That would explain the targeted scams I’ve been subjected to which seem to have been coming from old colleagues

You made me check, the cheapest I can buy one here is 70k EUR for the EQA:

EQA is the name of the new entry-level model to the all-electric world of Mercedes-EQ vehicles.

What a bargain for an entry level model

Mercedes: the EV market is challenging at the moment.

Also mercedes: pay 100k for this car with limited autonomy and dubious software in early beta stages…

People who keep paying are assholes

it’s excellent in the hands of those who have enough experience and understanding of concerns at all levels to use it but they’re generally either used by people without that experience

You’re just saying that skilled people can do stuff better than unskilled people. This is hardly a software engineering issue. It is common in all aspects of life

The difference with software engineering is that the field is still relatively young enough to not have figured out a working model or sets of working models (unlike farming, for example, or finance).This field is realistically 30 years old during which it continuously evolves and redefines itself so it’s still not going to produce good working models.

Agile, since you picked on it, is very difficult to implement because it specifically relies on engineering figuring out how to work and how to deliver. It’s really not a model at all. It’s just a set of guidelines meant to create the environment in which the figuring out happens. It’s no wonder that it only works when people have the ability to figure it out.

Bad things can happen but that’s why you build disaster recovery into the infrastructure. Especially with a compqny as big as Toyota, you can’t have a single point of failure like this. They produce over 13,000 cars per day. This failure cost them close to 300,000,000 dollars just in cars.

Serverless just means that the user doesn’t manage the capacity by themselves. This scenario can happen easily if the serverless provider is as incompetent as the Toyota admins.

That’s what I was saying too. The market has vanished because there is no supply

The sh market in my area was made completely crazy by the supply chain issues over the past few years. When I looked into it at the end of 2022, ah cars of 3-4 years were more expensive than the new ones. I could afford to wait 10 months for a new car so that’s what I went with, but had I needed a car quickly, I’d have had to part with serious cash.

The brands are so strong that they can afford to move slowly on this.

I really don’t think they are strong. The car industry was basically ravaged by the 2007 financial crisis and a lot of what were companies back then are just brands owned by a few of the industry players. It’s hard to believe they would survive another situation like that. I think they want to move fast, but they simply aren’t able to do so.

“The base car market segment will either vanish or will not be done by European manufacturers,” BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said on Sunday evening in reference to China’s push into Europe.

Is there a base car market in Europe at the moment, electric or otherwise? Is there even a need for one? I was able to live comfortably for ten years here without a car. When circumstances changed and I had to buy one this year, I was shocked by the prices. There really isn’t an entry level affordable market segment anymore. I don’t think there is any car designed for people entering the workforce or young professionals in lower paying jobs.

I remember buying my first car in early 2000s as a young professional. There really was a lot of choice. Not good choices necessarily (yes, I mean you, Clio), but choices.

Edit: hah! I just checked prices for clios where I live. A new one would set you back 26,000 EUR. The average income around here is 47,000/year before tax…

You’re obviously taking pleasure in debating an idea. Obviously so do I. However, you need more training. You have to add more support to your arguments and contradict the opposing arguments with facts that hold up. You have to concede points and counterpoint when possible. And most importantly, you have to bring datapoints to your claims.

At the moment you’re only putting out ideas with very little data. When I asked for examples of sanctions and international pressure, I was expecting something like this which is concrete. The “Killing Hope” is a really bad data point because it doesn’t support your claim directly and it is “fictional” 3rd party data from a biased source.

With the examples of actual sanctions, I would have pointed that USSR and their allies which included China and strong economic ties with India had its own access to resources and economic development and could impose sanctions of their own. In fact, I can point out that USSR controlled by itself a land area comparable to the entire NATO alliance today and that between them and China, they occupy considerably more landmass and have considerably more population.

In fact, those sanctions were not going to make any dent in the actual USSR economy. That wasn’t the goal (since it was impossible to achieve). They were meant to weaken the relationship with the communist buffer states such as Romania, Poland, Hungary and they did to a certain extent.

But, of course, USSR was doing the same thing in what has been the US back yard: South America. Countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Brasil were being aided by the USSR with loans, technology and technical leadership in order to remove them from the US influence sphere. And USSR was more successful than USA at doing this. In fact, Romania, Poland, Hungary only became US allies after the collapse of the USSR while the south american countries were closer to USSR since the 70s.

The discussion from here either goes backwards in history to how Russia had a late start or goes into economic details for a while, but ultimately it always ends in the same place: one model collapsed, one didn’t.

I grew up in eastern europe. I’m intimately acquainted with the philosophy, propaganda and history of the area. More than just 3rd party information. I’m also familiar with the Russian culture and arts. This was the only foreign culture allowed to be imported into my country for obvious reasons before the 90s.

I’ve had similar discussions through my life and I’m frankly disappointed in this one. But keep practicing, you’ll get better at it. A hint: learn from the facts presented by others even if you don’t agree with the interpretation. It helps in the long run

You too. Have fun making excuses for poor witches

Who did your daddy tell you the hungry witch was?

You’re telling me it was the USSR. Poor thing, alone in the woods with nothing to eat… Those kids were so unfair to her

But the poor witch was so hungry… What could she do?

Oh spare me of that song played on the world’s smallest violin. That’s the stupidest take an the whole situation that I’ve ever seen. “Read a book”… yeah, the poor little witch being burned alive by Hansel and Gretel… Is that how you view that story too?

No, I’ve already dismissed the narrative that poor little USSR had a disadvantage against the big bad US when I pointed out that they abusively occupied half of Europe at the end of WW2 and had influence over a lot more of it. If you’re bringing up secret services and you’re saying that the US one was better at its job, then you’re simply pointing out that the USSR one was incompetent.

I asked for examples of international sanctions which USSR & their allies couldn’t match. That book is about CIA and US crappy foreign policy. If you say that CIA actions where themselves sanctions against USSR, then surely KGB should have solved the issue.

Killing Hope’

That doesn’t answer the question. At most, it just shows that KGB were more incompetent or not endowed with literary talent.