Good. The video game industry’s kinda terrible for everyone who works in it. I hope the eventual positive impact of the SAG-AFTRA strikes will lead to more studios and developers unionizing.
GM got in trouble inn the 1960s for telling the unions that every strike and pay raise makes automation that much cheaper. However that is truth and as automation advances more and more things that used to be done manually will be done by hand. The union people need to adapt, that means many need to get retrained to do something more productive than repetitive assembly.
That’s not really true though. In my experience automation is either way way cheaper than manual labor, so much so that there’s no competition, or it’s completely impractical to implement.
Usually it’s not 5% cheaper or something like that.
As for the last point, with AI we are trying to automate intelligence, which is a completely different thing than classic automation
Automation typically costs millions to implement the first time, but then replaces labor that is paid every year. So you lose money the first 5 years, and after that it is a lot cheaper.
Don't forget that technology marches on. When GM started automation in the 1960s it was doing a lot of design work on it in house, so it was several million $ to replace a few people making $10k/year. Now you can buy CNC machines to make many of the parts off the shelf, and those machines directly hook up to the CAD your engineers are designing parts in, so automation is cheaper in just days (and the machine probably holds tighter tolerances for more quality). Even today though there are a lot of things that are we could automate, but it isn't practical as the custom machines needed would be more cost than doing the work manually - but there are less and less such things all the time.
The union should be pushing hard for education and skill training beyond just car assembly. Unions need to look out for labor behind the traditional boundaries. Labor is critical and lots of things need to be updated to support EVs.
They should have learned that with the near collapse of the American auto industry during the '07-08 financial crisis. Automated manufacturing has been part of the auto industry for nearly 40 years and it’s just going to continue to whittle away at jobs on the assembly line.
100%. One of the reasons I didn't join a union as a skilled worker is that I don't want to be locked into doing the same exact thing for the rest of my career.
There’s a huge amount of shit between the lines here…
For one, that labor isn’t going to be the purview of the union friendly grease monkeys. It’s going to be the purview of nerdy science club motherfuckers that likely won’t be the union type.
Much of the tooling is useless. Much of the skillset is useless. The writing is on the wall for those unions, an electric car is nothing like an ice car.
I early adopted on a zero motorcycle, and ended up with enough prototype/first year glitches that I only got 8k miles out of the bike before the company bought back all the 2012 bikes, but that was long enough to understand how entirely unlike a traditional vehicle the thing was. I’d get routine emails from the dealer offering oil changes on a bike with no oil, I’d look around the bike to figure out if there actually was any sort of routine maintenance (and came up with zero, to strike a pun). And when I did need help with registering a new sensor to the motor, that I’d replaced myself because I couldn’t find any sort of shop that would do it, the dealer spent two hours trying to sort out how to get the bike online, failed, and declared that they were no longer a zero dealer and wouldn’t support the bike they’d sold me.
The current gas vehicle infrastructure is completely unprepared, unsuited, unwilling, and incapable of supporting an EV. You’d probably have better luck with the dude at the little kiosk that offers cell phone repair, literally…
The article describes a gaggle of dinosaurs looking up to the sky at a meteor that’s about to wreck their shit completely. They’re going extinct and all this nonsense is bullshit about how they’ll be fine.
There might be an alligator or a horseshoe crab out there that’ll make the transition, but I bet it ain’t gonna be anyone referenced here :)
This is partly true, but the comparison to motorcycles is a little off.
What will be effected is jobs on the drivetrain. A motorcycle is almost entirely drivetrain, so you would have seen the most extreme version of this change. Cars have a lot more in them: climate, seats, soundproofing, doors.
Those jobs wouldn’t be impacted by electrification. Its the automation part that is at play there.
I’m of the opinion that the computer/electronics nerd community is probably more suited to adding seats, doors, and climate control than the car building community is to adding battery arrays, BMS, and all the other gizmos and gadgets…
I understand what you mean, but I’m speaking more to the infrastructure. The infrastructure of the phone repair kiosk guy is closer to EVs than Detroit is. It’s mindset, ya know? It’s sending an email every 3 months offering oil changes vs knowing that the “gas station” of the future should include tables, chairs, snacks, and overpriced coffee ;)
The livewire is a great example of what I mean… its like it was built to support the service department more than the rider. It’s got a transmission full of fluid that needs serviced that only has one gear. It’s got a service required coolant system that other electrics don’t have. It has requirements to visit the shop baked into the design, and it’s silly. As soon as they parted from HD, the bike radically changed, because gearheads aren’t calling the shots anymore. The bike has 10% of the service requirements at half the cost, because nerds (and I mean that endearingly… Im a nerd that turned gearhead, ironically) are designing them now :)
Any time there are moving parts, there is wear. Thats how phones and vehicles will stay different? Is this example, since they determined they needed a gearbox, it makes sense to use fluid. It keeps it lubricated and cooled, extending the lifespan. Probably makes it quiter, too
Just as a note, if you have moving metal parts, you will need lubrication. It might be sealed for life or it is more likely a transmission oil change, but there is still generally oil spaces in EVs.
Engine oil needs to be changed often - though most dealers understand just how much a profit center that is and so encourage people do change far more often than the engine needs. All cars can go more than 7000 miles on an oil change, and 25,000 is possible on the best oils, but dealers still push the 3 months or 3000 mile nonsense and say it is treating the engine.
Chassis lubrication is needed much less often and often is lifetime as something else will fail that isn't worth replacing before damage from not doing it is noticed. If you really keep the car/bike for 30 years do it, but most people buy "the last car I'll ever buy" and 3 years later upgrade "that old thing", and in reality the car/bike won't be on the road at all in 20 years.
I can see why people would be confused or concerned after seeing the manatees. The video linked in the article shows a group of several manatees in shallow water, all close together in a big heap of slowly moving indiscernible black rubbery skin. It is absolutely not clear that what’s happening is mating.
We’ll, those Tampa Swinger had to get the idea from somewhere. I was observing wildlife at a state park in FL, a place I had been going for many years. And one day I was looking to see if I could get some pictures of a manatee or two. Then I saw like 5 of them writhing about together. I started the video going on my camera, and it didn’t take long to realize what I was seeing was manatee sex. It’s The Real Florida™ out there friends.
Meanwhile, this article told (reminded?) me that we have a mental health hotline service.
These missed calls are happening at a time when most Americans still aren't aware the 988 national suicide prevention and mental health hotline exists — and even as we hit the service's one-year mark, few states have established long-term funding commitments to sustain it
Plans to use some of the nearly $1 billion in federal funding for a nationwide public service campaign haven't materialized, partly due to early concerns that marketing 988 could overwhelm the lifeline past capacity.
Well, good thing they aren't marketing it. We wouldn't want 1/4 of the calls to go unanswered or anything...
"It's taken 15 years for 911 to evolve to the kind of system that it is today. We're just one year in."
I mean, a 15 minute wait in a mental health crisis still doesn't sound like an ideal goal, but I guess it's better than being completely ignored.
As an older millennial, I was raised my entire life being told that, if I didn't get a degree, I would have a miserable life as a trash collector or a burger flipper or a cashier somewhere. We were told by parents and schools that getting a degree was required. Funny how they exploded in price during that same time that we were being told this.
The student loan debt crisis is a crisis. It has priced millions of people out of homeownership and parenting, among other things. It is not the fault of the kids who were told that they absolutely have to go to college or they will be a failure in life. It is the fault of the government, these greedy universities, and a gullible populace of parents and business owners/employers who bought into it.
I feel you. The boomers basically went to college for free (highly federally funded universities at the time) then later voted to end all the tax based funding to universities, which made their tuition rates skyrocket at a time when the government was backing predatory student loans. So tired of my parents’ generation fucking everyone younger than them over. They will also get to retire on social security while actively trying to destroy it for the next generation.
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