The interesting thing is, Tesla is perhaps the most obvious and extreme example, but they’re not the only auto manufacturer this is happening to right now. Nissan is in a bit of a tail spin as well.

There are so many problems slamming in to the auto industry right now. Even beyond the tariff instability.

In the US in particular, As cars have gotten more reliable and longer lasting, the market for new “budget” cars has dried up. Car buyers who might have once bought budget are now buying used cars that probably have a good many years left. The sales of new cars have been declining since 2016 but new car price have been skyrocketing, keeping up revenue growth for automakers.

This seemed ideal for automakers as it meant they could drop the lean margins of cheap cars and focus on higher margin markets, which looked much better to shareholders. Those companies that focused on this budget market have suffered, the best example being Nissan. The ideal for automakers is that people will buy “up” the value chain over time, buying higher end or “less used” vehicles when they trade in their old vehicle, going from a twice used, to a once used and eventually to a new car.

This kind of came to a head during the pandemic. Not only was the supply of lower end used vehicles dwindling as less and less entered the market due to less being made a few years back, there was also a shortage of new cars due to supply chain break downs and an increase in demand. Many people were taking out insane financing on massively over priced cars, both new and used. Now a lot of people are underwater on those auto loans from the pandemic because the trade-in/sales price is less way than what they have left on the loan. Many are also defaulting on those insane pandemic auto loans and their repossessed cars are ending up back on the market, increasing supply in the used market.

Many who are underwater on their auto loans but can still make payments can’t afford to make even larger payments, so rolling over the principle from the last loan into a new loan on another car is impractical. So they aren’t buying, let alone moving up the market to buy new or higher end. The demand being suppressed in the used market and the supply being bolstered by repos means used prices are massively depressed. This depressed used market carries over to the new market in turn, as most people buying new probably couldn’t afford to do so without trading in their old car, so a depressed used market hurts their purchasing power. Why would someone buy a new car when the only new one the could afford is probably worse than the existing car.

Tesla is getting a lot of focus because of the political entanglement of their high profile CEO, but the whole industry is under strain. Nissan is frantically looking for buyers to help them out of the debt hole they’re in, and groups like Stellantis (owners of Chrysler, Fiat, Jeep, Ram and Dodge) are desperately chasing new revenue streams as absurd as ads in the central console.

I mean, no? He lived in England throughout the controversy, he didn’t move to Japan till 2022, years after his controversy died down. He probably moved because he’s a fucking dork.

They’re lying about using AI to write software, they probably have required all their programmers to have an AI plugin installed, and are thus counting any code they make as “written by AI”, and then are counting any minor edit to existing code as the entire thing being “written by AI”.

The software is bad because it’s written to serve the infinite growth imperative. The reason they claim they’re writing code with AI is because that being true is the only hope that they have for achieving the infinite growth imperative. It’s a con, it’s a cult, they are extracting as much value as they can before everything falls apart.

The AI is not the reason their software is bad, but their software is bad for the same reason they’re claiming to use AI to write it.

I mean, he never really went anywhere, still gets like 2 to 6 million views a video, he just stoped doing news worthy edgelord shit for attention.

The stuff that was getting him in trouble was stuff like paying some kids on fiver to hold up an antisemitic sign, used some Nazi imagery in videos, shouted the N word on stream, and a bunch of other things. This was all between 2017 and 2019 and while he hasn’t made amends, he also hasn’t kept doing it.

I could see stuff getting small changes and them claiming that the entirety of the new version is “written by AI”.

I’d guess a lot of the people writing the code don’t even have it turned on, it’s just installed because management said it had to be, because management wants to be able to tell investors they’re “innovating work flows”.

I bet they’re counting code written while someone had an AI plugin installed as “written by AI” and I bet that accounts for almost all of that 30%. On top of that, I’m betting that they made it mandatory to have such a plug in, and the other 70% is just code written before they mandated this.

But, we already have quake.