13 karma · joined September 13, 2025
The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.
So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.
Playing video on Youtube causes much more cpu load than playing the video with the same av1 (or even more computationally intensive vp9) codec in VLC.
Imagine for a second, that you only care about watching cat videos, and arrange your viewing behavior accordingly. The algorithm will be quick to realize your preferences, and your entire home feed will be filled with nothing but kittens. Occasionally it will try to feed you some dogs and such, but Youtube is generous enough to provide "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" buttons on every video in recommendations, which are a great tool in shaping the home feed, or forming a nice little information bubble if you will. As for all the horrors of mainstream recommendations described in the article, they would look so out of place in your feed it won't take much mental effort to ignore them (or get rid of with aforementioned buttons).
Occasionally, you might want to watch something other than cat videos, or get sent a link in a personal message. For everything you don't want the algorithm to get the wrong idea about, use separate browser context or private mode.
Now, let's say you're got diverse tastes and like both cats and heavy construction videos. With two topics the Youtube algorithm might still manage to stay on track, but if you try to add more, the feed will quickly degrade to a mess. There is, however, a way around it: don't mix different topics in a single Youtube account. Youtube allows making multiple users on a single Google account, and with container tabs it doesn't even require switching between them.
Of course, and this is one part of the article I can agree with, use the subscribe feed if it fits your workflow, but certain kinds of content are made mostly by small channels on irregular basis, and the algorithm is a valuable tool to discover new ones.
Software controlling a safety-critical equipment doesn't even need a bug to cause deaths, bad user interface can do it just fine. "Behind Human Error" gives an example of device used to assist a surgery, that required complicated procedure to set up, which had a step unrelated to device functions in context and was easy to forget (rendering the device non-functioning) and would not indicate in any way it wasn't working when it was expected to. As for a more modern example, many of recent aviation accidents involve pilots failing to correctly interact with cockpit systems.
In the Therac-25 case the core issue (leaving aside procedures put in place to prevent the exact thing) was an error in the code, that could eventually be found and corrected, but software with badly designed interface can kill people while working exactly per specification, shifting the blame on the operator.
It's pretty much the same as a phone camera app adding watermarks on pictures, or free email provider inserting its name in the mail signature. I don't see how this kind of cheap advertisement could be seen "classy".
The few times I actually tried it, it worked badly, with huge chunks of text content missing from the page. Makes me wonder if with modern web the task has became so difficult even a browser couldn't pull it off, or if they just wasn't trying to do a good job with the feature.
Every time I see someone bringing up the idea of adding checked exceptions to a language (usually in these endless exceptions vs returning errors debates), it is met with "it won't work, look at Java", and it feels like a real shame. I'm sure complications of additional syntax would pay off just as fast as it does for regular type annotations.
However, downgrading the medium by going back to CDs, vinyls and CRTs as a way to run away from the reach of big tech corporations still feels like a downgrade to me. An upgrade over, say, Spotify would be something that solves these big-tech corp issues while keeping the same or close level of convenience, not going back to CDs.
If iTunes provides everything you need for managing music then good for you! However, getting "more intimate connection" to a music collection comes at a price of spending bigger chunk of limited time managing it, and I would rather spend it actually listening to music.
That said, looking at image depicting a phishing mail in the article, I notice that hyperlink text looks like legitimate link, while the link itself points to the bad site, and I would expect this alone to be extremely effective. Many people, myself included, would probably not bother hovering on this kind of long link to confirm it matches the text.
If I were to trust a person or organization, I would prefer them not talk about technical details at all, and instead ask me as many ways to get in contact as possible (phone number, facebook profile, maybe even physical address), not just single email, and promise to do everything reasonable possible to get in contact within defined term if delivering email fails. And I would also prefer them to be in this business for a few decades at least.
If I were to solve one-time task of keeping an eye on someone indoors I would go with USB camera (if lighting conditions allows even the laptop's build in), which is going to be cheaper than ones with IP and WiFi support.
Since you're mentioning opening laptop's lid I assume you mean literally failing to start, as after power cycling. For that, wouldn't simple hitting the power button be enough? It certainly doesn't require keyboard. If you plan to place it somewhere not easily accessible, there is Wake on LAN, which most modern PC motherboards are going to support.
If some maintenance task cannot be done with ssh/tmux, you can always use remote desktop software, in local network even RDP will do. And if something went wrong enough for you to not be able to connect to the server remotely then there is indeed no way around bringing and connecting a spare keyboard and monitor, but events like that should be quite rare normally.
That said, I can imagine people taking pride and joy in building an online game and making sure it works reliable even as audience grows way past anticipated level.
There appears to be quite easy way to fix the situation by making it more expensive than using sea water or investing in closed loop solutions.
When you get some actual experience of solving business tasks, dealing with colleagues and superiors, spending 8/5 at work and so on, it will be easier to make these decisions, and with a year or two of experience you get more options to choose from.