ThePowerOfGeek

@ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"What Is Your Dream for Mozilla" - Mozilla is doing a survey, questions include "What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?"⁩ ⁨⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree that’s basically what I out in the text box underneath the AI multi-select options. “We don’t want yet another annoying AI search feature or chatbot! We want a focus on useable features and security!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Death of the Junior Developer⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re not missing much, honestly. The article states with this:

  Warning: This blog post is somewhat speculative; the sky might not be falling. But my spidey-sense is definitely tingling. The way we are all doing our jobs in software is changing, potentially in big ways. So let’s think of this as a thought exercise.

  It’s basically a clickbait title on a fictitious concept.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Fans Are Losing So Much Money to Crypto Scams⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Russia says it might build its own Linux community after removal of several kernel maintainers.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And vodka. Soooooo much vodka!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I or should I not use/bother with using Linux? (READ THE WHOLE POST)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I know where you’re coming from on this. Linux is very cool in a lot of ways, and it is very flexible and fun to play with. But it does require an investment of learning and time to get more familiar with it. And that can be frustrating/overwhelming to face. And like you, I find the whole cult-like vibe around it annoying.

  I first got familiar with Linux many years ago, mostly out of curiosity. But also because I liked the ideas of using it and the idea of having another OS option other than Windows/MacOS. While I am still not a Linux expert, I feel like I can get around the OS competently. And in hindsight I think it was worth the time I spent getting familiar with it.

  Also, like you in not a pursuit when it comes to terminal use in Linux. Give me a nice UI option any day if the week. And to be fair, many Linux distro have come a long way with their UIs in the last 20 of so years.

  If you just want to tinker with a solid distro that has a decent UI, I recommend either Ubuntu or Zorin. Also, I recommend trying to pace yourself with learning it. Only pick the parts that interest you, and take your time learning about them. There’s no rush. Good luck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Death of the Junior Developer⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting article. But as a veteran developer the whole AI trend reminds me of the outsourcing trend back in the mid 2000s.

  Back then Western developers (especially junior and mid levels) were seen by many companies as a waste of money. “We can pay for three developing world developers for the price we pay for one American/European one! Why are we wasting our money?!”

  And so the huge wave of layoffs (fuelled also by the dot com bubble bursting and some other things) kicked off. And many companies contracted out work to India, etc. It was not looking good for us Western developers.

  But then the other shoe dropped. The code being sent back was largely absolute shite. Spaghetti code, disparate platforms bound together with proverbial duct tape, no architectural best practices, design anti-patterns, etc etc. And a lot of these systems started falling apart and required Western developers and support engineers to fix them up or outright replace them.

  Now, this isn’t a sleight on Indian of other developing world developers. I’ve met lots of phenomenal programmers from that part of the world. And developers there have improved a lot and now there are lots of solid options for outsourcing to there. But there’s are still language and culture barriers that are a hurdle, even today.

  But I digress. My underlying point is that there are similarities with today’s situation with what has happened before. Now, it’s very possible LLMs will go to the next level in several years (or more) time. But I still think we are a ways away from having an AI engine that can build a complex, sophisticated system in a holistic way and have it capable of implement the kinda of crazy, wacky, bizarre business rules that are often needed.

  Additionally, we’ve heard this whole “developers are going to be obsolete soon” thing before. For 20 years I’ve been hearing that self-writing code was just around the corner. But it wasn’t even close in reality. And even now it’s not just around the corner.

  No doubt, AI will hit a whole nother level at some point. The stuff you can do with Chat GPT and the like it’s insane, even right now (though as another article here on Lenny earlier today said, quite a lot of LLM code output is of suspect quality to say the least). And I know the market is rough right now for greener developers. But I think we’re about to see history repeat itself.

  Some companies will lean heavily into AI to write code, with only a few seniors basically just curating it and slapping it together. And other companies will find a middle ground of having juniors and seniors using AI to a more limited and careful level. Those latter companies will fare a lot better with the end product, and they will also be better prepared with regard to tribal knowledge transfer (which is another topic in this altogether). And when that epiphany is realized it will become the default approach. At least for another 10-20 years until AI can change things up again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Ever Happened to MSN Messenger?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Anyone remember the short-lived Great War of the Messenger Apps? For a few months back around… '98? '99? MSN tried really hard to shoehorn its way into working with AIM. About every day there would be an update from MSM Messenger to allow it to work with AIM. Then AOL would fuck with their own protocol to ice out MSN users again.

  I think these shenanigans also impacted the Trillium Messenger app too, which up until then had been flying under the radar of messenger interoperability.

  I might be getting some of these details wrong.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can someone give me an overview on the Jill Stein situation?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here are some of the common complaints about Jill Stein:

  As the Green Party candidate she will pull in more third party votes than most (if not all) of the other parties. While those views are usually trivial in number in the grand scheme of things, they can have a big impact in let seeing states.

  She has not gone out of her way to criticize Trump, and has instead treated both Trump and Harris as being equally bad, even though Trump is arguably much more anti-environmental than Harris.

  This isn’t her first time coming in as what’s seen as a Democrat vote-spoiler candidate.

  From the perspective of some, she pops up every four years to try to take votes off the Democrat candidate and then seemingly disappears for another four years.

  She has a bit of a cult of personality thing going on - arguably moreso than either Harris or Biden.

  She’s in her mid-70s, and so no spring chicken. This has become more of a concern this cycle because a) she’s for years older than she was in 2020 (obviously), b) age has become more of a point of concern given how both Biden and Trump have apparently seen marked cognitive decline at less than 10 years her seniors.

  There’s some evidence to suggest she is cozy with Putin, who is clearly does not have America’s best interests in mind. For example, she was photographed at a fancy dinner sitting at the same table as him and several of his ‘crew’ (among others). The common excuse for this is “she didn’t choose her seating!” But equally there’s no reason she couldn’t have got up and moved or left the event.

  Photo of the dinner in question, with labels:

  Image

  I’m sure there are other points I’m missing. But those are the ones that spring to mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Logan Paul, KSI Send Truckload of Prime Hydration To N.C. For Hurricane Relief⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried Prime for the first time the other day. I think I’d rather drink hurricane flood water.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are captchas enough to stop bots?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  To expand on what others here have said: no they can’t, and there was a recent article here on Lenny taking about how AI (which I know is different from average bots) has figured out most of the visual captcha types.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon tech workers leaving for other jobs in response to return to office mandate⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope so too. Although the IT job market isn’t great right now, so I doubt the departures will reach a critical mass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Watch out, Microsoft Outlook could soon give away when you're sneakily working from home⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting. Teams has been doing this for a few years now, so I assume it’s the same functionality just transferred over to Outlook (which has been going through a massive overhaul recently). For anyone in an MS-based company with Teams being actively used, this is not a new thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Altman is the latest from the conveyor belt of mustache-twirling frat-bro super villains.

  Move over Musk and Zuckerberg, there’s a new shit-heel in town!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This has the makings of a great sci-fi story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Couple tried to sell baby for a 6-pack of beer and $1,000 at campground, police say⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was thinking the same thing. They have different last names, bit that doesn’t mean anything. The article doesn’t indicate they are related to each other. But it definitely looks like they came from the same gene puddle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Couple tried to sell baby for a 6-pack of beer and $1,000 at campground, police say⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They are referring to the proposed law over there. Looks like it’s only fines as punishments for more. But that could change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tupperware in fight to survive after bankruptcy filing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup. Bought some of their containers about 10 years ago and they were okay quality. Bought some more of supposedly the same product a few years ago and the materials had totally changed and they were far inferior to the older ones.

  Ended up replacing most of them with snapware ones (which have Pyrex containers). Very happy.

  The whole thing with Tupperware is interesting. Weren’t they basically using mostly an MLM approach to sell their products for years? Seems like their marketing and entire business model hasn’t progressed since around the year 2000.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxford PV starts commercial distribution of perovskite solar modules⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh wow, that’s a big step forward in longevity!

  Thanks for the quote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxford PV starts commercial distribution of perovskite solar modules⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is encouraging news. But don’t perovskite solar panels degrade much quicker than silicon ones? I know they had found ways of prolonging their life by using lasers to ‘smooth out’ and strengthen the crystal structure of the perovskite. But even with that the last I heard was that they would still only last few a few (2-7) years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks.

  I am trying Libretube via F-droid. So far so good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No Android version of it yet, eh? Damn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RuneScape is increasing their membership price by 50%, and Reddit is trying to censor it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh wow, that’s a huge monthly increase. Thanks for explaining the pricing system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RuneScape is increasing their membership price by 50%, and Reddit is trying to censor it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a big surprise on the Huffman Shitshow. A lot of subs over there are insanely toxic. But yeah, a ban for that? That’s crazy.

  I didn’t even know RuneScape had a subscription! I think I briefly played it about 15 years ago. Good game, I just don’t have the time to play it, unfortunately. I assume you play? What’s the community like over there?

  I just looked up their pricing and it makes sense for them to have an optional subscription. $14 a month is in line with other similar games (e.g. wow). Would be nice if they had a couple of tiers of subscription. Maybe a $7 and a $14. But that might complicate things. How much can you do on the free mode?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do boomers hate squirrels so much?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Gen-Xer who hates birds and squirrels equally. So I guess I’m your antithesis?

  Though I don’t hate any of them to the point of harming any of them. That would be too much effort.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chromecast / Firestick Self Host Replacement⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was looking into something similar recently, and asked around on Lemmy. The general consensus I heard was that a Mini PC weren’t ideal, mostly I think due to the fact that they aren’t designed purely for streaming.

  One think someone said piqued my interest, and I might try this. They recommended buying a cheap, Android TV compatible streaming box (like an Onn brand one), and side-loading an open source (and ad-free) launcher onto it.

  I found this thread over on the Huffman Shitshow that had some good instructions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do any of you play WoW? There's an open source private server we could play and make a Lemmy guild⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds intriguing. But you have to be careful sharing info like this. Blizzard is ruthless when it comes to shutting down resources they consider to be a threat to their IP.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X says it is closing operations in Brazil due to judge's content orders⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lucky Brazil!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Next time I have to get a new TV I think I’ll just get a large computer monitor and stream content via an old mini PC with Linux installed on it. Not an ideal solution, but I’m so tired of this invasive bullshit. At least that will cut out some of its vectors.

  After the recent Roku TOS fiasco I’m done with them. If manufacturers won’t give us a viable situation we will make one ourselves.

  Anyone know a good OS setup for reduced ad streaming? I know about Pi-Holes, but I’m talking about a way of actually streaming content (in addition to blocking ads at our near the router level).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, this is a concern. I know lots of people say “just don’t connect it to the Internet” and turn it back into a dumb TV. And that works great right now. But the way things are heading I could see manufacturers requiring an Internet connection for it to work.

  The recent Roku scandal (where they required users to agree to TOS changes before they could use their device in any way) was a wakeup call for many.

  I’m hoping that a viable open source streaming device will become popular soon. I know there are solutions out there like hooking up an old PC or a Raspberry Pi as a media server. But I’m thinking of more of an out of the box solution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would I get banned here for being over active? I got banned from reddit because they thought I was a bot. And don't want to repeat the same mistake here. Thank you ahead of time.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are a few users who certainly seem to be.