fully charge at my destination with a 110 volt outlet and a long extension cable. Turns out I like to lounge for about 16 hours a day on vacation.
Of course I rented a Tesla for this trip and at home I can’t charge because I live in a condo.
As someone who owns an EV I'm 100% okay with spending an extra 30 minutes eating lunch somewhere with a fast charger when I'm likely on vacation and don't really care about time when what I get in return is more convenience the other 95% of the time when I never have to stop at a petrol station during my work commute.
Seriously, it's great. The FUD around EVs is ridiculous and so many people seem to have swallowed it wholesale without really thinking very hard.
I think this kind of sentiment is problematic. Ultimately, the people most qualified to tell you whether or not a given product will work for them are the potential users of that product. Most people these days have been exposed to EVs in some fashion, so it's not like they're an unknown quantity. If, at this point, people are telling you that the product doesn't work for them, that signal is probably real and needs to be addressed.
To put it another way, I'm not telling you an EV doesn't work for me because some online article told me what to think. I'm telling you that because I've investigated the options for myself, and come to a conclusion that, ultimately, only I am qualified to make.
Deep integration with the car is the most difficult piece of the Supercharger system to achieve for any other charging network. They have the best in-car and in-app charging experience, with the best routing to chargers and scheduling tools. Most networks still require you to use an app or RFID card to start a charge, Tesla you just plug in.
The other is probably just scale of the parent company in terms of being able to build out and service the network. They tend to have more prominent, nicer locations for their stations.
CCS2 supports "just plug in to charge" as an optional feature so depending on your manufacturer and CCS Type 1 charger it worked some of the time. All the charger networks and manufacturers are now migrating to NACS hardware over (the ugly) CCS Type 1 and NACS requires that CCS2 optional feature (NACS uses Tesla designed hardware but CCS protocols/software) so most charger networks including Electrify America and most manufacturers moving forward past the current transition to NACS should all support "just plug in to charge". "Soon."
Standardizing NACS was an interesting win for Tesla because their hardware design won out, but it was also a massive breach in their "moat" putting the other charging networks and other manufacturers on a much more equal footing with the charging story.
On the one hand it makes direct dumb "bottom line" business sense why Tesla would stop investing in its own network with such a massive breach in their "moat" about to spill out and maybe equalize the playing field. Perhaps especially if you think you've already earned enough recognition for your brand that you don't need to maintain it long term, just maintain the facade and PR spin of it. On the other hand, with such a huge first mover advantage and what everyone knows was a respectably huge "moat", you'd think there would be pivots to take advantage of to bulwark other parts of the same moat and still maintain some other advantage along the way to the old adage that "Teslas are the easiest to charge". Gutting the department may truly be a short term gain for shareholder quarterly results traded for a long term mistake and the risk of the loss of that first mover advantage they worked so hard to earn.
It's certainly fascinating to armchair quarterback what other options were in play here.
While I do think the Tesla / 'NACS' plug is a lot nicer/smaller/easier to use than CCS1, what really is the big win here? It's all based on CCS protocol anyway and hence will have the exact same interoperability issues than before.
The big win for interoperability is that NACS as proposed flipped some CCS protocol features from "optional" to "required". The EU mandated some of those optional features. In North America so far it has been a free for all how much of the software protocol manufacturers actually implement of CCS and many truly have done "the bare minimum". That was the bargain that NACS proposed for Supercharger compatibility in the US was that the SAE should have to also start mandating those features. If it gets standardized that way, and it seems like that will happen, a lot of the interoperability issues should start to go away. One of those features was "Plug and Charge".
If the drones could meter their own consumption from the line using a utility-approved meter, anyone with a drone with said meter should be able to just tap onto lines at will and get a bill at the end of the month.
Not sure how that plays out in terms of the weight/packaging of the drone but seems feasible for at least larger drones.
Hypothetically, sure, assuming the parent comment that these meshes are sufficient for modelling is correct and that you can find any teens who want a non-digital toy.
I think a good hobbyist application for this would be something like modelling figurines for games, which is already a pretty popular 3D printing application. This would allow people with limited modelling skills to bring fantastical, unique characters to life “easily”.
My dad handed me down our 2001 4Runner when I got my license and it was a great first car as a high school and college kid.
Not enough performance to be that tempting to do anything dumb, tons of space for friends and stuff, go anywhere, sleep in it, easy to maintain… Bumpers were rusted to hell but it had a sunroof and you could roll the rear window down so we were having a great time!
I don’t think the argument being made is that the cost should be proportionate to wealth, but proportionate to impact or alternatives.
If flying private incurs 10x or 100x the externality costs of flying coach, it should be priced (taxed really) to reflect that a significant portion of those externality costs are an unnecessary luxury benefit.
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