Relax, while mentioning the real world without any criticism for the soundness of the solution is absolute nonsense, some would say idiotic, thinking only in the absolute best solution given your narrow world view is not any better.
While I agree that my view is narrow, the "best solution" in question is what we used to do, and it was fine. There are still many places that manually manage dependencies. Fundamentally automatic software versioning is an under-developed area in need of attention, and technologies like semantic versioning which are ubiquitous are closer to suggestions, and not true indicators of breaking changes. My personal view is that fully automatic dependency version management is an ongoing experiment and should be treated as such.
I'm sorry to be that guy, but can we reintroduce a good dose of skepticism in our mental diets?
BYD was already selling a ton of cars when the oil prices were "low", of course there's some very creative accounting business moves you would expect from a Chinese company like BYD ( companies from other places have their own peculiarities too ).
Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The concept of electric vehicle is technically superior to support the context and lifestyle a large majority of people have. It will "win" over time. There is no need to this bullshit simplistic feel-good articles.
Btw, the the market movements of people trying to get rid of their gas-guzzling SUVs when prices are high and trade them for a smaller and more economical car ( what they should have been doing in the first place.. ) already happened in the past many times, there is no news here. But these movements don't happen in a time span of a week or a couple weeks.
Sorry for the rant, but between AI's "Absolutely, you're entirely right!" and these bullshit articles.. I don't know.
To be clear: EV's will "win" and BYD has been selling a ton of cars because they are cheap and not terrible right out of the gate, also people don't have much disposable income.
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
Have you actually seen the news and the situation? Gas prices will continue to rise and will stay high for at least 3-5 years, given the damaged infrastructure and how long it will take to rebuild. And that's if nothing else happens, so the situation could get a lot worse
This means 2 things: 1) it might be a better alternative to drive electric (depends on the numbers), and 2) if enough people start preferring EVs, prices for EVs might spike in the next 1-2 years. So buying now could be a good move depending on how things turn out
Russia has been recovering from Ukrainian drone strikes again oil industries within months. And Ukraine inflicted much serious damage than Iran on Gulf states.
Drones with 100-150kg just not capable of inflicting hard to recover damage. What they are good is striking repeatedly. But judging by numbers Iran is not capable any longer of sustained stacks with hundreds of drones per day.
Very interesting take. Not sure about the comparisons though: 1) Russia is a huge powerhouse that can do a lot on its own, I don't think Gulf states have the same capability to recover (at least that's what energy analysts are saying), 2) The US claimed they had completely maimed Iran in the first few days of the war, saying they had fully destroyed their navy and their missile launching capabilities. However, that clearly doesn't seem to be the case, and yesterday Iran even downed an F35, which until then was thought of as an almost impossible feat
I guess there's a lot up in the air right now, so I personally wouldn't bet on things getting better that quickly
The same analysts predicted that it would take years for Russia to recover from the strikes. And Russia is no longer a powerhouse. They gets most of their equipment from China including the oil and gas industries.
As for Iran just count the number of drones it uses per day. They started from hundreds but now it is below 50.
I wasn't talking about BYD in particular, nor referencing any numbers or quotes from the blog. I was responding to the above comment mocking/doubting people's decisions about EV purchases and showing how that contrasts with the current macro situation
Feel free to expand on the wholesale power market prices you are referring to though, not sure what your take is
Wholesale power market prices are responding to shocks in the natural gas market from two wars that disrupted those supply chains. Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.
Not so much in the US, where our braindead political culture is intent on ignoring the obvious economic advantage of renewables, but definitely everywhere else in the world.
> Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.
I think storage is great and solar has a place, but this is not true unless you discard reliability and other features, which should be in the price. Solar plus storage for baseload power matching requires huge overbuilds. Even in the last few years, before the AI hype, installed utility scale renewables costs went up in the US. It's not just the hardware or national politics.
And if you can't get renewables interconnected in a couple years, then the install rate won't lower the carbon of the existing grid mix charging your car.
Why would you need to “discard reliability”? What do you think storage is for?
People have been saying that solar will never work for my entire life, and my entire career in clean energy, as I have watched it grow and grow and grow and grow.
You’re right that the interconnect queue is broken. Many, many people are working on this problem. Believing that an extremely tractable bureaucratic hurdle means that solar can’t work is madness.
No, solar reliability requires overbuild and storage to compare accurately on LCOE. Hybrid and overbuild = expensive, so not "cheap/er", which you said.
A lot of people have this misconception about solar even with awareness of the duck curve.
I don’t think this is correct. You’re arguing that the industry analyses on this subject are wrong because they’re underestimating how much solar + batteries need to be deployed to be as reliable as a gas power plant. So you’re arguing that initial capex (which everyone acknowledges is higher than natural gas) is somewhat higher than existing analyses think it is.
The lifetime of solar panels is also higher than most of these analyses say it is, because both solar and batteries are frequently found to last well beyond their factory-rated lifetimes. So I think you’re wrong without any additional considerations here, so let’s leave that aside.
What you’re saying here is that the lower ongoing opex of solar and batteries is eaten up by the higher initial capex of gas, but you’re saying the prive of natural gas has no impact on this calculation.
I don’t think this makes any sense. Can you explain your thinking here? Can you cite any data on this?
> You’re arguing that the industry analyses on this subject are wrong because they’re underestimating how much solar + batteries need to be deployed to be as reliable as a gas power plant.
No, the industry knows this. Talk to any investor or developer. See the capacity market blowout in PJM because they don't have enough firm power supply to offset the flood of renewables (sans storage). Or just look at the announcements for natural gas turbine demand by datacenters, which need 24/7 power. The overbuild for renewables and storage is insane to hit the same reliability and safety margins.
> So you’re arguing that initial capex (which everyone acknowledges is higher than natural gas) is somewhat higher than existing analyses think it is
It's not just CAPEX. It's also OPEX. LCOE is a normalized ($/MWh) metric that allows for comparison. See Lazard [0] or NREL's analysis [1] on LCOE costs. Note how expensive solar plus storage becomes on an LCOE basis and realistically, you might need way more than 4h batteries to hit reliability targets.
> because both solar and batteries are frequently found to last well beyond their factory-rated lifetimes.
BTW, this is like saying you can still use laptops past their 5 year warranty. Yes, but that's not how depreciation, financing, and service levels work. These assets are getting pushed to their limits and not everyone's buying tier 1 suppliers.
That little (sans storage) is some load-bearing sleight of hand. Yes, solar is intermittent, and needs to be paired with storage.
You’re saying the overbuild is “insane”. Do you have an actual cite for this? I’m assuming there’s some percent over capacity you need to build that would allow people to reason about this.
I’m still not seeing an answer here re: the cost of natural gas, it seems like that has a huge impact on all of these assumptions.
I can't take your comments seriously, though, I don't think you're trying act in bad faith.
> You’re saying the overbuild is “insane”. Do you have an actual cite for this? I’m assuming there’s some percent over capacity you need to build that would allow people to reason about this.
If you have zero intuition about storage overbuild or underbuild to firm up intermittent capacity or why PJM has an undersupply of storage, then on what basis are you calling my comments on storage "sleight of hand"? My assumption, though, and seriously not trying to be mean, but based on your bio and paradoxical comments, you don't really know how to defend your argument or read these primary sources you requested.
> I’m still not seeing an answer here re: the cost of natural gas, it seems like that has a huge impact on all of these assumptions.
Taking one step at a time, you still haven't acknowledged you were incorrect about LCOE comparisons to date. These are provided in the sources that you asked for.
As for the future, you can run sensitivities. My primary sources included price shock sensitivities. You probably overlooked or can't process them as it appears.
Very true. It's not like EV owners were feeling regret when gas hit the (mythical ) $2/gallon. Honestly, while it's fun to know I've "saved" $5k or so in gas costs during the 4 years I've owned my EV, if saving money was my only goal, I would have paid cash for a slightly used efficient four cylinder gas car.
It's not like EV owners were feeling regret when gas hit the (mythical ) $2/gallon.
Gas could be free, and I'd still have no regrets. Because an EV is simply the better vehicle. And I think after over a decade of mass-produced EVs that maybe it's time to get away from "saves on gas" or "good for the environment", and maybe start marketing as "full every time you pull out of the garage", or something. Kind of like Mazda's old commercials for their Wankel engine cars: "piston engine goes 'boing', but the Mazda goes 'hmmmmm'".
I'd be more interested in EVs if they didn't come with significant privacy and complexity trade-offs.
I don't want a door handle that can't open in an emergency. I don't want my vehicle constantly phoning home to the mothership (sadly I have to deal with that today, I really need to go disable that functionality). I certainly don't want a touchscreen through which all controls are routed.
I have a 20-year-old Jeep with significant mechanical problems; I should really convert it to a BEV.
I'd be more interested in EVs if they didn't come with significant privacy and complexity trade-offs.
You're going to be really disappointed when you go to look at new ICE vehicles. This "EVs are a privacy nightmare!" trope needs to die, all cars do that now.
I don't want a door handle that can't open in an emergency.
Only one car manufacturer to my knowledge has that problem, just don't buy one of those. Again, nothing to do with electric cars.
I certainly don't want a touchscreen through which all controls are routed.
So far, other than the poorly-designed door handles of one manufacturer, nothing you've listed is unique to EVs. All you've done is describe "most new cars".
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The situation is something that makes people pause for a second.
Like everyone knows that EVs are the future, but when gas is fine, status quo fine, that future can be a fuzzy thing in the distance and it's really easy to shut off your brain, live in the present, and not really do any thinking and just go through the motions.
A sudden oil shock puts the issue of EVs on the front burner and gives people reason to think about things for a moment.
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD?
Or, America's "No War" candidate is starting wars in the middle east with no plan. It's co-belligerant is targeting oil production facilities, and the defender is responding by taking out refinery capacity in the area. Markets are predicting higher fuel costs for years.
That seems a reasonable time for a bump in EV sales interest.
Just be aware of journalists relating 2 unrelated things happening at the same time using "among" and "as" and discount the article accordingly. If you didn't pay money for the article, they will utilize click and engagement bait. Of course a week of increased oil prices hasn't changed any measurable purchasing patterns as the title implies.
This article is anecdotal with quotes from a BYD salesman about their product, and it doesn't mention that BYD's sales are down in Jan-Feb. 2026 (-36% y/y).
At any one time I would assume there are thousands of people in the world who are replacing their existing vehicle right at this very moment for normal reasons.
> I'm sorry to be that guy, but can we reintroduce a good dose of skepticism in our mental diets?
Of headlines? Always. Of the content of the article? Not without you providing counterevidence.
Speaking of the content:
* BYD has seen an uptick in demand for EVs
* "At one [BYD] dealership in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, demand is so high that it booked a month’s worth of orders in just the past two weeks"
* another dealership nearby had to hire more salespeople
* small uptick from Edmunds for people researching EVs in relevant period[1]
Tech directors, CEOs, managers, etc tend to be people with a certain personality and ( learned behaviors/thinking ) just like "technical people".
Yes, they tend to be incredible gullible to certain things, over-simplistic and over-confident but also very "agile" when it comes to sweep their failures under the rug and move on to keep their own neck in one piece. At this point in time even the median CEO knows AI has been way overhyped and they over invested to a point of absolute financial insanity.
The first line of defense about the pressure to deliver is to mandate their minions to use it as much as possible.
We spent a fortune on this over-rated Michelin star reservation, and now you kids are going to absolutely enjoy it, like it or not goddammit!
plus all the times he has been a crybaby and demanding special treatment when it comes to flying and everything related to his private jet for some reason.
He's not unique and probably not the Antichrist, just in the group of turbo-assholes. This post was made in the context of this chain.
Ironically, Google is the safer bet and this might have been a correct decision from Tim Apple.
AI is changing at a rapid pace ( still ) and OpenAI is no longer the only game in town at the top, plus their finances are.. something we’ll hear about the next year and Sam Altman is an incredible unscrupulous person with past actions and decisions catching up to him. Not exactly the situation you want to partner with.
At this point you don’t need your AI on Apple devices to be revolutionary, it needs to work and be better than the current situation which is not difficult.
Gemini 3 is quite good for the general public, Google has the money to keep playing the AÍ games and also played ball with Apple, OpenAI only has 1 or 2 of those going for them.
Possibly. Until online features are added, marking a slow decline into the everything-as-a-subscription-service world (E-ASS). Look at Apple vs Google stock price for the carrot.
Even if I turn it off, how to I remove it and reclaim the space I paid for?
The delusion of the “Mac just works” crowd is only matched by the delusion of the Linux “year of the Desktop” crowd.
They share the same trait of “it works on my machine, I like it, therefore it’s my identity and everything else is wrong”
I use Linux regularly as a second OS for more than 15 years. Driver compatibility improved, software design and quality didn’t, in fact it suffers more or less the same problems of other mainstream OSs.
Linux on the desktop has been winning because the others got bad at a faster pace, I’m not sure there is anything to be celebrated.
It's probably not worth it to say more than that my experience simply differs from yours. I've found it incredibly unproductive to quibble with people who have jumped to the conclusion that some difference of opinion must stem from some kind of identity-justification/confirmation bias delusion out the gate. This seems to be the most common mindless kneejerk criticism people jump to these days when they're engaging not with the person they're talking to, but a strawman or stereotype they believe that they conceptually represent, which in turn seems to be the most common failure mode of internet argumentation in general. It's interesting to see how the real phenomenon of confirmation bias and some relatively well-respected theories about opinion-as-identity have jumped from psychological literature to being basically pervasive thought-terminating cliches. But I like writing out my thoughts so... against my better judgment I'll write 'em out here. As a treat
My experience with the linux ecosystem overall, which seems consistent with that of the person you're responding to from what little information that post gives, has been of consistent improvement over a long timescale with an increasingly capable stack of open-source software whose exact pieces have shifted with various community and maintainer dramas and the natural process of the birth of new projects and death of old ones over time. I've found that I have my preferences within that ecosystem, like I settled on archlinux as a distro about ten years ago and haven't really seen a strong reason to switch, despite periodically working with other popular ones in the course of a career as a software engineer and researcher. I have strong reasons to prefer a modular, composable operating system that I control, so I wouldn't consider using proprietary software if there's a working FOSS alternative. This is a bias for sure! But I find my frustration with these things has decreased in aggregate over time, even as I've changed tools and suffered switching costs for it numerous times, and dealt with the general hostility with which a lot of manufacturers seem to view open-source software running on their hardware, and their attempts to make this more difficult. However, the aggregate experience of proprietary software users seems to have significantly degraded over the same period. They generally insist that this is still worth it to them over doing what I do, and again I've been in enough dumb internet arguments to know that it's not worthwhile to do more than gently suggest that alternatives exist and may be worth trying unless I know them personally.
I do get a window into proprietary ecosystems nonetheless, because I still don't feel I can replace the use cases required of me on mobile phones with an open-source alternative yet, and have seen my frustrations steadily increase over time with both these and SaaS products that I've been required to use for work. I also got frustrated enough with game consoles that I've entirely switched over to using PCs, running linux, for any games I want to play. At every turn, I have found that while computers are always error-prone in some way or another, and using them extensively will result in some frustration, this is significantly less when I have more control over the computer, and has become less rather than more frequent as open-source projects mature. I can not only observe that my own experience with proprietary products has followed the opposite pattern, but that more and more people talking about tech companies with scorn rather than effusive praise, yelling at their phones, and the public discourse adopting terms like "platform decay", "enshittification", "tech rot", etc all suggest that this is a general trend rather than my biases
Again, your mileage may vary, but I do find it odd that you are so immediately dismissive of this perspective, accusing a pretty innocuous comment about it of reactionary identity-defense basically immediately without engaging at all. If you're inclined to listen to a zealot like me at all, I would only urge you to consider why you have assumed this so quickly, why you are so adamant that this is the only sort of person who could form such an opinion
Even most toy databases "built in a weekend" can be very stable for years if:
- No edge-case is thrown at them
- No part of the system is stressed ( software modules, OS,firmware, hardware )
- No plug is pulled
Crank the requests to 11 or import a billion rows of data with another billion relations and watch what happens. The main problem isn't the system refusing to serve a request or throwing "No soup for you!" errors, it's data corruption and/or wrong responses.
I really never understood how people could store very important information in ES like it was a database.
Even if they don't understand what ES is and what a "normal" database is, I'm sure some of those people run into issues where their "db" got either corrupted of lost data even when testing and building their system around it. This is and was general knowledge at the time, it was no secret that from time to time things got corrupted and indexes needed to be rebuilt.
Doesn't happen all the time, but way greater than zero times and it's understandable because Lucene is not a DB engine or "DB grade" storage engine, they had other more important things to solve in their domain.
So when I read stories of data loss and things going South, I don't have sympathy for anyone involved other than the unsuspecting final clients. These people knew or more or less knew and choose to ignore and be lazy.
> I really never understood how people could store very important information in ES like it was a database.
I agree.
Its been a while since I touched it, but as far as I can remember ES has never pretended to be your primary store of information. It was mostly juniors that reached for it for transaction processing, and I had to disabuse them of the notion that it was fit for purpose there.
ES is for building a searchable replica of your data. Every ES deployment I made or consulted sourced its data from some other durable store, and the only thing that wrote to it were replication processes or backfills.
we had something like this to scale out for higher throughput. just in the 10's of thousands requests per second required 100+ nodes simply because each query would have a expensive scatter and gather
I’ve no experience with Elastic but what they’re getting at I think is indexes in Elastic is actually your data because that’s all it does due to the purpose it was built for, whereas in Postgres indexes are, well, indexes — that is, derived data, not the source of truth.
usually in companies, people have a main durable store of information that is then streamed to other databases that store a transformation of this data with some augmentation.
these new data stores don't usually require that level of durability or reliability.
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