The systemically important banks are better capitalized than ever before so even if the AI industry crashes I expect the banks to survive. But life and property insurers are more like financial dark matter. They've been buying a lot of bonds where the ratings understate the true default risk. My guess is that some of them will get hit hard.
Not immediately life threatening, but they have a major impact on quality of life and overall healthspan. When people lose mobility their overall health and fitness tends to steadily decline, although it can take a long time until those deficits become clinically significant. This is why affluent Canadians often skip the waitlists and pay out of pocket for joint operations as medical tourists in the USA.
My cars are more than just transportation. They're mobile storage lockers where I can keep my stuff reasonably secure. They're a place to sit warm and dry while I wait for something else. They're (semi) private changing rooms where I can put on my cycling kit. Regardless of who does the driving I'll never give up owning (or at least leasing) my own private cars.
The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group.
The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.
Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.
Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.
What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.
Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.
You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
Have you ever looked at how humans drive? Not the drunks, but the average person - they are terrible. You are not better. Self driving doesn't have to be very good to be better than humans.
The _average_ person drives just fine. It's specifically the idiots who either should never have been allowed to pass a driver's test in the first place (i.e. lack the motor skills and/ or mental capacity) and the idiots who are so addicted to their phones they can't go 2 minutes without looking at it. I have a very hard time believing those are the majority or even average based on all my time driving.
Which, these issues can be reduced if we stop giving people small slaps on the wrist for driving in ways that greatly endanger others. Hefty fines, temporary/ permanent driving bans, etc. Make people actually pause to consider their actions for once in their lives.
Wow, an improvement we can start doing _today_, that doesn't involve forking over billions of dollars to tech companies to pump out half-baked "self-driving" capabilities. These companies' mission isn't to save lives, in case that's not obvious, it's to _make money_. They are not and have never been interested in potentially simpler/ better solutions if they don't lead to sucking the consumer dry of their money.
I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do.
A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer.
Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_.
People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.
Have you ever stopped to think _why_ cars specifically are so expensive? The manufacturers need to put on a fake show to the market and consumers and pretend they are innovating with new "features" every year. But in reality they stuff so many expensive, fragile, and difficult/ impossible to replace electronics and gadgets into cars because 1) every single piece in that car is marked up from the price they paid. The more (ideally expensive) components, the more they get to mark up as the middleman, the more they get to gouge the customer. 2) The more challenging it is to repair the car, the more likely you _must_ come back to the manufacturer (i.e. dealer) and pay them exorbitant fees to fix problems only they know how and have the parts to fix.
I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.
I am also very suspect of the origins of some of these regulations as well. Modern airbags are wonderful, don't get me wrong, but it's not unreasonable to question, in the US at least, whether auto manufacturers and their lobbyists have been causing new rules to be invented that coincidentally both require fancy, expensive technology AND increase the difficulty/ cost of meeting the standards as a mean to prevent new competitors from starting up in auto manufacturing. Rear-view cameras, eye tracking, and drunk-driving detection all come to mind.
Emissions regulations should come to mind first. Eye tracking is a lot cheaper than getting an ICE to pass modern emissions (a multi-billion dollar project).
Of course any of the above if they work are a good thing. We are debating cost/benefit here though.
I've been keeping an eye on Slate lately. They _supposedly_ will be selling their trucks for sub $30k late 2026. Presumably they will meet every modern safety standard.
3) The "smarter"/ more unnecessarily complex the vehicle, the easier it becomes to enact planned obsolescence, forcing you to forever buy a new vehicle every 5-7 years, if not more frequent.
4) The "smarter" the vehicle, the more they get to track you and sell your data. You'd think "oh in that case I'm sure it'll be like google where I'd pay a reduced price that's offset by the ad money". No, they will obviously happily rip you off on the vehicle itself AND by selling your data. edit: Because guess what? It's working! People are more than happy to fall for this stuff apparently. I mean hell, it's worked for the phone market too, as one other example.
I'd be ecstatic to see the entire industry wiped out by a newcomer on the scene.
> The "smarter"/ more unnecessarily complex the vehicle, the easier it becomes to enact planned obsolescence forcing you to forever buy a new vehicle every 5-7 years, if not more frequent.
This makes it harder not easier!. Cars can only see for $50-100k because they last for many years. When the person who wouldn't caught dead in a car more than 3 years old trades in for a new one it gets sold. If the car only lasted 5-7 years that used car buyer would factor that in and be unwilling to pay nearly as much - they would have no choice because banks won't give you a 6 year loan on a car that only has 2-4 years left.
Planned obsolesce exists, but they are thinking of 12-20 year old cars need to go. Any car that makes it to 25 though is a collectors item and they want you to show it off at car shows (preferably not a daily driver though) so people think you can make cars that go that long.
The bank loans are a fair point; insurance likely wouldn't insure them either. The CyberTruck, as a notable example.
I will say it _can_ be difficult to keep up though, you don't necessarily find out a particular model is a lemon until it's too late, so it can take some years for everyone to learn and adjust. I mean a buddy of mine only found out in 2024 that his 2016 Explorer had a common/ known engine flaw (the water pump frequently goes bad and requires an engine rebuild). And so how do you reconcile that against for example some of Ford's other accomplishments? I mean, there's loads of F150s that have lasted forever (or at least used to).
In theory banks/ insurers would have enough data today to be able to map the general trend; so I don't think you're wrong, but at the same time I will counter that we may not yet be fully experiencing the effects of any obsolescence being implemented today.
I guess my larger/ real point is that I just foresee this industry heading the same way as phones, and many computers.
I'm not sure what the threshold is for a house to be smart. But I just had to get some fairly extensive work done and all my light switches and so forth are just traditional toggles. I'm not sure what's absurd about that.
A lot of walls were open after a kitchen fire. Electrician was redoing a lot of knob and tube and other older wiring. I had previously had a limited amount of DIY wireless switching (originally X10 but then a couple of voice-controlled switches) but basically everything was being redone anyway. And I basically just now have some dimmers and a simple programmable thermostat I haven't even programmed.
The parent point was that it's silly not to have a smart house (whatever that means exactly) and I disagree. It may make sense to do selectively rather than get an electrician in unless you have some other reason to do so.
As for threshold probably all the safety stuff: power metering, water leak sensors, smoke alarm monitoring. Then all the energy related stuff - heating, hot water controls - if you are on TOU pays itself in months. Then it's smart entry - probably one thing that you can actually experience and it's the best.
Right. The official reason given for seizing the M/V Skipper was sanctions violation, not a blockade. I don't know whether this was the real reason but as of today other vessels are still sailing in and out of Venezuelan ports without interference. There is no blockade.
The vessel is registered in Guyana so I guess they can complain if they think the seizure was illegitimate.
> "The government of Guyana — which borders Venezuela — said in a statement Wednesday the ship was falsely flying the Guyanese flag, despite not being registered in the South American country"
The US pressures countries to deregister ships on US sanctions lists. The ship had previously been registered in Panama.
It feels a little sketchy to force countries to deregister ships in order to seize them, but they could have flown Venezuela's flag instead of taking the risk of being stateless instead.
> The official reason given for seizing the M/V Skipper was sanctions violation, not a blockade.
“Sanctions” imposed by one country on another limiting its trade with third countries are (if force is used to effect them) a (limited) blockade and absolutely an act of war.
Lol what a joke. It would take a Chinese SSN about a month just to make the transit. By the time they reached the op area it would be almost time to turn around and go home.
Nah. Chinese submarines aren't that quiet so if there were any in the area then the US Navy would have them localized already and there's no sign of that. And Chinese subs lack the persistence to stick around without support for long. The reality is there are zero Chinese subs anywhere near Venezuela.
Regardless of legal issues and whether it would be stupid or not, China still lacks an effective blue water navy capable of projecting sustained power in the Caribbean Sea. They just can't do it in any meaningful way. They're expanding fast and might be able to do it in a few years but not today.
Lung over expansion issues can only happen when ascending after breathing compressed gas under pressure. That isn't a problem with breath hold freediving.
Nitrogen narcosis isn't usually a significant factor in breath hold freediving. They do feel it on extremely deep dives but most aren't going past about 100 ft / 30 m where it becomes really noticeable.
Technically it's not just nitrogen. Most breathable gasses other than helium have some narcotic potential. This includes oxygen, although the magnitude is unclear. Elevated CO2 levels (hypercapnia) can also seriously reduce your cognitive capacity via multiple mechanisms.
At very high pressures, helium is actually the opposite of a narcotic. This is why it is introduced in Trimix for deep dives. It kind of offsets the narcotic effect of the high pressure oxygen. However it can also cause trembling if there is too much of it.
It's not so much about nitrogen and narcosis from other gases, it's that underwater is a dangerous environment where you can get in trouble quickly if anything goes wrong.
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