[danielovichdk]

This reads as a technologist that has absolutely no clue about anything regarding the shipping or the logistics industry. I hope someone told these guys what the spent is on new (water) ships globally, because it points only in one direction.

[simonw]

"I hope someone told these guys what the spent is on new (water) ships globally, because it points only in one direction."

What IS spent on new ships globally, and what direction does it point in?

[QuantumGood]

It's a cyclical industry, so whether it "points" or peaks can be argued, but in 2021 561 container ships were ordered vs 114 in 2020

• Approximately 900 container ships are currently being built or on order worldwide

• These have a combined capacity of 6.8 million TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units)

Major shipping lines:

• Evergreen: 20 ships of 15,000 TEU capacity (delivery 2024-2025)

• OOCL: 10 vessels of 16,000 TEU capacity

• MSC: Multiple orders including 24,100 TEU ultra-large ships and smaller vessels

• CMA-CGM: 6 vessels of 15,000 TEU capacity (delivery 2025)

[danielovichdk]

New container ships being built is around all time high. Look it up.

It points to that the business is not only doing good but that investments is being made, heavily.

[renewiltord]

If the economics work, I’d imagine the best time is when there are the most ships built since that indicates unmet cargo demand.

[burnte]

I used to have intermodal carriers as customers, so for an IT guy I know a good bit about it. I went to comment on his post and it said only paid subscribers can comment. I'm not going to pay him to point out issues he'd need to deal with.

[scottLobster]

Yeah, it seems like every attempt at an airship company for the last 70 years or so just ends up speed-running the development of modern travel/logistics that makes airships obsolete. Same way crypto is/was speed-running the need for modern financial regulation.

On a broader scale I also wonder if we're near the top of a technological S-curve. It's worth remembering that until the industrial revolution the average pace of technological advance was extremely slow. The Mongols conquered Asia with weaponry that would have been instantly familiar to people living 2000 years earlier. Perhaps our descendants 1000 years from now will still be using refrigerators virtually identical to our own.

[numpad0]

I think it's more like the Western economy is silently crashing than technological development having reverted back to ~19th century rate, although the latter is said to be happening too - something feels wrong about tech lately.

[justin]

CRISPR, Yamanaka factors, computational biology, brain computer interfaces, Starship, LLMs... we are nowhere near the top of the tech S curve.

[scottLobster]

Most of those are still in the lab, Starship is an incremental improvement that was largely a matter of funding, LLMs are at best a threat to telemarketers and customer service reps, perhaps paralegals.

I'm really sick of breathless, Disney-fied tomorrowland fantasies of what technology might theoretically be able to do, and pronouncements of "breakthroughs" that dissolve into nothing once any real-world application is attempted. I understand it's necessary to drum up dumb money for startups, and it makes for a good amusement park ride, but I'll believe the AI "revolution" is here when a car drives itself coast-to-coast through all weather conditions without incident.

I'm still waiting on graphene super-capacitors to make batteries obsolete.

[pnut]

I don't know how old you are, but regardless, can you not see how technological change has occurred within your own single human lifespan? This wasn't true in a meaningful way to an individual's life trajectory until the last century or so. The changes are coming so continuously and with such significant future implications, it's impossible for me not to just stand in awe.

Whether the specific proof of radical change you're waiting for happens in the next 24 months or over the next 100 years, it's still instantaneous in comparison to everything that came before it.

[numpad0]

Then iPhone 4 came out in 2010. Google SDC prototype drove for 140k miles by then. It's 2024, and iPhone 4 is still sort of usable. Might run 0.25B LLM? Waymo is serving just couple small areas in US. There's no categorical successor to phones. No one other than Waymo achieved SDC.

Oculus DK1 shipped in 2012. VR is still a niche anime/gamer/anime-gamer product. AI bubble is correcting fast. Boom Overture supersonic jetliner isn't flying. Starship just landed for the first time, and it did land but appeared to have gone full banana soon after. Insane but it's not going into service for a little while. Brain-computer interfaces... meh. They were always stuck at immune response problem and that's why no one is doing invasive BCI, not because it wasn't invented back in 80s or whenever it was.

GP's claim is that things are slowing down and none of inventions are life changing big. Things are definitely slowing down and none of recent inventions are intercontinental teleportation certified for commercial services big.

[antifa]

TBH the last 10 years of my life I've noticed technilogical stagnation, enshitification, marginal improvments. The 20 years before that was an amazing wild ride.