Wow that's a really impressive and well put together demo and overview. Really easy to follow and I'm glad I went through the whole tour. Question - you mentioned optimizations but I didn't see that in the tour. How would that work?
As far as the optimizations: we transpile the code to different target runtime languages where we can automatically instrument different optimizations. Currently our microservice runtime is Scala code and we can add a cache layer around any function application or a parallelization queue around any map-like operations on iterable types (e.g., List).
The application deployment UI let's you pick the points of optimization (a top level function for a cache, or map-like application for a parallelization). Then you can pick the tier of optimization implementation you want (e.g., local in-memory map vs remote Redis instance; local thread-based parallelization vs remote actor-based cluster parallelization)
Loved the history. Don't imagine that traders will ever stop trying to get an advantage. I find it fascinating that even the postmaster thought an informational edge was unfair. Important to remember that those with a speed edge, even today, end up quickly converging the markets, and eliminating their own opportunity away.
Also there is a clear distinction between a speed edge and outright illegal acts. Cutting telegraph wires reminds me of modern day equivalents... ie. Enron calling generation plant operators to shut down.
To be clear, the price of energy goes negative because of government subsidies. For example, a wind plant with a $30/MWH subsidy can afford to run at a price of -$30.
Similarly, if you're in California and you ever wondered why your electricity bill is 2x that of any other state, it is because you are the ones footing the bill for those subsidies. Without subsidies, wind and solar are far more inefficient at a $/MWH basis.
Oil, coal, and gas is subsidized to the tune of ~$400 billion a year (2010 numbers), while renewables are around ~$60 billion a year. Renewables have a capital cost, but no fuel cost.
"Meanwhile, a recent report from the U.N. Industrial Development Organization notes that photovoltaic module prices have been falling at a rate of 15 percent to 24 percent a year for some time. In 2011, factory gate prices for crystalline-silicon photovoltaic modules fell below the $1-per-watt mark, often regarded as the point of “grid parity” for solar power. Earlier this year, they reached 85¢.
The “levelized cost of electricity” for solar, a measure of the average price of power over the lifetime of a power project, has fallen from 32¢ per kilowatt hour in 2009 to 17¢ in early 2012. These declining costs are a major factor behind an explosion in use. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calculates that from 2006 to 2011, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and wave electricity production increased from 1 percent to 2.7 percent of total US production, from 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent in China, and from 5.3 percent to 10.7 percent in Germany. One sunny Saturday in May 2012 saw Germany produce nearly half of its electricity from solar. Given the long life of power plants—often measured in decades—this rate of change is phenomenal. Again, five years ago, total global photovoltaic capacity was just 16 gigawatts. In 2011, the world added nearly twice that—29 gigawatts—of new capacity."
Note this article is from October 2012, two years ago. Renewable installations have skyrocketed, with subsidies far below what oil, gas, and other fossil fuels are provided with.
Those oil, has and coal subsidy numbers are completely bogus if they are generated from the iea numbers. Iea is just a solar/wind lobbying front - and the bulk of the numbers are made from countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran directly subsidising the cost of petrol for their citizens.
It is laughable for anyone to suggest that oil, coal or gas energy is subsidised when these numbers are calculated on wooly figures like access to land, or tax deductibility of research - the same rules that apply to all companies, software companies included.
The simple fact is that oil, gas and coal energy generates a magnitude more tax revenue than it ever gets in irritating or indirect subsidies, while the 'renewables' sector only ever takes subsidies and doesn't return net tax. This is plainly obvious based on the per mw/h cost of these technologies - there is no magic formula involved in selling something below average cost of production an making a profit, no matter how much volume you do.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to bring government subsidies for renewable into the discussion, you also have to consider the externalized cost of legalized pollution. The only defensible calculation is to look at cost per kilowatt hour excluding government subsidies and including externalized costs. That's the true economic cost of the energy source.
And coal is miserable on that front. I wouldn't be surprised if coal use is a net loss to the economy (i.e. the value of the energy generated by coal is less than the environmental cost of coal use).
I wouldn't be surprised if coal use is a net loss to the economy (i.e. the value of the energy generated by coal is less than the environmental cost of coal use)
That doesn't make any sense. Net loss to the economy? If you were to say a net loss overall, including environmental costs, I might agree.
Environmental costs are part of the economy. The cost of solar includes paying highly-skilled workers to build the panels. The cost of coal includes paying doctors to treat the resulting increase in lung disease, etc.
The problem is that we don't measure economic activity accurately, because we ignore draw-down of capital (human, natural, or otherwise). Fukushima actually increased Japan's GDP for a quarter, because the damage-response activity gets counted in GDP while the loss of physical capital does not. Fossil fuel use suffers from this problem in two ways: 1) the value of the capital removed from the ground isn't counted (i.e. nobody counts selling off their family furniture as net positive income, but resource-rich countries count selling off oil or minerals as such); 2) the loss of human and environmental capital is ignored (strip mining mountains causes rain to wash away river banks, and that's money directly out of someone's pocket).
Even then, it's not a net loss to the environment.
Coal is an energy dense naturally occurring product. The environmental damage from coal relates to mining, shipping and burning it. The environmental benefits of coal are that extraction, transport and burning doesn't happen to other things - ie, biomass, otherwise known as timber.
England has more forest now than it has for centuries, because a more energy dense substitute for energy was extracted (coal). In many developing countries, access to coal would be a net benefit, because it would reduce clearing and burning of vegetation, and because the ensuing affordable energy allows for more intensive food production, and the keeping of food inventories, further lessening the pressure on the environment.
Of course, everything that applies to coal also applies to natural gas even more so, and obviously to fusion even more than that. But this meme of 'coal is evil and must be stopped' ignores the reality of the situation and completely ignores the benefits of efficient energy production, especially in the case where real, persistent and preventable environmental damage is taking place because there is a lack of efficient energy productin.
Being able to externalize pollution is a subsidy. Accounting for externalized costs, coal is about parity with wind in terms of cost, though gas is ahead of both.
Agreed, but with the price of oil headed below $80/barrel, shale and other fracking operations that are expensive to operate are now going to operate at a loss (causing some producers to go bankrupt). You're going to see the cost of natgas dip down, and if enough producers go out of business, jump back up to new highs as production will have dropped quite a bit.
There's plenty of details left out but it sounded like Mrs. B was paying the bills, but wasn't happy about it. There was a hint that Mrs. B was "sick" so perhaps she was under doctor's orders to remove the mold/animal feces/garbage/vermin/etc that may be present in her home. Alternatively, sometimes people are ordered by home inspectors to clear out their homes enough to bring them up to code or face condemnation.
The actual process is, by and large, taking everything to the dump. There do exist some hoarders who keep clean homes and for whom an estate sale could make sense, but many/most have homes that are pretty much garbage pits.
Source: a close relative of mine was a hoarder, and I've watched way too many hoarding shows.
The risk of sickness, in these cases, can be a serious concern. My next door neighbor was a hoarder, or so the neighborhood found out upon his death. He was allowing wild animals to live in his house; along with a dog that was located in the mess almost a week after he died.
His nephew, who ended up taking care of the cleaning and refinishing, told me he contracted Toxoplasmosis from the accumulated animal feces. I accidentally let that fact slip to the first cleaning crew that was working in the house (without masks) and I didn't see them return after that.
I expect every situation is slightly different. A couple of blocks from here a woman died and her son paid to have the house cleaned out. (it was eventually condemned) My wife helped her uncle move into an apartment and helped clean out his house so that he could rent it out (additional income to cover his costs).
There was an interesting truth in there. The longer you wait to get rid of something, the more it will cost you. I'm sure it would make for an excellent priceonomics story to look at things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose. Some don't quite hit zero, but a lot of the stuff in her uncle's house had gone past it into the region of pay someone to haul it away territory.
things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose
I'm a part of the hobby machinist community and this comes up quite a lot because many retirees have (literally) tons of heavy machinery in basements and garages. When your 5,000lb manual lathe that cost $50,000 brand new is now only worth its weight in scrap iron (about $500?) but it will cost $2,000 to call a rigger to take it away, that's a problem for whomever you leave behind when you die.
It's bad enough when it's just one or two items, but I've seen hoarder symptoms in many hobby machinists/machine collectors and I feel quite sorry for the wives and children of some of these guys that will be left to deal with the aftermath.
This is key, and at least in the bay area there are enough folks who are crazy enough to rescue a "free" Hardinge lathe for the cost of hauling it out. But you also need an aging machinist, who probably paid top dollar for it, and it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" to let it go for nothing. The flip side is that the "kids" who are clearing out Dad's basement don't realize that a machine tool is a machine tool is a machine tool and so they sell it for scrap rather than post an ad on Craigslist or something. An old bridgeport can look worthless and still be a quite useful, especially with tooling included.
> it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" [to the original purchaser]
If this is the case, how can it have depreciated down to $0? I feel like I missed a key concept somewhere. With all the functionality of a new lathe, it must be worth something over the value of its materials as scrap... right?
Most machine shops (production shops at least) are not purchasing new manual machine tools. Manual machine tools, even tool room (i.e. high precision) machines, like mills (and shapers) and lathes represent little or no value to commercial enterprises due to the labor costs and productivity relative to CNC machine tools.
Thus, there are an abundance of used manual machine tools on the market, now they are irrelevant to the manufacturing industry. They remain difficult and expensive to move. They are very heavy take up lots of space, and may have special electrical power requirements. Their capability is also a function of tooling, which may, or may not be readily and cheaply available when obtaining the machine. So, despite the bargain that used manual machine tools represent, they are not likely impulse purchases.
If I had the space, I would love a Monarch 612. You can get them for scrap prices, but its just far too impractical to consider.
A manual tool that can still hold the same tolerances it did when it was new, in the hands of a skilled machinist, is worthless. Because a Haas machining center[1] can hold the same tolerances with an operator who has a 2 year certification degree.
So machine shops don't want (or need) the old manual tools, and yet they still work fine. Great way to build small arms on the cheap :-) If I ever retire to a ranch with space for a machine shop I'll collect these sorts of tools.
Short version is the market is not smooth and has very asymmetric knowledge and gaining the knowledge the hard way with measurement instruments is a time consuming specialized skill.
I know all about the condition of the bearings in the headstock of my lathe... you most certainly don't and if you're wise you'll hedge your bets.
Also the market is fragmented. I like screwing around in my shop and do not care about revenue per hour generated. A job shop only cares about revenue per hour generated. I don't think the markets are going to make sense to each other, but people insist that selling machine tools is selling machine tools and it doesn't matter if the buyer is a for profit shop or an amateur steam engine tinkerer, unfortunately it does matter, a lot.
And edited to add, skilled people can see hidden value. Sure the ways are worn out on that worthless lathe and that worthless lathe had a trashed QC gearbox but hoarder dude knows how to combine the parts from both and sell the one good one for $2000. True, individually each is worth $0, but combined, with a skilled repair man willing to put in maybe 100 hours of hard labor... And tragically I've seen some semi-hoarding situations where the guy just gets too old... he could make that $2K which would be really helpful for a retired guy's budget, but doc just said no lifting anything and no standing for long periods, so other than praying for an apprentice, it'll sit there till the estate sale.
It has degraded functionality, worn bearing/tolerances etc. and will require some amount of maintenance or work to keep it going. i.e. it might be fine, or it might be fine with some applied effort by a knowledgeable person with more time then money.
Those things play off against the costs of "buying" the machine for a non-nominal sum - and also the likelihood of a quick sale.
I tried this once with a very large pen plotter (6' wide). The sole bidder on eBay had not read the description and was unable/willing to work out shipment for themselves.
Note that this was before there was Craigslist in the area.
If you have a house absolutely full of junk, it has to get cleaned out sometime. Either before the hoarder dies, if someone is trying to help them get their life straight, or after the hoarder dies, because the heir of the property will want to get some value and you can't sell a house that is full of stuff.
Based on the article, no, they don't throw away what they can sell or salvage. He talks about this. Whatever isn't valuable, I'm sure they throw away.
This is one of the the few cases where Clayton Christenson's insights on disruption apply. Insieme was founded on the premise of trying to disrupt Cisco's existing business because Cisco cannot effectively do so from within.
While I was reading about the daily emails, I couldn't help but think that the slow web was just marketing speak for their chosen technical infrastructure. Ie. they run a midnight CRON job that parses all the emails because that's easy/cheap.
