Alternative take: if a SPCX-TSLA merger proposal is publicly announced, that will create market enthusiasm (quite possibly irrational) about “unlocking synergies” which will temporarily pump both stocks, thereby making Musk (and all the other insiders) richer, even if only temporarily.
Plus, the two firms already cooperate heavily, and Musk wants them to cooperate more, but being two separate public companies adds a lot of legal friction to that cooperation (each board has to review and sign off on things independently) and legal risks (shareholder lawsuits alleging they are cooperating in ways contrary to shareholder interests)
So I think, from Musk’s viewpoint, it is a very logical next step, which means it probably will happen sooner or later
They also want to continue to use Tesla as the piggy bank to offset the (vast) losses by the other companies. Once the "dump" phase is finished on the SpaceX pump-and-dump, Tesla will swoop in and buy SpaceX (or vice versa) in some all-stock deal and arbitrarily value it at $2 trillion.
I have a really dumb prediction that at some point he’ll name one of the public companies X, presumably either SpaceX or a merged company. The dumbest people in the world would say he’s turned Twitter into a $2tn company and he’d find that hilarious.
I think they saw how SpaceX was using Starlink as launch lever to provide SpaceX a baseline of regular launches at bare-minimum cost. As RocketLab starts to scale up, being able guarantee a minimum number of launches is a significant hedge against the dips in the global satellite market.
Also, RocketLab builds their own sats and can add the Iridium constellation replacements to their order book. It's a win-win. A smart move by Peter Beck and his team.
If you can afford to outright buy a customer to secure future demand for your product, does that not imply that this customer is "too small" to matter all that much? Because you could've just used the capital you spent on acquiring him on riding out demand fluctuations instead?
I'm surprised that Apple is not considering opening up its own fabs. Tim Cook is all about vertical-integration and they have a mountain of cash that they could use to fund the initial startup capex.
Semiconductor manufacturing is not an incremental step for Apple. It's an entirely new kind of vertical. They do not have the resources to do this. If they could they would have by now.
Designing CPUs also wasn't their core business and they did it anyway. Apple probably won't care that much about price hikes but if they ever feel TSMC can't guarantee steady supply then all bets are off.
I wonder what will happen in future when we get closer to the physical "wall". Will it allow other fabs to catch up or the opposite will happen, and even small improvements will be values by customers?
> Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to spend a record of up to $56 billion this year to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for chips, as it grapples with pressure to build more factories outside Taiwan, especially in the U.S. [0]
Apple has less cash available than TSMC plans to burn this year. TSMC is not spending 50 billion dollars just because it's fun to do so. This is how much it takes just to keep the wheels on the already existing bus. Starting from zero is a non-starter. It just cannot happen anymore. So, no one in their right mind would sell Apple their leading edge foundry at a discount either.
There was a time when companies like Apple could have done this. That time was 15+ years ago. It's way too late now.
Apple has very much been wanted absolute flexibility to adopt major technology changes so much they’ve tried hard to not be the sole customer of a supplier and deal with political ramifications (source: Apple in China/Patrick McGee)
Closer to $40b for a new fab for an established company to do it all correctly. It's a much more major investment to open a fab without ever doing it before, then continually use the brain power/institutional knowledge you've built up to stay near the forefront of fab tech, and then basically have weird incentives to build a foundry for only your products rather than the world at large.
You're setting yourself up for making a huge part of your future revenue stream being set aside for ongoing chipfab capex and research engineering. And that's a huge gamble, since getting this all setup is not guaranteed to succeed.
Is that true? I guess what I mean is, is it $40B if you are trying to replicate the scale of a TSMC fab? Or could you do it for considerably less if the fab is initially designed to the needs of single customer (Apple)?
Closer to $40B for some of the latest fabs from TSMC you're seeing, yes. While there could be huge simplification in SoC and packaging processes if it was focused on a single product, Apple's needs will likely still be about having cutting edge processors, so it would still be pretty high even if they were to just buy TSMC.
Great! Another bunch of micromobility products that nobody asked for.
And the price! I can buy 6 very decent Chinese ebikes of various formats for the $4500 this thing will cost. I'm sure it will be more advanced and nicely designed, but it's just way too expensive. Bicycles are a mass-market item. Price is the primary decider. If you want to be successful, you have to be cheaper than the competition.
Who is this for?
That's not even true for normal bicycles. Serious cyclists can spend massive amounts of cash on their rides.
Aside from that, if you're using this as a vehicle you want more than just the cheapest thing out there. Reliability and serviceability are important when not having the bike means you can't get to work or your kid's school.
> Reliability and serviceability are important when not having the bike means you can't get to work or your kid's school.
True, but this bike is completely non-standard so sort of blows that. There isn't even a direct connection between the pedals and the wheels. If the electrical bits stop responding you don't even have a bike, you have a really awkward velocipede. Every other e-bike that I have ridden or seen is still a bike when there is no power.
By massive amounts, of course you meant "dramatically less than any car", right?
Most serious bicyclists I know, some with wonderful bikes, still spent less on their bikes than the typical American spends getting the air conditioned seats option in their F-150.
This feels like a labor-of-love to me. I doubt very much that the original author is still participating in music to the same degree as he was when he made this. I don't think that current musical trends would inspire the same fastidious urge to document and archive as it once did.
The article highlights how to get into the modding industry. While that is part of the games industry, it is a small fraction of the larger game production business.
I've hired many game programmers and the key to getting into the industry is demonstrating a few critical skills:
1. Sufficient technical skill in whatever your field is.
2. Curiosity applied to problem solving. How can we make this work?
3. An ability to finish what you start. Get it done.
If you're a new programmer looking to start out on this journey, I recommend picking an engine and just start making stuff. Participate in as many Gamejams, Mods or minigame productions as possible. Ship things; Finish them. Then, when you're interviewing for a 'real' game job, you will have some experience to share and discuss.
For technical candidates, there's a minimum threshold that you must cross to be considered. For programmers, it's often C++. So learn the basics, get proficient, use the tools. Read the books on programming interviews and learn the types of things that are expected.
Absolutely necessary in a solo project, but in a team it is enough if a few members, or really only the leader, is good at that (as long as the leader is somewhat competent and has some cat-herding skills to keep everyone on track).
Keep things really small. Small projects you can pull off in a few days and then move on. The kind of scope you'd do for a uni trimester for example. I used a lot of my uni coursework to build small game(ish) projects around them
Unity is used by so many studios, it's a great signal if you're joining one of those and probably a good signal for Unreal shops as well. I think knowing C++ is a more robust signal for senior technical roles but I don't think it's a silver bullet for every role.
I would prefer engine experience over language experience if wanting someone to join and get to work quickly.
Beautifully written. Especially when you consider that the author suffered a brain injury to her language centers. Fascinating insights to how the mind works and how we process our world. I was supposed to be working, but I read the whole thing.
Yeah, I was struck by the thought of my child-self, perhaps 2 years old before I had a good grasp of the words I heard around me. Before I had language myself.
I scarcely remember but a couple things anyway, but even into the early years when I could speak, understand language, the memories of those times are as though of a time that seems not within the current continuum. It's like I was seeing the world but only through a small B&W TV.
Some high-impact reporting there from the BBC!
Also contains my favourite quote of the day:
"Westcombe Dairy's maturing cave is equipped with cheddar-turning robot, nicknamed Tina the Turner"
