Not comparable at all. The US is one market unless you have a compelling reason to protect your state market. Canada is 10 separate markets with provincial agreements between them - all protecting themselves. Easiest example is Quebec.
The US is the opt-in system where the States regulate everything not specifically allocated to the federation and Canada is the opt-out system where the federal government regulates everything not specifically allocated to the provinces.
Of course it's more complicated -- the US's inter-state commerce clause has been broadly interpreted by the courts.
Gonna try it out on my m1 mbp because of this comment. Been waiting to play alyx forever but I didn't know a way to get mac to work - theres a solution now.
Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
While I agree with that statement -- that is also a lot of jobs. We have a lot of humans -- not every single developer sits in the innovation seat. The fewer the jobs available the less employable humans.
I think that rewrite - if AI enabled - owes its thanks to the legion of individuals who put their code up on the internet in the first place.
I don't think that logic really holds but its pushed by spotify. People used to listen to a lot of varied music -- and theres a lot of ways to do that still without paying for spotify.
Anyways Spotify is just a platform/gatekeeper for record labels to push their products and theres no way that spotify prices ever become static. They will need to continue to push more products through the model to continue to grow and pay for company especially as all the other players have wizened up.
FWIW if you lapse in payment they kill all your downloaded content immediately. Super annoying service. I get why but like 10 days after probably about 10 years of subscription seems like a real jerk move. Even content that wasn't theirs and was mine -- they wiped it. You own nothing.
Japan is so far ahead the rest of the world for quality and innovative heat pumps. Quiet, robust, high efficiency in cold climates. I wish they could bring the prices down though.
I worry in 15 years we will all have crapily made Chinese heat pumps for a fraction of the cost. Noisy, not robust, copying competitor designs not innovating, lower efficiency but easily replaceable. Theres probably an analogy here with software talent and AI but its too early to do that.
I'm a big fan of Chinese lenses. I reach for Japanese and German lenses when I want to take the highest quality photographs that look like the photographs all the other photographers take. When I want to take a picture like you've never seen before I reach for
It's true a $3000 lens from Sony has better optical quality than a $300 lens from China, like take a picture of a starry sky and you will see light rays bounce around a lot more inside the Chinese lens. But in terms of value and innovation Chinese lenses have a place, and many Chinese manufacturers are looking for this kind of opportunity for whatever they make.
China figured out how to make thermal imaging sensors as well. Why would you buy a $4,000 Flir with less resolution when you can get a $400 Topdon. What's funny is now it appears Flir has cut their prices dramatically to compete.
I have Haier Arctic heat pumps that are made in China. They've been great so far. I've also worked with suppliers in Shenzhen for one-off custom electronic devices that would put western companies to shame in their communication, efficiency, turnaround time, cost, and engineering quality. The new transmission I just put in my truck was made in China too.
I never said that Chinese goods are crap. They seem to reside in the higher middle for HVAC. My argument is that if your business is a copy cat and the produce at scale - we cull the talent and model to build truly innovative products - since there isn't funding the innovation.
PRC's been white labelling / JV components for tier1 HVAC brands for 15 years now, they're fine quality/lifespan wise. Flagship PRC heatpump already caught up to JP in HSPF2 @ ~11 (GREE). Either way, more cheap commoditized heat pump = more installations = more aggregate global efficiency - every $ spend on JP premium is inefficient allocation of resources in terms of maximizing global energy savings.
Arguably, PRC price / value engineer is their innovation and by far more MORE important than vs minute efficiency differences. Ultimately it's about TCO and global adoption, if JP can't bring their prices down, if they can't fractionalize cost, then they're doing more harm than good for net transition - there's better things to with that 30-50% premium.
Oh I totally get their game - and its a smart one. Flood the market, own the distribution and servicing and you win the game. I feel like the GREE product is tier 2 but most people don't care. Its not comparable to the well made products - they aren't junk but they aren't quality either. PRC seems to have targeted the broad market - smart move.
Id argue that the PRC price / value engineer is only viable because of the development that the innovations in heat pumps have managed to provide. Can't have one without the other. Though once price / value owns the market - innovation dies.
Midea/GMCC, Gree spend ~5% of revenue on R&D like rest of industry, except they're larger vs JP companies (multiple size of related JP conglomerates & magnitudes larger than JP niche thermal management companies). Also more directly focused on thermal management/hvac (i.e. Gree doesn't have defense/space like Mitsubishi to split R&D). Then factor in PRC PPP, PRC simply spending magnitudes more on R&D and will continue to (involute vs domestic competition). Hence most of the tier1 western suppliers are now using white labelled / rebadged components (compressors etc) that are designed by PRC manufactures.
PRC just doing innovating AND value engineering - they have both. IMO with respect to energy efficiency tech is one of those "any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands". The primary metric for "quality" of energy transition products is efficiency / $, and in that JP fails hard. Only PRC is scaling efficiency / $ effectively, which has much greater value than JP trying to push top end, because frankly that's all they can do. Which has it's economic rational, i.e. TOC in wealthy countries where installation/labour expensive, but its still net, lower "quality" innovation because $ spend on JP premium nets less aggregate efficiency.
I live in the EU and have a heat pump clothes dryer. It takes a little longer than hot air, but it doesn't heat up as much and destroy clothes. It also doesn't take special voltage/plug. Any regular plug will work. All it needs is a drain - no waste heat vent required. Oh, and it's super quiet.
Even if only 50%, that is impressive! That sounds like a pretty good compromise for a slightly longer drying time. The most surprising part to me: The design is "ventless". I cannot imagine how that is possible for a modern dryer. When I was a kid, there was always an outlet from the house that pumped out waste heat from the clothes dryer. What a waste!
I don’t know a lot about heat pumps, but one inefficiency that irritates me is that we are doing opposite things in isolation frequently.
I want to cool the house (so have waste heat) but also want to warm my water, so make heat. In winter I warm my house, except for the fridge where it’s trying to cool its contents.
If there was any overlap or coordination it would surely be possible to have less hardware, working smarter and using less power.
Chinese brands have all but caught up, they're within a few percentage points in performance, but 3-4x cheaper.
The additional cost barrier being you can't self install or Mitsubishi or get any warranty on a self install, which means you'll likely pay 5-10x when you include install.
Inferior quality maybe was accurate 5 years ago. Now they're taking over the global automotive market. Only thing preventing them from pulling another Japan-in-the-90s against the US auto market is americans' love of oversized trucks, tariffs, and import controls. If we had a true market economy, we'd see more BYD's than Teslas (and in most global markets that's already the case).
Yes, you can still get cheap Chineesium crap off Amazon for pennies on the competitor's dollar, but it's no longer necessarily true that Chinese = inferior.
This China craze won't last long. The Chinese PV export market crashed couple months ago(down 30% YoY), and it seems like their domestic auto market crashed too(down ~25% YoY since August).
If you look at the monitor, the Shopify logo fits between the thumb and index finger, I suppose that's the only small thing about Shopify, lol.
All joking aside, I don't think most of us consider Shopify as a small company. I personally hope that Tailwind stays around after this acquisition. I was there when Shopify bought Remix and that project is as good as dead in the water now.
Meh educational system probably lacking but parental support is the missing piece. So many parents just send their kids to school expecting them to auto learn - many reasons why parents dont have extra time --> also screen time addiction. Home environment is pretty big component to success.
i think lack of parental support has been around for ages though, which makes it hard to attribute the very recent and sudden drop in reading comprehension, math scores, etc. to it.
ive had to make pretty significant changes to my courses in the past two years. many teachers aren't, or are making changes slowly, which is causing some difficulty.
I would wager up until mid 00s you had one parent staying at home a lot more // work wasn't all encompassing -> which would probably equate to more attention on child rearing although I admit that is speculative. Also means a bit more attention to regulating screen time / inputs etc.
I.e. Opt in vs Opt out but more complicated.
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