rowanajmarshall

No, Europe is not a factor in cutting-edge chip assembly. That is a tiny fraction of the overall supply chain to manufacture a finished, compute-ready semiconductor. There is sense in not trying to compete with the "sexy" part of chip manufacturing, and instead concentrating on the steps of the supply chain you are already good at.

There are a lot of tasks machines can do today that humans do anyway. Think baristas and bartenders. People pay more for human-made goods too, despite mass-manufacturing being a couple centuries old at this point. Having a human face is a competitive advantage in lots of stuff.

Every now and again someone will open a "American Diner" here in London, then have normal opening times and serve basically the same food every pub serves, only with more milkshakes.

Like, no. I want my American-style hash browns, over-easy eggs, and country-fried steak, not the same burger every pub on the street is doing.

And (refillable) filter coffee please, not just espresso drinks.

I recently visited my brother in Spokane (we're British, he moved out there a few years ago) and we went to Frank's Diner, still in it's original 1906 railcar. Not my first diner experience, but by far my favourite. Diners are probably my favourite part of American culinary culture.

Also, on my first visit to San Francisco, my mum and I stayed opposite the Pinecrest Diner on the edge of the Tenderloin. Being jetlagged, I woke up at 5am the first morning and went there just as it opened, and having my coffee and huge breakfast as various diner regulars stopped by was just fantastic.

Europe is a gigantic manufacturer of vast quantities of goods. It has not deindustrialised at all.

As much as I appreciate the difference between literal infinity and consumers' demand for software, there's just so much bad software out there waiting to be improved that I can't see us hitting saturation soon.

I think the downside is the developers who love the action of coding managed to accomplish several things at once - they got to code, and create things, and get paid lots for doing it.

AI coding makes creating things far more efficient (as long as you use AI), and will likely mean you don't get paid much (unless you use AI).

You can still code for the fun of it, but you don't get the ancillary benefits.