The only reason why I still have Windows is because of a handful of apps that are Windows-only and don’t play nice with WINE, and because so many of my clients are similarly locked into Windows with certain programs, or cannot otherwise switch, and I need to be able to support them.
Frankly, I am getting tired of the cat-and-mouse game of ripping out spyware and other decisions that are forcibly made for me (compressed files mounted as folders since XP, for example). I don’t think I’m going to stick with Windows past v11.
Except if there are tells that can be quickly distinguished, that would save a lot of us a lot of time and effort.
I would personally find the answer - if there is an effective one - very valuable. And I would likely employ said answer to filter out ads purely out of spite even if it takes longer and more effort than applying.
Fuck any company that uses ghost ads, they should all go on a public “don’t bother applying to ANY job here” registry. Let’s see them find applicants for the genuine jobs when they’re well-known for such shitty tactics.
But what if someone wants to be alone, and who relishes solitude?
I am one of those people who prefers solitude. I can be entirely by myself for days or weeks on end with zero issue, but can feel immensely lonely in a crowd.
Even spending time with others is problematic. I can be at a party or a get-together and be very social and talkative, but after an hour I get psychologically “itchy” and have an overwhelming desire to leave and return to my own private space. Sometimes the only “socialization” I need is to people-watch for a half hour or so, and that hits me only a few times a year.
George Carlin said it best when he described liking people, but only in small doses. That aligns pretty much with how I feel.
I have long since come to the conclusion that happiness is a bullshit goal. It’s like trying to capture Fae - are you sure it even exists? I’m not so sure.
Buddhism, in particular, teaches that wants will only ever cause pain and suffering, and when happiness is not something you can directly control - it arises out of conditions and situations you find yourself in - seeking and pursuing happiness is a fool’s errand. You will always suffer in those periods between bouts of happiness.
For me, I have focused on a much more concrete goal: *satisfaction.*
Particularly, satisfaction from having achieved the goals and targets I have set for myself, and in general, even the random shit that life throws at me. To tackle them and process/overcome/complete them to a quality or level or degree that I can be satisfied with.
And as someone with a nasty Voltron of ADD and Asperger’s, that threshold for satisfaction can often be disturbingly high.
Satisfaction does bring a certain degree of pleasure and happiness in of itself, but far more importantly it brings a degree of encouragement to keep moving forward in this capitalistic hellhole that is hurtling the human race (and potentially even the planet) towards full extinction within our lifetimes.
And as a coping mechanism, it works. Quite well, actually.
This! I mean, at least get all of the low-hanging fruit with a quick, needle-spray pass of hot water. And to do so while the plates are still fresh so that stuff hasn’t had the time to dry.
Like, we’re talking about powering through table settings for a half-dozen people at a family dinner in less than 60 seconds. Plates, bowls, cups, silverware; everything done in about 10s per person. This isn’t any kind of a deep scrub; it’s removing everything that will come off easily as fast and expediently as possible before the dishes go into the washer.
And the more important thing is just how much damage those lunatics can do through Microsoft using American laws -- even current ones, much less new ones. Microsoft would be a mostly helpless puppet in this entire exchange; a cat’s paw, as it were.
Yes, given how fast Amazon and Apple rolled over it's clear they don't stand a chance. It's not like they can teleport Seattle out of the USA if they had to.
I wonder how big a fraction of the US tech and Military industry realizes that Trump is killing their business for the next century.
This is the first time I have ever heard the term “database developer” to mean a developer of the database internals, of the database engine itself.
Every other use I have ever come across has meant the development of the databases themselves, the file in which data is stored in a relational (and recently, non-relational) manner.
Because when we talk about “a database”, we are almost never talking about the engine that works with one, we’re talking about the file that holds all the data. The former is invariably called a “database server”.
Wouldn’t a much more accurate and subject-separate term have been “database engine developer” or “database server developer”? That alone, I think, could have reduced or even eliminated a lot of confusion.
And no, not a newb: working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. In the English-speaking world, too.
Plus, with sulphur no longer in marine diesel, the cooling effect of those emissions has vanished.
There is credible evidence that warming has kicked into overdrive, and we will see more warming in the next 10 years than in the last 50. Think +3℃ not long after 2035, +4℃ some time before 2045.
+3℃ will see the tropics - the entire band between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn - see lethally high wet bulb temperatures in almost every region for at least a few weeks out of every year, meaning 4+B people will need to migrate away from the tropics or die. Imagine if America had 3× its population crash through its borders as climate refugees in a desperate attempt to continue living. And India is already flirting with lethal heat in real-time.
+4℃ is the point at which all megafauna - animals more than 55Kg (100lbs) - go extinct because of chaotic weather making it impossible to find sufficient food to survive. And humans are megafauna, too.
And with the Return on Research - how effective the discovery of new things is, per dollar spent - cratering by almost 98% in the last century, we will not be able to innovate our way out of our own extinction.
1. How AI use erodes skills in the subject AI is being used to assist in. This is a 100% occurrence, and has been demonstrated across all industries from software developers to radiologists. Most experience a 10-20% erosion in their skill set within the first 12 months of AI use, but others in the study groups have seen up to a 40% erosion in their skill sets.
2. How AI use shuts down critical thinking, and makes users more stupid. This is a 100% occurrence, and has been clearly demonstrated by MRI scans of the prefrontal cortex while users are actively using AI.
3. How AI use makes the user slower. This is the only user point that is not 100% coverage, as slightly less than 2% of the most senior and skilled users show a slight increase in work completed… after more than 12 months of using AI. Projections have been made on the other 98%, and over 90% of them will likely never work faster with AI than without it, regardless of training or experience.
4. The gratuitous hallucinations, which are only increasing in scope and severity with every AI generation. It arises entirely from the constraints the AI are rewarded with - providing no answer is weighted just as negatively as a wrong answer - and anywhere from 60-80% of all responses are hallucinatory or incorrect in some fashion, depending on the current model.
In prior generations, any industry with such performance would be laughed clear out of the boardroom.
But because capitalism is desperately seeking a solution to what they perceive as a problem - how to obtain labour without having to pay said labour - AI is being adopted hand-over-fist.
After all, the underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.
Isn’t this what Craigslist does with their geographical regions? They all store in the same “eventual consistency” DB, but IIRC each city gets its own server in a datacentre in that city.
I’ve even built websites the same, with a public login portal distinct on its own subdomain (and even server) than the staff/admin portal. Why? To separate concerns and enhance security without having to make the backend code that much more complex. And to keep everything performant, the backend DB is on yet another separate system, accessible only by the primary systems to keep its own security simple(r) than it normally would have to be.
I thought this was an old, well-established thing.
Still, a great write-up. I like how you’ve laid out your reasoning.
Frankly, I am getting tired of the cat-and-mouse game of ripping out spyware and other decisions that are forcibly made for me (compressed files mounted as folders since XP, for example). I don’t think I’m going to stick with Windows past v11.
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