Johnson: I don’t know, sir, but it looks like a giant–
Jet Pilot: Dick.
Dick: Yeah?
Jet Pilot: Take a look out of starboard.
Dick: Oh my God, it looks like a huge–
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker.
Bird-Watching Man: [raising binoculars] Ooh, Where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Wait, that’s not a woodpecker, it looks like someone’s–
Army Sergeant: Privates! We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with–
Baseball Umpire: Two balls.
[looking up from game]
Baseball Umpire: What is that. It looks just like an enormous–
Chinese Teacher: Wang, pay attention!
Wang: I was distracted by that giant flying–
Musician: Willie.
Willie Nelson: Yeah?
Musician: What’s that?
Willie Nelson: [squints] Well, that looks like a giant–
Colonel: Johnson?!

The part you seem to ignore is if that Supreme Court Judge was and is still a trial judge. Torvalds had been programmer; he had solved problems on a technical level. He still does when dealing with the kernel. While he is more of a lead, he weighs in on a variety of subject which require technical skills. For example this was his take on why he rejected the RISC-V submission in addition to the request being late:

The line of code submitted: "#define make_u32_from_two_u16(hi, lo) (((u32)(hi) << 16) | (u32)(lo))". This blog details where Linus was right and wrong. The main two problems was 1) the helper was badly written as it does not take into account that "lo" could be a high word too, and 2) such a function does not belong in a generic header file. This was one line of code in a submission which Linus caught was "garbage".

The flaw in your logic is you are assuming that Torvalds and others are completely binary. They cannot be technically minded and be a lead. In the case of Torvalds, his decades of experience being technical is still being used.

That's not what you said. You said his system was "all for collecting and modifying information related to dispatching trucks across the border" Modifying information affects what trucks are deployed.

I consider being fined not a good result. Unlike what you just said above, if he did nothing, he may not have been fined. He modified the system; the risk is he would get fines.

I never said anything about "doing anything by hand." That's another strawman argument. My complaint on vibe coding is that AI hallucinates so he needs to test the code. He created his system in 7 hours. I assume you he did zero unit testing.

You said: "Getting some results is better than getting no results at all and that's that. " That is opposite of what you are saying now. I am not sure why you are so desperate to excuse bad results.

I didn't say they did not play video games and movies. I said they did not do that "well" compared to consumer TVs.

One of the newest features of TVs is HDR (High-dynamic-range) showing more colors and more brightness levels and one of the leading standards of HDR is Dolby Vision. I do not know of any commercial displays that have HDR much less Dolby Vision as it is unnecessary for the task.

And if your "some results" is wrong? In my exact example, he did not calculate gross profit correctly. That could lead to the wrong conclusions.

Nowhere did I say that. Nowhere did I create a pissing contest on whether I was better than this person. I don't give a crap if he asked CoPilot to create his reports. My point again is he needs to check his work. He did not seem to do that and since his last step was to tie in his results into his accounting books that might cause all sorts of issues down the line.

How would you know? If his system causes him to erroneously deploy too many trucks to the wrong locations, that is loss of time and money.

Again my point is getting good results is the goal. You seem to ignore bad results are a possible outcome here.

I think you are confusing the situation where Torvalds does not write a lot of code currently with his lifetime experience of writing code. To use a sports analogy, that is like saying Retired Star Footballer knows nothing about the game because he did not play in many games in the past as he does not play many games now.

Again I feel you do not know what Torvalds does on a daily basis. He's not surfing the Tiktok all day while his lieutenants do all the work. He is currently the lead developer for the Linux kernel and has a large role when and how new kernels are released. For example, he rejected RISC-V code for the 6.17 kernel because it was submitted late and it was "garbage". Again you are equating "not a programmer currently" == "he knows nothing."

Reminds me of a situation years ago. A friend of a friend once asked me for some help optimizing some reports he built for his job on his own. He opened this web page with 60+ reports running. It took forever to load as it was loading 60+ reports some of which pulled years of data. The first question I asked is why he needed it to load 60+ reports on load. The first suggestion was to create a front page and then select the reports he wanted. The second question is whether he needed years worth of data for some reports. The last question was did he know the numbers were right. Since he built those reports, he created the calculations. For example his gross profit calculation was sales - cost, but he did not include refunds as his system did not treat refunds as negative sales.

Just because the owner and my friend built a bunch of things does not mean they are right. Getting good results should be the goal not any results.

The irony is that for some companies that have instituted RTO policies, these teams can be geographically located very far from each other. For someone I know their immediate manager is several states away and their manger’s boss is in another country. So they have to drive into work just to get on a video conference call and sometimes at very inconvenient hours. But at least the company satisfied some goal for the shareholders.

Yes but they are made for commercial displays meaning that they do not handle motion well. Great for signs but bad for the latest blockbuster action movie. But the TVs will last forever.

Some of them require it on the initial setup and even to update the firmware.

And which consumer TVs are not Smart TVs these days? They are all Smart TVs unless they are commercial sign displays which are way more expensive than consumer TVs. But please show us where the average person can get these dumb TVs.

So you think they want zero PC customers after the bubble bursts? The goal is to make more money not zero customers.

What is there to lie about? One type of customer is willing to pay lots of money for a type of product that makes lots of profit for them. They are shifting production to make more money. This screws over other types of customer. Why is your instinct to accuse them of lying?

And what incentive would they that offer? Whether the RAM was soldered on or as a separate module, it only comes from 3 manufacturers who are selling as much high end, expensive RAM as they can to AI. Adding upgradeable RAM means the OEM cannot charge whatever they want for RAM. Also it means the OEM has to design laptops to have a memory socket. Those are costs that the OEMs do not want.

Not exactly. That RAM is not on-die as that generally means part of the same silicon as the CPU/GPU. Apple and others have put RAM as a chiplet in the same chip package. Generally that RAM is purchased from Micron, SK Hynix, or Samsung, and then soldered next to the CPU/GPU. So they are affected by the current RAM shortage. Everyone is affected as RAM is only made by 3 companies.