That's a perfect example of a sunk cost fallacy. Also paying for electricity/janitorial staff/equipment replacement is not free.

Honestly, my logic is simple on why they want it:

"We have a lease on this property for the next 5-10 years, and the agency won't let us get out from under it. So if we're going to be stuck paying for it, let's use it."

What they should do is renovate them and turn them into rentals for housing. Pretty much everywhere has a housing shortage nowadays causing rents to skyrocket. You could easily add hundreds, if not thousands, of new units this way.

Pretty close to LFP batteries, but faster charging and more resistant to low temperature. Cheaper of course. Not sure about recharge cycles- likely less.

How do the specs compare with competitors and solid state?

I work at Kaiser Permanente and they are very generous with remote work where it make sense. I am in the back office and everyone I worked with prior to the pandemic were in different locations, but my team was in the office with me. However, they needed to talk to everyone outside of our team regularly. Since COVID, we are 100% remote and have been highly productive and happy. Some positions are still required to be in office, but the company downsized my office and is closing a building nearby saving a ton of money. A blanket get everyone in the office policy is stupid. There are some positions that should be in the office, but a vast majority don’t need to be.

Those people in your last paragraph suck. I am super extroverted. I thought I’d never want to work from home. Now, I could never go back into an office. It is not my job’s responsibility to socialize me. I can make my own plans with people that actually want to see me, not people who are forced into an office.

If you’re an extrovert, do the work yourself to make friends.

I’m telling you what I am currently seeing in my industry. Jobs had NEVER been outsourced in the past. And now those who self-identify as being able to WFH are the very careers that other competitors of mine are now outsourcing. Could it be a complete coincidence? Sure. Would I be volunteering that my job can be done anywhere? Heck no. Especially if I am a young person.

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. The pandemic has taught me how very little C level employees bring to the table despite taking the lion share of payroll. They need to be seen pea-cocking around the office with their assistants so share holders don't wise up to just how useless they are. If the company was a healthy moose, C level employees are the fat, over-bloated ticks getting a free meals and transportation at the moose's expense and hard work.

My next conspiracy theory regarding return to office - is the mass layoffs we're seeing all over the place. For what? Some fears of a depression era recession that we've been worried about for over a year now? Inflation? We "over-hired" (how does that happen anyway)? Insert some other benign un-measureable fear here. My theory is that indsutry leaders are deliberately over-filling the candidate pool. Why? Because when people run through savings and are looking at losing their homes, they will eventually accept the "In the office full time" job (at possibly a lower salary) just to keep a roof over their families head, food in the cupboard and keep the lights on.

Granted this isn't all companies. Some have fully embraced the WFH life (mine included) and this is just how we operate now. Because why NOT? We don't even have the office space at this point for a complete return to the office. I'm super lucky that the owner of my company really listens to their employees and even did a a complete 180 on their own views from WFH. Pre pandemic they were pretty old school. No remote work. Ever. Post pandemic when it was realized we were all in it for the long haul, he noticed productivity up and even enjoyed his ability to commute, only if he wanted to. So much in fact they moved to the beach and operate from there with bi monthly visits to corporate.

>The point is a robot that does basic household tasks slowly is possible...
>
>Time is really valuable.

yeah. like AI bots that start a paragraph with one premise and then end the paragraph with the exact opposite premise.

Tesla only decided to build such an entry entry-level vehicle to compete with BYD, whose EV sales exceed Tesla, and who has a much more diversified and integrated worldwide battery manufacturing system. BYD's bestselling Han goes for about $40k in the OECD, but they could conceivably sell the Dolphin in the US at around $20k after additional duties, targeted taxes, and price adjustment to the US market (it's ~$15k in China).

BYD is not the only foreign EV manufacturer who can, does, and will undercut Tesla if they get into the same market. It's only a matter of what Tesla's strategy will be. Arguably from some in the business, Tesla should not compete at the budget level, and instead remain a brand name like BMW or Apple. The arrival of low-cost players will expand the share of consumers who choose EVs in the first place, and thus the number of consumers who will later upgrade to a luxury brand -- thus Tesla would encourage its low-cost rivals to enter the US.

Interesting concept. Do you have anything to add to this?

Maybe it would be something we currently dismiss or take for granted. A phenomenon people are told to “get over” or that it’s a fact of life, before scientists study it and find a treatment.

This has soo much potential to be weaponized, think about it, you make a carrier immune and then ship him to infect everything he touches with a potentially deadly virus.

Can we please for the love of all things holy stop with the search for gain of function, we still haven't really got over the last mess someone created out of "coincidence"

Look up the Evergrande collapse in China. This has been going on for multiple years in various countries and everyone is doing everything they can to keep the panic from spreading.

https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/is-china-going-to-collapse-7525ea90a122

There is a strong US correlation since many US investment firms bet on speculative Chinese real estate. That’s $300 billion USD gone.

Tesla can’t fix the build quality and recall issues it has on current models they definitely aren’t rolling out a cheap shitbox that “changes the game”.

The point is a robot that does basic household tasks slowly is possible, at least in the somewhat foreseeable future and has a reasonable use case for early adopters, even if it does cost in the five figures. Think about how many households own a second car just to make somebody’s commute shorter. Time is really valuable.

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I think AI Chatbot delusions and misplaced empathy and attachment will become prevalent.

It does raise quite a lot of questions. I believe Washington and SpaceX would have to announce every launch and keep our nuclear rivals abreast of whenever they launch… these things are basically ICBMs without the payload, but I’d bet everyone else will be suspicious of every one of them.

Definitely an escalation in the weaponization of space.

Otherwise I see why they’re drooling over this capability. Imagine deploying orbital troops or vehicles to anywhere in the world in 30 minutes.

My counterpoint is that, at least in my case, technology has caused me to forget that education. I lack the ability to navigate far without the tech because those skills are no longer used. In theory, I could spend the time and effort to educate myself but with the tech so reliable, my chances of getting a benefit from doing so are very small. Even if I spent the time, the tech performs the task better than I could. Maps has access to life traffic data, for example.

So, to OP's point, what other skills will we lose once technology makes them defunct?

Battery maker Hina Battery today unveiled three sodium-ion battery cell products and announced a partnership with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Corp (JAC), which has made one of its models the first to carry sodium-ion batteries.

The unveiling of the Sehol E10X test vehicle means that sodium-ion batteries are starting to be used in passenger cars, after the new batteries were mainly used in electric two-wheelers and for energy storage.

The test vehicle has a battery pack with a capacity of 25 kWh and an energy density of 120 Wh/kg. The model has a range of 252 km and supports fast charging of 3C to 4C. The battery pack uses cells with an energy density of 140 Wh/kg.

The Sehol E10X is currently available in seven versions with a guide price range of RMB 46,900 ($6,810) to RMB 76,400.

In addition to the announcement of the sodium-ion battery-equipped test vehicle, Hina Battery today officially launched three sodium-ion battery cells.

These three types of cells are NaCR32140-ME12 cylindrical cell, NaCP50160118-ME80 square cell and NaCP73174207-ME240 square cell, with energy densities of 140 Wh/kg, 145 Wh/kg and 155 Wh/kg respectively. (Early LFP batteries had energy densities of around 160 Wh/kg).

According to Li Shujun, general manager of Hina Battery, the company's sodium-ion batteries are geared to mainstream market demand and have the advantages of long life, wide temperature range and high power, and are ready for mass production.

The company is advancing cooperation with a number of leading companies, and these sodium-ion battery products will be widely used in two-wheelers, passenger cars, commercial vehicles, home and commercial and industrial energy storage, and large-scale energy storage, he said.

For only 29.99/month robochef gains access to the Mediterranean menu!

Yes, today's navigation infrastructure within cities is quite robust. You probably won't have to worry about not having at least indirect access to Google Maps unless the GPS or telecom networks go down.

I still don't see how this is a counterpoint. OP's question assumed AI is instanteously available and implied that this means you would just rely on the AI for all info and direction in life. (At least the recent similar questions have all hinted at this) My point is no infrastructure is perfect, infomation transfer takes time which you don't always have, and finally knowledge doesn't equate to understanding or give you the ability to apply the knowledge.
Therefore you will still need to learn, memorize, and practice stuff in anticipation of needing it later or to provide a foundation to build further learning on. Is that not a working definition of education?

I wouldn't trust a robot - especially an *AI* robot - inside my house that has the strength to unload plates from dishwashers, lift laundry, etc. in close proximity to humans at any speed. There's a reason that industrial control robots are all behind yellow hazard lines. You're talking a literally crush/injury hazard.

Fold laundry? Not a chance it would be able to do the computer vision to do that with any accuracy.

Same for dusting, unless you found a kind of air-jet or similar.

Unload the dishwasher? It would be cheaper and easier to NOT BOTHER... just make the dishwasher twice-height. Lower is the dishwasher. Upper is storage on a sprung rack like in a restaurant. You now have a "cupboard" full of dishes stacked in their place, and you have integrated into the machine that washes them and which need only "raise" them out of the dishwasher into the storage section.

Puts away the groceries? Not a chance. Again, it's just easier to say "here's a modular grocery cart that gets delivered in a standardised way, here's a special cupboard that is labelled, here's a fixed, dumb robot that can put one into the other". No AI involved, no computer vision, no customised bespoke per-customer setup, no hazards, obstacles, confusions, choices.

I think a FEW people would pay through the nose to get a gimmick AI piece of junk that's not very good at the job.

Literally the closest we've had to any of your suggestions was that robot that was put into a burger joint at great expense, and unless a human lined up the ingredients perfectly for it, it wouldn't work at all, and most of the time it was slower, less able to cope, and easy to confuse, jam, break, etc. Didn't they shut that one down in the end?

I love my robot vacuum, don't get me wrong. The same principle as you state... I turn Bob (I named him, if you don't anthropomorphise your computers, you don't care about them enough) on before I leave for work. He does a good few hours of random-path vacuuming over several surfaces, avoids stairs, bumps off walls, then when his battery is low, he self-homes. That "time-saving" is enormous.

But he get 95% of the floor debris. He's not great on corners. He gets stuck under the radiator. I have to booby-trap the bathroom so he can't approach the penguin floor mat that he likes to shag (he literally gets stuck on it, and then his wheels try to reel it in so it looks like he's devouring the poor animal).

However, vacuuming 95% of my floor debris, every day, for the press of one button, means that vacuuming is no longer a chore and even when I want to go "all out", I only have the other 5% to worry about.

There is no way that in just 10 years we will progress AI to have even a handful more domestic chores be automated, let alone 40% of them. And each time, they can be outclassed by a dumb machine half their cost just doing a decent enough job. I don't want a robot butler who walks around and waters my plants. I want a small, cheap irrigation system with dumb, cheap hardware, so that nobody has to. Bob is dumb. Sensor-controlled. No "floor-maps". No "lasers". Even the self-homing is just two blinky IR LEDs like a Wiimote bar on his charger and he wanders randomly until he spots them and then uses them to home in. It doesn't NEED to be AI to be useful and get the job done.

Same way I don't need a robot arm to unload my dishwasher. I could just have a dumb mechanism in the dishwasher move the "clean plates" baskets up into an empty cupboard above it, for me to select a plate from next time I'm cooking like it's just a shelf full of plates. A fraction of the cost, far easier technology, same effect, literally available now if someone could be bothered to build one (a dishwasher, a cupboard, a sliding motorised rail, and a couple of relays.

Waiting for AI for this stuff is *dumb*. Using *dumb* technology to actually change how we live is *smart*.

Same for "smart cars". I don't want smart cars. I want a dumb car that runs on rails and doesn't need to interpret the road at all. I want individual rail pods that navigate fixed, well-defined, well-controlled, simple rail systems that follow every major road, where the control between you and the "car" in front is a mechanical linkage that means they cannot collide.

Simpler, safer, cheaper, available with current technology.