No, they want everyone to be used and tracked.

A good example of this market mechanism occurred recently with lithium battery tech. Lithium-Cobalt (3.6 Volt per cell) classed chemistries have reigned since their commercialisation in the 1990's. I don't know it's patent history.

In the early 2000's a far more rugged chemistry (One that doesn't spontaneously combust) classed as Lithium-Phosphate (3.2 Volt per cell) was developed and heavily patented. It never gained any popularity until just recently - Immediately following the expiry of the patents.

Agreed,
If Sammy is saying, as the horse-bolting leader, that the biggest gorilla on the planet has already overtaken him then I'm not sure how he thinks he's ever going to get that lead back.

As for AI, LLMs specifically, I don't think there's much money in it at all. Like search, no one is that interested in giving up money for it. It has to be converted to ad revenue to make money.

The other option for kept simple is make the central chassis computer fully open source. Top to bottom. So then any and every tinkerer can maintain all parts.

Electric motors can certainly last. Assuming they don't take a bath, an all-electric solution, kept simple, could easily become reliable long lived vintage in the future.

When I say kept simple, I'm talking about no big-ass computer in the middle. No requirements of connectivity. Stuff like GPS autonomy as an optional extra hardware add-on.

The billionaires are to some extent a tool as well. Or more specifically, they choose to align. We need to look at the politics plain and simple. And to get visibility on that, you need to look at the bundled law changes. One class in particular stands out - the Israel exceptions on crimes.

It's a little like how the President can't be lawfully wrong about anything now. Trump could order an assassination of the opposition leader and it's legal as long as it's done as the President. He even gets to pardon the personnel that carried out the order.

Read some of the other posts then. It's all economics. Electric is a money saver. The old trucks may even be getting retired early.

Okay, what your numbers are basically saying is unless the country's truck fleet is younger than 10 years, or there is some extraordinary reason for a change in fleet size, you're 99% measuring replacements by examining purchases.

These are replacements for sure. Commercial trucks wear out fast, or at least the engines do. Not unlike taxis I guess. Just the shear distance they travel. Electric will have a longevity advantage here.

The question will be, are they all short-haul replacements? If they're long-haul too then that's quite amazing.

Except Apple and Alphabet got stiff'd. Meta has stronger connections, err corruptions, I guess. Rule-of-law, what's that?

Yet more free taxpayer funds for the rich. Why isn't Mr Ellison funding this himself?

All these investors are expecting results on the intelligence front. And since that's a total fake sell, the expectations will inevitably crash.

My problem is not that there is slop now, it's that LLM AIs have been sold as intelligent when they aren't at all. There's even people posting on Slashdot that have tried saying AI is intelligent. Although, I haven't seen such posts of late.

Arguably, prompt engineering is a programming language. Just one less formal than usual. You only get a complex result with a complex list of instructions.

My point being there is now expectations of real intelligence. People are waiting for that servant robot to turn up. That's the real mess - It's not even close to happening as sold.

Ya, that's where the reflective coating goes. Only allow the desired band, nominally optical, through to the solar cells.

LOL, I was being loose with "polar". It is the general orbit rather than exact. You obviously understand this though, otherwise you wouldn't have nit-picked.