This is a good callout. If enigma is still an always online DRM that’s still a dealbreaker for me. Will have to check

Before the internet my mother wrote down things I asked about and we looked them up at the library on the weekend.

1. I rotate when I sleep so if the sheets etc aren’t tucked in I’ll rotate them off the bed then wake up cold.
2. I have dogs and having the comforter covering the entire bed keeps the parts I touch clean and comfortable

Huh? I’m definitely not hyping AI. If anything it would be the opposite. We’re also literally in the comment section for an a study about AI productivity which is the first remotely reputable study I’ve even seen. The rest have been rigged marketing stunts. As far as judging my opinion about the productivity of AI against junior developers against studies, why don’t you bring me one that isn’t “we made an artificial test then directly trained our LLM on the questions so it will look good for investors”? I’ll wait.

That said, this year’s crop of interns at work seem to be thin wrappers on top of LLMs and I worry about the future of critical thinking for society at large.

This is the must frustrating problem I have. With a few exceptions, LLM use seems to be inversely proportional to skill level, and having someone tell me “chatgpt said ___” when asking me for help because clearly chatgpt is not doing it for their problem makes me want to just hang up.

I would say that “replacing with AI assistance” is probably not what is actually happening. Is it economic factors reducing hiring. This isn’t the first time it has happened and it won’t be the last. The AI boosters are just claiming responsibility for marketing purposes.

Now, as for AI, it’s currently as good or “better” than about 40% of brand-new fresh from the BS program software engineers I have worked with. A year ago that number probably would have been 20%. So far it’s improving relatively quickly. The question is: will it plateau, or will it improve exponentially?

LOL sure

It is based on my experience, which I trust immeasurably more than rigged “studies” done by the big LLM companies with clear conflict of interest.

The point is that comparing AI tools to junior engineers is ridiculous in the first place. It is simply marketing.

People specifically hate having tools they find more frustrating than useful shoved down their throat, having the internet filled with generative ai slop, and melting glaciers in the context of climate change.

This is all specifically directed at LLMs in their current state and will have absolutely zero effect on any research funding. Additionally, openAI etc would be losing less money if they weren’t selling (at a massive loss) the hot garbage they’re selling now and focused on research.

As far as worker protections, what we need actually has nothing to do with AI in the first place and has everything to do with workers/society at large being entitled to the benefits of increased productivity that has been vacuumed up by greedy capitalists for decades.

AI tools are way less useful than a junior engineer, and they aren’t an investment that turns into a senior engineer either.

Fun how the article concludes that AI tools are still good anyway, actually.

This AI hype is a sickness

Lol this is ridiculous.

1. Small changes across many people add up. IE meatless Monday has a positive effect even though it’s not full abstinence.
2. If someone truly can’t economically afford to change their eating habits I’m not talking about them. You’re extrapolating to them in order to make a bad faith argument against anyone making any positive change. (Though beans and rice is cheaper than beef lol)
3. Corporate America, while it can’t be controlled exclusively by people’s habits, actually is able to be influenced by enough people’s spending habits. It has to make money after all.

Have fun completely abdicating your agency and making absurd rants though, I guess

P.S. no one argues that people should make personal changes in lieu of government/business changes. This is another bad faith assertion people make to attempt to abdicate personal responsibility.

How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It’s obviously someone else’s responsibility to change!

I think a lot of people have never had time to slow down and not work for an extended period (voluntarily and without financial stress). Having time to just process thoughts and feelings while doing things you want to do instead are obligated to do is actually a pretty big deal.

To reiterate, I don’t think there is anything wrong with using the AUR. I think that using an AUR helper that ties updating AUR packages to your pacman -Syu is a trap that people keep falling into despite the warnings in the wiki.

The wiki article :

• specifically says that packages are not thoroughly vetted
• does not recommend using yay or another AUR helper (which is the primary thing I recommend against)
• has a frequently asked question section that is fairly technical and should indicate that it is not for the faint of heart

The aur helper wiki has a fun red disclaimer at the top that no one reads

I like arch because:

• it is rolling release and I like having up to date software and not having to deal with distro upgrades breaking things
• it is community run and not beholden to a company
• packages are mostly unmodified from their upstream
• the wiki and forums are the best of any distro

conflict when trying to just update things naively

Sounds like AUR problems. IMO using AUR helpers that tie AUR packages to your full system update command is a trap. AUR never professed to be a stable repository (in fact it’s the opposite). AUR has a place, but it should be used sparingly and thoughtfully.

Sun Microsystems rises from the ashes like a Phoenix