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Some experts suggest Musk could use a tempered second-in-command to smooth over such matters and bring Tesla out of its growing-pains stage. |
In a recent article for Harvard Business Review, Stanford University adjunct professor Steve Blank praised Musk’s pioneering spirit, but — citing visionary but failed General Motors founder William Durant — suggested that perhaps it’s time for a steady hand to execute the comparatively “boring” part of growing a compan... |
There is some evidence the company realizes it may need to moderate its famously strident tone. |
Musk himself even shocked some observers by walking back statements he had made over the years about how a huge leap in automation would be a hallmark of Tesla's factories. |
Understanding Musk's approach means acknowledging the "move fast and break things" tech culture that helped create his first fortune at PayPal and has informed some of the brash moves of tech company peers ranging from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to Uber's deposed CEO Travis Kalanick. |
But it carries risk. After all, an act-first-ask-questions-later approach got Uber co-founder Kalanick forced out last year over toxic cultural and policy issues and recently landed Zuckerberg in front of Congress over serious privacy concerns. |
It remains to be seen if those prove cautionary tales for Musk or whether his larger-than-life personality — and considerable track record at disrupting entrenched industries — will keep him in a defensive crouch. |
Musk, Vance adds, "has definitely reached full-on Steve Jobs status at this point, complete with a following of true believers." |
Those include not only diehard fans and owners of his Tesla automobiles but also admirers of his forays into rocketry (SpaceX's Falcon rockets have Mars in their sights) and mass transportation (his hyperloop-inspired Boring Company vision calls for a remaking of underground commuting). |
It is perhaps that unflagging support of believers, as much as his own personality, that could keep Musk from allowing Tesla to evolve into the kind of mainstream company that is measured and, when necessary, apologetic in the face of criticism and tragedy. |
Follow USA TODAY tech writer Marco della Cava on Twitter @marcodellacava. |
What's left to say? No kicker in NFL history has made more field goals than Vinatieri. |
Now all that's left is the league's all-time points record. He's just 25 shy. The milestone should fall in the next month. |
Credit Hines, the smallest player on this roster, for turning Sunday's game around. His 14-yard touchdown grab in the corner of the end zone over Tyrann Mathieu gave the Colts life, and momentum. |
He'd catch another with 45 seconds left that pushed the game to overtime. |
Without a doubt, the biggest day of Hines' young career. The rookie proved he can make the big play when the Colts are hurting at receiver. |
Six catches for 56 yards, most of which came during the decisive second half rally by the Colts, and his first career touchdown. The kid who wasn't sure if he'd make the team at the end of the preseason just proved he can play in this league. |
After no catches in the first half, Rogers finished with 11 grabs for 85 yards, easily the best day of his career. |
Imagine if this guy had time to throw — like he did for stretches in the second half Sunday. Luck finished with a career-high in completions (40) and passing yards (464) and lit up the Houston defense when it mattered late. |
Darius Leonard will get the headlines, deservedly so, but Walker is quietly playing good football from the middle linebacker spot. He had 10 tackles (two for loss) and a sack Sunday. |
While the pair faced as tough a challenge as there might be in football -- that'd be J.J. Watt on one edge and Jadeveon Clowney on the other -- there were far too many times when Luck was under pressure before he could even get to his second read. Though they steadied during the second half, allowing the Colts to get o... |
An inexcusable mistake for Kelly, and a rare one. His botched snap in the first quarter essentially gifted the Texans a touchdown. |
"That’s six points (and it) takes the momentum away," he said. "It was really sledding uphill for a while there. A critical error on my part." |
Talking to you, Denzelle Good (false start and a hold), Chris Milton (roughing the kicker), Carroll Phillips (illegal use of hands), Eric Ebron (false start), Le'Raven Clark (holding), Quenton Nelson (holding) and Mo Alie-Cox (you guessed it -- holding). |
Mark Abbott (left), a distant relative of Regina sports legend and war hero Capt. Edward Lyman "Hick" Abbott, poses with Scott Veber, creative director and curatorial associate, holding Hick Abbott's war medals at the Hockey Hall of Fame next to the Abbott Cup, which was named in his honour after his death in the First... |
Like hockey players working together in a bid to score, it took a team effort to finally bring the wayward military medals of a Regina sports legend and war hero back into the hands of family. |
“I’m ecstatic we’ve got them back,” Mark Abbott said in a recent interview. Abbott is a distant relative of Capt. Edward Lyman Abbott – best known as “Hick” Abbott. |
The medals, acquired this month by the family, are now on loan to the Hockey Hall of Fame. They’ll soon join the Abbott Cup, also named in Hick’s honour, as part of an exhibit there marking the First World War. |
Leslie Cote, whose grandmother was Hick’s sister, has also loaned an identification bracelet the soldier had fashioned from a French coin shortly before he died in battle. |
Lauded after his death as “one of the greatest hockey players that this Dominion ever saw,” Hick, a right winger, helped the Regina Victorias or Vics hockey team capture the Allan Cup in 1914. He was also a member of the Regina Rugby Club (predecessor of the Saskatchewan Roughriders) that won the 1913 western Canadian ... |
Enlisting in 1915, the 24-year-old law student then went on to distinguish himself in the field of battle. He was awarded a Military Cross in July 1917 “for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty.” A bar was added three months later after he led a raid on enemy trenches despite being outnumbered. When he was killed... |
For several years, Thomson of St. George, Ont., has worked to take “valour off the market” by finding family, legions and museums who might have an interest in a particular set of war medals that are up for sale. In 2012 Thomson was in contact with a Quebec man who planned to sell Hick’s medals. Thomson shared the stor... |
Cote, who stumbled upon the article earlier this year, only then realized the medals were still around and spoke with the Leader-Post in April for an article. |
Mark Abbott, in Guelph, Ont., never knew about Cote, of Nepean, Ont., or the medals until one day before Remembrance Day he found the Leader-Post article quoting Cote – rerun as part of a Postmedia memorial to the First World War. Mark’s grandfather George Abbott was Hick’s cousin. Two weeks after Hick’s death, George ... |
After Mark connected with Cote and Thomson, a meeting to buy the medals was recently arranged with the seller. “I wanted to shake his hand and thank him,” said Mark, noting he didn’t have to sell the medals, prized by collectors, to the family. As for the seller’s price and his name, they’re keeping that to themselves. |
Wanting to preserve Hick’s legacy, Abbotts’ descendants opted to loan the medals to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Mark represented the family at the handover, and Thomson brought his friend Walter Gretzky. |
PARIS, March 6 (Reuters) - Retailer Carrefour is hoping blockchain-based technology will improve checks on the standards of its food products, as it prepares a major overhaul to tackle competition from Amazon, Leclerc and others. |
Carrefour is among several leading companies tapping into the growing use of blockchain in order to track where products come from, as consumers increasingly look to ensure that products meet standards regarding ethics and general safety. |
Carrefour, Europe’s largest retailer, said on Tuesday that the use of blockchain would enable shoppers in France to trace where certain food products are sourced, and added it was extending its use of such technology in this capacity. |
Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is a shared record of data kept by a network of computers, rather than a trusted third party. |
Last year, Nestle, Unilever, Tyson Foods and other large food and retail companies joined an IBM project to explore how blockchain technology can help track food supply chains and improve safety. |
BMW and a London-based start-up company also said this week they would use blockchain to prove batteries for its electric vehicles only contain clean cobalt. |
Carrefour will extend the use of blockchain to honey, eggs, cheese, milk, oranges, tomatoes, salmon and hamburgers by end-2018. It currently uses the blockchain programme to trace the production of free-range chicken in the Auvergne region in central France. |
Consumers can use a smartphone to scan a code on the package to obtain information at each stage of production, including where and how the chickens were raised and what they were fed as well as where the meat was processed, added the French company. |
Carrefour is also currently conducting blockchain tests to improve tracing the source of food products in China and could expand it to other countries. |
Alexandre Bompard, who took over as Carrefour’s CEO in July, unveiled in January a five-year plan to boost profits and sales. |
The plan entails overhauling Carrefour’s French hypermarkets and expanding online operations, with a pledge to invest 2.8 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in digital commerce by 2022. |
The group, which has struggled for years to become less reliant on its French hypermarkets, has promised to revamp its range of food, as customers demand healthier products. |
Carrefour is targeting 5 billion euros in organic food sales by 2022, compared to 1 billion euros generated at present. |
The words jump off the page of the January 2013 staff report to the Toronto Transit Commission. |
Certainly, it couldn’t be describing the SRT, the Rodney Dangerfield of Toronto’s transit lines, the most disrespected 6.4-kilometre stretch of transit corridor in the system, the object of so much scorn that governments are prepared to spurn it at a cost of billions of dollars. |
“The service has been very successful at attracting ridership and has been operating over capacity for a decade,” the report continues. |
The same RT that’s been left to fall apart — abandoned like the discarded toy of some rich kid with eyes fixed on a shiny new plaything? |
What? They can’t buy new trains? |
But their political masters ignored the plea and ruined a good thing that the rest of the world came to embrace. |
Now the Scarborough RT is so rickety, so rundown, so unloved, that to speak highly of it in its birthplace is to elicit ridicule. Vancouver bought the RT technology the same time as Toronto. It’s expanding its near 50 kilometres of SkyTrain service, again. Here the RT’s public image is that of a dinosaur. |
A number of transit experts are risking extinction. They claim Toronto should not be debating whether it’s best to replace the RT with a subway or an LRT. Neither is wise. Both are a waste of valuable transit dollars. Billions, in fact. |
The best route is to fix up the RT. In fact, one option might be to expand the technology — now branded a mini-subway — to the Eglinton Crosstown and Sheppard and Finch LRTs for a viable, low-cost network that is suitable for the lower ridership in those corridors. |
“TTC could save $2 billion by refurbishing and extending the Scarborough RT rather than throwing it away and building a subway that will do much the same thing,” says Michael Schabas, who’s authored an extensive report for the Neptis Foundation. |
David Crowley, a former TTC bureaucrat and retired consultant and transit planner, smiles at the irony of the RT. When it was first sold to Toronto, as an upgrade to the streetcar plan already under construction for the corridor, the argument was that “Scarborough was too good for the second-class LRT.” Now the subway ... |
Federal politicians won’t hold news conferences to herald the purchase of new RT trains. Provincial candidates don’t get elected on promises to refurbish Ontario-made technology. City councillors turned transit commissioners garner votes fronting for subways. |
So Torontonians will be dinged an average $41 per year for decades to pay for a subway that will run half empty for decades, ridership estimates predict. And the wasteful expenditure occurs because commuters have grown to hate a RT service left to fall apart. |
Last July, Bernhard Steglich travelled to Toronto from Kingston, Ont., to get his unpopular pro-RT message heard. And now that he had the attention of a Toronto Star journalist, the clatter and noise from the object of his endearment was too much for the retired transit specialist, and one of the engineers who first so... |
This is intolerable, he shouted, above the clamour of steel on tracks. How could the TTC allow the line to so deteriorate? It’s almost as if they want it to die of neglect, he offered. |
The arranged marriage between the TTC and the Scarborough RT was one of convenience, not love. The Ontario government forced the union and muted protestations by picking up the tab. |
The Scarborough RT was to be a demonstration project and the world was the marketplace. Vancouver bought in. So did Detroit’s People Mover. New York’s JFK airport uses the technology. Projects are in scores of countries as Bombardier bought out the crown corporation. |
Steglich, then an engineer with a government agency set up to showcase the new automated train system and technology, failed to arouse passion among TTC officials in the early 1980s. Service began in 1985. Steglich hasn’t stopped trying. |
Only now failure to listen could cost the city at least $1 billion. No, make that $2 billion. And counting. |
Essentially, there is nothing wrong with the RT that a little tender loving care can’t solve, Steglich says. The Transit City plan to replace it with an LRT is misguided. To build a subway, as currently planned, is overkill and a colossal waste of money. And if you think the retiree’s head is gathering water, consider ... |
Back in Kingston after his ride on the RT with a journalist, Steglich fired off a letter of complaint to TTC chief executive Andy Byford. “In summary, the ride was horrible, mostly because of the unacceptable high noise,” he wrote and urged Byford to repair the system. |
How could anyone love the Scarborough RT when the TTC kept talking about it being at the end of its normal life? Talk like that has doomed the RT, Steglich says. |
The TTC is using the same 28 trains it bought for the RT in 1985. Vancouver has changed and upgraded theirs since. In fact, the RT has shown its superiority by continuing to run, despite the neglect and failure to upgrade. |
For example, the subway system purchased the H6 subway cars around the same time as the RT trains. The last of those subway trains were retired last summer, replaced by the new trains. Vancouver’s system has new trains, including walk-through versions like the new subway cars. |
At a cost of $150 million per kilometre, the TTC can expand the RT by four kilometres up to Sheppard. Add another $400 million to retrofit and upgrade the system and the total is $1 billion, less than half the LRT and a third of the subway cost, Steglich says. |
So Steglich sends letters to the TTC, Metrolinx, the minister of transportation, the premier, MPPs, city councillors. He has a stack of letters with polite responses. But no one is listening. |
Mitch Stambler, TTC’s head of strategy and planning, knows how Steglich feels. His report to the TTC in 2006 outlines all the points. It argued for urgent upgrades and refurbishing of the RT. For about $360 million, TTC would have the system running like new with public acceptance akin to Vancouver’s SkyTrains. |
But almost overnight “the political landscape changed,” he tells the Star. |
A year later, then-mayor David Miller introduced the Transit City LRT plan as a network of routes, including the Scarborough RT. This was the chance to bring the orphan RT line into the transit family. TTC agreed. |
We all know how that turned out. Another pharaoh rose up in Egypt, er Toronto. And he wanted subways instead of LRTs. So the subway option everyone considered “overkill” or “overbuild” for a corridor barely dense enough for a fully separated LRT or RT, became a political talisman. |
Projected ridership numbers fluctuate to match political designs. Costs are understated to prop up shaky options. Votes are traded to deliver seats for threatened political parties. And the RT technology has so vanished from political consciousness that it is not even an option presented to the people during public con... |
And the average Toronto homeowner will be dinged $41 a year for decades to pay the premium on a project the experts excoriate. |
History shows no one pays for such shameful, indefensible hubris — except you know who. |
In Christian devotional writings it is common to come across the phrase, "the problem of prayer." |
The fact that prayer has problems is widely acknowledged, and the one that gets the most attention is the problem of unanswered prayers. |
For example, last Sunday morning, more than 25 local churches converged at our county fairgrounds for a combined service of prayer. It was quite an undertaking. The logistics were complicated, but there was a genuine sense of anticipation. People had been praying for months in advance of the service, and one of the pra... |
Gratefully, the heavy storms that passed through the area missed us, but we were praying for more than that -- we had asked for comfortable temperatures and a light breeze. Instead, it rained cats and dogs. |
Why did God not answer our prayers in the way we asked? For that matter, why does God not answer all our well-intentioned prayers in the way we ask? "Heal Mary of the cancer, Lord." "Help my daughter's husband come to his senses and halt the divorce." "Don't let my child get mixed up with the wrong friends." We pray, b... |
Devotional writers have offered helpful insights into this most obvious of problems. It is not insoluble, nor is it, at least from my perspective, the most serious problem related to prayer. The way God answers is less a problem than the way we ask. We must learn that prayer is more than the words we say or think in Go... |
We may say, "Hallowed be thy name," while our life's prayer is, "My name be respected." We can say, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," even as our life shouts, "My authority be established, my desires be gratified." We might recite, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," while our life demands, "I want th... |
A person's life is a prayer, a request -- and maybe even a curse. A life repeats its particular message over and over, parrot-like, to the heavens, though most of us are unaware of what our life is really communicating. But God understands the language of our lives. He hears our real voice. |
What does God hear people say in their real voice? Some say, "Just leave me alone. Leave me alone." Others repeat idiotically, over and over, "It's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair." Still others say, again and again, like a broken record, "My will be done," to all eternity. On the Day of Judgment the real messag... |
St. James describes the person whose lips say, "Thy will be done," but whose life cries, "My will be done" as "double-minded" or (more literally) "double-souled." He says that person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. And that makes sense. Which request should God listen to -- the one that rises from ... |
We'd like to think we would be happy and good if God would just answer our prayers, but I suspect we would be neither. God's answers will not contribute to our goodness and happiness as long as our words and lives are requesting contradictory things. Bringing our words and lives into alignment might just be the most im... |
-- Shayne Looper is the pastor of Lockwood Community Church in Branch County, Michigan. Read more at shaynelooper.com. |
Claman on Call: FBN’s Liz Claman with an after-hours web exclusive on the markets, the Federal Reserve, the dollar, oil prices and FedEx earnings. |
The Fed lifts off and takes the markets with it! Exactly seven years to the day after cutting interest rates to historic lows, the Federal Reserve took flight, hiking rates by a modest .25%. |
Stocks built on triple-digit point gains Monday and Tuesday as the Dow moved into rally territory to close up 224 points. The S&P rose 29 points to become positive for the year and the Nasdaq gained 75 points. |
The dollar showed an immediate reaction to the move, strengthening against the euro and yen. |
Treasuries also spiked on the decision; the 2-year yield climbed to 0.984%, its highest level since May 2010. |
The 10-year yield also reached 2.28%, its highest level since December 3. |
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