I am talking typical usage. In typical usage a car lane is very inefficient since cars have on average very low occupancy, are large and require significant safe distances. In comparison, bike lanes are much more efficient since bikes are much smaller and can safely travel closer together.

This is true for a single car lane vs. a single bike lane, but consider that for the space occupied by a car lane you can easily have 2 bike lanes, so a comparison of capacity per area is even more in favour of bike lanes.

IMHO they actually are. As example, the typical American residential low-density suburb is the result of significant planning and the way it's structured is a fundamental reason for car reliance. Other countries have made different planning decisions and that leads to less reliance on cars.

I currently don't need a car: I can do everything I need with either mass transit or a bicycle, but if I were transplanted in a typical American suburb I will almost guaranteed switch to a car. People will do what is a combination of most affordable and most convenient and how cities, residential areas, commuting, shopping is planned has a huge impact on what is most affordable and convenient.

Also it's important to keep in mind that once the planning allows for alternatives to the car that are affordable and convenient, car users also benefit immensely from that. The reason is that a road has a relatively small capacity. A bike lane occupies a fraction of the space of a car lane and has 5-10 times the capacity. Every person that decides for an alternative to the car is one car less on the road which benefits every other car user.

I think you are missing the point. I have queried the AI completely offline, meaning without any connection to the internet. The AI was able to respond without issues even in that situation, meaning that it does effectively work completely offline.

Just ran a quick test and e.g. ollama launch claude --model qwen3-coder-next works offline without issue, as long as you already have the model downloaded locally.

> do you need internet access to function?

No, I don't need internet access to function. I can work offline with:

- Reading/writing files on your local system
- Running local commands (git, npm, builds, tests, etc.)
- Using tools like LSP for code navigation
- Managing tasks and workflows
- Creating artifacts and editing notebooks

I do have access to some online capabilities when they're useful (web search, fetching URLs, etc.), but they're optional — I can work perfectly well without internet access as long as you have the files and tools you need locally.

Try something like Ollama + OpenCode. Or even Claude Code with CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC, if you trust them enough.

An AI can easily decide that, at least as first step triage. It's one of the activities where it can be exceptionally good.

Typically the policy is to prioritize passive measures to prevent excessive heat buildup in the home or apartment, with active measures like AC coming second. This is because AC would cool the home or apartment inside, but at the expense of a lot of energy consumption plus a lot of heat being pushed outside, which would bring its own issues especially in an urban setting. Noise is also a concern as some residential areas can have very strict noise emission limits especially during quiet hours.

Pushing passive measures first ideally makes sense, e.g. even an AC unit might struggle if the home has issues with isolation. Take those apartments in Paris with zinc rooftops. Installing AC while leaving what is effectively a huge scalding metal heating element radiate into the area would not work well at all.

So the policy makes sense, but heat is becoming an urgent issue, so probably regulators will need to find a compromise between ideal solutions and pragmatic necessity. Otherwise people will just opt for portable units rigged to a door or window which are significantly less efficient that a properly installed split AC system.

Claude is exceptionally good at inferring test scenarios, but in terms of implementation IMHO it writes tests that are far too much low level and focused on implementation details.

In my existing projects I almost always have my own test patterns and utilities that effectively provides a mini-framework at the abstraction level I consider appropriate. I can tell Claude to use these as basis for new tests and it helps immensely in getting the kind of test implementations I want.

Note though that the reason most of my projects got these mini-test-frameworks was originally to avoid other human developers implementing tests using the same anti-patterns, so it's not a new problem nor an AI coding agent specific one IMHO.

A modern coding agent can have huge context windows. I use Claude Code with Opus and 1M tokens window at work and that's plenty for "normal" coding activities. The real limiting factor are the API token costs.

As of carefully hand-holding the AI, it's often not necessary anymore since a modern coding agent can infer if there is ambiguity and proactively ask the user for further information and make use of structured development methodologies, e.g. TDD with small incremental changes.

Last week I didn't prompt anything except "implement issue xxx" and Claude Code connected to our JIRA, read the issue in question, asked clarifying question, created a plan and submitted it to me for review. I iterated on the plan a couple times as there were parts I didn't like, then let Claude proceed with the implementation. The result was correct except for a minor GUI issue and a performance optimization.

Instant SEPA support for retail payments is still fragmentary and relies on private financial institutions.

The idea with the Digital Euro is that it would effectively have "legal tender" status. The EU would definitely push for widespread adoption.

Completely cashless is likely not going to happen any time soon, but more and more people pay cashless most of the time. I don't even remember the last time I paid something with cash myself.

The idea is not to replace or compete with SEPA: it's to try to replicate some nice aspects of cash in a more and more cash-less society especially for day-to-day transactions.

A cash-less payment currently needs to involve a private financial institution somewhere in the transaction. This is because the central bank only issues cash. This "digital euro" supposedly will allow for cash-less transaction only involving government institutions instead of private ones.

Of course the question is whether you trust more a government institution than a private one and whether this will open the door to an eventual phasing-out of cash down the road...

The summary also mentions him being able to talk with his daughter. Furthermore, being productive is a very important aspect for many people and while it might not be their whole purpose in life, it's still typically very important for their self-realization.

Also a professional setting is usually focused at delivering results and that the technology is successful in that setting is indicative of how advanced it has become.

The SVP is the most "right-wing" party among the major parties in Switzerland. Although firmly "right-wing" I don't think it should be considered "far-right" though.

Note that Switzerland has a number of "major" parties that cover the political spectrum. Even as the largest, the SVP has "only" 30% of the seats. The second largest party has 20% and it's the left-wing SDP. Neither the left parties nor the right parties have absolute majority. The system functions by finding consensus.

IMHO the problem is that many professional are sleeping on AI. They don't take the time to try it and become proficient with it. Part of it is likely due to inertia, part of it due to prejudice or bad experience with earlier iterations.