Interesting Links for 04-03-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Privileges Committee Believes Boris Johnson May Have Misled House On Partygate

(tags:BorisJohnson lies fraud politics pandemic )

2. EU countries postpone vote on combustion engine ban (because Germany wants to be allowed to keep making them)

(tags:politics europe cars pollution )

3. ChatGPT Is Nothing Like a Human, And having it pretend to be one leads us in very difficult directions

(tags:philosophy morality ai language )

4. There's a Good Reason Why So Many Terrorists Are Engineers

(tags:terrorism engineering )

5. "Eat Out To Help Out" caused an increase in Covid cases. Matt Hancock covered it up.

(tags:Pandemic restaurant OhForFucksSake murder censorship )

6. Iowa: Republicans propose ban on same-sex marriage

(tags:LGBT marriage USA republicans OhForFucksSake )

7. Happy Weird Pride Day!

(tags:weird pride )

8. Food Timeline: food history research service

(tags:food history )

Comments

[altamira16]

Number 4 has me wondering if I chose the wrong career path with engineering.

Arkansas was trying to pass stupid anti-trans legislation.

[calimac]

Only if you became an engineer because of a fondness for cognitive-closure conservativism, and then became angry at society because you couldn't find a job.

[dewline]

2. I sense the hands of Volkswagen, and possibly others.

5. I am unsurprised and angered.

6. Nor is Iowa alone in this obscene nonsense.

[channelpenguin]

There are also huge numbers of small-medium businesses here in Germany that are parts/spares makers/suppliers to the car industry. It's not easy/affordable or even possible for businesses of this size to retool/retrain and they will likely simply be eliminated - and they know this. And their politicians know they know...

[andrewducker]

Possibly time to subsidize them to retrain and move to new business for the new world.

[channelpenguin]

In an ideal world, yes. The supply chains may be utterly different for electric vehicles, and the parts, so it will be extremely challenging, and the time money and effort required may prove prohibitive. You can see why the businesses, employees and politicians could all be scared enough to be short-sighted.

The (or one) industry view https://clepa.eu/mediaroom/an-electric-vehicle-only-approach-would-lead-to-the-loss-of-half-a-million-jobs-in-the-eu-study-finds/

Or this move is an opening play in a game to get more funding for such subsidies from the EU... That would be a best case, I suppose, if it works.

Another view

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-many-car-industry-jobs-are-risk-shift-electric-vehicles

And more background and views
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/02/09/will-german-engineering-survive-the-electric-vehicle-transition/

[armiphlage]

The difference so far between IC and EV supply chains is in a portion of the power train. Right now most other parts on the Bill of Materials aren't changing. Accessories, closures, seating, and most other things are the same. Electronics usage is soaring, but that's affecting both IC and EV platforms. For everything else, they're still using the same parts to perform the same functions. Even when you'd think that EVs rewrite the requirements, designers have strong cost incentives to reuse existing components. PPAP and APQP isn't free.

Even with the future switch to autonomous vehicles, the parts list will stay largely the same. You may not need a windshield on a future delivery van, but you'll still need wheels, body, doors, and closures.

(bias note: I work in the electronics assembly industry, where retooling mostly requires software changes rather than fixtures).

[channelpenguin]

All true, but do read the longer articles, they detail the issues we have with the smaller suppliers in Germany and the switch.

It seems to be a mixed bag. We have lots of small family type companies with bosses in their 50s-70s doing very IC-specific components (spark plugs, filters, exhaust bits etc). They are not going to have the money (or maybe will) to retool, and the new EV work is mostly battery stuff which isn't local right now, and certainly not done by locally owned small to medium companies ... And perhaps not even competitive to BE done the way the IC parts are (at least here). There might even been be qualifications problems with staffing, at least in the more technical areas. So the business goes elsewhere, to bigger firms, foreign owned. However, this so might help us shift some of the work out of Bayern and get it east and north and even up the country a bit ... (Full disclosure - I live in the East)

As a software developer myself (though not automotive) I can say it's not everyone that can retrain to do software. It takes a certain mindset. You know what I mean.

Germany is not considered dreadfully advanced/competitive in the automotive software side.

[channelpenguin]

More like BMW and Daimler - Volkswagen seems far more committed and further ahead with the shift to electric. They might even be for the ban if they think they now have a decisive commercial advantage. See my links and comments. (I don't follow car industry so closely - but I do live in Germany, past 8 yrs).

[bens_dad]

I thought VW had already shut down design of new IC models ?

[calimac]

3. This article desperately needs a reference to Philip K. Dick and his theory that many apparent humans are really robots, which can be determined by what we would now call their AI-like responses to verbal stimuli.

[simont]

IS IT BECAUSE OF YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU MENTION MY AI-LIKE RESPONSES TO VERBAL STIMULI

[anef]

This made me laugh!

[conuly]

4. There's a Good Reason Why So Many Terrorists Are Engineers

Me, before reading the article: Is the good reason "because engineers suck"? Nah, there's gotta be more to it than that.

Me, after reading the article: That's a lot of words that basically boil down to "Engineers suck. Oh, and also so does getting waterboarded".

[simont]

My first thought, before reading the article, was that it was going to have to do with engineering skills being directly useful in terrorism. The article plays that idea down, suggesting that although a few terrorists in your organisation need to be good at bomb-making, it's not necessary for them all to have those skills. But I wonder if there are a couple of factors that make it more important again:

Firstly, engineering skill isn't just about making things. It also encompasses looking at a thing already made, and having a good idea of how it was made and what parts of it are structural – partly because you see where all the loads and forces must be going, and also because you're in tune with how other engineers design things and can anticipate even the less forced decisions (to some extent). So I'd guess that an engineer would also be better than a non-engineer at figuring out how to bring down a structure or device, or at assessing what targets are feasible in the first place.

Secondly, there's a thing I notice about my own thought processes, which is a kind of two-way feedback between the desirable and the possible. There are a lot of things I know I'd like to do, or to see get done; there are a lot of things I know how to do; for me, a good definition of the experience of "invention" is when I suddenly realise that something is in both categories at once – either because I've just learned the missing piece of how to do it, or just learned the reason I'd been overlooking for why it would be desirable, or simply that both parts have been in my head for a while and I've only just connected them to each other.

So it might not just be a question of the terrorist cell only accepting people with the necessary skills. It might also be that a person with destructive desires, given some engineering skill, begins to see some of them as clearly feasible, giving them the confidence to seek out and join whatever group they can find who's trying to do them – even if the group then turns out to put them to work on a non-engineering part of the task. The same person without engineering skills might have still felt those desires but left them at the level of "unrealistic pipe dream", to the point of not even looking for a group trying to do the thing, because they didn't have quite enough confidence that one even existed or had a chance of succeeding.

[conuly]

My actual first non-snarky thought was networking, and I was surprised that the article didn't look at that more.

If, for whatever reason, your first wave of recruits has a lot of people from one area or one field, then it's hardly surprising if they tend to recruit all their friends and, gosh, those friends have a lot in common with them besides the politis.