maffyoo

totally agree but aside from the joy of driving, which I genuinely appreciate, most of my driving is of the kind (commuting, sat in traffic) where id like the driving bit to be taken away and any number of alternatives presented. Also sleeping is essential. Productivity is surely about what you do when you are awake, the problem with driving is that it demands constant attention so surely that has to make it (equally to anything else that requires constant attention) the most unproductive activity there is (initial caveat aside)

Don't get me wrong on this, I love driving.. the right car. But, most of the time, driving is one of the most unproductive things a human can do in the modern world. I guess you could argue that some commuters (who aren't driving themselves) don't exactly fill that time with the most productive things but thats a separate issue.

some context here is really important:

China started construction on an estimated 95 GW of new coal power capacity in 2024 it accounted for 93% of new global coal-power construction BUT, importantly, Coal power's share in the electricity mix has steadily declined, dropping from around 73% in 2016 to 51% in June 2025 heavily driven by renewables push in China

China's average utilisation rate of coal power plants in 2024 was around 50% meaning there's already spare capacity. The continued building is driven largely by energy security concerns, financial incentives for coal-mining conglomerates, and institutional momentum. The most immediate trigger was power shortages of 2021, when factories had to cut production due to blackouts. That was politically embarrassing, so provincial governments and energy companies rushed to approve new coal capacity as an insurance policy. More than 100 billion yuan in capacity payments were made to coal plants in 2024 essentially the government paying plants just to exist after all half the capacity isn't being used.

Chinese policy makers have plans to "strictly control" coal use during the current period and start phasing down coal use during the 15th Five-Year Plan period covering 2026–2030. China also has a long-stated goal of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060. which probably explains the apparent paradox of being world leaders in renewables but investing more in Coal than anyone else. usual caveats notwithstanding

totally agree, technology could make this much more cost effective (or time effective). what's the best use of my time versus the cheaper option..

It's interesting running the numbers though. e.g. if it only take 10 minutes to get cheaper fuel, how much cheaper does it need to be for your time to be worth more than the UK minimum wage (£12.21 for adults over 21)

based on my maths (from above calculations) it needs to be about 7p per litre cheaper to justify the extra 10 minutes and for your time to be worth more, per hour, than the minimum wage.

you can probably work it out but you have to make a lot of assumptions :)

Ultimately how much is your time worth? in the example given drcongo's time is worth £1.28 an hour.

When see things like this, I always think of the Chinese proverb

"An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold"

Which always says to me that its not worth it just use the quickest option

Take the example drcongo posted:

"Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map."

Assume he uses 30 litres a week (high end of average UK usage) that's £1.50 per week saving but assume the extra miles use half a litre, that takes about 65 p off the saving (ill not go into wear and tear) over 30 years of work 50 weeks a year this means a saving of £1,275 over 30 years ... sounds a lot but

20 mins away - this assumes 40 minutes per week over 50 weeks is 2000 minutes, and over 30 years 60000 minutes. Now assume you are awake for 16 hours a day this equates to 62.5 days of free time - more than two months of awake time

so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time

this seems reasonable but isn't the conclusion a statement what we already know. These tools are really powerful, but with the ability to cause significant pain, need organisations to adapt, so that they can make best use of them but this is fraught with security problems. AI looks a lot like a technology problem but ultimately, to most small businesses, it's a procurement and change management problem.

Also (I appreciate the authors message here but..)

"Excel on the finance side is remarkably limiting when you start getting used to the power of a full programming ecosystem like Python"

With the addition of lambdas Excel formulae are Turing complete. no more need for VBA in a (mostly) functional environment.

Also on this, Claude for Excel needs a lot of work (as does any tool working with financial models) if you have ever used them in anger I dont think you'll be relying on them with your non-technical finance manager for a while...

Yeah that’s another gripe. When is a product finished ..

my 83 year old mother was able to use (almost) all the features of iOS when she first got an iPhone, in 2012. It genuinely changed her life and meant she could participate in a world I dont think she ever expected to be comfortable in. She tried and failed to use a PC for years. Local library lessons, family time (and patience) etc, but she always needed support. the iPhone as different, it was simple to use with familiar user interactions with every app. Roll forwards to 2025, gradually bit by unnecessary bit bells, whistles and complexity has bled in from every angle. Last week I did a FaceTime call with her to help her log in to an app on her phone. She can do it fine on her iPad that hasn't been updated. this was like going back to her PC days - too complicated and giving her features she didn't ask for, or need.

what was it Steve Jobs said?

"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer — so what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. Sort of the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."

ive always wondered why, in "day stay" car parks (commuters etc) they dont have 6 to 8 cables from a charging point that can all connect to different cars and then do round robin charging. This solves the problem of one person being connected all day and preventing others from benefitting. This way a number of cars can be charged up without the inconvenience of just one person being constantly connected. We have chargers at work where this solution would prevent all the car shuffling and aggro associated with people managing access. in our case 3 cars could charge in a day, so 3 cables available to three spaces and charging done round robin. Probably not a novel idea but one id like to see implemented

Im not sure that's the case, they've been doing MR-G watches for a long time (29 years) as a push upmarket. Just look at the latest GW-BX5600 (released in 3 days) it has a new MIP LCD panel on a new module. This retails for $150 .. no doubt the module will be put in much more expensive watches but one thing Casio continues to do is produce good value digital watches and at the lower price points. im hoping they add a model like the 5600u, with this module, with a screw in case back and higher quality resin. Also, my current favourite is the JDM yellow (original style) LCD F-91W. That was released 4 years ago and cost me $11 plus shipping. long live Casio!

Fusion is 30 years away

what happens if access is unrestricted from UK users and the content becomes available again. Reads to me that they will monitor sites to ensure this doesn't happen. Surely logical..