So we're taking out regulatory credits but leaving in the CEO award, right? I guess if you cherry pick your one time items you can make any number appear.
This company is worth a trillion dollars, is barely growing, makes no money and is starting to lose share in some markets. I don't think I'm the one that has to do the cherry picking.
Hey there! We're Balena, a startup laser focused on a single goal: enabling every developer to succeed on the new frontier of Edge/IoT computing and building fleets of devices that work as reliably as servers in a datacenter. In the process of creating this bridge, we've built many tools and services, from cloud services (balenaCloud) to desktop utilities (balenaEtcher), to operating systems (balenaOS), single-board computers (balenaFin), and much much more.
Engineers at Balena have the ability to work on issues and features from inception to deployment, from talking to users to solving architectural riddles to learning new technologies as needed. Engineers are empowered to take on a user problem and chase down its solution to any part of the stack, working alone or coordinating other engineers in service of improving users' lives, without regard for internal silos or barriers.
Yep, but with the msft focus on the cloud, their priority is to take from goog.
Additionally, people buying OSX computers isn’t really a bad scenario for Microsoft. MS office is quite popular on OSX and iOS and people spend more on that than they do on operating systems.
If Apple really invested in OSX it could be a threat to windows, unfortunately, combined with the high cost of the hardware, OSX's downslide means it's stuck to its current pro market...
Apple is making investments in OSX: Catalyst, T2 chip /security, Touch bar support, iPad mirroring, airplay, arm64 support (speculating), SwiftUI. Metal/GPUs. Core apps: logic pro, xcode, playgrounds and brining more iOS apps (news, stocks, apple tv app, apple arcade with subscriptions). I also suspect with arm64 will come better cameras (lidar perhaps), beefier GPUs and neural cores. all of this running on macOS.
What kind of investment do you think they need to make to be a threat with Windows? If you think they should be trying to "match" windows with things it does, it would be a bad strategy that isn't winnable. Throwing away money. At least with their current approach they are levaring strengths (verttical integration, mobile dominance, etc) to build something that could leapfrog windows one day. Especially if the user journeys that span into other products (hw accessories, phones, etc)
Tesla has run a factory in Shanghai post-COVID, so far as we know successfully. Also most if not all the other car factories in the US are already operating. Also workers aren't forced to come in. This focus on Tesla is not taking into account all the data equally, unless folks are also outraged at every other factory in the US.
Multiple reports indicate that Tesla workers were told to report to work last week or be fired, and that if they were fired for not showing up, Tesla would not let them claim COVID19 as a reason for their termination (which is a $600/week difference in unemployment benefits for the next 6 weeks).
There was no outrage about other factories because most US factories use more automation than Tesla and workers are generally spaced more than 6 feet apart at "stations" on the assembly line. (See, e.g., the General Mills factories where cereal is made, any other US automaker, etc.)
>Tesla said employees were told to report to work or be fired.
Bullshit. You are confusing different activities that involve not getting paid.
Not showing up for work, the person doesn't get paid, and contrary to your claim (there are no such "multiple reports" unless you are counting reddit comments?) Tesla is being nice and not firing them, but instead putting them on unpaid leave so their job is actually held open for a while. Not even the same ballpark as fired.
Yes there are consequences for unemployment since their job is available to them should they want to do it. This is by law, not Tesla's doing. They aren't terminated by the way… another word for fired… just on unpaid leave, again.
>workers are generally spaced more than 6 feet apart
Bullshit. You are confusing different activities that involve not getting paid.
No, I'm not. Every media article on this, including by Teslerati and other pro-Tesla sites is unanimous on this point.
Not showing up for work, the person doesn't get paid, and contrary to your claim (there are no such "multiple reports" unless you are counting reddit comments?) Tesla is being nice and not firing them, but instead putting them on unpaid leave so their job is actually held open for a while. Not even the same ballpark as fired.
Only someone in Silicon Valley could think that being put on unpaid leave is somehow "being nice" to the employee. Many people live paycheck to paycheck. Also, Tesla wasn't being nice--they were following labor law. If they had terminated those employees without sufficient notice they would have violated state and federal WARN Acts.
This is by law, not Tesla's doing. They aren't terminated by the way… another word for fired… just on unpaid leave, again.
This is false. Tesla asserted that it would challenge any employee's claim that the termination was COVID-related, when the whole reason the factory was shut down was due to COVID restrictions. This is a heinous violation.
That's also the case at the Fremont factory.
This is also false. Employees in the Fremont factory work within 6 feet of each other at multiple stations when the factory is operational. At many stations on their lines, they literally work side-by-side as if they were in a meat-packing plant.
> Yes there are consequences for unemployment since their job is available to them should they want to do it. This is by law, not Tesla's doing
Except it was illegal for Tesla to be opening up early against health department orders, so it seems likely that the law would actually be on the employee’s side. Terminating an employee for refusing to violate lawful government orders is illegal.
Of course, non-unionized factory workers at Tesla may very well not have a lawyer on retainer to consult about this and might feel forced by Tesla’s unlawful threat to go in anyway...
The argument is not moot. Employees can still sue Tesla for making them return to work in violation of a lawfully issued closure order. If any employee gets infected as a result of Tesla reopening, they (Tesla) are not protected by any liability shields that would have applied to another business that waited until it was authorized to reopen.
Balena is laser focused on a single goal: to enable mainstream developers to succeed on the new frontier of Edge/IoT computing in building fleets of devices that work as reliably as servers in a datacenter. In the process of creating this bridge, we've had to build many and varying tools and services, from cloud services (balenaCloud) to desktop utilities (balenaEtcher), to operating systems (balenaOS), single-board computers (balenaFin), and much much more.
The role of product engineer at Balena is for a truly full stack engineer, ranging from talking to users to solving architectural riddles to learning new technologies as needed. Product engineers are empowered to take on a user problem and chase down its solution to any part of the stack, working alone or coordinating other engineers in service of improving users' lives, without regard for internal silos or barriers.
The ideal product engineer has a wide variety of background experience and isn't afraid to learn to use more technologies when needed, but also is comfortable deferring to experts within the team when their particular skills are required.
If you think this role is for you, please let us know of a problem you see in one or more of our products, and how you would improve it. All who submit a non-trivial answer to this challenge are guaranteed to have an interview with a member of our leadership team.
Drop us a line at producteng@balena.io with a CV and your answer to the question, as well as any other relevant info that makes you particularly suitable for the role. We appreciate non-standard backgrounds and encourage you to focus your material on the substance and not on formalities. We look forward to speaking with you!
Being wrong for 12 years and counting is a bit of a concern, no? Also, if he has no credibility, then the points in the article require more scrutiny, we can't just take him at his word, can we? That's why credibility matters.
"quite rightly", "sticking some batteries"... Its fascinating that you do realize that the people who disagree with you have been right, and yet you're not updating your model. Look up Sandy Munro, a car guy's car guy, talking about his teardown of the model 3[1], or even just focus on his comment about the superbottle, and perhaps you'll get a better sense of why nobody has matched the 2012 Model S yet, nevermind the 2019 one.
You have to consider that if a car becomes attractive only after a country removes the 25% VAT on it and then taxes competing products (ICE) up to 100% then the business model of the classic manufacturers still very much makes sense everywhere else in the world where this isn’t the case.
So depending on how you pick and choose the data you want to consider you can paint absolutely any picture you want.
What’s your personal take on why people would go for other new cars that don’t match even a 7 year old model but cost the same(ish)?
I think he is just too sensational. Is this guy doing actual engineering?
From whomever I talked, I hear the same: Tesla's engineering leaves mixed impressions.
One can say that the range is definitely good - Tesla scores very high in getting most range out of kw/h. But things like poor metalworking would be a recall worthy flaw for every other automaker.
For the interior, Model S feels way too American. Compare its interior and an actual luxury car, like a maxed out Benz S600.
Its engineering in overall is nothing groundbreaking, and saying that EVs are way more straightforward to engineer is true. Telsa just stands out as one EV maker that didn't make some "showstopper" omissions, unlike almost every other competitor.
Chinese and Japanese EVs are dead on arrival in US because most of them are really small for Americans... If an American buys an expensive car, it will most likely be a BIG car.
Poor driveabiliy chases other competitors. There are simply not so many makers with experience making 2.5t+ full sized sedans, nor compact car makers which can make a compact car suspension not to croak under 1.7t+ curb weight.
NIO for examples despite making a quite marketable SUV for China was delayed launch for 2 years because their first attempt at making SUV got so much bad reviews from test drivers, that they had to near completely redesign the body and suspension twice. Reportedly, after finding out that live axle is a completely inadequate for a 2t+ vehicle, and that unibody design can't handle the weight of a battery pack.
Leaf had both tiny battery, poor chemistry, and poor thermals.
Bolt - all bad things you normally expect from a US car maker other than Ford.
Mind substantiating the whole "recall worthy metalworking" claim? First I hear of it. Are you sure it's up to date?
All these flaws you talk about on other cars are not accidents. Everyone is running up against the same fundamental tradeoffs, and only one company has done the insane optimization of everything to get to the other side. It's not a matter of just deciding to do so. The nio example you mention for instance, Tesla famously was initially planning to use the lotus Elise body for the roadster, but ultimately had to redesign essentially every part to get to production, since the weight changes invalidated all the assumptions of the original.
Yes, they're not the best at every single thing. But producing the safest car ever for a newcomer is pretty nuts. Producing the most efficient electric car ever is pretty nuts. Producing the best OTA story ever is nuts. Producing the most advanced driver assist feature is pretty nuts. Doing all these things together requires explanation. It can't just be "oh, the others just made bad choices".
> It can't just be "oh, the others just made bad choices".
I'm afraid this is exactly what it is.
When the team works from a bigger setup of existing auto company, they will be held back on most expensive, but necessary design decisions.
In from-scratch EV companies, on other hand, lack of experience in everything else, and lack of manufacturing resources, is usually the origin of failure.
All big misses in EVs in recent years were conventional auto makers making silly stupid mistakes in electric drive trains, and "from scratch" EV makers making cars that are either unmanufacturable, or undriveable.
This a testbook examples of things not being "though through" and "MBA driven development."
Air cooling alone can be fine if battery chemistry is stable enough (lifepo.)
Using a novel battery chemistry in production with highly controlled settings is also fine enough.
Parachuting "big name management specialists" into an engineering project mid-way, and putting novel chemistry battery into an assembly specially designed with LiFePO cells in mind to send a PR signal of how "sophisticated you are," is not fine at all, and is a recipe for disaster.
Critically, this doesn't take into account that the model 3 has the lowest probability of injury [1] of any car ever tested by the NHTSA. Driving a car with a higher probability of injury means you must calculate the cost of a fractional injury and what this might cost you and your passengers in lost time and/or quality of life, nevermind the case where the injury is fatal.
Hey folks, balena.io founder here, just chiming in to mention that Chris is one of our Hardware Hackers in Residence, and if you think that doing HW projects with all sorts of cool technologies and writing them up for the world is your dream job, we're hiring! https://balena.workable.com/j/27A101659C
Happy to answer any balena (or train station sign) related questions, of course :)
I haven't used balena but I have worked with other IoT SAAS companies in the past. All these services seem rather expensive for what you get. Other than creating an easy way to push OS updates to field devices what would I get from your service?
You can't ask a founder this and not expect a pitch, so here goes:
Having built a similar bespoke stack in the past, Balena would have been a steal! It gives you the development, provisioning, build & deployment, configuration, management, and even remote debugging workflows out of the box. On top of that, it's built to require web/cloud developer skills, not embedded skills.
To do that, we have created several companies worth of infrastructure, from a cross-architecture container build system, to a bespoke OS supporting many device types, customized docker engine for embedded use cases, container deltas for bandwidth saving, etc. Even simple things like "how do I make sure my device gets DNS in an arbitrary home network" are incredibly tricky, and balenaOS gets it right almost always.
Which brings me to my next point. We are fanatical about support. We take responsibility for our customers succeeding, which means we constantly find and improve sources of friction. Using Balena gets you that backup team, but most importantly gets you hooked up to the flow of improvements we make all the time. Cloud companies charge $15 per server per month for various devops type services. We do very similar things but for devices that are smaller, more diverse, in tougher conditions, with less reliable networking, and ask for just $1 per device per month.
In other words, when I was in the shoes of our customers, producing even a fraction of the value and piece of mind that Balena provides in house took a lot of work, which was money, and that's not accounting for the time and risk of not getting there in the end. If I found myself in that situation again, knowing Balena and not using it would essentially be negligent. Our most fanatical customers are those who have tried to build something like it themselves, because infrastructure is so easy to underestimate.
Note: I am in no way affiliated to balena, only a happy customer.
As a long time customer of balena, I can assure they are a ton for what you pay for.
* faster development times: git push and your code is built and compiled in their cloud (with real ARM servers), and downloaded from your devices. Doing CI/CD for iot is a great experience with balena.
* the support is tremendous: several times I found very specific use cases that failed or wasn't what the balena APIs where expecting, and after contacting the support, they even put me directly with the developers in charge of those areas to discuss if it makes sense to add it as a feature to balena, or if they can provide me a workaround
* again, the support: I have around 10 years of experience with Linux derived systems, but some things still are black magic to me (like debugging problems with aufs partitions). The support of balena goes to the deepest level possible to solve your problem, even if you aren't in the private support tier. You just enable access to your board to support and they get inside and try to find the problem. It's truly amazing. They are even open to discuss how to improve what they are giving you or the tools.
* total control of your fleet: need to set a flag for a client? Just set an environment variable from the api or the dashboard and each device will update its state when they come back online
* amazing tools: the balena dashboard feels as polished as their other projects, like etcher, if not even more. Any kind of need you have (remote access to the device? Proxy to a port in the device? contact the supervisor of the device from a proxy inside their VPN?) they give to you.
I have been looking at building a project on Balena OS and raspberry pi 0 W. I want to deploy it in a hard to get to place and don't want to have to replace the SD card for a good amount of time.
I was wondering if Balena OS with Balena cloud managing it puts more or less strain the the sd card write cycles than Raspbian.
Chris's application seems to write little or nothing to the sd card so in your experience how would it last? A couple years?
Hey, balenaOS has been designed for long term deployment. As such, we have a read-only partition for the hostOS. We also have a second host partition so we can update the OS remotely and atomically. In general, we've tuned all sorts of elements in this direction as our customers really don't want to run around collecting sd cards from all over the world.
Thanks,
Have you done any testing on the effect of something like leaving persistent logging on vs off. I know that writes to the state partition which is not read only.
Is there a way to push device logs to another service to keep track of them long term?
How did you come up with the pricing model of essentials vs micro-services?
Persistent logging is only there for cases we need to debug something, in other words where it's the only choice. Even so, it writes to a circular buffer so it should be reasonably safe. But it's not intended to be on by default, more like an emergency measure. We do push logs to our server to some degree, and some customers use proper devops platforms to manage their logs, but we definitely want to do more in the future.
The pricing model is along the lines of "essentials is for people looking for a better OTA solution whereas microservices is for people who consider their devices mini-servers". So it's more a difference of perspective of the customer that allows us to group features and give more to the one crowd without alienating the other crowd with high prices. Not sure if that makes sense.
Cool project thank you for sharing it! I was checking out BalenaCloud and BelenaOS and noticed you support more advanced embedded devices (such as the pi) but are there any plans on supporting lower cost IoT devices? Similar to Azure IoT hub, Amazon FreeRTOS IoT, etc?
In either case I can completely see the value in these IoT SaaS services. A lot of companies I see which want to get into IoT are experts in their own field - not networking. It is very easy to underestimate how much work it is getting everything up and running which is required for a product. You can always roll your own cloud solution later on once you gain the expertise and market fit.
We're currently focused on devices that can run Linux. The smaller devices are a different kind of challenge, and while we do have some ideas about how to achieve the same level of developer experience for them, it's not out yet. :)
