AmericanChopper (u/AmericanChopper)

AmericanChopper commented on Electric vehicle battery prices are expected to fall almost 50% by 2026 goldmansachs.com/insights... · Posted by u/doener

louwrentius · a year ago

I think it’s unreasonable for people to think everything has to be business as usual whereas the true cost of a galon of fuel should have been 50 dollars if we facor in the environmental cost.

I think I don’t like that people see consumption as a birthright, and pretend there aren’t any consequences.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

This is the main reason I never plan on buying one. I really hate all of the car-driven-by-a-computer functionality. I don’t want to drive a car where an internal computer can take over control of the vehicle, I especially don’t want one where the computer in charge of the car can connect to a network, I never want to drive one that has a mandatory always on connection. I also really want buttons, dials and switches, and think a yoke is such a stupid idea for a road car…

Plenty of ICE vehicles are starting to get these features as well, but I don’t buy those cars either, and all of the half decent EVs seem to have (nearly) all of those features I hate, configured in the worst way I could possibly imagine.

AmericanChopper commented on Electric vehicle battery prices are expected to fall almost 50% by 2026 goldmansachs.com/insights... · Posted by u/doener

9dev · a year ago

It’s definitely a hyperbole number I made up. The point is that the technology isn’t equal or better, but different. It has other constraints and capabilities, but pretending an engine is an engine as long as the hood is closed gets us in the current situation where car builders struggle to recreate ICEs, but electric, consumers are never satisfied because they have wrong expectations, and regulators don’t ensure the charging infrastructure that would actually required exists.

With an electric vehicle, you can get an extremely low-maintenance, easy to drive, fast accelerating, ecologically efficient car. That has its on merits. On the other hand, it has a lower range than an ICE engine, and is less reliable in cold weather.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

> consumers are never satisfied because they have wrong expectations

Consumers are satisfied with buying ICE vehicles, which is why 90-something percent of them do just that when buying a new vehicle. You’re not saying anything about consumers expectations here, what’s happening is (most of them) just they don’t want what EVs are selling. You can’t be wrong about wanting something, we’re all allowed to choose what it is that we want for ourselves.

This is just the EV version of “the world would be much nicer if everybody thought like me” argument.

AmericanChopper commented on Electric vehicle battery prices are expected to fall almost 50% by 2026 goldmansachs.com/insights... · Posted by u/doener

9dev · a year ago

People really need to get away from that notion electric vehicles need to be as similar as possible to ICE vehicles. Most people living in cities don’t ever require that range, because 99% of their rides will be constrained to less than 50 kilometers. And even on the countryside, few people need to drive such long stretches on a single charge.

Keeping up this stoic desire to not having to change your habits around driving at all is dismissing a lot of the benefits small, lightweight electric cars could get us, if they didn’t need to carry tons of battery around—that isn’t even necessary most of the time.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

If you want people to choose one thing, then you want it to be better than or at least as good as the alternatives. The idea that EVs need to be comparable to ICE vehicles isn’t just some silly argument, it’s literally the choice that consumers are faced with if they want to buy a car. Even if longer range travel is only 1% of what consumers will do with their car (which I’m sure is a number you just made up), why would you get a product that only meets 99% of your needs, when you can get the competing product that meets 100% of them?

AmericanChopper commented on Day Rates (2023) davesmyth.com/day-rates... · Posted by u/herbertl

hinkley · a year ago

I had a boss at a consulting company who really chewed on this idea. In the face of a potential boondoggle project, the discovery phase may be close to the last time your company turns a profit on a project.

Why not get the payments for helping them define the project requirements, and then if you still smell boondoggle, you can quote them an estimate that you can actually profit on but may make them run to a competitor for a lower bid. Now your calendar is clear for projects you’ll actually make money on, plus one of your competitors now can’t compete as well on your next bid.

But he ran into the same problem: an explicit discovery phase gets summarily rejected. Even though it would benefit everyone. I suspect deep down they know what they’re asking and they want to trick you into saying yes and getting sunk cost fallacy before you sober up and start telling them no.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

I agree that it usually doesn’t fly with clients, unless you already have a good relationship and track record with them. But I don’t think it’s supposed to be a trick. On the client side somebody either has some funding for a project and needs to know whether you can deliver within the budget, or they need to go and apply for some funding to complete the project, but in either case the deliverable they’re committing to provide in exchange for this funding is the completed project, not a scope for the project.

From that perspective the “discovery project” is just a much worse version of “contact us for pricing”, it’s “pay us $5,000-$20,000 or more for pricing”. Paying a lot of money to find out how much something will cost, or what you’re going to get from it (if anything) just isn’t a valuable proposition to a lot of people, and doesn’t fit in nicely with their existing business processes.

AmericanChopper commented on TypedDicts are better than you think blog.changs.co.uk/typeddi... · Posted by u/rbanffy

tptacek · a year ago

This is the kind of copyediting advice ChatGPT gives. I think everyone gets that the author doesn't know what you, in particular, think about TypedDicts. Read things more charitably; this is not a good use of time to discuss.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

I’m not a big fan of the “my opinion is fact” or “your opinion is wrong” headlines. They can be mildly funny in the right context, but it’s been done so much that they’re just a bit boring now. I’m especially bored of seeing this convention in conference presentation titles.

AmericanChopper commented on US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case ft.com/content/f6e84608-e... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

11101010001100 · a year ago

The irony is begging....

AmericanChopper · a year ago

I think it’s an excellent comment, and I’m very happy with it.

AmericanChopper commented on US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case ft.com/content/f6e84608-e... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

whaaaaat · a year ago

You can just type MS. I understand that it was cool to use M$ in the 90s, but like, all the tech giants are bad at this point and M$ looks silly.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

I’m happy for people to keep writing M$. It’s a great way to quickly identify comments to scroll past.

AmericanChopper commented on Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees siliconvalley.com/2024/10... · Posted by u/Melchizedek

sidcool · a year ago

It's the same as saying all whites are racist. Both are wrong.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

To say that some quality is embedded in a culture isn’t even close to the same as saying all people originating from that culture possess that quality. The extent to which India’s (racist) caste system is embedded in its culture is hardly up for serious debate, the influence it has in India has basically been proven by science at this point.

> https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/the-caste-system-has...

A hypothetical claim that all Indians are racist would clearly be absurd, but it’s hardly surprising to find a group of Indians practicing something that is openly part of their native culture.

AmericanChopper commented on Who died and left the US $7B? sherwood.news/power/who-d... · Posted by u/jsnell

schneems · a year ago

> we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do.

I had the idea that we should put a donation box on tax forms. The 100 top donators get on the “US 100” list (like Forbes) but it’s based ONLY on how much you donate, not how much you claim to be worth.

It’s one thing to claim to be rich to a Forbes reporter, it’s another to have the (tax) receipts to back it up.

AmericanChopper · a year ago

Most tremendously wealthy people don’t want to be known for being tremendously wealthy. Unless being known for being tremendously wealthy is a part of your wealth accumulating strategy, the attention it brings is almost entirely negative. Being tremendously wealthy without millions of people constantly chirping about clawing as much of it away from you as possible, or demanding an explanation from you every time you wipe your ass is a far better outcome, and most people who are savvy enough to become billionaires are savvy enough to figure that out pretty quickly.