Tag: blog

Electric car license plates in Sofia

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In November 2023, newly registered electric cars in Sofia began receiving license plates starting with EA (Electric Automobile). Electric vehicles have the right to park for free in the city center and this change probably makes it easier for everyone who uses the benefit. Me and my kids on the other hand started counting the cars. All newly registered cars would have plates that look like EA XXXX AA. We would try to find the highest number but it would always end with AA. Today we spotted an EA AB number, meaning that there are at least 10K electric cars registered since the introduction of the new plates in November.

2 electric cars, parked in the middle of nowhere, Poligona, one of which has the highest EA AB number on our family record. Looks like a Zoe.

Daily dose of AI – the human powered API

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

The Guardian has a nice article on the curious case of Amazon’s AI-powered shops. Customers would go to the Amazon shops, pick whatever they wanted, and leave, and Amazon would charge them using AI. According to the article, the AI was in the form of human data labelers in India.

The whole thing is funny and a bit sad. Primarily funny.

Imagine the first truly self-driving car that turns out to be driven not by AI but by humans through an API. You get this gigantic self-driving center with state-of-the-art gamer sets where young folks will ride your luxury self-driving car for you. Tesla couldn’t solve this problem for 10 years using the brightest engineers. Here we are, solved for you, Tesla, using some Amazon Mechanical Turk magic. Then this driving center can be optimized, for the moments when the drivers have no cars to ride, they’d vacuum with robots or mow grass with the 100% AI lawn mowers.

Celestial Hit List by Charles Ingrid book review

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

The elite battlesuit carrier and a walking tank Jack Storm goes to a new planet. He’ll face prophecies, miracles, magic, and a human nemesis. Or at least the nemesis he thinks he has. I’m sure there will be no shortage of future nemeses to Jack and his sentient suit. One of the major opponents is a civilization of cruel and clever cockroaches that’s unlikely to go away.

The series is still interesting to me. I’m captivated by books with complex worlds and simple plots. The enemies are clear, and the solution to the problems they create is also clear. There will be battles with lasers, jets, and spaceships. What is not clear is who will endure all the challenges and who will be sacrificed by the writer.

I think the score for this one is 4/5.