Early Retirement Extreme Forums

jacob wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:04 am

She also has the option of getting stuff delivered to her front door for $19.95/month.

Yes, as a result big supermarkets are in decline and being replaced by smaller local express supermarkets. Which is a welcome trend. Joanne and her friends can toddle down on foot to get their shopping and get their blue rinse done, which would grant her both a cardio and upper body workout, thus increasing her longevity to torment Henry for many more years.

I'm surprised how expensive Walmarts delivery fee is. Sainsbury's do it for as low as £1 per delivery, although it's probably travelling a shorter distance.

Uber took out the geezer bus by providing her the option of whenever she wants to go out to wherever she wants to go. She just didn't like the Russian Roulette of it. Roboxtaxi will remove that factor.

chenda wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:19 am

Joanne and her friends can toddle down on foot to get their shopping and get their blue rinse done, which would grant her both a cardio and upper body workout, thus increasing her longevity to torment Henry for many more years.

The post WW II infrastructure of the US to accommodate the baby boomer generation was designed and built to correspond with the mass manufacturing of cars developed by the Detroit automotive industry. America is a place for T-Birds not Toddling.

The short bus in my realm is only available to seniors who are disabled, and anybody else who is disabled, and it costs $3 per ride each way and has to be booked at least a day in advance. As the Boomers increasingly become decrepit, I think we will start to see less services made available simply on the basis of age, and more tied to "physical ability" and/or "income."

Henry wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:23 am

Uber took out the geezer bus by providing her the option of whenever she wants to go out to wherever she wants to go. She just didn't like the Russian Roulette of it. Roboxtaxi will remove that factor.

But only a Telsa-brand robotaxi, which "the" government will force us to exclusive use ... forever?

candide wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:36 am

But only a Telsa-brand robotaxi, which "the" government will force us to exclusive use ... forever?

Yes, please.

@Henry, do you mind telling us what percentage of your portfolio is in Tesla? I am moving some money around today, so I will later on have some positions of my own to report.

But, to be clear, you really do not have any more nuance in your position than that? This is where you can spell out something different, so don't let me put words in your mouth... Again, to be clear, you are over 90% sure that Telsa will be the only robotaxi brand allowed in the U.S. for perpetuity? And further, this will replace all rides? The federal government will literally run roughshod over every state and municipality and not allow human vehicles on the roads? Even though that's not how road jurisdiction has ever worked in the United States before?

Adjust any of that to your liking. But please be clear with your position.

candide wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:46 am

@Henry, do you mind telling us what percentage of your portfolio is in Tesla? I am moving some money around today, so I will later on have some positions of my own to report.

But, to be clear, you really do not have any more nuance in your position than that? This is where you can spell out something different, so don't let me put words in your mouth... Again, to be clear, you are over 90% sure that Telsa will be the only robotaxi brand allowed in the U.S. for perpetuity? And further, this will replace all rides? The federal government will literally run roughshod over every state and municipality and not allow human vehicles on the roads? Even though that's not how road jurisdiction has ever worked in the United States before?

Adjust any of that to your liking. But please be clear with your position.

13% in TSLA and headed higher.

I have stated somewhere in these parts that TSLA will need competitors in the FSD/Robotaxi industry to stave off Federal anti-monopoly laws. Much the same way Microsoft propped up Apple in the PC market when Apple had existential concerns, TSLA will require a few bit most likely regional players. Maybe let San Francisco putter around in Waymo's until everyone gets dizzy constantly take right hand turns. I said it's a winner take most market and TSLA will no doubt be the AI hostess with the mostest.

My Mom, who can absolutely afford Uber, is for some reason enamored with that short bus as her fallback plan. Even now, my parents refuse to call a ride share when a vehicle is out of commission. It's like the services don't exist. Same with these AI tools, zero interest.

My experience in middle America, had been ride share fails spectacularly. Open the app, there's just no cars. It's like stepping back in time 40 years.

Uptake, in other words, will be a problem. Intensifying as these tools take people's job. As the above/below the API divide escalates, it's not going to be pretty.

Musk may be accurately assessing legislative risk as Tesla's biggest threat. Trucking employs middle America. Disruption of freight delivery will not be well received.

Scott 2 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 10:06 am

Trucking employs middle America. Disruption of freight delivery will not be well received.

FSD trucking is potentially its most lucrative application due to cost savings on labor, fuel and insurance, hence Tesla Semi. It will disrupt logistics throughout the US not just Middle America.

My mother and many other seniors have to take the short bus rather than Uber, because they are disabled. Even those who can manage their own vehicles are often not going to be happy or well-served when the Uber vehicle that shows up requires hauling themselves up or heaving themselves out of the vehicle. The short bus driver also helps them with tasks such as paying for ride with transportation app. Sending my mother off on the short bus to a dental or medical appointment is very much like putting a child on the kindergarten bus.

I also agree with Scott and making use of Uber in middle America. I have used it in exurban environments in emergency situations, and faced the trifecta of getting signal on my phone, finding the one driver on duty within reasonable radius, and then waiting 40 minutes for my pick-up for a ride that is quite expensive, because every distance between facilities in exurban area is going to be longer.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 05, 2025 10:59 am

My mother and many other seniors have to take the short bus rather than Uber, because they are disabled. Even those who can manage their own vehicles are often not going to be happy or well-served when the Uber vehicle that shows up requires hauling themselves up or heaving themselves out of the vehicle.

Bots, here. Get your bots here.

Ok, maybe not for 5-10 years, but before you know it, they'll be carrying Grandma out of the house like it was her wedding day.

delay wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 07, 2025 5:17 am

Some have traced the history of AI to the Mechanical Turk. It was presented in 1770 to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and was able to play a strong game of chess.

One keeps wondering what's real and what's not. On the one hand, San Francisco really has self driving cars. On the other hand, an article in the Times of India suggests the Mechanical Turk story continues to our day:

A once-hyped AI startup backed by Microsoft has filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that its so-called artificial intelligence was actually hundreds of human workers in India pretending to be chatbots.

My wife was making fun of the new Aldi pool float:

https://www.aldi.us/product/bigmouth-in ... 0000067254



I thought this float would be funny, which she promptly forwarded to her sister:



A zero effort fake from my free ChatGPT account. I assumed that was obvious. They both assumed it was real. We're talking highly educated, intelligent people. And that's not even close to what a paid tool can generate.

My wife and I talked about what's obviously false in the image. Once she considered the possibility, picking it out was easy. But that was not on her radar. The misinformation happening must be already massive. And it's going to escalate.

Scott 2 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 09, 2025 8:47 pm

A zero effort fake from my free ChatGPT account. I assumed that was obvious. They both assumed it was real. We're talking highly educated, intelligent people. And that's not even close to what a paid tool can generate.

People are used to trusting pictures on the internet (or pictures in general). They know you can do certain manipulations in Photoshop, but not that the entire image can be fake. This will rapidly change in the next few years, with very interesting implications. I wonder if photos and video recordings will still be regarded as a proof in court. Maybe it'll be a gray area where we pretend we don't know the photo could be doctored? Similarly to how our whole legal system currently depends on physical signatures on paper documents (contracts), which could also be doctored.

I guess the new equilibrium will depend on how easy it is to create an unrepudiable AI fake - if it takes a rare, high-end expert, like it does today with forging signatures, we'll pretend the issue doesn't exist. Whereas, if the unrepudiable AI tools are accessible to the public, the value of images as proofs will go down to zero.

It is already fairly common practice to "float" the design of a product to potential customers before actually producing it. So, in that sense, neither or both of the images could be regarded as fakes. We have already accustomed ourselves to being able to order anything we desire to be delivered to our doorstep, and now it is much more likely we could co-create our own designs for production. For example, it is already reality that you can write a book with AI and make it available for print-on-demand. You can even create an AI agent as editor/publisher and render the entire ongoing enterprise passive.

Anyways, the post-modern is towards revealing all cultural production as deep or complex fake. Early modern photographers couldn't perform traditionalist miracles such as rendering Jesus white, but they could choose where to point their cameras. Will any of us be able to even maintain our own narratives as the results of prompts such as "Show me the scene that occurred from the perspective of looking into my kitchen window on June 10, 2025. Did it appear that I wasn't listening to Mary? Did the children seem happy? Where did I go wrong? Please alter and then post."

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 10, 2025 6:23 am

Early modern photographers couldn't perform traditionalist miracles such as rendering Jesus white, but they could choose where to point their cameras.

And literal airbrushing. Victorian women's waistlines were often rendered artificially narrower in photos by copy and paste ''photoshopping''.

@chenda:

Yes, it seems likely that even pre-historic proto-humans engaged in artifice as soon as they were capable of art.

@7w5 - Yes and pornography seems to have been a favoured subject of paleolithic artists.

@chenda:

Yes, back in the good old days when wealth was displayed in the form of how voluptuous you were able to maintain your wives in alignment with conspicuous kcal consumption.