JeffL

Totally agree. The response to complaining about bad AI in civ is usually about how players don't really want good AI, but for me as the AI randomly shuffles their units around outside your city you constantly pick them off with mutually supporting ranged units, achieving kill ratios in the 20:1 range is so totally unrealistic that it destroys immersion.

I fully believe that the great mass of the bell curve is happy with the bad AI, but for those of us who are a little better at the game, we will keep complaining about how terrible the AI is.

Tesla has lots of showrooms with cars, test drives, and sales people. If you're there and want to buy a car, they direct you to a computer with an Internet connection.

I agree with and appreciate your comment, but I do think there is some validity in the more broad usage of "socialism" that has come to be. To steel man the other sides argument, if you have to pay taxes on an asset, be that the means of production or real estate, or else the government will come and take it away from you, it feels more like renting than owning, and the only thing you "own" is the right to pay rent on the governments asset.

I do definitely think that just labeling every government overreach that one dislikes as "socialism" is not the most useful.

When you are new to it, yes. For me it's a better experience because I've been using it so long and have a good idea of what it can and can't handle. I use it extensively on roads I know it works well on, and use it sometimes tentitively on new roads when I'm in the mood. That I spend almost all of my driving time on the same few routes makes FSD very valuable to me. It's probably still not a net benefit if you're mostly driving new places or places where it doesn't work well, but it's getting better.

I use FSD a lot and generally like and feel less stressed and safer. For me, since I dive mostly the same roads a lot, I know which roads and intersections FSD can handle correctly and which ones it can't, so I use it where it works and don't use it where it doesn't. I've personally had a pretty big increase in use over the last year because it's just plain getting so much better. It works in places now where it didn't before.

I have FSD and totally agree with you. I use it about 90% of the time, feel less stressed and more safe. I feel like I have a good idea and where it might have an issue and am super vigilant in those situations but way more relaxed on those same stretches of road it's driven perfectly 100 times already. It's "nice to have" in normal driving conditions and f-ing wonderful when there's traffic.

Insurance for the consumer is lowering your expected value to reduce variance. Gambling for the consumer is lowering your expected value to increase variance. The profit and operating costs for both casinos and insurance companies is the lost EV of their patrons.

Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space.

I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.

The most fun I've had with ChatGPT is having it make up stories for my five year old with her as the main character. She loves it.

The main thing I'd want in a Civ AI is to be barely competant at combat. Right now, if you can get a couple archers up in time, you can beat an AI army that's 2-5x your size depending on the terrain. Yeah, it feels bad as a beginner when you haven't bothered to build any military and an AI comes and kills you, but a beginner should be playing a beginner mode.

I'd love God mode AI to put up any sort of half decent fight without needing to have so many more units that just go through an endless meat grinder because they can't coordinate or figure out how to back off and heal.

That's what the developers say, but I think it's part true and part a cop out. The AI in Civ 5 & 6 is just so so bad, that it's only challenging when you play on the really hard modes that gives them all sorts of cheats. And then it's a bit less fun because you're walking the line between impossible because of the cheating and having to essentially exploit the AI because of the cheating.

I don't necessarily want an AI that tries to play like a human, though it would be a fun option, I want an AI that isn't just straight up terrible given the same starting resources and rules as the player.

Part of the problem, I think, is that each iteration of Civ, they make the game more complicated in a way that makes it even harder for the AI to do as well as a good player, but probably most players don't care and there isn't a lot of reason to become good at the game anyway.

To replace like for like, you go to a thrift store and buy a used shirt for $5. Or not. But a used shirt isn't worth the same as a new shirt.

Every version of the software is tested on thousands of situations in simulation before release and has to pass all the regression tests which are constantly being added to. Surely this is much better than a super limited real world test. (It's also tested in the real world by testers before going into wider release.)

I think they are way ahead of you.

When I was looking at preschools for my daughter, there was no tuition info for the Montessori schools available until after the tours.

When companies generate cash flow from profits, three major things they do with that cash are 1) pay dividends, 2) stock buybacks, 3) reinvest in the company. Shareholder's prefer the company to engage in number 3 if the company can reinvest with high ROI. If they pay the shareholders a dividend, and the shareholder can only invest that at 10%, it's ok but not as good as if the company thinks it can invest and do better.

The "plan" with these growth companies is to reinvest in themselves and keep growing as big as possible until the cost to grow is too much, or the ROI from growing is less than is generally available elsewhere. Only then will they pay dividends or do stock buybacks (which are functionally equivilant, but with favorable tax ramifications). The "plan" is that you hold for 10 or 20 years or more and then get your dividends then. Or sell at a profit sooner, because the stock will be worth more because it will be closer to that future pay day.

You can expect unprofitable companies to give you money in the future if you believe in their business plan and believe that they can execute.

I mean, the companies that are talking about increasing user counts... the users generally are the product, or ads for those users are the product.

I think maybe you don't follow the companies closely enough. The poster you are replying to mentioned AMZN and TSLA.

Amzn's core businesses are very profitable, but they are constantly reinvesting those profits into new areas where they are growing. It's like a conglomeration of start ups, each aiming at future profit. It's like you've invested in one profitable company, and instead of dividends, you are getting shares of new start ups.

TSLA has now been profitable for 9 quarters, recently massively profitable with billions in free cash flow. Analysts are projecting even more to come, with profit margins approaching that of Apple and a total addressable market 10x the size. (I feel like TSLA is one of the few exceptions to the problems the author identifies in the article.). The TSLA bulls that I follow are all talking about future profits and how to discount those to net present value.

The older Tesla's do lose up to 30% range in the cold, but all the currently sold Teslas have heat pumps which largely fixed that problem. It's true that you won't get your rated range unless you're driving on the level and not going faster than 55, but you'll get more than enough range to get between Superchargers on road trips or to putter around town all day. If you want to putter around town all day and then leave for a road trip, you better super charge in between.

These cars are probably going to use the cheaper iron based batteries which are fine to charge to 100%.

Supposedly rental car companies keep their cars an average of 13 months and are constantly turning over their fleet. This order is over at least a year, so I imagined it's just that they will be buying Model 3's instead of whatever else. The advantage is their service costs and depreciation will be greatly reduced and they can keep the Tesla's 2-3x longer before needing to replace them. This should be a huge reduction in their costs. I would guess they buy their cars with debt anyway, so not like they need to plunk down $4b all at once.

The "good" Pickleballs, Franklin and Dura, seem to last a few to several days before cracking or warping while the "bad" ones that nobody wants to use because they are softer seem to last forever. It's a bit better than tennis where people want a new can every time they play. No shortage in Pickleballs that I've seen so far.

Most people do most of their charging at home. Our off peak cost at night is 5 cents per kWh. Much, much cheaper than superchargers.

He said the more cars they sell, the more money they would lose without credits, which is a misconception.

Yes it's a misconception. Their profit margin on cars is consistently over 20%. They have large overhead costs that are more or less fixed like R&D that get amortized more and more as sales go up. They have massive net free cash flow every quarter even while building out new factories that will increase production capacity by 50% every year for the next several years, further increasing economies of scale and operating margins.

Yeah, when I forget and accidentally click on the Dropbox icon when I want my Dropbox folder and get whatever abomination it is that comes up now instead of the folder, I get real ragey. It's such an anti-consumer thing when companies take a nice product and add a bunch of crap to it that no one wants.

I was driving on 280 once in clear weather and light traffic, and the car ahead of me suddenly swerved left, swerved right and went tumbling across all lanes and ended up upside down on the shoulder. It was a really bizarre thing to witness. And both people inside seemed mostly OK.

Sandy Monroe has some reactions in this video: https://youtu.be/jKrFAcNgG40

Gambling at a casino is trading expected value for more variance of outcome. Insurance is trading expected value for less variance.

If you want to coast, you have to apply slight pressure to the accelerator. It doesn't use battery. It's a little weird at first, but you get used to it in a couple days, then it's second nature.

What advantage would Tesla gain picking up all the dead weight that GM has, with its dealerships, unions, pensions, and huge factories dedicated to building ICE's?