Excuse my French... but no shit. It's all so obvious. Screen time. Social media. It's all bad for kids. Cake is bad for kids too, but a little now and then is fine. Same with screen time. However, you are being a bad parent if you're just dumping your child in front of a screen instead of spending time with them (with obvious exceptions like working parents who literally can't afford day care).
I loath Musk and will never buy a Tesla, but your criticisms are strange. I don't want a HUD. I don't want new features. I want as basic a car as possible that goes forward when I press the gas and stops when I press the brakes. I had a 2007 Honda Fit which I still regret getting rid of. I have a new Honda and every single new feature (except for displaying the speed limit, which has it's own problems) is useless at best and dangerous and distracting at worse.
What "new features" are we talking about? What else do you need in a car? Do you complain about "new features" in an expensive bottle of whiskey? Or a nice computer? No, you want the basics done really well and made with the highest of quality.
When I went from a 2006 mini to a 2021 polestar 2, there were a bunch of things that were either "up in class" or "15 years makes things better" - traction control, non-invasive lane-assist (with invasive options), per-driver (per-keyfob really) seat adjustment memory, charge-aware navigation, radar cruise-control, 360° camera fusion, headlight washers, kick-to-open trunk, interior pre-warm (including seats, as a software upgrade), smart (camera-based) auto-dim of high beams, mirror-retract when parked, mirror tilt when backing up, retractable trailer hitch... little of this is structural, it's just an accumulation of details and attention paid to them.
And a few downgrades (if my 2023 Polestar 2 is an indication)
* Wait 60 seconds to start using the GPS / nav to become responsive
* Unreliable backup camera (even after several software "fixes")
* No buttons or knobs for climate control
* No way to disable intrusive line detection that makes car vibrate when you get close to yellow and white lines
* Overzealous auto-dim of high beams (our 2023 Mazda CX-5 is significantly better with almost no false positives)
It's not all bad, and once the infotainment warms up, it's plenty responsive. It's certainly a luxury car though (as an admitted Mazda fan) you can get a lot of nice from a $30k Mazda.
I'm with the other poster. You're comparing apples to oranges in a 20k vs 60k car. I assume people spending that much on vehicles do want the fancy electronics.
I happened to reread it recently and was absolutely blown away by how relevant it is today, and how it is almost certainly more relevant today than when it was written.
I think Vonnegut really had his pulse on the human condition. Writers such Aldous Huxley could capture parts of it but Vonnegut seemed to capture it in just about every book.
Just coincidentally, I read Player Piano during my introductions to GPT-2 (summer 2022).
One of my brothers asked (out of legitimate concern) if I needed to visit a mental institution... because there just is no way you are talking with machines about books — about such fantasies.
Granted, my life has been a series of abuses; but Vonnegut helped me realize the impossible isn't so.
At my company, we're actively lowering our off-shore dev count in favor or on-shore devs. We're small but we're growing so we're hiring about one junior dev a year. This alone doesn't mean anything, but adding another data point to the conversation.
My grandpa’s greatest gaming achievement was beating Top Gun: The Second Mission on the NES, in the ‘90s. Perhaps his training as a B-17 tail gunner gave him an advantage, lol (he never fought, war ended after he finished training but before he saw a combat sortie). He was better at the game than any of his grandkids, hahaha.
(I’m pretty sure it was the second mission, it was the one with the space shuttle launch or whatever at the end)
There are very real limitations on AI coders in their current state. They simply do not produce great code most of the time. I have to review every line that it generates.
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