I agree, but then learning to code isn't much of a hurdle. It's a similar effort to learning vim. The difficult part is getting to know the language. I never coded in Haskell for example and learning to use that language would take effort. On the other hand, it would be pretty easy with an LLM at hand.
It might even help in figuring out whether Haskell would be a good fit. Something I couldn't do, as I do not know the language. Then again, it's not a question that really gets asked much in a corporate setting. Most things are just solved in a few popular languages, whether that makes the most sense or not.
> learning to code isn't much of a hurdle... The difficult part is getting to know the language.
I agree. The people who depend on chatbots to write their code for them won't have either of those skills though. They don't know (or are in the process of forgetting) how to code, and they're missing out on the opportunity to really learn the language by turning off their brain and letting a bot spoon-feed them code.
An LLM would only get in your way if you actually wanted to learn Haskell.
We’re like 6-7 tiers deep on that aren’t we? Does every c developer understand the instruction set on the cpus their code is executing against? Does every c#/java/other managed memory language deeply understand their garbage collector?
It’s abstractions all the way down and most people aren’t going to have an intimate understanding of every layer, and it’s not economically worth it for the vast majority to even try
Abstractions are very different from having a bot regurgitate code for you. Abstractions are an aspect of the programing languages we use. Using them means using the language.
LLMs just give you results (of highly variable quality) and if you lack a solid understanding of the language being used that result gets blindly accepted as valid (especially if it manages to 'do the thing' when you test it). Learning how to type a prompt is not the same as learning how to code or learning a programing language.
Actually, if by “learning to code” you mean “writing good usable code”, my experience is that many people struggle to code. Especially when you consider planning a (human-level) complex project.
Maybe you don’t know those people. I work with them every day.
I am reminded of the scene of a guy walking through various layers of security to access a computer that isn't connected to any network and still wonder what the hell this guy's job was in Mission Impossible (1996). The data got stolen either way, because of course it did, but what highly sensitive work can you even do on a computer not connected to any network?
If there's too much security in the way, it seems to me that work becomes impossible.
We had water and traffic control and electricity for decades and centuries before the Internet. It is less convenient and more expensive, but it also means hostile countries can't literally poison your drinking water from across the planet. It's not a difficult trade to consider.
Is it really more expensive to not connect a water treatment plant to the internet? I can imagine the vendor selling that idea but I struggle to come up with how that could make a water treatment plant cheaper to operate.
Yes. Without a remote system you must have a real person check levels, pumps, pressures, and many other devices thus be present. This person must be trained and you will likely need a backup as well.
If not a person you need more redundancies built in. Bigger tanks, multiple backup systems. When items start failing you need them to be shutoff in a timely manner. Water pumps at these facilities are in the 50-100k range. When it starts failing you want to know.
Think of it like driving a car and it starts making funny noises. The longer you wait to fix it the more it costs.
Why that drastic, checking system state (telemetry) can be done using 'data diode' style networking - one network just broadcasting sensor data, other network allows changing parameters and 3rd one allows allows software upgrades and so on.
You can be very defensive and design any remote sensing controller to act as two systems - one management cpu only does data routing (no other connection than administrative tasks), sensor cpu works only with sensors. As bonus you can have management cpu act as active firewall.
Main problem it is necessary to have in house expertise (hw, fw and process knowing) which in making company lean are optimized first and outsourcing custom solutions suddenly too expensive.
Or you can just slap a lot of Windows XP boxes with closed source control software and remote access software and let the central team do it. Which will be a bit cheaper
Surely it isn't impossible to devise one-way data flows that provably work for remote sensing? And yeah then you have to send somebody to fix stuff if something is off..
Like something that would work but not not scale would be one computer writing data to an updating qr code and another reading it. Surely something like that can be made (and probably already exists?) on the cable level?
Most water treatment works are unmanned most of the time. You don't need 24/7 staffing or even close.
But more to the point, a modern water network has a huge number of nodes. If you can't centrally aggregate and control in a control room the costs and complexity explode, probably also the error rate.
Even if you demand a full air gap, the solution here can't be to get rid of computers or networks. They are much, much too valuable. Luckily industrial control is full of very low hanging fruits.
There is lots of infrastructure related to water that doesn't have someone physically there 24/7 as it would not be feasible to do so as 99.9% of the time there is nothing to do. So you need some sort of remote alarm system that can be monitored.
The expense usually comes in operations. By connecting the water treatment plant to the Internet and making it remotely operable, you can have one guy who sits in an office and is responsible for overseeing the water quality at many different treatment plants. If everything is local, you need one guy on site at each different plant. People are expensive, software is cheap.
Of course, by making it remotely operable, that one guy could be replaced with a guy in Russia who's job is to poison everyone.
William Donloe is played by Rolf Saxon, he's an analyst working for the CIA in the movie. A different installment of the series reveals additional information!
I don't really understand why people insist on treating cheating like something that has to stop. Back in the days before the Internet was a thing, just playing board games, cheating also happened. There are even board games designed around the concept of deception.
Play single player games, then you can complain about cheating AI opponents.
I don't think "use distribution_name" can be a universal advice, the reality of Linux is that you need to research which particular distribution supports your particular hardware well enough. Or try several distributions until you find one that has the least issues.
That, or make hardware compromises and buy a laptop that provides official Linux support, which is likely to have a more Mac/Windows-like experience of things "just working".
Isn't the only difference that people using servers are expected to have deeper knowledge? As someone using Linux both on servers and on a desktop, I see little difference.
Apple doesn't even have a tiling window manager as far as I know.
They have one built in now and have had third party ones for over a decade. I used SizeUp to tile windows in Mac OS in 2013. Now the OS has it built in but I find Rectangle to be superior. And it’s free and much better than any window manager I’ve tried in any Linux Distro.
SizeUp isn't a tiling window manager as far as a youtube video showcasing it goes and neither is Rectangle. It's more like an alternative to the Windows aero snap thing.
I'm sorry but objectively macOS window management is wholly subpar compared to the options on Linux.
Rectangle is a literal hack on top that hopefully works when you need it. Rectangle is great, but Rectangle, Yabai and whatnot can only hope that the undocumented private APIs that macOS _allows_ them to use today don't mysteriously break tomorrow.
Meanwhile a Linux window manager actually does its full job unencumbered because it's a _real_ first class window manager and not a hack.
Based on everything I thus far know about WWII, I do not have the impression that Hitler wanted war [1], nor do I have the impression that their ideology demanded it.
If you also read what they published about themselves, instead of only what others wrote about them, the whole thing becomes a lot more nuanced.
There's also the thing where trade work is in the process of pricing itself out of what normal folks are willing to afford. Combined with Youtube tutorials and AI help that is getting better, it wouldn't surprise me if more and more people would just decide to do all this stuff themselves at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, I feel DIY is definitely on an upswing. There's surprisingly decent info, tools and parts for cheap to be found. And materials are getting simpler to work with.
There are still things that will remain difficult (or illegal) in domestic settings for DIY, of course, but that's no model for full employment.
I haven't got any experience with them but there's even vendors for house assembly kits that cost a fraction of a finished one. Imagine you idiot-proof house planning and building: just do exactly what the app says.
I wonder just how far we have to push this until we finally get the 10h work week.
It might even help in figuring out whether Haskell would be a good fit. Something I couldn't do, as I do not know the language. Then again, it's not a question that really gets asked much in a corporate setting. Most things are just solved in a few popular languages, whether that makes the most sense or not.
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