The release announcement on the forum at https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2369... lists what is new. AI is obviously a lot of the focus when it comes to talking about the product, (and in the current environment that is no surprise), but is still only a small portion of what is new in this release.
I'm no expert (relatively new to the field myself), but I was trying to put together some simple videos with animations in Final Cut Pro and decided to try DaVinci Resolve, and I'm glad I did. The Fusion stuff bundled into it is incredibly powerful for animations.
It does take some getting used to, but the amount of tutorial content on YouTube is another reason I'm happy I made the switch. A lot of really good stuff on there. (Search on 'DaVinci Resolve Fusion' to see some examples of it in action if you want to get a feel).
That's why I think the Optimus thing might make sense from a 'market cap' perspective. Tesla is great at innovation and ramping global manufacturing for new tech. Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.
I do think 'self driving' is still their 'moat' when it comes to EVs. I use it every day, and nothing else comes close. But other than that, building EVs is becoming a cut-throat slim-margin business. I don't think that's where Elon, or Tesla employees, want to spend their energy.
When Tesla was overpromising self-driving cars, the thing they sold was still a pretty nice car. Even without the magical features, customers were still satisfied with the product.
Now imagine you're selling robots. If the robot "disengages" and breaks 10% of your plates while emptying the dishwasher, you're going to be pissed. There's no fallback to manual mode. It has to work 100% of the time out the gate.
Based on past history, I don't think Tesla has an engineering culture capable of hitting a home run with this kind of frontier technology out of the gate. So they either delay it until it's ready or they launch it prematurely, in which case everyone mocks it and the dream crashes (along with the stock price).
Even optimistically (no pun intended), I don't see Optimus justifying the Tesla share price.
There's plenty of other companies making robots. Robots can either be controlled by AI or by humans. In the case of humans, there's no moat because everyone can do that. In the case of AI, it can either be on device or on a server, but we're already hitting power supply concerns for data centres, rising prices and supply issues for the components for even local servers, and the historical timeline over which hardware and algorithms have become more energy efficient (and the available power envelope) suggests that on-device AI sufficient for an Optimus to get into a non-self-driving car and drive it at some competence score* happens around a decade after that competence is reached by self-driving cars.
It doesn't even matter if your perception on the relative ranking of different self-drive systems is right or wrong, we're still not yet seeing Tesla vehicles do as Musk said in January 2016:
I think that within two years, you'll be able to summon your car from across the country. It will meet you wherever your phone is
> Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.
Kind of yes, the competition, especially from China, is catching up, and exceeding Tesla's offers.
Kind of no - EVs were around for a very long time before Tesla, Tesla's sales pitch (at one point) was that it was a software company not a car company.
On that front - almost every vehicle manufacturer has caught up, and Tesla is still stuck /promising/ a self driving car, but still not delivering.
The Twitter acquisition is widely seen as the marking point where Musk lost his appeal - something that was not smart because, coupled with his foray into politics was an attack on his core market - middle class left of centre people who were buying for the environment.. etc
He poisoned his brand, and Tesla's too (because the two brands, his and Tesla's, were so intertwined)
He lost the impetus in European markets, leaving a dying (for him) US market, and Asia (which is largely interested in Chinese made vehicles).
My Anecdata: In Australia, where I am, it used to be Tesla's were fairly common, now, I think I've seen two in the last week, compared to maybe a dozen BYD (and I am in a middle class suburb)
Does Elon over-hype nearly everything he gets involved with? Clearly yes.
Does he also deliver on some mind-boggling timelines? Well Tesla went from delivering its first cars in 2008 to having the best selling car in the world in 2023, and SpaceX went from not having successfully launched a rocket to delivering about 80% of the world's space payload in roughly the same timeframe. So I'd say that's clearly a 'yes', too.
SpaceX also dropped the cost of kg to space by multiple orders of magnitude, which is a part of the reason they essentially are the space industry now a days. And should Starship deliver we are likely going to be seeing even more orders of magnitude drop in price there.
Elon made some political positions (which he has always hinted at in any case) publicly clear, and the divisive nature of politics in the US which has made a rather vocal minority of people just freak out with regards to him. But the reality is that if he died tomorrow, he would already go down as the Thomas Edison of modern times. And he as of yet still has some years to deliver on Mars which could cement a far greater legacy.
A order of magnitude is a factor of 10x. Multiple orders of magnitude is at least 100x.
SpaceX Falcon 9 has a launch cost of 74 M$ with a payload to LEO of 22,800 kg for a launch cost of ~3,200 $/kg to LEO.
So you are incorrectly claiming that space launch costs were 320,000 $/kg. Elon Musk is a habitual liar, but you should try not to be one as well as it demonstrates your argument to be based in ignorance and deception.
Falcon Heavy reusable is the most $ efficient system at around $1500 $/kg. The Space Shuttle costs were $54,000 $/kg. If you want to nitpick that that's "only" a 97% cost reduction instead of a 99%... well that's the sort of good faith debate I've come to expect from the aforementioned vocal minority in any topic related to Elon, and with all the class you've already demonstrated in your post.
Why are you deceptively bringing up the Space Shuttle? That was never intended to be a serious cost-effective launch vehicle. Also, why are you deceptively talking about 97% and 99% like the difference between 30x and 100x is not a factor of 3?
The Ariane 5, first launching in 2003 which is 7 years earlier than the first Falcon 9 launch, had a launch cost of ~150 M$ in 2015 with a payload to LEO of ~16,000 kg for a cost of 10,000 $/kg. The Soyuz-2, first launching in 2004 which is 6 years earlier than the first Falcon 9 launch, had a launch cost of ~35 M$ with a payload to LEO of ~8,000 kg for a cost of ~4,500 $/kg.
The truth is 3-6% of your claim of 100x cost improvement.
Because the Space Shuttle is what SpaceX replaced. A 97% discount relative to that is what SpaceX has managed, after a commercial profit margin. 99% is 2 orders of magnitude. So you're here bickering over 2% with all the class that one would expect.
No it did not. Nobody launched their commercial satellites on Space Shuttles. Soyuz, Atlas, Proton, Delta, Long March, Ariane; those are commercial launch vehicles. Even considering crewed missions we can look to ISS crew missions which were half Soyuz missions and then entirely Soyuz missions between 2009-2020.
And again, you do not seem to understand how percentages work. If I have a thing that costs 1,000 $ and I find a 99% cost reduction it is now 10 $. A 97% cost reduction means it is 30 $. That is a 3x difference. The difference between 1% and 3% is a factor of 3x. That is half of a order of magnitude right there and here you are claiming it is small.
So you are wrong on history, wrong on comparables, and wrong on math to defend a man who runs a company that is legally, and I quote a actual legal decision: a "greviously reprehensible... grossly racist workplace"[1]. But, you know, racism man good because he slightly lowered the cost of cruise ship internet I guess.
You're engaging in some wild freak out mental gymnastics here. Seriously, just read your paragraph about me not understanding percents, and tell me you don't get hard-core Chewbacca Defense [1] vibes. It seriously reads not only like satire, but pretty good satire! You just need to add a QED to the end. lol
And don't trust flatterbots to argue for you. They hallucinate regularly and just make you look more absurd. The Space Shuttle was flying crewed missions to the ISS until 2011. The reason they stopped is because the Space Shuttle had been retired and commercial crew began, which was ultimately won by SpaceX. Well SpaceX and Boeing in an overt act of insiderism, but Boeing is still - 15 years later - trying to figure out how this whole space thingy works.
The alternatives you mention were never commercially viable against SpaceX. All not only cost multiple times more but come with significantly worse reliability records as well as lacking the payload capacity of something like Falcon Heavy for those missions that require it. And when you look at things like the Soyuz, the sticker price doesn't matter so much as the price companies were obligated to pay. They offered cheap internal launches, and charged dramatically higher rates for foreign launchers - including NASA. By the end NASA was paying $90mil/seat.
Yes, you clearly do not understand how percentages work given that you continue to argue that the difference between 30x and 100x is just "2%".
You are correct that there were Space Shuttle missions to the vicinity of the ISS until 2011. I was talking about ISS crew rotation missions where the last Space Shuttle mission was STS-129 in 2009. The Space Shuttle was still used for ISS assembly flights until 2011. I was using crew rotation missions to highlight that not just commercial satellite launches, but also one of the other important class of missions, crew rotation, also regularly used alternatives to the Space Shuttle disproving your point that the Space Shuttle had some sort of magical monopoly on launches and thus the only alternative to compare against.
You were the one arguing that alternatives cost over 100x more than SpaceX. Even deceptively comparing against the Space Shuttle you were still off by a factor of 3x and comparing against actual competitors your claim is off by a factor of 16x-30x. Your claim is egregiously wrong. Continuing to argue it means you are either completely ignorant or utterly biased or both. I am done here.
I said that the difference between a 99% saving and a 97% was 2%. You're the one engaging in freak out mental gymnastics to try to turn that into 'ACTUAAAALLLY... that's like a 300% difference and the proof is that Elon kicked my dog.'
And no, I obviously know you're just grabbing nonsense from your flatterbot of choice. The tell tale is being easily confused on basic points, making rather nonsensical statements, being oddly precise about irrelevant esoteric details, and then finding yourself in a situation where you're left trying to recombobulate it all back into something sensical, which you're not quite succeeding at. Your post above is borderline incoherent, even moreso than the 97% to 99% = 300% nonsense.
> he would already go down as the Thomas Edison of modern times
A small but important correction - he would be similar to Henry Ford, with capitalistic approach to humans that would make Marx shiver and write second Capital book. Also aligns better with his nazi sympathies.
There isn't a single thing he personally invented AFAIK, but he is a good manager from certain angles and can recognize future value in ways entrenched ivy league managers seemingly cannot. Also a textbook sociopath and few other mental issues, and horrible father for those who care (most should, future of mankind and all that).
Henry Ford literally invented the moving assembly line. He's also the primary reason that we now have a 5 day, 40 hour week as the standard. Prior to him (and his successes with trialing such), the typical work week was 6 days, with 10-16 hour shifts common. Marx, by contrast, achieved nothing of value for the common man, and spent his entire life mooching off Engels' capitalistic successes, while critiquing such. It's trivial to critique systems, but quite difficult to create and build things up in a way that is sustainable and means something.
As for Musk, he completely revolutionized the space industry. In modern times no single person just invents everything around something akin to e.g. the telegraph, but I don't think that really diminishes his impact. It's just a consequence of the fact that a reusable rocket is much more complex than a telegraph machine. But he's quite infamously involved and directing essentially every single step of the process. This is quite different from the detached and profit/metric motivated focus of typical management, but in many ways it's much closer to how things were 'back in the day' rather than a novel discovery. It should go without saying that people running businesses building 'x' should be deeply knowledgeable about 'x'. "Business", as a specialization in and of itself, in modern times is the disease that's killing America.
I would argue that 15 years is not a mind-boggling timeline to go from first car to best selling single model (especially given how few models Tesla has).
Xiaomi Auto reaching a quarter of Tesla's annual output after four years is much more impressive, given it took Tesla until 2019/2020 (8 years, twice as long) to reach that level.
SpaceX is rather more impressive. Unfortunately for everyone, only someone like Musk could have pulled that off: not just the visionary, but also arrogant and litigious enough to sue the US government to reconsider when the government decided against buying from SpaceX. I'm reminded of the phrase "only Nixon could go to China".
I keep this link in my favorites and refer to it every now and again. Still one of the best write-ups I've seen on just have vast the difference is between a naive and well tuned kernel
I'm not a Tesla fanboy, last year was the first time I bought one (new Model Y), but it is by far the best car I've ever owned, and the FSD blew my mind with how much better it was than I expected.
My wife hates Elon, and has a new hybrid Mitsubishi, but she still drives my Model Y all the time because it's just so much better to drive.
Same experience here. Had a 2018 P100D. Absolutely the worst car I’ve ever had. Terribly put together. Awful interface. And so utterly fucking distracting it was a liability.
Got rid of it after it stomped the brakes on an empty road and had a battery issue that took weeks to fix.
I don’t own a car now and don’t want one. I’d probably buy a Polestar next time if I had to get one.
I concur. We were in the market for a new car. I went to Audi to test drive their A4; and it was OK. The sales guy sat in the passenger seat, yakking away.
Next we went to the Tesla showroom. The sales guy just entered some address and told me to press the gas pedal and it would go by itself. Full FSD. And no sales guy in the car. That just blew me away.
I've been playing around with low-level Metal a bunch lately, any many of their docs and samples seem still be mostly in Objective-C/C++ and not Swift, so have been forcing myself to get into it.
At first I had the usual revulsion to the syntax, but after a few days getting used to it, I actually don't mind it at all now. (I still wouldn't say it's "elegant", but I can live with it).
Being Metal shader code is basically C++ anyway, and C++ is a language I'm familiar with, having a couple of .mm files to hold the Objective-C++ for API bridging and working in regular .cpp (and .h) files for the rest is pretty straight forward compared to having to learn Swift. (Especially with all the complaints I've heard about its complexity, including from Chris Lattner himself lately, which aligns with some of the other comments here).
Though to be fair, "Swift seems overly complex so use C++ instead" seems like a tough argument to make with a straight face ;-p
Metal is the last Mac OS framework that was fully done in Objective-C, however contrary to Microsoft, at least Apple does provide first class bindings to Swift.
To this day, .NET is not welcomed on the Windows division, and they rather go out of their way producing stuff like WinRT/UWP with the outcome we all know.
> Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year
Excuse my naive physics, but is there a point at which if you take enough mass off of earth and launch it into space, it would have a measurable effect on earth's orbit? (Or if the mass is still tethered to earth via gravity, is there no net effect?)
Earth weighs about 5972200000000000000000000 kg. They are claiming to plan to launch ~5000000000 kg / year. That's 8x10^-14 %. You'd need some pretty accurate instruments to tell the difference.
