Cliffski's Blog

I picked up my car about 2 months ago, so I’ve put some actual miles into it now, and can assess what I think of it. Previously I owned a Tesla model S 85D, which I had for about 7 years. That was an ‘autopilot v1’ car, so not as advanced technically. It also had radar (apparently) and ultrasonic parking sensors. Eventually, the software for the main screen started to glitch and bug me, so I upgraded it to a new screen, at my expense. I think it was £2k? it was definitely an upgrade worth doing. Anyway, I got sick of the length of that car, and wanted the latest autopilot tech and better range, so sold my model S privately and bought the model Y performance. I had to wait a year! but it arrived at the end of November.

My very first impressions of the car were pretty good. It felt CHUNKY, in a way that is hard to describe. The Y has laminated double-pane windows, so its quieter inside than my old S, and you can definitely hear the difference. The whole car feels really solid. I don’t think mine has a front or rear cast body, but it does feel like its much more professionally assembled than the old US-made model S (made in Fremont California is 2015).

Something I was kinda dreading was the switch from a 2-screen model S, where the main screen tilts towards you, to the super-spartan and flat-angle screen of the 3/Y. In fact… I got used to it within days. Its actually very very easy to use, and I don’t miss the screen behind the steering wheel one bit. The interior design of the 3/Y is a bit ‘love it or hate it’ but I definitely love it. Looking at all the buttons in other cars just amuses me now.

I opted for red, performance, with full-self driving, which is also known as the ‘give me the priciest options because I’m mad’ choice. What do I think of the value for money? Well… no regrets on the red paint, it looks super awesome, especially when its sunny :D. The performance… is a bit of an overkill luxury. Frankly the sensible choice would have been long range. The performance model is stupidly, stupidly fast (0-60 in 3.5s), and absolutely pointless unless you are a track-racing fan. I am fully aware that I did this purely because I hate buyers remorse, and if I bought a new car and it felt under-powered I’d be sad about it :D.

The full-self-driving stuff is even more of a leap of faith. Right now, it doesn’t get me much, except the car recognizes traffic lights, and stops at them, and then pings to remind you they just turned green. This works perfectly for me. The other stuff is ‘coming soon’, which is Tesla speak for ‘at least 2 years’, but I intend to keep the car at least 5 years so I do actually expect to see the benefits in time.

I will say that the general autopilot performance on this car is WAY better than my model S. I drove about 55 miles recently on a trip back from London where I only steered once, briefly to change from a motorway to an A road. The rest was all 100% computer controlled, in the dark, with high winds and heavy rain. My model S couldn’t have done it that well.

There is one small thing I love about it: the charge-point door will self-close after you unplug (its powered) which is super convenient.

In lots of major ways, its an upgrade on my old Tesla. The range is way better, the energy usage is way lower, it charges tons faster, and it feels like the sound system is just much higher quality. I would hate to go back to my old model S now I have this car. I also have greater access to the supercharger network, because this car has a CCS connector, and newer superchargers only support this newer standard. There are now superchargers absolutely anywhere that I’d want to drive, at the same time that I need them less due to the longer range.

To be honest, my conclusion is that I kinda over-specced the car, but I don’t regret it. The autopilot stuff will likely grow into its valuation. The lack of parking sensors will likely be replaced by better tesla vision stuff soon. I can definitely see me still owning this car in 5 years and being very happy. Actually the ONLY scenario I can imagine where I get rid of the car, is if Tesla offer a smaller car with similar range and performance (or a bit less). I live down a single track lane, and UK parking spots in car parks can be pretty tight with the S or the Y. Offer a Tesla model 2 performance which is a few cm narrower, and maybe 30cm shorter, and I’d be very tempted, especially if it was even more efficient.

I actually got the Y instead of the 3 because I like hatchbacks and hate old fashioned boots/trunks. If the model 3 had been a hatchback I’d likely have got one of those instead, as we don’t have a dog or kids and don’t really need an SUV at all.

TL;DR: The model Y performance is amazing, but the performance bit is likely overkill.

I am well aware of the history of the term ‘640k is enough for everyone’, so hold your horses in your excitement to post it as a ‘gotcha’ response. I would like to lay out a case for a big slowdown in consumer spending, and put it to you, the reader, that although often we are wrong when we predict such things, this is not always the case. We have not all rushed out and bought 3D TVs, as predicted. We did not all buy VR headsets. I have still only seen a single folding phone in the wild…

I’m in the economically enviable position of having some spare cash which, in previous years I would probably have put towards buying some new thing that I coveted. Maybe a new TV, or phone, or gaming PC or laptop, or whatever. However, I am definitely noticing that this is slowing down, at least for me. Maybe this is an age thing? but maybe not…

I’ve had a bunch of mobile phones over the years, right back to the first actually practical ones, which were given to me at work when I was in IT. They were big, they were dumbphones (no apps or games or internet access), they were heavy, they sucked.

The first phone I had which was a smartphone was a revelation. Then, the next one was much thinner, much lighter, and much more powerful. The last one I bought was a samsung S8. Its amazing. It has bluetooth/wifi it has a fingerprint reader, it has GPS, it has a nice big screen that does face recognition, takes amazing pictures, and videos, can post-process them, and can play games. I use it to control my car, my drone, my lights, my TV, to talk to my solar panels and home battery, to surf the net, and to pay for everything. It charges wirelessly. I record my weight on it, and my steps. I take it everywhere.

I’ve had it years now, and there is basically no reason I can think of to get a new one. At least not yet. I’m not just ‘skipping a generation’, I think I’m at the end. It would be *nice* if the phone battery lasted longer, or if it was a bit thinner or lighter, but its not exactly a hardship now. It charges wirelessly in my car anyway, and its hardly heavy or bulky. It fits easily in a pocket, but its not too small to lose track of. Its thin, but not so thin I can break it.

To get me to buy a new phone, you need to REALLY go nuts on the few things that would improve it. Make the battery last 10x as long, and make it 1/5th the thickness (but same strength) and yeah…MAYBE I would pay the money to buy a brand new phone. I don’t anticipate this being possible in the next 5 years though.

My TV is a 43″ TV. I cant go bigger, because it fits in a small alcove. We sit far enough away from it that a 4K resolution would be pointless. The streaming apps *are* a tad slow on it, but can I really be bothered to set up a new TV, and recycle the old one, and tell alexa about the new one… just for a minor speedup in streaming UI? Not really. If a new TV was FREE, and had a slicker, faster UI, then *maybe* I’d bother. But my current TV does the job well enough.

Its not just these two things.

We bought a toaster years ago that seems indestructible and will probably last as long as me. My gaming PC has ridiculous power, and plays 60FPS Battlefield 2042 even on a 5120 res monitor. This laptop is fairly new, and amazing, and frankly…I am not sure if there is any improvement that is worth paying for. If you gave me a voucher for consumer electronics that I had to spend RIGHT NOW, I honestly struggle to think of anything I’d upgrade. Home theater system is fine and will last forever, alexa works fine…err…don’t bother with bluray player any more. No radios, everything is streamed. Nothing needs upgrading. Nothing.

Now obviously this is not the end of consumerism because a) I’m clearly well-off enough to have bought all this, and many people are not and b) I don’t know what crazy tech may come out soon, but I am definitely noticing a change…

chatgpt is amazing. midjourney is amazing, but these two amazing discoveries don’t require me to buy ANYTHING. The most exciting tech breakthroughs right now seem to be software, not hardware. When I see headlines about CES (Consumer electronics show), it just seems laughable. They are running out of ideas now. I really don’t need a phone that I can fold. I don’t need a 3D TV, I cant be bothered to wear a VR headset to be entertained.

The trouble is, our entire societal model of economics seems to be focused on selling new shiny gadgets to the wealthiest 25%. Thats how the system works. Bored wealthy people buy expensive cool cars which in 10 years time end up in the hands of ordinary people. The trouble is, we have run out of ways to get those wealthy people to trade in their current stuff. Its good enough. People now want ‘experiences’ not a slightly thinner, slightly faster phone.

And yet… there is a ton of work for society to do. So many people do not own a refrigerator, let alone a drone or a VR headset. We need to be addressing that huge swathe of people without the basics of western consumerist culture, not working harder and harder to make VR and the metaverse a thing. To be blunt: we need cheap fridges, not AR goggles.

In theory you can fix this with a lot of high taxes and high welfare, taxing those AR goggles like crazy to fund purchases of ‘my first fridge’. In practice, I think we do need to do that, but ALSO we need a shift in thinking in modern technology companies. For the last 30 years or more, it seems that the assumption in ‘tech’ is that the goal is always to produce some new, amazing cool thing that wows the CEO and impresses everyone in the boardroom. The problem is, everyone in the boardroom is rich.

The future may not be ‘look at these AR goggles, they are phenomenal’, but in fact be ‘look at this ordinary fridge. It was made for $30’. Thats what we NEED, but its not what we are getting. Companies are more excited about new features and functionality, but never about low cost. Tech companies want the specs on new tech to always be higher bigger, better. Hardly anybody talks about affordability, or how cheap something is to run.

I don’t know how the politics of the future will work out. We may end up with UBI and a crazy high tax rate on a super-wealthy 0.1% of the population. Who knows? What I do hope for is a future where technologists and industrialists care more about what the bottom 25% cannot yet afford, rather than what the top 0.1% might buy if you can make something 1% faster.

What about you? do you have a big long wishlist of stuff you wish you could afford on amazon? or are you quite happily reading this on a 3 year old phone or 4 year old laptop?

I studied pure economics at the London School Of Economics. At least, thats what I tell people when I am trying to sound clever. Technically its a true statement. What I tend to leave out, is that I pretty much lost interest in the topic after year one, and was mostly coasting in years 2 and 3. I went to the pub a LOT, I drunk a LOT of vodka and whiskey. I played the guitar a lot, I listened to a lot of heavy metal. This was all unexpected, because I was super-good at economics A-level, and was destined to be good at degree level. The problem? I suddenly realised I found economics beyond a certain level boring, and too maths-focused.

Annoyingly, the solution to my interest-failure would soon be at hand, because 2 clever people eventually discovered an entirely new field of economics called behavioral economics, which, to my mind, was 1000% more interesting, and absolutely was the sort of thing I would be interested in, had it been an option. But no, the LSE still taught ‘classical’ economics, which focuses on interest rates. Other things matter, but you would be amazed how much of classical macroeconomics is focused on interest rates. I studied it for 3 years. I still don’t know whether rates should go up or down. This stuff is complex as fuck.

Why are you reading this?

The significant thing here is how those clever people suddenly were motivated to invent behavioral economics. I’ll give you the short version, and tie it in to the title soon. Are you excited?

Classical economics models rational behavior. In classical economics, every ‘agent’ in the system has perfect information and is perfectly rational. All data is available, and all decisions make sense. If offered 2 products, an agent will evaluate all of the properties of each of these products, giving this decision their 100% attention. They then make an absolutely perfect choice, based on the cost/benefit analysis of each choice. There is no regret in classical economics, no buyers remorse.

Classical economists were not idiots. They were extremely clever people, and they knew that is not entirely how people work, and that we all make the odd silly decision, but at the macro level, across large populations, its pretty clear that rationality wins out. The best product, taking into account the best offer in terms of features/price will always win. In the long run, rationality rules.

These economists were at a dinner party (presumably where they would while away an evening arguing about interest rates), and the host was cooking the main course, while the guests enjoyed some small nibbles. The guests were enjoying the nibbles, and suddenly one of them concluded, with the agreement of all present, that they should ‘put these nibbles away so we stop eating them’, presumably because they were concerned they might spoil their appetite for the main course.

So far, so middle class dinner party.

But hold on. One of these clever economists suddenly pointed out that this was irrational. At the moment, everyone present has a choice: Eat a nibble, or wait for the main course. This was a simple choice between instant satisfaction or a potentially better option if they wait. They were all adults, they could all make that decision. But WAIT. Everyone agreed that in fact, they would be better off if this choice was removed. They would actually be better off with LESS choice.

On the surface of it, this is not exactly earth shattering, but actually, its a revelation. In the word of classical economics, more choice is ALWAYS good. The idea that en-masse, intelligent adults with full knowledge of the available choices, would be better off if they removed some choice, is a complete refutation of everything that classical economics tells us about the world. It was the beginning of an entirely new science of behavioral economics, which would make its inventors widely read, respected and famous, and change economics forever. It would lead to studies of the special nature of ‘free’ as a magical price, and a staggering amount of research and publication. Behavioral economics is awesome.

Ok, but so what?

What this massive upheaval of literally hundreds of years of analysis shows us, is that human beings are incredibly irrational. We are extremely good at backwards-justification, where we pretend our choices make sense, but if you actually look at how we make decisions its an absolute car-crash. We are massively irrational, and so far from the happiness-maximizing creatures that classical economists imagined. Even given really, really simple choices such as ‘eat these nibbles now… or more of the main course in 15 minutes’, our brains completely and utterly collapse with the stress. Only PHYSICALLY removing the nibbles from our immediate vicinity enables us to make what we think is the ‘correct’ choice.

Social media is the nibbles.

You probably spotted that early. I’m not Agatha Christie here, but I hope the point rings true. Deep down, we are all aware that the amount of time we spend doom-scrolling on twitter is not maximizing our happiness. We know that having twitter and tiktok on our phones is just leading us to waste endless time getting into arguments, or just mindlessly scrolling for a tiny tiny serotonin hit…

About two years ago I uninstalled twitter from my phone. I also don’t have a facebook or reddit app on there. I’ve never used tiktok or instagram. A few years before that I quit an online community that just sucked me into arguments and flamewars. I was aware for a good time that these things were ‘bad’ for my mental health, but they were the tray of nibbles in front of me, so I kept nibbling.

I still have a twitter account, but the fact that I have to go to a laptop or desktop PC to use it means I’m wasting less time there. This is, for me at least, a good thing. I know a bunch of people who tweet at least 50 times a day, always political, always angry, always distressed. This is *not good*.

The best economists in the world went decades without realizing just how irrational we are, and just how out-of-touch their model of human behavior was. We are THAT delusional about our ability to make choices in our healthy interest. Its incredibly hard to take this lesson to heart and actually do something about it, but once you do it, its pretty amazing.

You should delete all the social media apps from your phone.

The year is almost over, so I thought I would recap. For those unaware, as a side-project (yes its a big side project), I started an energy company called Positech Energy, and decided to build a solar farm. This is an epic tale of frustration and expense, that seems to be endless,, but here is what happened during 2022 for this project!

The first blog update of the year was this one, where I talked about the solar panels. I ordered them way in advance, before we actually had planning permission, because I was hoping to slap them in during summer of this year and start generating actual income. This proved to be both a mistake, and a genius move, depending on your POV.

This was during a time of climate emergency, a global supply chain collapse, and pandemic shutdowns, so it was obvious that lead times on panels would be long, so I ordered them anyway. That means I ended up with over 3,000 410 watt QCells solar panels. They did show up! But by the time we got them… we had no planning permission because it got refused. Oh dear…

I initially decided to forget the whole enterprise at that point, and was quite depressed about it. I tried phoning round wholesalers to sell my panels before they even hit the UK but basically got nowhere. I think people can tell you need to shift them, and offered me a pretty bad price. The company that is managing the project for me did offer to buy them off me at the price I paid, as and when they needed more panels. This was good, and put a floor under my losses, but the trouble is all 70 tons of panels needed storing…

To date I have paid out £15,000 in storage costs for these solar panels. Yup, I PAID £15,000 to keep SOLAR panels in a warehouse during summer. However annoying that sounds to you, it sounds worse to me, but there was no other option. Its still costing me about £600 a week to do this…

Luckily, the price of those panels went up, and I am currently still ahead of the game on this. Assuming they get taken out of storage on schedule (hopefully April), I wont have actually lost out anything except the transport costs for the panels to the site. (Originally that was included, but they needed to be left at a port warehouse instead.

So what else happened?

Well hey we WON planning permission in October, which was a very stressful process, not to mention expensive. In fact the whole process has so far cost me £541,568.94, including buying the panels themselves. Yes, this is a stupid amount of money.

The rough breakdown is:

£50,000 grid connection deposit

£424,000 solar panels

£6,795 for pull-out tests to pick the ground mount system

£3,750 in rent to the farmer for the field so far

..and the rest is planning application and legal bullshit.

Of course the good news is that once you have planning permission…you have it. We cannot get blocked now. The ONLY things standing between us and total conquest of the galaxy is the grid connection and the actual build-out of the site. That means waiting for decent weather, because its in a muddy field near the English/Welsh border, and frankly taking dozens of trucks up a single track lane on very hilly ground when its raining would be a nightmare. Luckily, the UK is so situated that solar output at this time of year is farcically low anyway, so its actually no massive loss.

So where are we left? We are hopefully about a week away from a final, committed quote for the build-out of the farm, and then at that point, the developer will buy the ground mount kit, and order the inverters and other electrical stuff, like the substation. Apparently the first thing that will happen will be putting up a ‘deer fence’ around the whole site as security. Eventually we will have either real or fake CCTV cameras, depending what insurers say.

The aim is to get building in April-ish time. We have mentioned MANY TIMES to the DNO that will put in our grid connection that we really, really want to get connected this year, in Q1 or Q2 if at all possible. These is no free-market for this, and its basically a state-granted private monopoly that does what it likes, so we just have to grin and put up with this.

Also, the cost of the grid connection is likely to go up even more, which is insane. For the love of god, can we nationalize this bit of the grid, and just pay the army to go round the country doing grid upgrades as an urgent matter of national security?

Anyway… a mixed year because we DID get planning permission, but there has not been any real progress on the physical build. I’ll feel a bit more optimistic once I actually see people on site putting up a deer fence. I’ll fill much more optimistic when we see the mounting kit installed and work starts on the grid connection.

Hopefully next years update will be full of amazing progress!