The problem is this is the way it’s being pushed. This is how it’s being sold. There are no guardrails.

…… and that’s the biggest problem. I’m frustrated as hell on the commits I’ve had to unwind because someone doesn’t know how to check the changes before committing, then has it try to fix itself, again without checking on the changes , then again. It’s horrible.

…… and I’ve seen it too. Trying to have it do only code reviews - the ai points out useful things but then wants to commit a crapload of changes without going over it with me first.

…… and people are playing with mcp agents, which are really great for letting the ai get data from systems and integrate with those systems . But with few to no guardrails. There’s no no review, the user doesn’t necessarily follow what’s changing, it just gets done. Sometime badly very badly

We’re all focused on whether the ai works, and it does do a pretty good job with coding but the tools don’t keep the human in the loop, or humans don’t know how to stay on the loop

I wonder if ai can actually help here. As the industry abandons consumer hardware in favor of datacenter equipment to profit from the ai bubble, perhaps ecc memory will become cheaper

I remember the rise and fall of icq. I laughed from the real internet as you kids played, knowing it was a fad wouldn’t last, not worth taking seriously.

I played online before the internet, when it was scattered individuals, or when you needed access to separate telenet and arpanet, when you could keep in your head all the accessible nodes, when the building blocks you take for granted were all new and exciting ideas

Now get off my lawn

For sure, any longer term presence outside orbit will hinge on finding resources. And i don’t think it even matters if we’re able to harvest helium-3 or something that might be worth bringing back, but to be able to use enough resources to make it affordable. Every pound lifted from earth to outside orbit will always be too expensive and local resources much much more affordable. While it starts with shelter and radiation shielding (ie live underground), we’ll need to generate bulk consumables like water, oxygen, fuel, and we’ll need to grow at least some of our own food

But we don’t even know if we can live on the moon. Microgravity has bad long term health effects such that we really don’t want to spend more than a year there. Does the moon have enough gravity to be substantially better?

If we do establish a larger off earth presence, we’ll have to compromise on enough gravity for long term health and livability vs as little gravity as necessary to keep space accessible

I agree that large colonies are an enticing science fiction image that doesn’t look likely.

But we’ve proven that we can support an “international space station” to maintain a continuous scientific presence in space. A great next step is the same but on the moon. It seems quite possible with relatively little technical development. This is desirable to advance our technology, our science, our society, to use our imagination to look forward , to have hope, to see a positive future for humanity.

Here’s the problem with fixing local problems first: you can’t. You either stagnate, looking within, looking behind, looking down, and still have the same local problems or you take a portion of your civilizations product and also move everyone forward.

Here’s the problem with using those resources: it’s not enough to matter. The space program is a tiny percentage of the government budget, almost invisible next to what is needed to fix our problems. If you want to fix our local problems, it starts with social justice, environmental justice, safety nets, quality of life and most importantly equity in taxes, and greatly reduced income inequity. Elon musk’s wealth will soon be 40x NASA’s entire annual budget yet is barely taxed. If we were able to tax one persons wealth at a mere 2.5%, we could fully fund NASA at no cost to anyone else. Most of us pay a lot more than 2.5% of our income so why is he excepted?

Yeah, I stopped buying anything Welch’s for just this reason. Actually I’m not sure I ever started. When I bought juice, I always looked for some that had juice. Now that juice has entered a new phase of enshittication, it’s just not worth it, even for special occasions

True, it doesn’t have the side effect of continuous hunger, feeling deprived, constant cravings, until you explode with binge eating. That would never happen

Fast chargers aren’t the only option

• Tesla already has fast chargers with megapack, and with solar. There are fast chargers that don’t impact the grid much
• we definitely need to build out destination chargers. Charging at work is no different from at home, except for when. And build out of solar can make peak energy available just when needed
• there are proposed answers such as streetlight chargers

Obviously we don’t have an answer yet, haven’t built out the infrastructure, but we do have options

Imagine places like Kansas city or Chicago or LA.

I’m imagining park and ride stations with fairly slow charging. People in the suburbs can leave their car on a slow charger all day and take a train into the city.

• My home charger is 50a which is too fast for this.
• My work has 30a chargers and most people take turns for half a day
• so we’re talking 15-20a, or again, something smart enough to spread the load

I’m anxious about being on the layoff list because I submitted my self-appraisal without reading the step that says: use ai to summarize your assessment and copy-paste to the summary field. Dammit, I wrote it myself

That can be a dangerous line of thought ……

Started thinking of my legacy and

• I’m divorced
• I’ve been bad at keeping up with friends
• I’m unlikely to have grandkids and am estranged from my only niece
• I live far from my family
• my kids can’t afford to live in my town
• I won’t be able to leave a house or other inheritance
• even if one of my kids has kids I’m not sure I can run around with them anymore

Everything I’ve done has no lasting value. I’ve always loved tech and can fix the problem of the day but a year or two later that’s no longer relevant

I’ve read the same but am skeptical because no one ever pulls out any numbers. I know every country does that same thing to some extent so just saying they do it doesn’t mean anything.

I’ll believe it when I see actual data

It’s also not necessary for the current reality to have happened. Following the K.I.S.S. principal, the current Chinese car industry is explainable by consistent government policy over many years, out in the open, so why are we blaming it on things we don’t o ow or don’t see? I’m not saying it’s not there, just that we’d be in the same boat whether it is or not

I’m pretty sure maintenance still is a bottleneck. I did have to get warranty work done and the wait was significantly longer than I’ve waited for warranty work on traditional cars. I haven’t read much about it in the last year or though, so who knows.

But do you even have to goto Tesla? Certainly the drivetrain and any software is highly proprietary but it also rarely needs attention. The shop I use for inspections claims they can do wear items like tires, brakes, suspension

Body work on the other hand is probably a nightmare. Actually it’s a nightmare for traditional vehicles and can only be longer for Tesla based on lack of parts inventory

Everyone has different definition of lifetime and very few keep theirs 40 years

I personally buy new and keep it for its lifetime, as defined by “needing more work than its value “. That has worked out to be 12-15 years for ICE cars. For an EV I’m reasonably confident the battery will last longer than I own the vehicle and it will still have some amount of resale value based on batteries degrade rather than die

Also I’ve seen quite a few articles like

• https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-makes-surprising-discovery-tesla-101549360.html

Tesla is ahead there too. Its average EV lifespan is 20.3 years, whereas the average electric vehicle has a lifespan of 18.4 years. By comparison, the average gas-powered vehicle’s lifespan is 18.7 years.

wouldn’t necessarily say that from what’s visible outside the information confines of the CCP is cheating.

I do have to say I’m skeptical of all the claims that they are subsidizing industry and this is a problem. They are. In the open. And that’s normal. I have yet to read a convincing story that they are doing this enough to be substantially different from every other country. And being consistent over multiple years is clearly not cheating

Chinese companies have a deserved reputation for industrial espionage and not respecting intellectual property. I haven’t read complaints recently so does that mean they’ve cleaned up their act?

Maybe, but there’s a lot more chance to solve it 20 years out

More importantly, generating and transmitting more power is not the only option. It is for ai since a datacenter needs huge power continuously. However EVs need much smaller amounts of power intermittently. If I plug in overnight, I don’t care when it charges or how fast as long as it’s done by morning. Not everyone does that at the same time, and we ought to be able to create a “smart” solution to coordinate this and minimize the impact

EV potentially could coordinate with the grid so we don’t need much or any additional power but just use it at different times

I don’t think anyone is denying Chinese aggressive intent here, just our response. Give us a response where we can get onboard, a response that is more legitimate than their approach, and wecan all be mad at China.

Or think of it this way. We all agree on all the ways China are the bad guys, but our behavior is making them look like the good guys. wtf are we doing?

While I’m positive they are playing dirty in many ways, the fundamental difference is they saw a long term transition, welcomed it, guided it. Whereas us sees a long term transition, pulls our head into our shell, holds on tighter to old ways of doing things, keeps focussing shorter and shorter term. Whatever China may be doing to “cheat”, it really seems like this is mostly self-inflicted

Not practical, no one wants it.

People are already bitching and moaning about how hard it is to build out charging, when it’s based on existing electric system that’s is already everywhere. You really think it’s at all practical to build out everywhere a network of station with a large inventory of one ton batteries to fit every age of every vehicle in every location no matter how rural and heavy automated equipment to maneuver them? You want to hold battery technology stagnant to support this? You want to lose the efficiency and reliability benefits of structural batteries.

The reality is current batteries already last longer than the first owner keeps a vehicle and newer ones easily exceed lifespan of ice vehicles. The reality is charging is already more convenient that battery swapping. The reality is building out chargers is much easier than any other infrastructure

grid systems couldn’t handle a complete EV swap by 2035. Look at the issues these stupid ai server farms

While we’re so stagnant it would be a challenge, do you not see the difference between

• a known, gradual transition with a 20 year timeframe (10 to end ice production + 10 for most existing to age out)
• an immediate demand for for large amounts of power for a bubble technology that didn’t exist a couple years ago

You can plan for a well known and couple decades timeframe, or the failure is yours. It’s harder to plan for surprises

If it has to be forced, then it probably isn’t a good idea

It’s not like people want to do that for shits and giggles.

A different perspective is the market shift is inevitable. We can work with it to make the transition smooth, to help existing manufacturers retool, to more quickly build out the necessary infrastructure, ensuring least disruption and existing manufacturers are still in business. Or we can let the market be disrupted by new companies predominantly in other countries. The transition will be longer and rougher as jobs are lost, infrastructure lags, existing manufacturers cling to old technology, until eventually that entire industrial base collapses

Or of course there’s the perspective of acknowledging long term climate trends and understand the responsibility to our children, our society, our descendants, to make small steps to mitigate the harm we do them