Bubbles are caused by reckless stock purchases leading to insane, unjustifiable valuations, regardless of the company's prospects.
Hysteria + widespread financially illiteracy means there are lots of people prepared to buy AI stocks at any price. They're adamant to get in (FOMO).
Suppose OpenAI will be a successful company into the long term, and you bought its stock at a $5T valuation. After several reporting seasons and subsiding hype, its true worth turns out to be closer $1T. OpenAI could still be enormously successful, but anyone you bought at much over $1T valuation is going to get hurt.
> Then, in April 1996 - by which time I’d expatriated to the Kingdom of Tonga and was working on various internet startup schemes
Why would an American working in software in the mid 90s expatriate to Tonga, a tiny island nation, population ~100k, virtually no tech industry, with little or no internet back then? (assuming Eric is American).
Maybe a govt IT contract, but it sounds at odds to "working on various internet startup schemes".
(Retract the cheating dig if not applicable. Make it in the first place b/c I’m bummed when folks who make their money thanks to a country’s infra, laws, etc. don’t pay their fair share, at least in those cases when there’s so much you can even give back half and have immense riches.)
Everyone says that but I've had the opposite experience, possibly due to my location (near Orchard Rd). Can easily pay $15 to essentially go around the corner.
I love walking - checking distance tracking on my phone, I walked over 20km in a day a couple of weeks ago. But when it's hot in Singapore, the distances I don't want to walk can become crazy-short at times.
I'm hesitating to judge someone taking a ride-share around the corner. Among many other reasons, I can imagine scenarios where someone would think it worth paying to not arrive a sweaty mess.
I walk 99% of the time. By around the corner, I mean a 10 - 20 min walk (5 min drive in good traffic), which will easily get you drenched in sweat depending on the weather. If I'm headed to a dinner or gathering that requires a bit of dressing up (shirt and trousers), walking isn't really an option.
I’ve been travelling to singapore for the last 15 years, my gut view is cabs are far more expensive today than they were 10 years ago even after adjusting for inflation. Maybe it’s just incorrect memories - rates don’t seem to have increased that much.
My next trip to singapore is the end of next week. I’m staying a mile from the office, Apple predicts it’s 89% at 0730 but will drop to 75% during the day, and back upto 80% after dinner.
When was this? I lived in a condo at walking distance from Orchard station for a couple of years and never had the feeling that I was paying more for the cab. I also lived in other less affluent areas so I had a good idea about how much it should cost.
Does anyone know what they're smoking in that big pipe at about 25:15 into the video?
Imagine showing up in a remote village as an anthropologist and after a few hours the first thing the villagers ask you to partake in is the equivalent of a huge bong hit. And you don't want to offend anyone by refusing...
Actually your comment reminds me of this guy who travels to Vanuatu to try really strong kava. The village chief invites him to drink multiple bowls, which he can't refuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BtP_B4TBWs
...basically this is the "take a few near-pre-contact villagers around the U.S. and show them how cool the rest of the world is" that the article talks about.
There was another show (might have been "Going Tribal(?)") which did the reverse, where a "modern man" tried to integrate into daily life tribal life, eg: setting fish traps, mauling taro root, trying not to scare away rabbits while hunting with bows and slings, etc.
Probably tobacco. The article mentions it was introduced to PNG in the last few hundred years, and the plant made its way into the highland tribes despite limited travel and trade.
This was an incredible video, and I feel so many complex emotions after watching it. I wonder where everyone in that video is now.
Sounds like there's some controversy about this video though. There was some accusations that it was staged, and / or that this was NOT the first contact this tribe had.
That was fascinating and endearing. I wonder whether anyone there is still alive, and how profound/impactful that meeting was on those and the generations that followed. Thanks for sharing
I am realy excited for the Findings on these missions. Altough I am still missing an Enceladus mission because enceladus is among the most fascinating ocean worlds.
Maybe I missed it but they didn't delve much into the TAM.
"Half of all flights in the world are under 2 hours." Then they give examples of Fjord-town hopping in Norway, or Island hopping in Hawaii, which seem very niche.
Will they be able to compete in any of the busiest routes? Could it take me Melbourne-Sydney in 1 - 2 hours for < $100? I'd sacrifice some time and $ for an eco-friendly option, but obviously there's a limit.
Batteries are rapidly improving (on many metrics, but the relevant one here is increasing in energy density).
The range is apparently 125 miles electric, and 500 miles as a hybrid. That's not enough for Melbourne Sydney. Give it a couple doubling-times though (5 years total?) and it will be.
Meanwhile aircraft take forever to develop and there should be enough of a market in shorter hall flights to occupy a scaling company in the meantime anyways.
Batteries aren't rapidly improving. Every single battery that has proposed higher energy density also has downsides in max discharge current. We may get at best like 10% improvement over what it is today.
If you are consuming X watts per cell, then each cell will drain by the same amount of current regardless of whether the cells are in series or parallel (or more likely a combination of the two).
This is supposed to be able to handle "up to" 2-hour flights, and (for jets at least) takeoff power is about 3x cruise power, so about 1.5 watts per watt-hour of battery, or a 1.5C peak discharge rate. What chemistries are you thinking of that cannot handle this?
Canberra - Sydney is one of the busiest routes in Australia with Dash 8 and ATR turboprops on high rotation every day. I could see a small electric aircraft working pretty well there, modulo charging times.
Electric planes can in theory get longer flights, provided they change the flight profile - you spend a lot of energy going up to higher altitude, and the essentially glide down.
The energy used to achieve altitude is then saved in the descent stage. So that’s not an issue for aircraft, regardless of how they’re powered. This is why every flight you’ve ever been on climbs to cruise altitude as fast as possible.
High altitude where the air is less dense is better for speed due to less drag. This is also power source agnostic.
yes, but current battery energy density is nowhere near fuel ATM, and evs operate differently. Gas engines use fuel/hour as a function of RPMS, independant on the load on the engine. EVs use battery juice as a function of the load.
When you size a gas engine for a plane, you design around the power needed to takeoff on a given runway, which is fine because in cruise, you will throttle down and use less fuel.
When you design an electric vehicle, if you design it the same way, you end up carrying effectively dead battery weight, which also affects power consumption during cruise (you either go faster, or use use more wing, which creates more induced drag).
IF you design it for cruise, you end up being horribly inefficient at takeoff.
The only 2 solutions are
1. 10 mile long runway where you can take your time accelerating, to reduce the torque requirement on the motor. You would basically limit the current draw and the plane would accelerate slowly, and eventually you get to cruise speed
2. Changing your flight profile, where you get to high altitude ASAP where you can be more efficient,
A self employed person can deduct many things used personally from the taxes in Germany as a business expense. An employed person pays shit ton of taxes and the value added tax. So from pre-tax salary you get only 30% for spending. Lol. It’s slavery.
Corporations also deduct things as expenses. Small business or self-employed person don't have any special privileges - au contraire - in many jurisdictions big corporations are not audited at all and have special tax arrangements where they agree with the tax man to pay certain amount of tax. The idea that small business somehow avoids tax is a myth. If you have limited company, your personal spending wont fly past accountant.
Hysteria + widespread financially illiteracy means there are lots of people prepared to buy AI stocks at any price. They're adamant to get in (FOMO).
Suppose OpenAI will be a successful company into the long term, and you bought its stock at a $5T valuation. After several reporting seasons and subsiding hype, its true worth turns out to be closer $1T. OpenAI could still be enormously successful, but anyone you bought at much over $1T valuation is going to get hurt.
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