I’m all for an UBI but a future where people have no purposeful jobs, no way to actually make a real difference to anything around them, is a bleak one.
I would love such a future. I would be perfectly content focusing on my hobbies and playing video games rest of my life. Perhaps the UBI would be sufficient even for a little bit of travel.
For some reason, I feel much less excited about creating things myself just knowing that ai can do it in 1/10th of the time. Even if I know it wouldn’t turn into a business or make me money. I don’t know why that is, but I was much more motivated to build anything (even things just for myself) before ai. Kinda depressing
At least for me, I think half the value in building to learn was that the knowledge and skills acquired in the process, especially cursory skills and knowledge, might be useful in the future, even if there was no obvious path to application at the time.
I built several projects at home, many involving learning e.g. graphics programming and rendering, that would never be useful in my professional work, but which were intrinsically interesting and enabled me to build other, more useful projects later on. It also gave me greater confidence in my abilities as an engineer, and cursory skills I learned in the process did help in my professional work.
Now it feels like what’s the point. The machines can or will be able to build anything I could want, useful or not, faster and with less frustration. I probably won’t be able to be employed as an engineer long enough to build a career on said skills. And I can’t mentally justify not spending that time with friends and family, when the expected return is basically zero.
I still find math, science, and engineering interesting and intrinsically rewarding, but in a closer sense to how one might feel about playing video games. The information is or will eventually be useless, so it isn’t worth spending a significant amount of time on.
Wow thank you this was actually very helpful for me in understanding why I’m feeling so demotivated by ai. Gaining knowledge, even if not immediately useful, to become a better overall developer was a huge part of why I enjoyed spending so much time building things in my free time. Now it seems pointless, because with ai, will that knowledge really make a difference? Probably not. Bummer, anyways I appreciate the comment.
I've felt the same for a while now. On my free time I have completely stopped building projects where the main motivation is professional learning. I now only build stuff I want or am genuinely interested in, and utilize AI in the process to save time.
Eventually I plan on learning some physical skills, like renovating, working with electronics and plumbing. I doubt robotics will render that useless very quickly.
That's fair, I guess I just enjoy the craft of building stuff rather than the outcome/product itself. Which I know I can still do, but for some reason just doesn't feel the same now. Hard to explain I guess.
The point of the article is not that banners are good; it’s that they would not be needed at all if websites didn’t share all the possible data about their users with hundreds of vendors.
Fun fact: the OP blog doesn’t display a GPDR banner.
The responses about code quality, wisdom that comes with experience, etc. are missing the big picture: no one will ever care about any of this as long as things work as explained in the prompt.
Eventual shortcomings will be fixed not by looking into the code, but by typing in another prompt, asking another agent.
Doing it manually will not bring any value to anyone.
I saw it already with my own eyes: a friend of mine started an online psychology counseling site. A year ago they would hire a developer. Now, he only needed an LLM. And it’s the whole thing: a booking system, video calls, a website. What’s underneath: he doesn’t know. The only thing that matters to him is that it works.
Can he trust it's secure? Does what about when something goes wrong. Ops issues might come into play and just handing AI agent ssh keys could cause all sorts of issues. Only time will tell though I guess.
Gotchas aside: I’m not saying the end of programming is a good thing. I’m just saying: it’s happening. Unless the LLM tech will suddenly hit any sort of ceiling.
BMW also makes rare-earths-free motors for their EVs and - at this very moment - theirs are far more advanced. They offer almost twice the power (up to 300kW vs 160kW) and are on a 800v architecture.
I assume you’re talking about the n52 vs n20. I’ve had both engines as daily drivers, and they’re both fine. The n20 has a bad rap due to early models failing from a timing chain guides breaking.
They suffer from some of the same problem your likely modern fridge does, and then kick it up two notches.
In the name of "safety", they have made design decisions such as integrating fuses directly into the very large and expensive control boards and making them non-replacable. Just in case this wasn't enough, they also tend to blow an OTP so that in the event that you have the know how to replace the fuses anyways, nothing will work. Naturally you also cannot just swap in a replacement board, as it needs to go through the same pairing process to the ECU as things like the car doors, which in most cases requires an active certificate/license on the ecu programmer that only dealerships/oem have.
In theory they should be, but EVs also tend to be more computerised, proprietary and locked down than ICE cars, so in practice I think it's not as simple as that.
For example there was that case of the car that needed an entire new sealed €5k battery controller because it was in a minor crash and blew a fuse.
My garage charges 50% more for labour on EVs. I'm sure part of that is price discrimination but I bet part is also because working on them is more difficult. I would not be surprised if they need to pay more for access to the manufacturer's diagnostic tools too, which are becoming increasingly required.
If you take care of the car it’s just brake pads, tires, rotors. Pads and rotors are really simple to DIY. Tires are more expensive than like… an Elantra, but if you’re buying a 60k car you can afford 1.2k in tires… otherwise don’t buy the car.
If you get into an accident or let the bmw get into disrepair via neglect, yeah it’s not cheap to clean up. Body work is expensive on any car though, and I don’t have sympathy for people who own higher-end cars and don’t take care of them, they deserve to pay the price for it.
It's more than that though. Any repairs due to wear and tear or whatever, ends up being really expensive. Although you can probably reduce the costs a bit if you get the non-branded OEM part or potentially the same part from another manufacturer (e.g. the toyota supra uses a lot of bmw parts so if the toyota part might be cheaper than the same bmw part).
That was my whole point actually, the wear and tear is really minimal if you get regular oil changes. Things don’t just break and need replacing. Tires, rotors, brakes, those wear out. The tires are not cheap, rotors and pads aren’t crazy expensive and super easy to DIY.
If you had bought a 7 or 5 Series at that time, you would not have had that experience. The 2001 7 Series had something like a 25% roadside breakdown rate.
So like... One in four cars would break down at the side of the road before it was otherwise EOL? One roadside breakdown every 800,000 miles or so? That really doesn't sound bad.
Not in the first 800,000. Maybe in the first 8,000. They really struggled with reliability early on the E65, they introduced a lot of new (to them) technology all at once.
Owned a BMW. Had the audacity to use non-BMW windshield washer fluid. The fluid sensor broke; because in a BMW it’s a fancy sensor that is only compatible with specific washing fluids. Sums up my experience with that car. It was nice to sit in, though.
Mostly just tires and minor maintenance. You're unlikely to need pad and rotor replacements unless you're driving as if you were on a racetrack every single day.
With daily EV driving you have the opposite problem - regen means you rarely, if ever, actually activate the brakes, so you get rust on them that you need to clean out.
They share the same OEMs, and both are following the same ex-China automotive strategy.
Renault has also been thumbing China recently for undermining EU manufacturing as well [0] while China has returned to using Wolf Warrior diplomacy against Europe [1][2][3][4] using the same rhetoric that the Trump admin uses.
Of course, under the Xi admin China's foreign policy has always viewed the EU as inferior and a has-been [5] and has become an active participant in the Ukraine War [6][7].
Europe might not be able to trust the US, but it can't trust China either.
The EV batteries are sourced from Ampere and LG (in the EU) and the EESM from Valeo (in the EU).
Sharing platforms isn't something EU manufacturers are opposed to, but they do not want to be dependent on Chinese supply chains. That is the crux of ExChina, especially as the majority of an EV's value is derived from the battery and powertrain.
Why do you think the R5 was developed in China? Renault have been quite open about all the improvements they had to make to their processes, development centres and factories in France to make it. The Twingo was partially developed in China.
It is, but the PRC has been pushing back against sourcing from within Europe and only intends to use CDKs to assemble EVs. This is what the EU is pushing back against.
What EU states are now lobbying for is if BYD wants to sell an EV in the EU, it should include European originated parts. Just assembling a knockdown kit in Hungary whose parts were all manufactured in China is not "Made in Europe". If BYD or MG wants to sell a BYD or MG car in the EU, they should source the battery pack and powertrain from the EU.
Alternatively, the PRC can drop similar origination requirements from it's domestic market.
The reality is the PRC won't back down, so they will be tariffed by the EU, especially as the EU has lost patience with the PRC due to their active involvement in the Russia-Ukraine War [0], attempting to use diplomatic immunity to kidnap a French national [1], and attempting to embargo the EU's rare earth imports [2].
Additionally, it's easier for the EU to push back against China versus the US while also winning brownie points in the US.
The cheapest Minis are made by GWM in China, and are using different motors and batteries.
However, comparing prices between cars nowadays is a complicated matter. BMW's iX1 and iX2 (they use the BMW EESM motors) theoretically cost about €55k, but they have been very recently available to lease for about €250 euro per month - so pretty much for the same price as the cheapest electric Renault if leased.
Which is quite the contrast to Mercedes new axial flux electric motor, which goes all in on rare earths- the design relies on the highest end high-grade permanent magnets.
Still, presumably Mercedes ambitions are for few motors than BMW or Renault.
Vastly different target market and/or features there. Mercedes are chasing maximum power density, minimum weight for high performance deployments, with seemingly little concern for cost or supply chain.
Renault is going after the consumer market with these motors, where minimising cost and maximising availability is more important than pushing past 95% efficiency or cramming a 700kW power output in a motor that is small and light enough to fit inside of a wheel hub.
i don't work in the industry, sorry. We just made music and released mp3s, 1997-2008. Co-creator of Def Jam, alright.
I wonder if David Lynch watches his stuff on a tiny screen just to make sure everyone has a good experience.
hint: no, he thinks small screens are stupid.
ETA: after like 3 years of mastering and reviewing this way i trusted my ears and my studio monitors enough to know what it would sound like. I also wrote in headphones and mastered on speakers, then remastered in monitor headphones. Anyhow, i think the whole point i was making is "yes, this is a good thing to do, for music, for websites, for software, etc"
I guess it depends on who you’d ask. BMW made a switch from prismatic cells to cylindrical design only recently, and it looks like the biggest gain was in costs and weight efficiency. The range/capacity ratio didn’t improve that much. Although, to be fair, none of these parameters depend on battery alone.
Europe doesn’t need new entrants. They got legacy automakers that are no worse at making EVs than Chinese and American startups.
The problem is: they can’t make them cheap enough to compete with China in developing countries. I’m not sure if they even want to do that at this point, the margins there are so low. It’s easier to just rebadge a Chinese car as your own (Renault and GM already do that in SA).
> Europe doesn’t need new entrants. They got legacy automakers that are no worse at making EVs than Chinese and American startups
Innovator's dilemma. It's not a coincidence that the two largest EV makers in the world are battery natives [1], and that they outproduce Nos. 3 (Geely), 4 (GM) and 5 (VW) combined.
There is also Mercedes eActros line and MAN eTGX. There are already thousands of them in Europe. Funny how that just happened, without fanfares and trillion dollar evaluations.
Speaking of which, I don’t know why would anyone still wait for Tesla Semi or any other up-and-comers. Promised better efficiency sounds good on paper, but means nothing if the product doesn’t exist or is an unreliable prototype with no service support.
Now Chinese want to enter the market with cheaper trucks, but - as the article clearly mentions - these are not yet ready to be used in Europe or the States, and making them ready will increase the price.
