I remember seeing some of this stuff when it came out and thinking “why are they doing this?” A bunch of it I never heard of, and a handful I wish had seen success (Firefox OS). Not sure how this counts as a hit piece, it didn’t seem mean spirited and definitely didn’t seem to be misrepresenting anything.

But I don’t want my devices to be bombs

I didn’t take the image to be showing a macbook, it could just as easily be my computer or probably many others.

You’re right, doesn’t sound great. In the example they shared, sounds like the issue wasn’t that the car couldn’t drive around the fire truck, but that it couldn’t break a programming rule about crossing into a lane that would normally be opposing traffic. Once given the “ok” to follow such a route, the car handled it on its own, the human doesn’t actually drive it.

I could imagine a scenario where you need one human operator for every two vehicles. That’s still reducing labor by 50%.

Obviously they want it to be better than that, they want it to be one operator per ten vehicles or no operator at all.

And the fundamental problem with these systems is they will be owned by big corporations, and any gained efficiency will be consumed by the corporation, not enjoyed by the worker or passed on to the customer.

But I think there’s true value to be found there. Imagine a transportation cooperative - we’re a thousand households, we don’t all need our own car, but we need a car sometimes. We pool our resources and have a small fleet that minimizes our cost and environmental impact, and potentially drives more safely than human drivers.

Seems like a company that initially differentiated itself by hyping 3D printing, and once they realized that won’t work they’ve got to pivot without spooking everyone.

Every business’s biggest expense is labor. Skilled labor costs more. The people in charge like it when you save money.

I think it’s wrong. But only because the interests of the people who own the machines and businesses diverge from the worker’s interests. I’d like to see more worker cooperatives. If the workers own the machines, then it’s good when things are automated.

I also don’t believe anything will ever be truly automated, or that it’s a good idea to try.

All that to say we don’t have to resort to an explanation of “managers must hate engineers” to understand why they would want to eliminate positions.

I don’t think it’s just managers saying hey we could automate such and such a thing away. It’s human nature to think “how could I improve this” which almost immediately leads to “if I get this right it could mean no work at all”

Isn’t the question here why shouldn’t friends not let friends use CSV?

You absolutely want a keyboard when programming, but you can get one that works with the ipad. As someone else suggested the software environment is probably more the limiting factor.

Lol well sorry the joke didn’t go over, but thanks for contributing.

After reading the alt text and googling I’m still baffled. The actual google trends show no spike in interest, so I guess OP is saying they wish Slackware was back on people’s radar, and maybe the Slackware maintainer could do that using a stunt name change.

This is pretty exciting

Won’t this be a challenge for Ukraine? I got the impression they rely on consumer drones a lot

There’s only one response: We’ve got to drop the big one. We have got to nuke the ocean.

You’re right, and other intellectual “design” jobs will have physical or visible manifestations of the design process. In video you have a storyboard, set design. In music you have notation, lyrics, demo recordings, and so on.

Do you use an ad blocker or privacy extension? I’ll just throw out there I don’t think it’s right, but I’ve had to disable adblock to get some banking site stuff to work

Yeah, I guess you could argue it needs more contributors, but sort of like Wikipedia, suppose it saw wide adoption. Is it just a learn to code type thing? I guess better that Wikimedia runs it than stack exchange or whoever.

With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.

You’re right, the climate is going to get worse before it gets better. You’re right, the impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect poor and underdeveloped areas. We can’t make that go away with positive thinking, and it’s not enough for humans as a species to survive, we need to focus on reducing suffering while we’re turning the ship.

What I took away from this article is that the market forces for cheap renewable power and the means to store it are now stronger than the forces for CO2 emitting power. And those forces are moving faster than predicted. That’s good, and it’s ok to talk about something good when it’s true!

People who have been paying attention and care about others have good reason to be wary about the narrative “oh, everything is going to be fine” because that’s what industry and politicians have been saying for a long time instead of taking needed action.

We’re at a point where most people recognize climate change is real, and they can see it’s effects. We’re also at a point where many people don’t have hope for the situation. It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.

Boooooo to this post

Thanks for commenting!