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Comment GDPR (Score 2) 42

Not exactly on team litigious but why is this even a stretch? A bajillion websites worldwide had to spend a collective Billions to add notice/opt-out widgets to their websites years ago because that site was accessible in the EU. They're not alone (<cough>China</cough>) but, for better or worse, we've been in the internet world of "You do business here so you have to follow my laws" for a LONG time..

Comment Re:IT / coding needs to be an trade not college! (Score 2) 220

"IT" and "coding" are already trades and we have a number of Technical Colleges that will teach you just that.
"Software Engineering" if done right is college-style. That's not to say these things couldn't be learned in a good Tech School or boot camp or on your own, etc but it's the philosophical difference between the typical styles of the institutions. Here's how I typically describe them:

A trade school focuses on the "What and How"..
A college/uni focuses on the "Why" and in-general how to learn.

I don't care what languages a school taught you. I've taught myself dozens over the course of my career. I need you know how to learn one and to understand why there are dozens of languages so you can choose the right one for the job at hand.
I definitely don't care what frameworks you've been taught to code with. There's going to be a new one out tomorrow anyway. I need you to understand what they are doing for you and why so you will be able to wield them appropriately and be able to handle their shortcomings.
Hopefully they taught you a collection of algorithms and data structures (*hopefully) but I don't necessarily care which ones you've learned.. I need to know you have the ability to evaluate their tradeoffs so you can wield them appropriately (or heaven forbid synthesize new ones for yourself!)
You found the answer to "How do I _____?" on Google/StackOverflow/AI/etc.. great! We ALL do that. But, do you have the ability to understand the answer that was fed to you enough to *know it's the answer you need and be able to cleanly integrate it into the existing code base?
You were taught a bunch of "stuff". That's great.. it'll be obsolete before you land your second job if not your first. I need you to be able to learn the next thing and the next and the next and the next because they just keep coming. That includes learning the systems/software created by others that you now need to support. That includes learning more about an ecosystem than those that created it because they screwed up (or the environment changed) and you need to figure out how to make it better, bigger, faster, etc.

There are self-taught engineers who are amazing. There are university-trained engineers who are a waste of space. That being said, on average, I tend to get more maintainable and far more performant code as well as better self-sufficiency out of a university educated engineer than from any other pipeline. YMMV

Comment Re: Another "kids these days" story (Score 2) 220

Where are any software engineers getting paid $12/hr? (At least inside the US?)

Where I live in the Midwest (far from a super high cost of living part of the country) the *average starting salary for a Software Engineer is > $100K. The low is in the mid $60sk range which is still >$30/hr.. ??

We have some overseas offices that can hire roughly 1/3 US rates but not domestically.

Comment Re:And when there is something that should be remo (Score 1) 78

So much this... I don't go around randomly (or vengefully as some do) reporting content.. it's all blatant scams or fraud or bots and absolutely 0% of the time are any of the posts removed. Heck I'm in the beta testing group and I've reported as bugs either over-matching or easy-to-detect patterns they could add to the algo to prevent a lot of nefarious activity going on and... surprise: nothing.

Meanwhile: This article. AYFKM??? They can't seem to detect a single truly bad actor in their space but the most benign of content is getting flagged as problematic. People are getting suspended or booted for literally innocuous statements while the most vile of content goes without a scratch.. If I was this bad at my job I would have been fired long ago but.. I guess as I recall Meta went the other route and laid off all of the good engineers.

Comment Re:Maybe you just don't enjoy new experiences? (Score 1) 173

Pretty much all this but to add some corollary:

Moore's Law: Frequently misinterpreted to imply "computers get twice as fast every 2 years" when that's not the case.Those doubled transistors are benefiting us now with more cores, additional functional modules, more memory, etc instead of meaningfully increasing our individual CPU speed BUT that takes *work to redesign how we create software to make use of that additional hardware instead of "My thing runs fast now because its on faster hardware".

I think the authors of this article are basically making the same mistake in the gaming space. They got those fireworks for free just because the hardware was improving. Not saying they didn't have to update the code but there was a lot of the same "laziness" so-to-speak of relying on the improved hardware to do the heavy lifting in ways that didn't require massive evolution in the games themselves.

Not trying to denigrate the whole industry but the author of this article and probably the big studio people behind it don't understand that. Sorry we took your easy hardware wins away. Now you have to learn some new tricks to keep people buying your new products AND if you're only a hardware company then guess what: welcome to the PC world where sure a decade or 2 ago you could maintain a 3-year upgrade cycle because you needed the next generation to keep up. I now have a laptop from 11 years ago which does far more than like 95% of the population would ever need it to do and now the only reason I need to upgrade it is because I need a GD Thunderbolt Port that you can't "add" and TPM 2.0...

If our current hardware is limiting what games can do.. great. Better hardware is coming down the line.. OR maybe engineers can remember what it was like to squeeze every ounce of performance out of limiting hardware?? But as you say the next evolution in games is *better games* not higher tech specs.

Comment Re:WTF is going on? (Score 1) 117

It was worth publishing purely for the fact I got to read "fuck off" multiple times in a /. summary this morning which made me smile...

The rest of it? Yeah pure internet squabbling BS with absolutely no merit..

BUT dang since I've started typing: To those railing on this being woke censorship? Whatever.. they made it clear in the summary the title wasn't the issue. The crap article it was attached to along with the crap previous behavior of the author led to them being done with his crap. Period. If the author or his content were more worthwhile I'd be more inclined to get into a pissing match over something as benign as the title of the paper but as it is. No not worth dying or even working up the tiniest bit of perspiration on that hill.

Comment Re:Wrong question (Score 1) 137

Not sure why this is at a 4 right now.. It's hardly "insightful" when the whole point off the article is that Apple's TV shows tend to be really well done. "the streaming service has won nearly 500 Emmys" -- Not that IGAF about the Emmy's opinions but they don't tend to miss the mark *that hard.

I have 0 interest in Apple to the point of basically boycotting their products for a number of reasons which is why it took me a super long time to watch any of their shows.. For All Mankind changed that. got a strong recommendation so checked it out.. it was amazing. Next was Foundation which I LOVE those books so had to try.. also amazing. That's the point I went and literally searched Apple's catalog and since have also thoroughly enjoyed Dark Matter, Time Bandits, Monarch, Constellation, Foundation and See.

Everyone's tastes are different and not going to promise everyone would love what I do but ALL of those shows were well made IMHO and there's a few more I just haven't had the time to check out that look right up my alley. Of note I've never seen a single episode / clip / etc of Ted Lasso and TBH it's probably not my kind of show but there are plenty enough that are great.

Comment Re:Don't even remember (Score 1) 104

Ditto... and in recent years AT&T made it so I never will again (not related to this article at all): I prefer to own my phone, not rent it. As of 2 phone refreshes ago AT&T would no longer 'sell' me my phone. I mostly didn't buy from the AT&T store anymore because they stopped selling the phones I wanted and it's easier to buy unlocked than jailbreak BUT I figured I'd check in since they started carrying good phones again see if I could cash in years of upgrade perks but no.. buying literally wasn't an option.. only 'rent'.

Our whole society has switched to a rent-seeking-model and it's really annoying.

Comment Re:Enterprise (Score 2) 163

You could easily work for my company and make that exact same statement (Do you??)

Business people love Excel. Non-Techy people can use Excel. ..and to be clear.. it's just an XLSX file.. We don't even really care if someone is using Excel or OpenOffice or whatever.. it's just a super flexible file format and one we'll have to support for Import and Export probably "forever".

Hey I created a great UI for that!
--> Can't I just upload my spreadsheet?
--> Can you make your UI look like a spreadsheet?

We support uploading a bajillion file types!
--> I literally just want you to import my spreadsheet

We gave you an API!!
--> Does it accept my spreadsheet as input?

We've now empowered you with AI?
--> Awesome! I'm going to start feeding it all of my spreadsheets right away!

Comment Content Moderation as a "good" example?? (Score 1) 111

META's Content Moderation is so ridiculously terrible.. It relentlessly blocks benign content and fails to block actual nefarious content consistently. The fact he purports that as a positive example of what their AI tech can do might be the best indication of why his opinion of AI isn't worth listening to..

Disclaimer: I am absolutely not against AI.. I say let it come and enjoy the ride. I am however *adamantly opposed to the torrent of shit software being released and blowhards like this guy wasting bandwidth in the news cycle.

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