cubano

Exactly my thoughts..thank you for doing the working of actually writing it up.

As I was reading the OP I kept thinking..well this sounds exactly like what used to happen before AI.

The more things change...

Me too, indeed.

Exactly. Not to flog this dead-and-buried horse again, but it so obvious that tech hiring is a beauty contest and and exercise in social engineering and NOT a serious attempt to get the smartest and most productive people working at the jobs that need filling.

I'll goto my grave thinking that the easiest way to fix hiring is just give promising job seekers a week or two of real work BEFORE hiring and do away with all the silly whiteboard stuff and "gotcha" crap, and simply evaluate how the applicant actually performed doing real job stuff.

Sink or swim hiring...yes yes I know who am I to express how to fix hiring?

Like 7 years ago I read the most amazing book on biology..it described that inside cells literal skyscrapers of protein-based structures and machinery took individual ATP molecules and stripped them of an outer electron thus creating what I believe is called a "proton gradient".

This imbalance of electrical charge across a membrane is LITERALLY what creates life. Everything that living things do to recreate themselves is powered by this machinery and, as I remember this book telling me, the idea that a cell could suddenly pop into existence with all this truly incredible and unbelievable complex machinery is exactly like the idea of taking all the parts of a 747 and throwing them into a large box and then opening the box and a fully functional 747 is there waiting to take off.

The use of proton gradients gives an insight not only into how life got going in the first place, but also, perhaps, its deepest mindfuck point: the evolution of complex eukaryotic (nucleated) cells, which arose just once in 4 billion years of evolution.

There are no signs at all of some sort of gradual path to eukaryotic cells as evolution would lend us to think. Just the sudden appearance of this self-replicating nucleic cell which allows ALL multi-cellular life to exist.

I was utterly shocked that it took me 53 years to learn this most amazing of all facts I've every learned, and to be honest it makes the whole Black Hole fascination seem pedantic and almost trivial.

Of course I hate myself for not remembering either the name of this book or it's incredible author, so yes I know I suck.

I think the Big Melt has already started...it will, of course, take several months to complete.

I'm not sure this is the exact advertisement they would want for their business.

Then again...

Anytime you can turn a deep personal interest, like designing and building this impressive gearbox, into something that lands you a paid gig somewhere, you have basically hacked the typical employment system and you should be happy and proud that you saved all the time and expense of a 4 year degree to get what you wanted in the first place.

Now, it remains to be seen if this project will land you a professional level paid job doing what you seem to love to do, so I think the whole "engineer" question is still up in the air.

Yes, anyone can call themselves an engineer but I believe, in the West at least, that until you graduate from an accredited University or have 3-4 solid professional industry experience, calling yourself an engineer might be considered premature.

It's interesting to note that very often these same Republicans have no issues at all with large tax-based incentives when they help their employers or knock some dollars off they yearly property tax bills.

It just boggles my mind how the poor are supposed to be continually punished just for being poor and should always be denied, almost by rote, any sort of government aid because, you know, did you hear that story about that fentanyl addict who was found with THREE active EBT cards in his wallet?

Yeah for sure...how dare some dirty addict should be able to eat!

I can think of very few things that I'd rather not do then to be an OS. Talk about a thankless "game"...and I'm glad this came up.

Since when have games become more about just completing boring tasks and not about using your mind and dexterity to kill evildoers? Hell, the original Space Invaders was 100x more fun then this, and all we had to do was press a button to kill advancing aliens.

So if three Tech companies (Boston Dynamics, Google, and Softbank), very smart ones at that, couldn't think of a way to make Atlas profitable, well for sure an automotive company should have no problem at all figuring it out.

Huh?

I mean...what evidence does the management at Hyundai have that shows them that these things aren't just YouTube stars? What teams does it have in place to start the transition from not profitable?

Yes...exactly the same here although the guesses often had some grounding in the root of the word.

Your dream may be only a prompt away.

> and they tell us they use $2K per month in tokens with their current employers...

perhaps they are simply trying to impress you with their mad prompting skills and like, what self-respecting engineer would be caught dead using less then $2k/month?

giving the context of your interaction with those people, it probably is the simplest answer to your rather baffling question. for the life of me the idea of using $2k/month doesn't even seem possible unless your telling it to waste credits.

perhaps simply threatening to fire it would also do the trick...it sure has worked well on us for a long time now.

Well...what about a <BLINK> as well? For gramps.

> I'll see if my 6 year old can grow corn this year.

Sure..put it in Kalshi while your at it and we can all bet on it.

I'm pretty sure he could grow one plant with someone in the know prompting him.

> I think it is impressive if it works.

It only works if you tell Claude..."grow me some fucking corn profitably and have it ready in 9 months" and it does it.

If it's being used as manager to simply flesh out the daily commands that someone is telling it, well then that isn't "working" thats just a new level of what we already have with APIs and crap.

Come on...haven't we all had to deal with the crazy smart lead who was loaded with those same types of annoying tics?

Considering what these LLMs bring to the table, I think a little tolerance for their cringe phrases is in order.

I just turned 60. My first computer was a 4.77MHz IBM PC with an 8088 processor, two floppy drives, and that magnificent mechanical keyboard IBM shipped in those days. My father, clearly receiving excellent financial advice at the time, picked up a 300bps Hayes modem for the princely sum of $599. CompuServe, here I come!

For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today — still a lot for a modem, but not quite the "gazillion" I remembered. Still, it illustrates just how far we've come.

Since then, I've written software professionally for over 40 years (with varying degrees of success). I've owned well over 200 computers — roughly 90% Wintel machines and 10% MacBooks. I've built them, repaired them, debugged them, and occasionally, after particularly frustrating days, set them back together again. I like to think I know my way around a PC.

Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.

For a while, it was genuinely fun. The sheer number of options was overwhelming in the best way possible. Customization everywhere I looked. All those incredible free software packages waiting in the repositories. In the beginning, I didn't even mind that I found myself doing full reinstalls every two or three days due to random instabilities. I was living the dream. Desktop effects and visual flair? Bring it on. Why does Compiz get so much criticism these days? What's more satisfying than a beautifully animated window?

Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony. The system celebrated for its stability and reliability was the one leaving me longing for a responsive desktop environment. But that's exactly what I experienced, and I gave each distribution a fair shot.

There's also the practical reality: I'm a heavy Ableton Live user, and dual-booting has become increasingly grating. The Linux audio ecosystem has made real progress, but for my specific workflow, it's not there yet. Maybe in another year or two.

So I'm back on Windows 11. It works. It doesn't surprise me. After four decades, I'm okay with "it works" as a primary criterion.

Will I try Linux again? Maybe. The ecosystem continues to improve, and who knows what the next wave of AI-assisted tools might change. But for now, I wanted to share an honest account of what I encountered — because I genuinely wanted Linux to win.

Besides anything you discussed, you are a very good writer.

Thanks for the laughs my friend.

I'm not at all sure you can make a blanket statement like this and expect it to be always true. This is classic Disruptive Technology stuff, and I'll spare everyone the tedious explanation of how the typical trajectory will go.

Yes there will tons of garbage, but of course there will be the 1% of the 1% who spend the time and efforts to, perhaps, create something of equal and perhaps better quality than what has come before.

We wanted flying cars, but instead got fake AI.

Shameful.

Typically, scams like this are very top-heavy with the vast majority of the pilfered cash going to a few well-placed "bros" at the top of the company pyramid.

My guess? Most of the cash is socked away in BTC or some such wealth sink just waiting for the individuals to clear their bothersome legal issues.

Spoken like a man who has never had to write a payroll check in his life.

Of course human ownership is preferable, but it's also crazy expensive and since the point of all corporations is to "increase shareholder value" (not "gainfully employ workers"), well then all your talk of responsibility-here-and-there is quite touching but absolutely misses the point.

Economics is driving this bus, not quality and most certainly not responsibility.

Of course! But just look at all the pretty lights all that energy is flashing.

Just wait until v2...it will probably get you laid in the local singles bar.

Of course. Why would you expect anything but? Pride is actually a very good driver of change if you ask me because people often do their best work when they are proud of what they are building.

I find it almost completely mind boggling that with all the breathless new coverage on the "incredible shortage of qualified tower personnel", I have yet to hear even one mention of what I find to be the elephant in the room.

Uhhh...why not use AI to start controlling the airports and airplanes? Talk about an app that, to me at least, seems an almost trivial use of its abilities and I'm sure that an AI could be trained in a very short period of time that could outperform a roomful of overaged, distracted humans...right?

Yes of course there is no way I'm the first to think of this...but just the fact that here it is day 3 or so, and literally NOT ONE MENTION ANYWHERE in the media about the potential for AI to safely land and direct all these flying things.

Isn't the pain of installing Arch the point?

Well perhaps your a photon and then you certainly are both.