Author Archives: 47530

Tesla Semi Truck Chaning the Transportation Industry and the World

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Back in 2017, Tesla Semi Truck was presented by the CEO of Tesla Elon Musk as an innovation in the transportation industry. Again sticking to the idea of a sustainable future, the company had an idea to create a semi-truck that would be eco-friendly and simultaneously outweigh the performance of usual combustion engine-based lorries in every possible way. For example, it was stated that the vehicle would be capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h in mere 20 seconds with a full load, which is claimed to be 37 tons! Though, 5 years passed before one of the first such lorries would be released on the market. Recently, tesla has presented ready trucks labeled with Pepsi-Cola logos.

Tesla Live. Tesla Motors official Twitter page.

Yet, the data regarding the credibility of Tesla’s previous claims was not provided. However, if they turn out to be true or at least 50% true, the product could revolutionize the transportation network. Although the cost that a company would have to bear in order to purchase one of these is unknown, the fact that the vehicle is electric most likely provides a possibility for an immense economy in terms of fuel expenses for logistics businesses, especially considering the ones like FedEx or UPS. Just to compare, the average fuel consumption of a semi-truck in 2022 as found by research at Bridgestone Mobility Solutions is around 30 to 40 liters of diesel. “According to the Spanish observatory of road freight transport costs report published in October 2019 by the Ministerio de Fomento, an articulated vehicle with a payload of 25,000 kg that travels around 120,000 km annually will have a fuel expenditure of more than 40,700 euros” (Bridgestone Mobility Solutions B.V., n.d.). Meaning that in just a year of the vehicle’s exploitation the costs for its fuel would come close if not overcome a third of the vehicle’s own monetary worth. That’s why an electric Semi Truck would shift the whole industry. The expenses connected to fuel would diminish by thousands of euros and the potential losses that would be connected to slower recharge times would be equalized by the fact the vehicle is moving simply faster. Even if the vehicle costs more in the beginning, considering the long-term perspective it would be cheaper for companies to use them.

Another important factor to look at is that the ownership of a such vehicle by a company would promote the company itself, and would also contribute positively to its Corporate Social responsibility. Moreover, the environmental impact would decrease with time. Sounds like a perfect solution to many problems at a time:

  • The companies are interested in these semis because it is financially beneficial for them.
  • The human race overall is interested in decreasing the negative influence we put on nature.
  • The economies are interested in quicker and cheaper transportation.

Just by the provision of a single new product, a revolution in an industry might make a shift in the whole world’s operation. Nonetheless, as it often happens, the beautiful picture portrayed on the internet and on TV may not be so true. The fact stays that the majority of electricity that is produced in the world still comes from coal. In other words, if we would transfer to electric trucks the majority of energy used by them would still come from a source that destroys the climate. Moreover, another threat that electric trucks can bring to play is the massive batteries that have to be carried in order to overcome more than 800 km on a single charge. The way in which batteries are produced is not fully eco-friendly and the largest issue with them is recycling when their lifetime passes. There yet was not invented a sustainable way to do that.

In conclusion, the Tesla Semi Trucks seem like an innovative product that should set a new trend in the logistics sector. With time, it might stimulate other car manufacturers to develop an electric semi truck of their own, thus spurring the growth and competition in the space, that in turn could lead to a reduction in prices for such transport. Furthermore, with the global transition to renewable sources of energy, the vehicles would not only preserve millions of dollars for corporations but would also save millions of lives suffering from global warming.

Share your thoughts on Tesla Semis and its impact on the environment and the economy below! I will be happy to hear different ideas 😀

References:

Average and Median MPG For All Types of Pickup Trucks. (2022, August 22). GizmoDriver. Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://gizmodriver.com/average-and-median-mpg-for-all-types-of-pickup-trucks/

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Black Friday in 2022 becoming fake

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The famous Black Friday sale has already happened on November 25th. This is a tradition that came to Poland along with other European regions around 2013 from the USA, but not all Polish stores act with customers according to the same rules as American ones. Often, the announced discounts are purely symbolic. It is also a popular opinion among customers that stores increase the prices on purpose to then make a “discount” so that they feel they buy products cheaper, though they might be even paying more than could pay before Black Friday.

Moreover, statistics show that sellers do manipulate buyers. According to the research conducted by Deloitte, in 2021, discounts in “800 surveyed Polish stores averaged 3.6%. Almost 57% of the stores did not prepare any special offers for visitors. In rare cases, discounts reached 5%” (Podczas Tegorocznego Black Friday Średnie Obniżki Cen Sięgnęły 3,4 Proc., 2021). Meaning that the screaming all-around SALE and discounts -70% signs are mock. At the same time, an increase in prices for a third of the studied goods was revealed. The largest discount that was recorded was 36%, although the marketing messages were talking about 70% for buyers.

Buyers themselves seem to feel that stores often treat them dishonestly – according to statistics, interest in Black Friday is falling from year to year. According to the Picodi service, in 2021, “31% of Polish residents expressed their desire to participate in the sale, while a year earlier there were 40% who wanted to participate in the sale” (Black Friday (Czarny Piątek) – Picodi Polska, 2022). Therefore, revealing a great deal of interest fall toward the hoax yearly sales.

As mentioned before, it seems like a common practice in retail to raise prices for goods a few days before Black Friday and then “lower” them on the day of discounts. For example, a tech store can raise the price of a fridge from 2 000 zl to 4 000 zl on Tuesday and lower it to PLN 3 000 on Friday. This will provide a banner showing the “Big discount” of 1 000 zl. The Polish authorities, however, promise to take care of this loophole soon. In Europe, there is a special Omnibus directive that obliges sellers to inform about the prices of goods. It was developed to prevent fraud and also to prevent the purchase of customer reviews. And although it has not yet entered into force in Poland, some stores have been adhering to it for a long time now.

When the directive comes into force, according to research by Sebastian Gorski, shop owners who deceive their customers will face a fine of PLN 20,000. Panstwowa Inspekcja Handlowa will monitor compliance with the terms of the directive. If it turns out that the price of a promotional item has been different in the last 30 days, then the store owner will be in trouble (Górski, 2022).

All in all, I recommend that you refrain from impulsive purchases on Black Friday, and before making a decision to buy a product, check whether it is really participating in the promotion. You can use services like ceneo.pl, skapiec.pl and nokaut.pl, which help you get an idea of ​​how the price of a product has formed in recent months.

Comment your thoughts below, share your valuable opinion with others!

References:

Black Friday (Czarny Piątek) 2022 – Picodi Polska. (2022). Inspiracje. https://www.picodi.com/pl/inspiracje/black-friday

Podczas tegorocznego Black Friday średnie obniżki cen sięgnęły 3,4 proc. (2021, February 9). Deloitte Polska. https://www2.deloitte.com/pl/pl/pages/press-releases/articles/podczas-tegorocznego-Black-Friday-srednie-obnizki-cen-siegnely-3-proc.html

Górski, S. (2022, November 25). To ostatni taki Black Friday. Za rok sklepy nie będą mogły ściemniać z promocjami. CHIP – Technologie Mamy We Krwi! https://www.chip.pl/2022/11/to-ostatni-taki-black-friday-dyrektywa-omnibus

Tagged , , , , ,

Subscription – money magnet

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today subscription services surround us everywhere. It is difficult to come up with a good or service that you wouldn’t be able to fit into a subscription model. At present, we can subscribe to anything. Among the known examples are – Netflix video streaming, Spotify music, YouTube music, Chewy for pets, PlayStation Plus, Xbox game pass, etc. Some of the largest companies in the tech world have at least one subscription service. And more companies appear whose business is fully based on subscriptions like Netflix. What’s interesting is that today, you are able not only to get the benefits of subscription in the tech world or online but also you could consider subscribing to dietary services that provide you with sets of healthy meals containing certain amounts of calories and nutrients of your choice. The food will be delivered to you regularly and the money taken from your pocket as well. You could subscribe to sausage or cheese services, you could subscribe to deliveries on such planforms as Allegro if you order packages regularly, you could subscribe to various events or business breakfasts that happen regularly, and so on and so forth. Although subscriptions always seem advantageous for the subscribers, not often do people ponder over the question of what makes large companies transfer to, or implement features of this exact business model, it’s got to be beneficial for the organizations as well.

First things first let’s make it clear how subscriptions work. As stated in the Cambridge dictionary a subscription is “an amount of money that you pay regularly to receive a product or service” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). Taking into account a well-known example of Netflix. When you subscribe to it you make an agreement with the company that for a given amount of money you paid, you will receive a certain service, in this case, film streaming, for a certain period of time, here it is a minimum of one month. Sometimes you are provided a “free of charge” trial period to check out the service and decide for yourself whether you would like to use it in the future or not. What’s funny though, is that you can only get a free trial under the condition that you provide your bank card information to the service, so that the company at least has a chance of you not remembering or not even knowing that the money will be taken off your card with hardly any warning.

This is a genius way of getting money from people. It looks like a little legal scam. The trick here is that you do not consciously make a purchase every month, no, it could potentially make you think about whether you actually need it. On the contrary, it simply automates the task of taking money off your bank acc. As mentioned before, an especially controversial it is when the company makes you enter your bank account data for a free trial period. Hence, they purposefully want you to forget that you have entered the data and don’t even think about the money no more. You will start using the service and no matter whether you liked it and continue using it or not, they will get the money. And it is also important for them to make the money “you pay” seem insignificant so that you do not start wondering where did your salary go the moment you got it. They want it to be as seamless as possible so that when they gain thousands or millions of subscribers half of which would not even use the service, they will still gain the cash on a regular basis.

But don’t just take my word, check out the research recently conducted by C+R research. Survey has found that nearly half of the population who use subscription services forget that they pay for them, and when it comes to generation Z, the number rises to 55% of forgetful ones. 22% of responders, in turn, claim that they feel overwhelmed by the number of subscriptions they have to deal with (Subscription Service Statistics and Costs, 2022). However, there is a solution. Get a subscription for a mobile app that allows you to keep track of and manage your other subscriptions 😀

Figure 1. C+R research. Most forgotten types of subscriptions. (Subscription Service Statistics and Costs, 2022)

In the figure provided above, we can see that the easiest subscription to forget about is the mobile phone, the internet, tv, and movie streaming. Those are pretty much the ones that become an integral part of our lives, and are relatively inexpensive whatsoever.

Nevertheless, we cannot deny the fact that subscriptions are not pure evil. They are of good use to those who truly take the benefit of them. Those are the people who do interact with the service on an often and regular basis. Say you are a music lover or you make business on buying and selling stuff on Allegro. In these cases, a subscription to Spotify or delivery would make your life simply easier and cheaper. Furthermore, as mentioned in the research from Lin: “Rounding out the top 10 benefits of subscription models for customers are the ability to access a wider range of products and being able to avoid fraud and/or theft” (Lin, n.d.). Meaning that customers find it comfotable and troubleless to use subscriptions. It reduces the number of unnessesary worry/activitires we have in the modern world. That’s why crowd is keen giving up some extra money for a service that even potentially might be useful. It is connected to the feeling of security as well as feeling like the choice is bigger for smaller money, and it is difficult to argue with.

To conclude, what we can do to get the full merit of subscriptions and not suffer from losing our money subconsciously, is to make ourselves aware of the deals we make with organizations. Be cautious whenever we leave our bank account information, and make sure we either use the service we pay for, or we do not pay for the service we do not use.

Hope you found this post interesting. Feel free to share your thoughts on this matter in the comments section below 😉

References:

Cambridge Dictionary. (2022). subscription definition: 1. an amount of money that you pay regularly to receive a product or service: 2. an amount of. . .. Learn more. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/subscription

Subscription Service Statistics and Costs. (n.d.). C+R Research. https://www.crresearch.com/blog/subscription-service-statistics-and-costs

Lin, Y. (n.d.). Top Benefits of a Subscription Model | Oberlo. https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/benefits-of-subscription-model

Tagged , , , , , , ,

TikTok is poisoning your brain

Reading Time: 5 minutes
TikTok Is Altering The Behavior Of An Entire Generation | by Julien  Dimastromatteo, PhD | Invisible Illness | Medium
Source: https://medium.com/invisible-illness/tiktok-is-altering-the-behavior-of-an-entire-generation-576d38a8d1d5

TikTok has been around for 6 years now. In such a short time it has gained the title of the fastest-growing social network ever in the history of the internet. It not only managed to gain millions of users in a matter of months but also has affected the whole industry of video/photo platforms, and killed millions of brain cells. It is difficult to deny, that TikTok is now virtually in every social media, and the short videos from it even acquired their own name, simply “TikToks”. These short-form videos have a span of up to 60 seconds have overtaken the internet. Instagram is TikTok, Facebook is TikTok, and youtube is TikTok, they just call it in different ways like “reels” or “shorts”. Some would argue that it is great when a new, fun, and useful app gains popularity and the technology is adopted by other companies, it is a natural part of any developing competitive space. Though, let’s take a closer look at why TikTok has made such a boom on the internet, the main reason for which, is it being a real addictive drug.


With TikTok possessing more than a billion active users and its technology being copied and pasted into such giant platforms as Facebook and youtube (promoting it to some of the other hundreds of millions of viewers), it makes me ponder on what makes everyone watching it, and what makes all those companies strive to have the same brainwasher in their software. Though, after a few minutes of active thinking, an answer comes to mind – TikTok is dope.


The essence of its addictiveness (which is truly the highest among all social media platforms), lies in its design. The way the app looks, feels, scrolls, sounds, and the way the buttons are laid out all create a virtual space that lowers the level of our brain’s activity and makes it lose the track of time. It is designed in a way that forces innocent minds to watch hundreds of short videos daily while forgetting what they have seen 30 seconds ago no matter how funny, interesting, or exciting it could seem at the moment. We don’t have to search long for evidence of the effectiveness of such a design, because it has already been given: corporations like Facebook and youtube which used to be the largest social media trendsetters have suddenly adopted the pattern of TikTok app to their own playing fields. Though, the question still stays: why is this design so addictive?


In order to answer that, we first have to figure out how addiction works. As stated in the Harvard Health Article: “Addiction involves craving for something intensely, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences. Addiction changes the brain, first by subverting the way it registers pleasure and then by corrupting other normal drives such as learning and motivation.” (Harvard Health Article, Understanding addiction). In other words, addiction makes us lose control over our own actions due to a strong craving to experience this addictive something. Although, for the majority of people when thinking of addiction, some of the first things that come to mind are such substances as cigarettes, alcohol, pills, or marijuana. By way of explanations, those are drugs. However, it is important to notice that those drugs that are used for medical purposes are also called medicaments. At the same time, if we consider the word drug more as a general concept of it being something that causes addiction, then it should not be only restricted to physical substances. Moreover, the addiction mechanism works in the same way for all drugs, be it nicotine, sugar, sex, or TikTok videos. In particular, whenever the brain is exposed to certain external stimuli, which causes it to release a set of hormones that are making it feel good, and starts to crave for that good hormone rush, such as dopamine. Then a pattern emerges, “cue routine reward” (Duhigg, 2016). Whatever can become a cue, say being bored, feeling upset, wanting a distraction, etc. When a cue is touched upon, it then triggers the craving for the reward. The reward is known by the brain, in this case, it is the pleasant hormone rush. Hence, our mind urges a subconscious uncontrolled behavior that, it also knows, will bring the reward it craves for. This is how addiction emerges. Translating it to TikTok, whenever we find ourselves bored we know that we can entertain ourselves in TikTok by watching short funny videos. Whenever we scroll for the next video in the first few seconds we are getting excited by its looks, sound, or contents. This then makes our brain release a little bit of dopamine which makes us feel slightly better. Have you noticed that if the video does not excite you in the first 3 seconds you are very likely to quickly scroll to the next one? This is a clear evidence of you scrolling subconsciously, not even realizing that you are already addicted. Your brain wants more dopamine, hence it traps itself in a loop: scroll, get excited, feel good, crave the good feeling again, scroll, and so forth…


One would say that even if TikTok is addictive, it does not cause any severe consequences to neither individual, nor society. Nevertheless, studies have been conducted which state that the addiction to TikTok, just as for any other addictive essence, does affect our brain activity, especially it lowers the activity of particular part of our brain. This, in turn, might lead to the brain’s certain structures’ gradual atrophy. Especially susceptible to this are people of the age under 25 because the brain is not fully developed up till that time. Ironically, those are the ones that tend to spend the most time on the internet and TikTok due to the lack of interest in the real-world and boring classes in schools and universities.


Just like with addictive substances, addiction to TikTok is very difficult to notice, as it happens very gradually and smoothly. You don’t feel like something is going wrong, unless you check out the time of the day before you clicked on TikTok and right after you finished your daily session, here you get surprised by how much time has flown by. The danger is high, as it is hard to detect the full amount of hours we lose to TikTok, though it accumulates over time. Just the mere thought of us spending an hour daily on watching vids we don’t even remember at the end of the day, makes me think of how much I could have achieved if spent it on reading self-improvement literature or learning a new skill. Lets try to leave a worthy legacy behind and not be left known as the “look at me generation”. 😉

Feel free to share your experiences with tiktok and thoughts on this in the comments down below 🙂

I will be very glad to hear from you!

References:

Duhigg, C. (2016). Power of habit. Penguin Random House Audio Publish.

Understanding addiction. HelpGuide.org. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain.htm

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Why A.I. art is NOT art and how it is devaluing digital art as such

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Suddenly and very quickly, such a term as ‘A.I. art’ began to promptly spread and become popular. People all around the world were thrilled by the quality and beauty of artificial intelligence creations. The general rush to try and generate one’s own picture was unavoidable, considering the fact that it could be done by merely describing the wished-for picture in the text. I myself am not an exception. However, in this article, I would like to dive a bit deeper into understanding what art means to me and share my thoughts on why A.I.-generated art is NOT art at all.

To begin with, here is an example of A.I. artwork:

Looks amazing to me. The colours, the composition, the world depicted in this image… Fantastic. Though, it carries no artistic value. Read further if you want to know why.

First of all, let’s figure out what is A.I. and what A.I. art could possibly mean. As stated in the Artland article by Adam Hencz: “AI art refers to art generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence. AI is a field of computer science that focuses on building machines that mimic human intelligence or even simulate the human brain through a set of algorithms.” (Hencz, 2022). In other words, artificial intelligence is a set of complex algorithms that, by crawling the internet, are capable of computing a piece of imagery based on and assembled from thousands of thousands of already pre-existing creations produced by nothing else but human beings. Now, let’s look at what visual art means. Mentioned in the Britannica encyclopedia as follows: visual arts – “These are the arts that meet the eye and evoke an emotion through an expression of skill and imagination.” (Visual Arts Portal, n.d.). To put it another way, the visual arts are images that are created using imagination and creativity. It is crucial that a given artwork is expressing an idea and carries a certain emotional component.

Thus, the phrase ‘A.I. art’ is wrong in its essence. The pictures created using algorithms are indeed capable of being nice looking and are capable of evoking emotion in one viewing them. Nonetheless, the image generated in such a way does not represent any idea, it does not possess creative value and is, in a way, not unique. Moreover, art does not only refer to the end result from a technical standpoint. It refers to the process of creation, to the story of one image, which A.I. doesn’t have. It is the way in which the picture was made, the style, the idea behind it, that makes a picture – your picture. While an artificially computed image is random…

Whatsoever, humans are prone to misapply the A.I.’s imagery by referring to the images made with its use as ‘their’ creations. This brings a large threat to the whole digital artists’ community and to the jobs of people devoting their time to the passion of visual arts. The fact that spectacular images can be ‘constructed’ in a matter of seconds and without virtually any effort, or imagination either, deprives the world of digitally created imagery a huge worth. Now anyone without any particular skills or fantasy may assign a beautiful, though meaningless piece to himself.

Therefore, one of the ways to preserve the value of human-made digital art is to embed some kind of reminder in the image itself or oblige those who use this image to refer to it as the creation of algorithms. It doesn’t sully solve the issue, no. But it might help to lower the level of discouragement among digital artists.

The aim of this article was to shine a light on the misconception of calling AI computed imagery – art. It is not. And never will be. No matter how similarly a set of algorithms can simulate human brain or the product of its function, it is and will forever remain a simulation. Just like the copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ will never be worth any close to the actual masterpiece, the so called A.I. art is carrying little to no value in the world of true creativity.

Share your thoughts on this in the comments below 😉 I will be very glad to hear from you!

References:

Hencz, A. (2022, June 27). Agents Of Change: Artificial Intelligence – AI Art and How Machines Have Expanded Human Creativity. Artland Magazine. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://magazine.artland.com/ai-art/

Visual Arts Portal. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/browse/Visual-Arts

Tagged , , , ,