It would be amusing if it weren't so annoying; but you often see people who embrace both positions without a hint of awareness of the contradiction: when condemning the non-breeders they are 'selfish' and 'hedonistic' and so on; but, in the same breath, children are their greatest pleasure and most fulfilling experience and so on and so forth. What's it going to be? Are children the cutting edge of indulgence and everyone who is missing out will die bitter and miserable; or are the people failing to pay the flesh tithe to our civilization repulsively self-centered for avoiding a massive hassle that one undertakes only as a grim duty?

I'd be curious what, if any, role the increasingly obviously hollow promise of progress may have.

In absolute terms residents of low-income countries are usually more fucked than those of high income ones; but in terms of trajectory they often have a somewhat rosier picture: if GDP per capita is really low you don't really have an option but to be really poor, there's just not enough productivity to support being otherwise; but there's a fairly straightforward alignment of incentives: unless there's a local supply of mineral wealth to skim, even the local elites generally want everyone to be more prosperous because there's just not that much money to be gouged out of subsistence mud farmers; and there are a variety of plausible avenues toward greater productivity in the form of people looking for new manufacturing areas and the like.

Similar things hold for various quality-of-life stuff. Low income countries tend to see a lot of morbidity and mortality from lack of relatively cheap and simple medical interventions; but have a corresponding selection of relatively cheap and simple improvements that will improve population welfare if realized.

Wealthy countries are, obviously, absolutely wealthier; but are often harder to write an optimistic trajectory for: if most of the obvious productivity improvements have already been made and you still feel squeezed it's a lot less plausible to believe that you will grow out of that problem(both because there are fewer evident paths to notable growth; and because feeling poor in a wealthy society is often a good sign that someone who isn't you is good at capturing value; and will probably remain good at that even if more value is unlocked); and if most of the relatively simple, relatively cheap, improvements in things like medical interventions and occupational health and safety standards have already been made it becomes much less evident how your children will do better than you did.

My impression is that, among people who actually reason their way toward parenthood, there's a general desire to see good outcomes for their children. This often involves heavy doses of irrational optimism regardless of location; but there are definitely some contexts where at least expecting your children to have it better than you is within the realm of the plausible; and others where you need to be hitting the copium pretty hard to imagine that they'll beat the odds dramatically enough to do so.

I assume I'm not supposed to ask what 'our own civilization' has done to deserve our care; and just swallow the implication that suffering as an end in itself is totally sensible?

Learning to program isn't the same as Computer Science.

Computer Science is lots of algorithms, computational theory (finite automata, P and NP, etc.), graph theory, tons of numerical algorithms, lexical, syntax and semantic analysis, program transformations (loop unrolling, etc.), lots of compiler theory, databases, networking, cryptography, etc. Tons of really interesting stuff! A lot of CS is more like mathematics than programming. Lots of proofs.

Focusing on programming is a little like telling an engineering student that the curriculum is mostly bricklaying. Are we talking about a college that teaches computer science or a trade school doing "programming"?

If you think that AI is good enough to replace education; do I want to know what jobs that pay for family-size houses you expect people to be working?

Most of the time economists respond to data about individual choice with a "meh, revealed preference, obviously"; then "It becomes possible to do sex without 9 months of creepy endoparasitism and a couple of decades of very high cost parenting; turns out people are up for that" hits and suddenly it's a crazy mystery what is driving such a change...

>"Where I live, most people just use the recycle bin and the trash can as the same thing. It is a two for one deal! woohoo!"

In some (many?) areas it all goes to the dump anyway (without any recycling).

Too bad that is not what the article is about. It is about contaminating the recycling. It is not about failing to recycle. The title is WRONG. Even the summary doesn't support the title.

>"Ohio City Using AI-Equipped Garbage Trucks To Scan Your Trash, Scold You For Not Recycling"

No, that is not what the article says and not what the summary says. There is ZERO in there about scolding people about NOT recycling. They are scolding people who put incorrect junk into their recycling bins. Big difference.

There's one confounding factor with a lot of enterprise tech announcements: the people who make the purchasing decisions or act as executive sponsors for splashy projects don't actually have to use whatever they are purchasing, and are often at fairly modest risk of real consequences(especially if the failure is readily contained: if the COO announces a bold plan that ends up destroying the ERP system he's probably going to use that golden parachute whether he wants to or not; but if a little NFT faff can be described as an experiment in unconventional marketing and then quietly dropped in 6 months when it's time to announce a 'digital twin' AI-centric approach to airframe maintenance, that's entirely survivable); but the those people are the ones looking to build 'personal brands' get treated like 'thought leaders' and industry conferences, and so on. So there's a temptation to do trendy nonsense with only the slimmest business case because it effectively means that you can spend the company's money on burnishing your own resume. The most overt cases are where the speaking gig is directly related to the thing you are buying: get real hyped about Salesforce Agents, sign the contract, get your own little keynote at Dreamforce for being such an innovator.

That's what is a trifle puzzling here: 'crypto' is basically a generation old as a "things the degenerates of linkedin think will make them thought leaders" item. Even the guys who are still just talking 'generative' rather than 'agentic and context aware' are starting to look out of touch and behind the curve; so it's a weird time to see an announcement.

When you can use other people's money as the stupid money there are sometimes reasons to remain in the market longer than if you are working entirely on your own account; but the most obvious of those reasons requires that the stupid money still be pouring in because it's trendy; which NFTs definitely no longer are. 'Crypto' has settled into a fairly lucrative but somewhat less glamorous role as the deeply, deeply, shady side of 'fintech'; but nobody cares about NFTs and 'web3'.

>"It's required for several major GUI apps, like Chromium."

But you should be using Firefox, not chromium ;) And Ubuntu containerizes Firefox as well. And LibreOffice, and GIMP, and all the important things.

Your point is correct and understood, however. Yes, Ubuntu is trying to force everyone to use containers, which is a horrible move to start with. And Snap containers, which makes the horrible move even more horrible.

That is one of several reasons droves of people have left Ubuntu for Mint. And Mint is ready to debase from Ubuntu if needed. And there is always Debian.

>"I switched back from Ubuntu to Debian when Snaps became an unavoidable thing. I only switched to Ubuntu for compatibility with more recent software, but nowadays I don't notice anything that's not available on Debian."

I would be much more inclined to use Debian than Ubuntu on a new server install. And more more inclined to use that or Mint for a desktop install. Even Mint is hedging their bets against Ubuntu with their alternative LDME distro in the wings.

Given a chance, Ubuntu will act just like RedHat. They have already shown a lot of hostility.

>"Every other distro action that I see further supports my growing opinion that Debian is the answer."

I concur. I wish we would pour the effort and funds into the Debian project directly and make its LTS version the new definition of "Enterprise Linux". If vendors back it, it can happen. I have had enough of corporate capture and monetization of what server Linux should be.

I am all for paid actual support- tech calls, installs, Email, chat groups, training, education certifications, equipment certifications, etc. But not for the actual Linux distro use. It flies in the face of the entire spirit of GNU/Linux. People are SICK TO DEATH of dealing with "entitlements" and 1,000 page licensing agreements and crap just to have access to a stable, business-friendly Linux distro.

>"Debian solves all the issues."

Not quite, the LTS is still not completely long enough for many platforms. But it is close. And without large hardware vendor-backing from HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc; and software or cloud vendors, it will be problematic. Swing enough of those and it is very possible the others will quickly follow.

>"Honestly though, at this point, it might be wiser for people to consider repackaging Ubuntu Pro packages (for server use) minus the branding"

No thanks. I see Ubuntu as better than RedHat, but just as irritating and hostile in many ways. It is why I use Mint for desktops (like an ever increasing number of Linux users) and not Ubuntu. But Mint really meant only for desktop, not server use...

I would love to see business resources funneled directly into Debian, so its stable release could become the new definition of "Enterprise Linux". Just need some even longer package update support and more vendor backing and it could happen.

>"That is nothing compared to the damage they did by making taking over CentOS with promises and then breaking those promises."

Completely agreed. And the moves/hostilities after that were almost as bad. It poisoned RedHat forever in many, many people's eyes.

>The fact Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org]

And Alma Linux, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Falmalinux.org%2F which came first

>"exists is good"

Indeed.

>"Nobody needs RedHat and nobody should be making new installs using it."

We should actually turn focus back to Debian and somehow pour resources into that, making it the new definition of "Enterprise Linux". Because we CERTAINLY don't want it to be Ubuntu at this point.