"All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get" I used to wonder this. I read the religious answer to this relies on the concept of infinitude: what if an infinite god can invent an infinite number of exciting new... things to do?
The traditional concept of an 'embodied' resurrection (as opposed to ghosts playing harps) makes me lean towards: yes (eg the gut is part of the body). Who knows though, it's a fun question!
yeah it is :) Like, do we eat in heaven? If not, then all our little passengers must also be immortal in their resurrected form. But part of the biome is the dead bodies of those critters, and those dead bodies also affect our mood (chemistry doing its thing). So how does this work? Does heaven automatically maintain the correct chemistry in our guts to maintain our emotional and hormonal stability with needing the actual biome? Or does it maintain the biome at the correct chemistry without needing the actual ecosystem?
And other parts - do the bugs that live on our hair follicles come with us? Does hair even grow in heaven?
John's vision of heaven in the book of Revelation includes both the wedding feast of the Lamb and the trees of life that will bear 12 different fruits in season. Jesus also ate fish a few times after his resurrection to demonstrate the physicality of his resurrected body. So there is the concept of eating in the resurrected paradise of the new heavens and the new earth.
I don't understand: Who's lending the $2B in situations like this? Wouldn't they be worried that the above situation (company gutted, then going down the drain) is going to play out and they won't get their $2B back? Or is that the root problem with this whole YC submission: banks are being hit by defaults because of this exact problem?
It's from the rapid exploitation of an asset. If I have a cow, I can milk the cow or kill the cow. If a cow costs $1, maybe I can get $5 worth of milk over the cow's lifespan, or I can kill the cow immediately and get $2 of meat. The man with $100 who buys all the cows in town and kills all of them doubles his money in a short timespan, but now there's a shortage of both meat and milk next season.
That is the exact problem. The people who put up the $2B thought they were safe - after all they were putting up money to buy a successful profitable business.
Problem is they didn’t really understand the business and trusted the PE guys to keep running it well…
BMW resale values make it very clear: these cars are actively hostile (in many many ways) to their owners the second they go out of warranty. Pity, their interiors are lovely. In the long term, is this strategy going to work out for them? I won't buy another one. I know... anecdata :)
A friend of mine used to buy the first model of any new and hot BMW. He'd know the specs better than the sales people and he spent a fortune on them.
They also spent more time in the shop with electrical gremlins than any car that I've ever seen. One of our employees insisted on a Mini, which is also BMW as their lease car. No other car we had had that much trouble. BMW is a crap brand that used to make very good cars. Mercedes is getting there. Neither of these will survive in the longer term if they don't somehow get back to their roots: making safe and reliable vehicles with good resale value. But for both companies the problems are in the same domain: they never got the hang of software.
> Neither of these will survive in the longer term
German government will do everything possible to prevent these companies from failing, no matter how bad the situation gets. This means that current management can simply apply the "next quarter" strategy without any realistic downside.
Probably more of a gimmick than a strategy. In the grand scheme of things in cars a pretty minor one too. Replacing a panel and a bolt vs. replacing more complex components that have proprietary firmware, wiring harnesses, 3d printed/molded components with very complex design and tolerances, etc. A lot of that is business as usual across the industry.
The key issue here is that repairability is currently not really factored into the sales value of the car. That's a bit naive of course because it actually does impact the second hand value of a car. For example, MG makes nice cars but they have a bit of a reputation for needing lots of repairs under warranty. That reduces their second hand value and therefore also impacts their new value. You can get some really good deals on second hand ones. But the repairs might add up. That's why the second hand value is so low.
Lease companies buying new BMWs to lease them out to high salaried executives expect to be able to sell these things on 3-5 years later and get a decent second hand value. If the car then has a reputation for being a bit difficult and expensive to work on (like MG), that is going to reflect in the second hand price. And the lease price. Mostly lease companies just pass that on in the lease price. That works for BMW until more competitive vehicles show up that can be leased at a lower cost.
A few quirky bolts won't move the needle here. They aren't going to get rich selling them or the tools that go with them. It's just a bit of minor friction for car repair shops. If they see enough BMWs in their shop, they'll get the damn screws and tools. It's not that different than Apple using custom screws on their devices. Every phone repair shop has the tools now.
BMW used to be extremely good and very repairable/upgradeable.
They have clearly lost their way. Seems like a fundamental loss of confidence in their ability to produce leading technology, and instead feeling like they must defensively focus on blocking and extracting maximum funds from customers, both with costly "authorized-only" repairs and subscriptions for heated seats.
And even for their older cars, most parts have gone NLA (no longer available), sending prices through the roof if you can find them at all! At least Porsche and Mercedes have programs to manufacture new parts for their old cars...
(My E39 M5 was one of the last user-repairable BMWs, but it's getting very expensive. On the other hand, it's driving a significant market for regular people designing and building replacement parts, whether 3D-printed, CNC'd, or homemade)
I believe this is already what happens with Volkswagen - recently I had my brakes replaced by an independent mechanic, and they had to charge me $50ish for some software lock as part of the process.
Disabling and then reenabling the EPB is part of doing a rear brake job not some optional extra, very cheeky (IMHO) to charge extra for that. It's also possible to do it without a VAGCOM tool, but requires removing the EPB motor so the piston can be pushed back and then manually turning the motor to the disengaged position so that it can be refitted.
Is it worth mentioning that there are almost countless Chinese EV brands nowadays? I wonder if Apple was really trying. I’m sure it’s difficult, of course, but it seems like every week there’s a new car manufacturer. To quote Clarkson ‘how hard could it be’ ;)
Maybe they tried and didn’t find that they could be competitive with the hundreds of Chinese EV producers. The market was crowded, and they didn’t see what special value they could add? I mean, it’s already cliche that xiaomi decides to release one, but they released a heat pump as well, their stores in the mall are pretty confusing.
Interestingly enough if apple really wanted they could acquihire one of the currrent EV brands and do a beats/siri on it.
Theres probably a lot of churn currently before the field stabilises , and probably the entry point for a new entrant would be currently closing.
Yeah, even the industrial design angle seems a bit on the wane.Most likely move to open a new product lineand integrate it into the apple ecosystem.
At this point they havent had any new product lines or innovations rather than thinner and custom chip designs , if they want to go that way.Although i think a better fit for them would be one of the humanoid robot firms and apply some of that industrial design they are(were) famous for.
I guess I could go with an apple bot...especially if they partner with someone that really does AI. The Chinese techs however are better positioned to do this, even if a trade war cuts off access to the USA, they still have the rest of the world. One wonders what could have happened if Google didn't get rid of Boston Robotics.
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