Mistral has recently shown a good trajectory of improvement. It is already an important thing that there is a European mid range open weight model that can compete. (Frontier models need a lot more resources, it is important to compare apples with apples) This is good enough for many applications were data security and sovereignity are prime concerns. Of course, it would be good to have a frontier model, lets see how Large 4 will perform when we get there.

Mistral Medium 3.5 isn’t that far behind comparable current open weight models.

Who knows? That is either just an excuse to protect that illegal facility of an oligarch or they are really using that facility to target girl schools in Iran.

No.

It is generally thought that official token price is breaking even, at best. Maybe it is not even doing that. The worth of the AI usage has nothing to do with those costs and is likely much lower. So far there is very little done on understanding actual value of AI use though.

I am not saying you are wrong, just that the above statement can be correct at the same time.

Yes, but what good is that if 100 USD more is still losing tons of money.

Turns out, if you don’t sacrifice cities on the car altar and plan for quality of life instead, children can in fact play on the streets. The Netherlands show it.

You can export your contacts and settings and import them in another browser with a few clicks. I am not sure what energy is needed for that but use whatever you prefer.

It just needs an employee who ended his employment in a way that was not to his or her liking. This is a huge risk for the company, the fines are substantial and huge companies will have a hard time keeping everything watertight and secret. Alternatively, hackers or other informed people can get to know a lot about the functioning of systems, firmware and software. So even if there is no one ratting the company out, they could still end up with those huge fines, or worse.

That’s why in Austria we have not only Unions but a “Worker’s chamber” (and also an “Enterpreneur’s chamber”). While companies can prevent unions they can’t prevent that chamber. If you are not part of a union you can still call the chamber and it has legal specialists, it can help you and also sue on your behalf if need be, at no cost to you. If the company fires you over your legit concern’s they can also get you damages for that from that company. Of course, unions can offer stronger protection and the two institutions also work together but it is good to have a second layer that companies can’t get rid off.

These things are quite different between different countries in Europe as well though.

Selling that data is illegal in the EU, isn’t it? It probably isn’t elsewhere though.

Oh, so now the EU is not just treasonous but also fascist, never mind that actual fascists in the EU like the AfD or the FPÖ are staunchly against the EU with identical arguments like yours which are the same to what I can read on RT. Pointing that out, I assume, is being a Russophobe.

Hungary was not buying at oh so low prices and the costs and inflation were already there before any issues with getting the oil or gas through Ukraine, a country that is the victim of a blood soaked invasion by Russia which aims at imperial conquest.

I agree, probably everything said here, no one is going to be convinced by the other here but you should really go into yourself if wishing others dying a painful death in some war, merely because of different opinions is the kind of person you want to be. Hopefully this is just an internet thing.

Wow, you are really into the full Russian narrative. Never mind that this mythical cheap resources from a regime that is openly waging a hybrid war against the rest of Europe, did not help Hungary at all in getting energy prices down, let alone keep inflation in check. Its way worse than in Poland which has done everything it could to get away from that “cheap energy”. Those not falling for Russian propaganda are doubling down on the transition to renewable energies and the necessary infrastructure modifications needed to support it. The shift in the last 5 years has been very substantial and is already paying off during the price shock caused by the US regimes war against the Iranian regime.

But yeah both, the US and Russian regime support the identical parties in the EU, which are reliably acting against the national interests of their own countries and for the interest of their sponsors. Surprise, surprise.

The EU is massively investing in strategic autonomy, which of course cannot be achieved over night but there are very meaningful programs going on right now to get there. All of them are wildly opposed by people supporting your stance. Those programs also will not disappear when Trump is gone. Galileo is there to stay, so will be Iris2, European arms programs, improved coordination etc. Unless of course those parties sponsored by Russia manage to convince the majority of the voters. In that case those projects might be killed and we will enter the age of true national sovereignty … for sure.

It is probably a waste to ask you, how it is that the US is driving the same anti-EU propaganda that Russia is and supporting even the identical parties for that. It makes zero sense if the EU is “the biggest bootlicker to DC”.

Member states have shifted substantial arms procurement away from the US, contrary to your claim too.

Given the delusional stuff you are saying about gas and your opposition to the sanctions against the Russian regime, at least it gets clear where you are coming from. If you prefer being ruled by DC or Moscow, after destroying Brussels.

No. France vs Germany, Romania vs Bulgaria, Crotia vs Austria …

Not really, Germany is a much larger net contributor than France, yet European identification is a bit stronger. Also Bulgaria vs Romania etc. The correlation you are proclaiming is actually not that strong.

Funny how nationalists, can’t possibly imagine that there could be something other than national entities and communities, as if the Westphalian paradigm would be really so total as it pretends to be.

There is no “Euronation”, there doesn’t need to be to have a common European Union, with a common civil society, legal and judicial institutions and common law, to do the things the member states can’t do on their own. Of course Russia and the US hate that because they’d rather prefer those things being decided in DC or Moscow instead, without the influence from anyone from all these European countries.

True, that’s why I did not even bother to mention it ;)

You are using a derogatory term for cars that are great choices for many. Even if those cars are not suitable for your requirements it just puts you in a certain light.

There are indeed not a lot of MPV EVs on offer, I guess, car producers really want to push people into more profitable, less useful SUVs instead. But then VW has been killing the Sharan also among ICE vehicles. So this isn’t even an EV problem.

The best best for your requirement is maybe still the Toyota Proace City Verso L2 50 kWh. AT 40000 EUR it is also somewhat reasonably priced for a van with 5-7 seats. It has a central screen but it is rather conservative as far as modern cars go. Yes, it is a full Van rather than a compact Van but like I said, producers really don’t want to produce those anymore.

Golf carts don’t come even close to the feeling. It is more like driving an go-cart racer, from the drive feeling, but without the noise of course. Different, but hardly lame. When you look at the Renault 5 or the ID.Polo, they don’t feel that different on the inside from ICE cars. Yes they have some central screen nowadays but so do modern ICE cars. Other than that, real buttons, real handles and controls and one does not have to use one pedal drive if one prefers more traditional controls. Of course gear shifting isn’t a thing anymore and that is still strongly rooted among most European drivers.