They pretty quickly publicly abandoned that algorithm, so they may have recreated it (since the core stuff is pretty reproducible as the blog states) but yeah, that competition being brought up without bringing up that they abandoned it is interesting.
》 So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations.
I do not see your arguments
US has worker protections, even if US government goes bancrupt, it has to pay its obligations. And if government refuses to pay, no worker, even if employed, is getting anything!
And you think that an offer accepted by sending an email with "Resign" in the subject line is subject to these protections? You think DOGE is even authorized to make said offers? Why, because Elon and Trump said so?
Also your last line is just bizarre. The US government can very much selectively pay some parties but not others during a shutdown. That's kind of the definition of a shutdown....
Plus this administration is already brazenly breaking laws. You think they won't violate worker protection laws? Sure, maybe the courts sort it out in a year or two, small comfort to the people who were relying on that income to pay their rent in the meantime.
The requirements for making a contract are minimal. If your friend says "I bet you a hundred dollars that you can't run over there and back in less than a minute" and you say nothing in response but start running, you've entered into a binding contract. Your other points still stand, but an email that makes an offer and makes it clear that you accept by responding "Resign" and a response to that email that says "Resign" is definitely sufficient to be subject to contract law.
Binding on illegal contracts is tricky. If I offer X for murder, and you do the murder and I don't pay you; you can't seek recompense in the courts.
If the government's offer is illegal, those who accepted it and performed their part of the contract may not be able to force the government to perform its part.
I think I agree, on reflection, that it is not a binding contract. But (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think it's a matter of consideration- in a wager, each party stands to gain the agreed upon amount depending on the outcome, which should qualify for that criteria AFAICT. I think the informality of a between-friends bet and gambling laws are what do the example in.
Yeah that clarification helps and I agree there - there's a bunch of exceptions of 'joking bets' etc. I first read the offer as "I'll give you $100 if you can run there and back in under a minute" rather than each party being able to win the $100 which would indeed satisfy the consideration requirement.
This is confidently wrong. The requirements for contracting with the federal government are nothing like the requirements between private citizens. There are specific statutory procedures which must be followed for an enforceable government contract, including but not limited to congressional funding.
Maybe I should have quoted the part I was disagreeing with, but I thought I had made it clear.
>And you think that an offer accepted by sending an email with "Resign" in the subject line is subject to these protections?
I'm saying that if you say "accept this agreement by sending 'Resign' in the subject line" and someone does so, that's a legally valid offer and acceptance of a contract. Are standards higher for the federal government on this?
Here's a quick blurb from a law firm blog, notice the "acts at its peril" language which is not the standard for private citizens contracting together:
"Authority Issues. Contract awards and contract modifications may be made on behalf of the government only by duly appointed contracting officers acting within the limits of both available funding and their delegated authority. This public policy principle of limited authority is strongly supported in the law. To the extent that a company incurs costs based upon the directions or promises of government persons without this essential authority, the company does so at its financial risk. Moreover, the contractor has the responsibility to know the scope of authority of the government official with whom it deals, and acts at its peril."
No, they don't. Contracts are enforced by the threat of the state's monopoly on violence. If the US goes bunk, who exactly are you going to to get your money? The courts are bunk too.
Even if the government exists, if Trump and Musk hold the payment system and you somehow get a judge to tell them to pay, they can just say no. Then what? Are you going to go Rambo? They hold a monopoly on violence and imprisonment.
This is why government's need to be set up with so many layers of indirect power and checks against direct power. this is why the military (should) have no role in governance.
If congress doesn't allocate the money, they won't be paid, even if they have a contract that says they will.
Imagine Trump decided to offer a worker a trillion dollars. He writes a contract with the worker. It is irrelevant - the worker won't be paid because the executive branch is not allowed to spend money that hasn't been authorized by congress.
How about you read actual news, not already half-digested propaganda vomit? You do not have to live in polluted wasteland of western media propaganda! Big media failed 1000x since war on terror, and Bush lies, yet you still consume their shit!
Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries.
Next level are independent channels on Telegram and Youtube. 10 min daily summary on war situation goes very long way.
> Simplest way is to read media from independent country. India is good, perhaps Arabic countries.
It's interesting that you listed India first. The English-language news source that pops up most often via Google News is the Hindustan Times, which is hot garbage. Are there any Indian sources that are much, much better than that which you recommend?
Honestly no idea, I followed this rabbit hole many years ago.
Hindustan times seems like a rag, like British Sun.
I guess I would recommend to take some event that happened 2 years ago, find how some papers wrote about it back then, and if you like it, follow them.
My point is there is no reason to stay in toxic relationship. There is no reason to read news if you do not get any rewards. Even monthly AI summaries will be better, and you will stay "informed".
For example all the Trump shit today, he wants legal precedents from constitutional court, 90% of this shit is irrelevant.
Most European EV sales that aren't Tesla are European brands like Volkswagen Group (VW, Audi, Skoda), BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis (Pueguot, Fiat, Opel), Renault-Nissan (Renault, Dacia, Nissan), or Korea's Hyundai.
The only Chinese challenger brand that has some traction is Geely via Volvo.
I'm not sure about Austria, but these are the cross-EU stats [0].
And in the largest EU markets (Germany, France, Italy, Spain), it's overwhelmingly local players.
Chinese players have started gaining some traction, but that's overwhelmingly Geely via Volvo. And Geely began their expansion abroad largely due to domestic competition within China, with most consumers preferring either a BYD or a Tesla.
That link talks about H1 2024 and says this about BYD:
> BYD registered 17,000 electric cars - 14,000 more compared to H1 2023. In fact, BYD’s rapid growth allowed it to outsell Nissan, Smart, Toyota, Polestar, Citroen, Dacia, Ford, Mini, Porsche, and Mazda. As a result, BYD is now Europe’s 16th best-selling BEV brand - the second Chinese brand following MG, which held 8th place in the BEV ranking.
We'll see in a couple months, but probably not well, because EU EV sales shrank overall in 2024 [0]
> That link talks about H1 2024 and says this about BYD:
Yea, but primarily this - "BYD is now Europe’s 16th best-selling BEV brand".
It's total sales are still dwarfed by existing giants in the EU market, as the H1 24 sales data has shown. The brands it outsold are those that didn't really target EU BEV sales (eg. Ford, Renault) or are conservative in their EV approach (eg. Nissan, Toyota)
The only Chinese firm that has kind of cracked the European market is Geely, and that's because they were able to leverage Volvo to sell a rebadged Geely as the XC30.
> Most European EV sales that aren't Tesla are European brands like
Bikes are still "vehicles". Problem is that stuff like Tesla are luxuries, we simply can not afford that! Bikes are an alternative on the same market.
An alternative that is heavily advertised by our governments! If there is a significant difference between car and bike, you should tell our government!
Not everyone has resources to treat their car as an IPhone!
Absolutely, yet at the end of the day Electric Bikes are not treated as EVs in colloquial conversation and are not a direct substitute for a Car in most cases. And I'm sure yk this too.
> You can absolutely carry family of 5 and furniture on bike! See Denmark and India!
I can't speak to Denmark, but in India people resort to buying electric bikes because of income. The moment they earn enough to pay for a car loan, they go for it, as people in my ancestral town have done.
That said, even in India, most 2 wheeler/electric bike sales are largely being driven by Ola - India's Uber/Tesla/AWS - because they are subsidizing Ola drivers to buy Ola Electric bikes. And that is what is driving most E-Bike sales in India.
That, even in India the sale of electric bikes has fallen significantly [0]
At the end of the day, in a market like India, if you can afford a car, you buy a car. And if you're buying a car in a market like India, you'd tend to prefer an SUV due to the negative stigma against sedans ("sedans are for p*ssies" mindset is the norm, and drives the popularity of vehicles is HC as the Mahindra Thar) [1][2]
The same mentality exists in the Indian 2-Wheeler/Bike community, with the KTM being treated as the gold standard.
The same "macho" style mentality that makes Pickup trucks popular in North America and Thailand is the same one that exists in India for SUVs (ICE or Electric) or Two Wheelers.
IMO, EVs and especially EV Sedans have done well in the Chinese market because the status symbol ICE car in China has historically been the Audi A6/A8, but in India the equivalent ICE car status symbol wise has been the Jaguar Land Rover [3]
Getting service for a Tesla in the US can be pretty unpleasant. They’ve gone from truly excellent service to not wanting to interact with their owners and managing parts availability quite poorly.
Absolutely terrible. I had to wait 2 months to get my Model S in for routine service. The day after, the battery pack heater failed and the vehicle would no longer fast DC charge. I was told it would be another 2 months until the vehicle could be looked at. I bought the part myself (1038901-00-K) and replaced it for ~$200 (requiring me to learn and perform the HV pack isolation procedure). Do not recommend.
Don't worry, everybody else is following suit and not selling parts for new cars either. My friend just bought a new GM vehicle, and it sat in the bodyshop for 9 months after someone hit the bumper at 5mph.
There's also the recent story about a guy running a limo business who couldn't get a bumper for his Cadillac, and had to keep making commercial insurance payments, and of course the car payment, while the car sat and could not be used.
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/01/gm-keeps-86k-cadillac-lyri...
With a legacy car maker, the service centers are independent (sort of). They have phone numbers, they answer the phone, and they want your business. If your car is drivable but needs a part, you can ask them to order it, and they will do so. Tesla service centers do not answer the phone, do not answer email, and generally could not care less about you unless you have an appointment made on the app. And they do not reliably answer messages sent via app. And, while their people might notice that they don’t have a part a day or two before your appointment and tell you this (by in-app message) and advise you not to bother bringing your car in, the automated workflow part of their app does not understand this, and there is a chance that you will get stuck and your car will never get fixed.
You can bypass this process to some extent by walking into the service center without an appointment, hopefully getting a friendly person, and having them ask you to make a service appointment while you stand there (using the app on your phone) so they can then log in, find your service appointment, and attempt to get the system to let them order parts while you stand there (a process that may or may not require a tiny amount of actual technician time because, while Tesla has all kinds of telemetry, this telemetry does not integrate at all with the system by which service centers decide what parts are needed).
Other than BYD, I would be very worried about getting spare parts for Chinese cars as well. Most of those car companies are in a very bad financial situation, in a country where the rest of the country is saddled with a crazy amount of shadow debt as well.
Europe has instituted tariffs for Chinese vehicles up to 35%. Given the low cost of Chinese vehicles, this may not be a big barrier (like in the US where it's 100% tariff).
Other than that, I completely agree - and hope that Europe manufacturing can catch up to China on EVs.
Completely uninformed statement. Its impressive what they achieved in such a short time but neither the xiaomi nor the BYD Seal is anywhere close to what it is mimicking.
Most people don't need or want FSD. They want an actual steering wheel and an actual stalk in order to activate turn signals. They want reliable well-made electric vehicles that don't take long to repair.
Musk has spent many billions of dollars building something his target market doesn't require. Tesla does not currently have product-market fit.
Musk should resign his board and CEO positions and stop interfering with internal decision-making. And refrain from rumored ketamine use.
people might even want fsd if it worked… except of course it only works on the highway and my 1986 hyundai had cruise control that did 93% of what tesla’s “f”sd does
That’s largely as a result of its branding strategy (single brand, only two mass-market models). There are 19 production vehicles based on VW’s MEB platform, say, most of them very similar. This is fairly typical; all of the big car manufacturers have at least a couple of brands, and many models, and some (notably VW, Stellantis, GM) have _dozens_ of brands, largely with shared platforms.
A lot of that is selling just 2 mass-market models. And it only barely beats out the Toyota Corolla, except that Toyota also sells the third highest volume model (the RAV-4) and the 8th (the Camry).
But when you add up sales for all models from each company, there are 12 companies that sell more cars each year. Market share is 11.07% Toyota, 6.41% VW, 4.87% Honda, 4.82% Ford, 4.56% Hyundai, 3.84% Nissan, 3.77% Suzuki, 3.53% Kia, 3.48% Chevrolet, 3.47% BYD, 2.67% Mercedes-Benz, then 2.77% for Audi and Tesla, and bringing up the rear of the top 15 is 1.85% for Renault
Yet, Tesla makes more profit than most. It's like saying Apple has no market-fit vs Android because it's far less popular… until you realize it's a strategic choice to sell fewer vehicles but at higher margins.
Tesla hasn't started going down market with cheaper cars. But they've said new, cheaper models will be released by June 2025. We'll see what happens for the cheaper and higher-volume segment of the auto market.
But for now, Tesla has the most popular model with the highest margins.
It just shows how uninformed you are! BYD Seal is 2000kg car, we do not want that! Europeans want EVs that are maybe 600kg to do shopping and drive around town. 80kms on single charge and 50kmph are quite acceptable parameters.
If I can remove car battery, put it on a cart, and take it to my apartment on 10th floor via elevator, even better! I need to charge it over night!
If I could spare $50k on new car, I would buy ICE before they are banned!
Who is we here? Europe is a big place with a lot of countries which are very different from other European countries. Here in Sweden that 600 kg 80 km/charge 50 kmph car would not do so well since it would run out of juice on the way back from the supermarket for a substantial part of the population, it would get stuck in the snow in winter and does not have enough power to keep the interior are a reasonable temperature when outside it is anything but reasonable. It might sell in Stockholm but then only to affluent citizens who'd use it next to their other two or three vehicles.
I'm all in on thinking modern cars are too fat but "maybe 600kg" is an absurd suggestion. That's less than a Smart Fortwo. There'll be a market for that but it's not what "Europeans want".
But most cars we had in the 80s were less than 1000kg, and that was fine.
Context differ from country to country, and from cities to countryside within countries, but in places where most of the population is concentrated in high-density cities, small cars or alternatives to cars are much, much more desirable than 2000+kg SUVs. Case in point, in France: more and more city centers just drastically reduce cars lanes and accessibility.
No, it is pretty much dialog, I would compare it to pair programming.
AI in many levels is more capable than human programmer, in some it is not. It is not supersmart. It can not hold entire program in its head, you have to feed it small relevant section of program.
》 That’s why we use documents—they let us organize complexity, reference specific points, and track changes systematically.
It worked great for them. Current masterpiece from Netflix has 13 Oscar nominations! Every AI company should learn and apply this lesson!