There possibly is a pushers/braking truck attached to the rear of the Transporter.

Also one must remember on transporter it is about winning over rolling resistance rather than the weight. Doesn’t necessarily take that powerfull truck on flat ground to pull even great load.

Also turbine housing has lot of air and as equipment to be lifted to top of a mast, built with light weight in mind. Not for pulling it, but in thought of the crane that has to lift that thing dead load up.

third option is he sets up some kind of foundation or trust arrangement and testaments his shares to that trust, which is then run by board of trustees as per trust charter. Usually meaning “well board of trustees is entrusted to see to the continued profitable management of the company by selecting suitable new management as comes necessary” combined with possible whatever extra instructions there is as to how to and underwhat principles the company is to be run.

Be it either private trust to benefit the descendants/described beneficiaries or a charitable trust with funds to be used for charitable causes.

Family trusts aren’t that unheard of to exactly avoid the splintering of the ownership and thus risk take over bit by bit.

At some point you really do just have enough money.

Well there is people to whom no amount of money is enough money. Not that it is at that point about, what you can do with that money. Rather by then the amount of money is a leader board and score board all to it’s own. The desire to be Forbes number 1 and then to be forbes number 1 with ever increasing lead to the number 2.

However all indications are, Gabe Newell isn’t one of those people. He would have had plenty of opportunities to cash out and then do some other business dealings to get ever bigger score card number. Don’t really know exactly what else it would tell of him or his character, but the one thing we can pretty confidently tell is “it seems he isn’t about just singularly amassing ever growing pile of wealth as large as possible”. He would have had plenty opportunity to enrich himself way more aggressively and he didn’t.

When Gabe Newell at some point leaves Valve, the company will change, no matter if it stays private or goes public.

Depends how that happens. Since frankly I think people think “the way Gabe Newell leaves ownership of Valve is by him eventually dying”. Since he has never shown any indication to sell. He has offered shares to employees as part of compensation packages, but as I understand even then he has controlling share.

So ofcourse the most simplest way is “Gabe dies and has done no special arrangement”… shares go to inheritance to his family. So his wife and children. Which might mean nothing changes or everything changes. Maybe he has given private last wishes, maybe not. However they get to decide. They might decide to keep the company as is. Since given they are inheritors of Gabes fortune, not like they would be immediately hurting for cash.

Second option is… Gabe does actual official arrangements. This isn’t unheard of in case of big private family or personal companies or holdings. For example he might put his shares in a foundation or trust with legally binding last wishes unlike non legally binding personal last wishes. Then what happens is whatever the trust charter is. Given example of say some European industrialist foundadtions like Bosch, instructions are left to run the company as commercial business by board of managers to best benefit of the company finances. However the one option the holders don’t have is “sell the company”, since the shares are hold up in the foundation/trust with instructions “never sell”. Company is to be run profitable enterprise as his and best ability of managers and then… the trust gets the profits and uses them for it’s purposes. It might be a private family trust, where upon the money is then shared to Gabes descendants, but don’t really have say in “we want to cash out, just lump sell our shares”. It could also be as in case of Bosch, that it is charitable foundation. After which all of the business profits of the Bosch conglomerate end up financing various charities, foundations, clinics and so on run by the Bosch stifftung.

It will change no doubt, since well Gabe isn’t there anymore with his personal personality and well each person has their own personality and influence. However it might not change as much as people think, if say his heirs decide to keep running the company based on same base ethos and principles as Gabe did.

That or everything might change. Two days after he dies, his estate sells Valve to Electronic Arts.

Well the thing is … yes Valve has shareholding investors… Only one that matter as far as anyone knows is Gabe Newell. Given it’s private corp, they don’t have to publicly tell what his exact ownership is and I think it is known it isn’t anymore 100% unlike at some point. However all “as far as we know” indications are, Gabe Newell maintains 50%+ controlling shareholding. Rest of the shareholders as people understand are employees and ex employees, who got private shares as part of compensation packages.

We don’t have actual look at the books, but Valve people have on multiple occasion said “Valve doesn’t have external investors”. Given it was public official comments by official people, I would think they wouldn’t lie about it. So there is no external VCs or share external investor investors.

Gabe pretty much has probably pretty universal control only limited by business regulation and maybe whatever clauses the corporate charter has. However since he was at one point sole owner, I doubt it contains anything too much curtailing him. Since the way any other people have gotten shares is by Gabe agreeing to give them or sell them to people in the first place.

As far as I understand at no point has Valve been cash strapped such as to need to ask for external investors. Since it is company founded by two early ex-Microsoft people who had made decently money at Microsoft already before Founding Valve. Gabe ended as sole owner as the other founding owner decided to leave the business and Gabe bought him out.

Well as per article yes, but 600$ is the reporting limit. If Ticketmaster, stubhub and so on has a reseller account with sales income of more than 600$ per year, they have to file it to IRS. Whether its single sale or thousands of separate small sales doesn’t matter.

Completely normal tax procedure. Pretty much all big such platforms of various fields stock exchanges, commodity markets etc. have such obligation ledges on them for avoidance of tax evasion.

Nor as second note is anyone being “punished”. Punishing is what happens on breaking law. This is business taxes, you make profits selling stuff, income taxes start applying. Normal cost of doing business in society for the services society provides (national military keeps the Mongol horde from wrecking your business and so on, transport atluthority builds roads to run business trucks on so the music tour entourage can get to the arena, so one can sell tickets to that conce for profit and son on).

Ahemm as I understand the previously license did have a “we don’t change this license on you” clause, which they removed shortly before this change. As I understand there is atleast possibility, that some existing customer developers might upon being pressed take unity to court over “you said you wouldn’t change the license fundamentally without our consent, we had a deal”.

What the exact language of that clause and would it hold in court challenge, I don’t know. Just heard one interviewed developer say something to affect of “hey they did have we don’t change the deal clause, which they sneak removed on pretty recent license update”.

I atleast as business would not agree to deal of “yeah we have a deal, except this deal allows us to change the deal however we want”.

It might mean having to do time limited or project limited deals, since on otherhand no provider would agree to “we have no room to change deal ever”. I would atleast in case of say game development expect clause for example “any fundamental license change must have 2 year announcement time for existing customer.” Such clauses are very common in “on-going basis contracts and deals”. Heck international treaties use such clauses “If you want to leave this treaty, you must give other treaty parties 1/2/3/5 year notice and for the duration of that notice period you are still bound by the treaty”.

So I would guess: If this ends ugly, there will be lawsuits over was the license change contractually legal, were the possibble change notices clear enough upon the main change being in itself legal and for example was some jurisdictions fair and good behavior clauses of national contract law itself violated. Was enough notice time given etc. Since one cant make any contrac or contract change whatever one likes, business contracts are always subservient to local contract law regulating what can be agreed, how and what amounts to stuff like informed consent, how contract terms can be changed and regulation on prohibition of underhanded or deceptive business practices.

I would also add… the part count hasn’t actually dropped overall maybe as much as people might think. Since… seats are parts, head rests are parts, doors are parts, windows are part, body panels are parts, suspension springs are parts. The mechanical drive train part count sure has gone down. There was many many valves and springs in engine and so on. However mostly the overall assembly line is still the same. The final assembly line doesn’t care “are we putting in fuel tank or battery pack”, “is the motor here electric or combustion one”, “oh these fuel lines are electric instead of fluid, well still pretty thick and stiff lines to run, wrangle in there you dastardly high voltage wire as thick as my thumb”.

People often forget most of the car… is the car, not it’s drivetrain. Drivetrain is there to move around the car, the cabin. Lot of effort and parts go in the cabin and it is often what sells the car, not the drivetrain. Many a car sale is decided on “hey honey, try these seats, these are really comfortable”. Instead on “is the 0-60 7.2 seconds or 5.3 seconds”. Can you fit the baby stroller in the back boot and so on sells cars. None of that changes, even though the mechanical drive train is completely different.

All the upholstery and final assembly department is still exactly same. Except the fuel tank and engine reverse weight. The electric motor weights less than the engine block, but that electric fuel tank sure has gained weight over the empty liquid one.

Heck it is say for example straight up the plan in Europe. Since say for example there is no getting away from IG Metal for all German makers. Since IG metal literally covers pretty much whole industrial manufacturing and so on.

So they just immediately went “IG Metal, workers of the company, now don’t go doing anything rash… we have retraining program planned”.

Remember this was what Herbet Diess of VW got in trouble in part. Saying to Wolfsburg of “large fraction of you should be just unceremoniously fired, we need more cost efficiency”. Though his main fall was the mismanagement of Cariad and software delay resulting. Which caused the cardinal sin of any big legacy car CEO… Announced launch and delivery dates were not kept. Out he goes unceremoniously.

I found it funny how some were going “The CEO is talking truth to power, the need to cut workers, don’t you understand”. You don’t do that in place like Germany. You can’t get away from IG Metall. They can make CEO’s life living hell, if “employee-employer” relations are not at least on tolerable stance. Even the comments were from union side of caliber CEO seems to be dumb and doesn’t understand how things are done here in Germany.

Work force is the main asset. Meaning retrain. Combustion engine labs will be soon instead studying most efficient heat pump setups, most efficient electric motor windings and most importantly Battery pack and cell optimization. The casting plant, that cast and machined engine blocks. Congratulations you are still casting “engine blocks”, only now these new engine blocks are called “electric drive unit housings”. Assembly people are moved from assembled double clutch gearboxes and engine valve trains to assembling electric drive units and battery packs. So on and so on. The gear cutters who cut transmissions, well we still need reduction gearings and say differentials and so on.

Oh no, unions wanting to expand the sectors industry they cover? How suprising. 😃

Ahemmm just pure “they be crafty”… Like did UAW keep their twitter X account just so they thought “Will Elon be stupid enough to revoke us”. Since it is clear sign of anti-union behavior by CEO of a car company by concrete act and well car company CEO can’t exactly do that with atleast potentially getting in trouble. It won’t suffice alone, but combine it with other actions by Tesla and UAW can argue “Tesla as company all the way to the CEO shows a consistent pattern of anti-union activity of actively hindering our union drives. That is supposed to be illegal”.

Atleast I think UAW doesn’t mind at all the publicity, this will cause for them “Automaker CEO revoked us, since all business is too conglomerized to too few hands and control way too much of the business”

half the time hallucinating something crazy in the in the mix.

Another funny: Yeah, it’s perfect we just need to solve this small problem of it hallucinating.

Ahemm… solving hallucinating is the “no it actually has to understand what it is doing” part aka the actual intelligence. The actually big and hard problem. The actual understanding of what it is asked to do and what solutions to that ask are sane, rational and workable. Understanding the problem and understanding the answer, excluding wrong answers. Actual analysis, understanding and intelligence.

Yeah. the one good use I see is reefer trailers. Since some times they have to sit long times, with still the coolers running to keep the cargo within demanded thermal limits to keep the cold chain uninterrupted.

Most cooling is obviously needed when it is hot… so in summer and thus sung light time. So the panels would probably nicely run the coolers instead of having a fuel burning generator keeping the coolers going.

During winter, when there is no light. Well it’s probably cold enough ambient the reefer isn’t using lot of cooling anyway.

Tehnyt again if that follow others behavior is drive faster, that also leads to accidents. Not many with the other frustrated drivers, but with say wildlife. People not being aboe to stop in time more often dye to the increased speed and thus increased braking distance.

That is why bendy narrow roads have slower speed limit. It is function of what is the predicted reaction time, the amount of sight distance one had.

Can’t cheat physics, the more speeding there is, the longer the braking distances, the more often it isn’t anymore a near miss due to braking in time and instead a full on collision.

So sure one is more synch, but every is in synch with less reaction time available, when the unavoidable chaos factor raises its head. Chaos factor like wild live (who are not obligated nor obliged to follow traffic rules) or say someone bursting a tire leading to sudden change in speed and control.

Oh wow! In only 6.5 years

Then again look it this way… Once the lining has been built it will serve California for centuries, just as the original built rail corridors have. The rail tech might change, but the cleared out suitably shallow contoured corridor remains. For centuries.

Actually yes. Though not the business owners really. Instead it was society and strategic planners. It is matter of supply security, not of profit maximization. Which is why incentives and penalties were involved.

Also presumably lacking the cheapest of cheap labor, production automation would be increased. In low cost production countries like China, they don’t always use hordes of cheap labour due to not being able to automate. Rather it is cheaper to use lot of wage slaves operating manual machines, than to pay for the more expensive specialized automated production machinery. Specially on short term. On long term the automated machines probably amortize themselves and then start to make gains over the wage slaving, but well that takes time and one thing quarter report stock market capitalism hates is having to wait for anything. They will take less profits overall over decade, if they can get more profits this quarter or this year.

Is it rational? Well no obviously rational business expecting to be around for decade would take the long term bigger overall profits. It’s literally more money earned for the company as long as one plans for the company to be around at the end of the decade. However companies are not managed by rational machines, but instead by these things called CEOs. CEOs, despite their claims, are often anything but rational. CEO’s with personal motives, CEO’s with emotional quirks, CEO’s with inbuilt expectations, CEO’s with in-built assumptions, often wrong assumptions, CEO’s with incentive packages that often are not really that thought through. Stock holders looking to incentivize short time stock gain over long term business profitability.

It’s interesting because by strictly following traffic rules you might infact be a danger to others but by driving like humans you’re also breaking the law.

Well the others should also stop breaking the law, then things are safe again. One doesn’t solve the illegal murder problem by making murder legal. If someone is danger to someone else by driving legally, then source of problem is other persons behaviour. Since legal rules don’t include stuff like “be obnoxious and hindering to others”.

The other drivers must drive like expecting possibly the others involved driving by the rules. Leaving enough room, incase the car in front in fact does stop at the stop sign. Since they might have to emergency stop anyway. If one isn’t distant enough to leave room for stop sign stopping, one certainly doesn’t have the safe distance to anticipate as they should the car in front at any moment having to do emergency stop due to developing sudden situation. One must always leave avoidance distance.

Drive by the speed limit and not little over? It is the speeding over takers fault they are speeding over taker, took a dangerous over take when they shouldn’t due to being “annoyed” by someone driving by the speed limit and thus causing a crash.

There is very very few cases where driving by the rules is the cause of danger. Other drivers being fool hardy, emotional idiots is the source of danger. Fault will and should land with the fool hardy idiot.

As NTHSA said with making Tesla remove the “california stop” aka rolling the stop singing without stopping, others breaking the law don’t make it legal for you. In fact said arbitrary cultural behavior, which some follow and some don’t is a source of danger due to uncertainty it causes.

edit: So in long term the car is safer by following rules, since it induces others to drive legally and predictably. Specially since machines don’t use human non verbal hints and so on. Thus the only sensible route for a driving machine, instead of driving human is to strictly follow traffic rules. Since it makes it a predictable player. Unlike with humans other humans have no way to culturally gauge how a “driving machine would behave”, if it doesn’t behave by the one publicly known precedent it could be expected to behave… Driving by the rules to the letter. Which does include the simple rule of “if you can you must try to avoid collision, even on having right of way”. No amount of “but the rules say”, overrules that basic rule in the rules “every driver has obligation to try to avoid collision or minimize collision upon not being able to avoid collision.” So there well be no “cyborg car bowling down a pedestrian or other car, because technically the other person was breaking the law. The car had right of way”.

I get the “but different states sales taxes thing”, for national advert. However even then, just make them present example price

Get the new Moborola Bazer, only 549 dollars*
* price example for Buffalo new York, including taxes and fees

Since if one is going with “well the final price you pay might not be what was advertised”, make it be more representative and real. Yeah the final price might be different sometimes even lower depending on your local taxes compared to the example prices calculation locations taxes.

Local advertising or on the shelf prices? There is no excuse, you are selling in that location. You know what the taxes and fees are just add them in. Any rare special discount and discrepancy cases, well the people eligible for those know to expect the difference.

Well checking it up they don’t actually have their own instance. Instead they arranged an account on the social.bund.de instance, which is run by the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) for purpose of offering official accounts to german governmental entities.

What makes it still “less likely something bad is right next to them” is exactly, that only government official and officials can get accounts on that instance and is for official use only. So thus it’s a sterile controlled instance.

I’m sure they could have also spun their own instance, but well bund.de service was already running one anyway so just hop on that band wagon.

I think this will become a more common thing. Governments run a national “official business” instance, where there is only official communications accounts of various government bodies and goverment officers (The official account of the office of the Presidency of the country, the official account of the Prime minister of the country and so on).

Did he really?

Rather is it instead some billionaire would have done it. We had the bad luck of it being Elon Musk instead of someone better.

He put money in Tesla. That is his main contribution. Tesla which kinda had the first mover advantage of being the one well placed EV company via their deals with AC propulsion and Lotus. Both which happened without Elon.

What really made Tesla possible aka the first Tesla roadster possible was Tappering and Eberhard personally flying cross the Atlantic to go personally meet Lotus leadership for Lotus to produce the gliders aka most of the car. The chassis, body, the suspension. The roadster was mostly a Lotus made car in which Tesla dropped electric drive train. Electric drive train, which core technologies were licenses from AC propulsion.

Funnily worlds first big EV company might have been called AC propulsion. They had their Tzero prototype, which is pretty much hand build kit car Tesla Roadster. All of first Eberhard, Tappering and then Musk talked to AC propulsion about them starting serial production of tzero. However it didn’t happen since the company leadership adamantly refused. That is why Eberhard and Tappering incorporated Tesla Inc. They needed separate company to start production of tzero style roadster, since AC Propulsion strictly stuck to the field of just electric drivetrain tech. Under which field they then did what they thought their business is, AC propulsion licenses the drivetrain tech to Tesla and then let Tesla take the job and risk of actual automotive production.

Main contribution of Elon was insisting on carbon fiber instead of glass fiber composites. Requiring expensive retooling at Lotus for the Tesla production line thus making making car more expensive and saving negligible amounts of weight.

All the engineers apparently went: We already considered carbon fiber anyway. Carbon Not worth the extra cost of parts for the weight saving. This body can be perfectly well be done with glass fiber composites. Like you are the main stock holder, so it’s your money. We do it in carbon fiber, if you insist. Just saying there is no reason to do it engineering wise.

However Elon wanted cool space age carbon fiber body so they did it in carbon fiber. Again at great extra cost for both Tesla and the customers.

Sound familiar? Elon insisting on non practical engineering choice, since he got in its head a obsession to make the thing that way and no otherway. Like removing radars and other sensors even though as leaks have later revealed all the main engineers on the driving systemics said it is stupid idea and leads to unreliable sensorial leading to problems.

Atleast in the camera only case he is trying to save money. I guess that is improvement over the unnecessary exorbitantly expensive carbon body paneling on the Roadster (Roadster is aluminium tub chassis car , the carbon fiber was doing no mechanical work, it was literally just body cladding).