sofon

Project starshot does have a history, beyond this press release. And they have thought through the issues. There's a great youtube video here that goes into the details:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbi1hHPpTjY

They talk about using a 1km^2 earth based laser array to accelerate the craft. They also discuss using a 1W laser on the craft, and using that to transmit data back to earth (with a similar 1km^2 array to receive the signals).

They really seem to have thought through all the issues and come up with difficult, but plausible solutions.

Yes, I think throwing out the CEO of an established company with revenue is quite a bit different than throwing out the CEO of a pre-product startup however.

With a startup, you've invested in the founding team. If you throw them out... you've effectively thrown out a significant part of what you invested in. It also calls in to question your own judgement as an investor. And it reduces your standing in the eye of companies looking for investment.

Overall, unless something really really bad happens you don't want to throw out the founder...

If you just don't have confidence? You either let the investment go, or you try and pump it and get someone to buy you out in a subsequent round.

The only possibility I can see if that someone wants to buy Zoox, they made a really generous offer... but the Zoox CEO blocked the sale. Acquiring company is willing to take Zoox without the CEO to get Zoox out of the market, and acquire the team for their own projects...

Yes, survey data. And to be clear, the world value survey has asked questions covering racism. In particular:

"Would you accept someone of a different race as a neighbour?"

and

"How often do you see racist behaviour in your neighbourhood?"

You could also look at mobility of foreign workers of as opposed to native workers of a similar background. Unfortunately the world value survey results don't really support your case. You'd want the racism broken down by ethnicity I guess if you believe that the Japanese are particularly racist against other Asians.

The refugee figures help support the idea that Japan is more racist (Japan accept far fewer refugees than other countries), but as this is a political issue, rather than based on the reaction of individual Japanese people, it's harder to draw conclusions from this.

But yes, I don't really find a comment by an individual, or unquantified data from wikipedia very compelling.

If that were the case, you'd have a better managed transition.

Ideally you'd have the CEO onboard with this from the start. Alternatively when it came time to boot them, you'd a) already have someone in place to take over b) be able to pay them off sufficiently to not make a fuss, and help you frame it as transitioning to a new role (i.e. they'd stay on as an advisor, move to a COO role etc.).

Why would this be a good plan?

Booting a startup CEO always looks bad in my opinion and would likely concern anyone doing a follow on investment.

ok, so... no data then, just a series of quotes and observations about individuals.

I'd honestly be interested in learning about racism in Japan, and if it is different/worse than other countries. But all that's been presented is anecdotes.

You're talking about the Japanese PM, and it's possible to make a case that current and past PMs have been racist.

That's not the same as saying that the population in general are racist and Asians are oppressed i.e.: "if you're Asian and not Japanese, they look down on you. Read about ethnic Koreans in Japan and how they're oppressed"

So... data that shows that non-Japanese Asians are oppressed in Japan?

On top of that, is there data that shows that racism in Japan is quantitatively worse than other countries?

"The plural of anecdote is not data."

Then present some data other than a wikipedia article which doesn't appear to support your case.

Valued at 3.2B USD, by investors who have just fired him...

It's a sign of how crazy things are when 300M USD can be considered a small amount of money to spend on technology development (particularly for a product that doesn't actually require anything inherently very-very expensive, aside from staffing costs).

"Kentley-Klay, 43, is an improbable entrant into the crowded race to develop self-driving cars. He has no engineering degree, no background in computer science. Through his early 30s, he was a successful artist and designer—creating music videos and ads for major companies like McDonald’s and Birds Eye frozen vegetables."

https://www.forbes.com/feature/zoox-autonomous-cars-taxis/#1...

"In a move that some will call devious and others will call ingenious, Kentley-Klay reached out to some of the biggest names in the field and told them he was making a documentary on the rise of self-driving cars. The plan was to mine these people for information and feel out potential partners."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-tax...

The whole thing seems insane to me. I don't understand why you would fund someone with no tech or business background... I'm sure he hired some good people, but it still doesn't make sense.

As to why the investors booted him? Investors generally don't kick out the CEO unless they did something crazy. It doesn't look good for the investor, and it makes it investment look bad (and follow on investment less likely).

I'm curious as to why automated translation seems to be so bad for Japanese<->English.

Is Japanese really such an outlier?

English <-> Chinese seems more reasonable. Translation between European languages I would guess is an almost solved problem, but how about between language groups in general?

For reference, it appeared to be 20cm away from the transmitter and held exactly facing it.

In the video she holds the phone 20cm from the charger, and directly facing it.

This is a scenario that's well known can work (at high power levels which are not generally legal).

What doesn't work so well is charging off axis and at higher power levels.

This is a school science project level demo...

In case anyone is wondering about the feasibility concerns the FAQ on the web blog is very comprehensive:

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/

Overall, it seems unlikely to work, even for trickle charging phones, under anything but ideal conditions.

And if it's operating at <10% efficiency that will be a disaster for the environment too.

In any case, it sounds like you want one of the inductive charging mats that are already available. My guess is that in real life the performance will be similar.

I don't think blaming "fraud" is really helpful.

If the majority of leave voters failed to investigate the facts that seems like a bigger issue with referendums in general.

Entertaining read. It takes a while, in any business/other relationship to learn to stick to your guns.

Reading this, and somewhat projecting, I would say you lack confidence in some of your decisions. You therefore seemed opened to discussion.

I'd personally never quit a job for a startup with no money. But if I did, I believe that would be on me and I'd be walking into it with the idea that this would be an interesting experience which might not pan out.

Regarding the wedding/holiday. You just need to be firm about what you think is right. "I need to take this time off", "we need to reschedule/cancel as I have an important prior engagement".

If that kills the relationship, well it probably wasn't going anywhere anyway...

It helps that employee costs in India are competitive with China... (92¢, compared with $3.52 in China)

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2014-11-06/india...