Whilst he owns a lot of Tesla, he doesn't have majority control - and has to get shareholders to vote on stuff like "Whether Elon should be given ridiculous bonus packages" and similar.
He's previously said both that he wants a single company and that he needs complete control of it.
Merge of companies at values I mentioned wouldn't give him over 50% ownership, but gives 51% of the votes
(Although I'd suggest you check my maths, people on the internet are sometimes wrong..)
I've also ignored the Tesla bonus plan - as it could be argued (and I'm sure it will be), that if it's Tesla that consumes SpaceX, then he's increased the market cap of Tesla. This then triggers new Tesla shares to be minted and given to him (last bonus plan), which both moves both more cash and voting out of the hands of the public into his.
Some might suggest this sounds like outright fraud - but his little fans will undoubtedly cheer this all through again..
I was wondering why he got so many voting shares in SpaceX. Then worked out it was just enough to get overall control of a combined company (assuming SpaceX remains at or above IPO valuation and Tesla stays under his beloved 420).
Suspect it also means all pumping from now on out will be Space X, whilst Tesla will be "less bullish" than normal.
It wasn't a bug. Please, just say it. Give me closure. It'll be good for your karma.
The adverts have been running all month and the 1* reviews on the app store and your forums would have made you aware of this 'defect'. Forum responses were initially to tell us to upgrade - and then they went silent. I presume you had some internal meetings.
The Verge story came out on the 24th, and on the 25th suddenly the adverts vanished (on both beta and production channels simultaneously). Imagine me raising my eyebrow.
Unlike some of my fellow previously-paid users, I'd said I was OK with paying you more money. The app's lasted longer than most, I've used it nearly every day, and I want to make sure the maintainers get paid and you can keep the lights on.
I think it's still the only app where I've raised a ticket to ask how to donate more money.
What's sent us all the the barricades though, is the tone-deaf way this was done - and it's continuing to happen. The adverts are gone, but I'm not feeling happy. This feels like remission at best. I'm suspecting you're not feeling deliriously cheerful over what the last month has achieved either.
My constructive thoughts are:
1) £40 is too much to pay each year for a podcast app. Nothing will work at this price.
Look at Antennapod and justify anything you're charging for - it's what any your new users will be doing.
2) For people who paid to turn off the adverts forever, they need to have a way to have their adverts turned off turned off - so they'll need to be differentiated from the new users.
3) This doesn't mean I (and I assume others) don't want to pay you money though. Give me a way. Maybe every month, or 1000 minutes of playback just pop-up a "I hope your enjoying us, have you got a spare $10" message"? And if I click the little X, that message should instantly vanish/snooze.
Annoyingly, this might have worked better before you'd torched the goodwill.
What the article seems to miss is that for every delusional high-performer who's about to be short-changed on reward and recognition, there's an order-of-magnitude more potential high-performers who aware of the lack of reward and recognition, are having a nice relaxing life. Possibly knocking out their work in a couple of hours in the morning and spending the afternoon studying micro-biology to perfect their sourdough pizza crust.
i.e. retaining your 10x superstar is important, but are the rest of the team really only capable of 1x? Really? What's the benefit to them of giving 2x?
There seems to be some myth that everybody gives every ounce of their potential, out of the goodness of their heart as an employee. I think the reality is that most of us do whatever the role requires, plus anything we happen to enjoy/fixing frustrations.
I suspect the easiest thing would be a "return to base and shutdown" button that the Secret Service could trigger at short notice - would cause problems for everything wanting to use a Waymo, but I suspect the SS are quite OK with causing disruption already.
You know what a LiPo pouch looks like right? silvery bag, some yellow tape at the end with some wires sticking out.
Less likely you know what they look like inside, as it's been drilled into us not to pierce the things. Also if your laptop battery only lasts a couple of hours you might suspect something is wrong. If your pager needs recharging every month instead of every 2 months... well nobody has a clue how often a pager should need recharging.
I've no idea if it was the battery, but just feels like the right approach.
That's got to be a reason why the attacks are staggered.
Separating them definitely increased the chances that somebody would check their radios - but taking out the pagers drove people to the radios. Now taking out the radios is making people worry what else might be compromised. Your enemy refusing to use their communication equipment is a definite win.
The pagers and radios were supposedly due to the worry that the phone system was compromised - but I'm guessing more people will be using it tomorrow.
But if you wanted to put 30g of explosive into a device, you wouldn't just want it sat there looking out of place to any curious person with a screw-driver. My guess is that you'd want to put it inside a component like say a LiPo pouch that looks like it belongs there. Half-battery, half-explosive - and maybe hijack the BMS components to also allow it to be triggered.
Exponential revenue is easy - you just need exponential inflation and it comes for free.
Increased productivity is maybe the goal - but how it's measured is up for discussion. If you do it in dollars, then do you adjust for inflation? If you do, what inflation? (inflation on the price of bread or super-yachts etc).
Or do you do it in value? What can you get for your work? In the 1990s a "machine in your pocket that can play any music ever recorded" would have been near-impossible/priceless. 25 years later it costs maybe a dollar a day and we can all have it.
If we can always get the same stuff for an ever-decreasing amount of effort, then that could be seen as exponential growth. You could argue that you could measure growth by technological advancement.
Conversely if your rent is going up 10% a year, then who cares that you're 5% more productive and making 5% more money every year. That doesn't feel like growth.
Unless you're not renting and you're the landlord and then you're experiencing sweet sweet growth.
3M VHB (Very High Bond) is awesome double-sided foam tape, that comes in a variety of thicknesses and bond types. I last used some to re-attach a piece of rubber seal around a car door.
"Gorilla Tape Crystal Clear", which I think is a "repair tape". Size of Duct tape, looks like regular clear tape - but much thicker and much stickier and waterproof. Ideal for say repairing a tear in a paddling pool. Or a crack in a roof-box, where Duct tape would look bad.
3M Super 33+ It looks like standard black vinyl insulating tape - but is a pleasure to use. I don't think the existence of insulating tape is going to blow minds, but I'm just mentioning it for those who "thought it's all the same" and are "annoyed by it".
Self-Amalgamating Tape. Black, thick, rubbery tape with a pull off backing. Not very sticky, so doesn't immediately feel useful. What it does do though, is bond with itself. Not 'stick', but as the name says 'amalgamates'.
If you've ever wrapped a load of tape around something to keep water out, this is what you should have used.
I wouldn't normally inflict this list on anybody, but 'tape' is this wonderful area of technology where everybody knows what it is - but there's seemingly endless specialization for every conceivable use case. Finding/collecting these tapes feels like I'm assembling a box of solutions - and a tape-suitable problem is an opportunity for happiness.
Oxy is a pretty good example of the pros and cons of legalizing it.
Deaths from prescriptions were relatively rare - but it created a huge number of addicts with escalating tolerances.
Then as progressive efforts were made to reduce distribution, pill-mills and secondary markets appeared (i.e. crime). Then with further restrictions, addicts moved off oxy entirely, onto heroin, and then fentanyl flooded in - and bodies piled up.
Just "legalizing" might reduce the harm, but would increase number of addicts.
Prescriptions for existing addicts is good for them - but dealers aren't just going to give up, they'll focus on creating new users.
I don't think I've ever seen a perfect solution - but things like distributing naloxone or creating supervised places to self-administer seem like no-brainers in the meantime. Resistance seems to come from a somewhat ugly place where people see users dying as the problem being solved.
I'd taken the "too insignificant" as more of a threat than an observation.
I don't think anybody is expecting the Vision Pro to be anything other than niche - but it's very expensive pointy tip of what Apple hopes will be a brand new market for them. This thing is called "Pro", solely to indicate there's going to be a cheaper, mass-market version coming next.
Apple have been exceptionally good at making money recently - but less so at being innovative (aside from maybe unifying CPUs).
Apple's not afraid of losing money on Vision Pro. They're afraid of losing face in the market. They need this to succeed. They've patiently waited on the sidelines for a decade of VR - now they've leapt into the ring, they not only need to beat the incumbents, they need to build a larger ring and win in that as well.
To succeed they need the hardware (which they seem to have) - but also they need content to access once it's on your head. No content, no mass-market.
Apple needs Netflix to be inside their magic-goggles way more than Netflix needs to be there.
Nobody's cancelling their Netflix account as their new goggles don't support it. Many people might not buy the goggles if they can only watch AppleTV.
So why might Netflix not want to roll another client?
Well I suspect as AppleTV is a direct competitor and Apple has delighted in sitting between users and their subscription providers, skimming off their %.
Apple would love to have a Keynote with Disney, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix and the rest on stage. All the big boys pledging fealty to Apple and undying support for their new shiny - but wtf is in it for them?
In their shoes I'd only get inside the goggles after I'd got a very long and generous list of commitments for the future met - so if the goggles take off, I share in the rewards. I'd also ensure my non-attendance was widely noted and commented upon to provide some pressure.
What's the worst that can happen? I get to sit back and watch Apple absolutely haemorrhage money producing expensive content that shows the value of the headset, but can only bring in money from the relatively small number of people with it.
It's not even as if Apple can punish you for not showing support. Any time you decide you do want to create a Vision Pro client, you just announce it's ready - and Apple would have a hard time explaining why it couldn't be released.
We also have some very odd taxation in the UK with regards to property.
We have Council Tax (similar to property tax), which is a monthly charge for local services. Oddly based on house value in 1991 and regressive (richer you are, the less proportionately you'll be paying).
Stamp Duty, which is a tax on buying a house. We punish people for moving out of houses that are larger than they need, to a smaller one.
So we've got generations of people who weren't particularly rich, but have ended up in very valuable houses - and there's simply no incentive for them to get out of them.
We've sprinkled on some incentives to help first time buyers, but they're massively outweighed by the lack of 'stick' applied to the other side of the market.
I like the idea - but then wouldn't it be nice if your fridge had battery backup in case power went out? or your washing machine could charge cheaply overnight and run during the day?
And then I start to think that maybe the better solution would be a smaller version of something like a powerwall. Maybe something flat that would easily fit behind the kick-board under the units in the kitchen and then could be wired up to provide multiple uses.
Or maybe add a couple of sockets to that induction hob, that let you use it as a UPS for your fridge? Boiling water in 40 seconds might be fun, but doesn't strike me as a killer feature. Only time I've ever wanted a more powerful hob myself, is when I've got my wok out.
I think of it more like learning a language.
Yes, you have to put the effort in and learn your grammar and basic vocab yourself - but in conjunction you want to immerse yourself into hearing experts speak it.
Watching a film you fancy with subtitles or another audio stream is still mainly entertainment, but it's making you better.
Every person who's picked up an instrument has done so, so they can play something they heard and enjoyed.
Also - I don't need to master something. I like the messing about. Occasionally you'll later stumble across a problem you'd accidentally learnt the answer to - and that's gratifying, but it was never the point.
Plenty of books on that list give you fair warning before embarking, but LotR lures you in with "You liked The Hobbit, right? Fancy some more of that?"
Whilst he owns a lot of Tesla, he doesn't have majority control - and has to get shareholders to vote on stuff like "Whether Elon should be given ridiculous bonus packages" and similar.
He's previously said both that he wants a single company and that he needs complete control of it.
Merge of companies at values I mentioned wouldn't give him over 50% ownership, but gives 51% of the votes (Although I'd suggest you check my maths, people on the internet are sometimes wrong..)
I've also ignored the Tesla bonus plan - as it could be argued (and I'm sure it will be), that if it's Tesla that consumes SpaceX, then he's increased the market cap of Tesla. This then triggers new Tesla shares to be minted and given to him (last bonus plan), which both moves both more cash and voting out of the hands of the public into his.
Some might suggest this sounds like outright fraud - but his little fans will undoubtedly cheer this all through again..