if you add in the lack of routine maintenance and moving parts that can wear out, the cost savings multiply.
Time. There’s a “time not spent dicking around with dealerships/mechanics” component here too. This is the reason why I bought an EV a few years go. I got fed up with the gas engine maintenance ecosystem and paid my way out. I was literally buying time.
This has been in the back of my mind ever since I last rented an apartment. Short of dangling an extension cord off your balcony, there’s not much that can be done here. You might luck out and get a job somewhere that has charging stations, but that’s a big “if”.
This also generates a deep concern in my mind for poor folks that can only afford to rent. As they say, “it’s expensive to be poor” and having little alternative but to drive gas-burning cars to/from work is only going to crunch budgets harder as time goes on.
Meanwhile, we can’t count on landlords to install these things. My last one was the sort that couldn’t be bothered to hire painters that understood what masking tape was; moving day was half spent picking paint out of light switches and electrical sockets.
Nice! I should have looked first. Screw it, I’ll keep my version up too.
This may be from the meme graveyard, but it has never been more appropriate:
Of course Japan decided to use robots. But why not use a big dog instead? Maybe it’s a humanitarian concern since they’d be facing off with bears…
:: looks at image from article ::
Oh. It’s a fucking robot yokai-cyber-demon-dog: pure nightmare fuel. They’re clearly on to something here.
Assuming that happens, I think we can look to Detroit, starting 50 years ago, for a good example of how awful we are at scaling down and retiring infrastructure at anything approaching this scale. Especially when the state doesn’t care to require companies to clean up their mess.
You say that, but that is (or at least was) a real problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)
(X) Doubt
As a Sr. Engineer, I completely get that my situation may be wildly different from what’s cited in the article.
Right now, I’m using AI “in the loop” rather than “as the loop”. That’s a big difference. And I’m getting my ass kicked routinely on review for dumb-ass things that I’m letting slide from AI generated output. And rightly so. Plus, models routinely lead me down sub-optimal blind alleys while dreaming up really stupid ways to fix problems. The level of (re)prompting I have to provide to suggest to get decent quality results converges on a post-grad that has encyclopedic knowledge of software engineering as it exists online, but with zero real-world experience. It’s both impressive and dangerous as a replacement for software engineering.
In the mode I describe above, I’m not losing the ability to do anything. I can see how one could surrender some coding chops or familiarity with a whole language or stack, in favor of automation. But all you have to do is not do that.
I will say that as a rapid-prototyping technology, It’s nothing short of miraculous. I’ve watched junior engineers knock together medium-weight applications, complete with browser UI/UX and decent workflow, in less than a week. This is great for showing value or putting something semi-functional in front of management and/or customers. But pivoting those prototypes into something maintainable is an utter nightmare. Depending on how beholden to AI and forever prompt-looping with “skills” and MCPs you want to be, I suppose it’s possible to just keep mashing the AI button. But at some point, you’re going to need to get inside there to fix security problems or bugs that elude this workflow. What then?
I think it’s possible (theoretical at least) that greed can be harnessed in specific ways to do good and even empathetic works; it’s a potent motivator after all. IMO, there’s likely a balance. But the overarching market and financial governance can’t ever be on the side of greed for that to work. Otherwise, the people in power pull all the stops and the experiment is rendered moot.
This always happens.
A company that acts without empathy for their customers will invariably act the same towards their employees. This is because the behavior is usually driven by personalities in leadership that (dis)function this way rather universally. Add the fact that empathy limits one’s ability to make money (in this economy), and that psychological modeling is a thing in the workplace, and it’s easy to see how we keep getting into trouble like this.
There really isn’t an “at the right hand of the devil” scenario. Everyone is in his path, especially if you’re close.
Exactly. First scheduled service with my EV was a joke; it amounted to a minor recall and a tire rotation. I was using regenerative breaking so much, they said that the factory brakes didn’t even look worn. The service manager actually looked surprised by this.