I spend quite a bit on Discord server services, but I'm out.

GFY, Discord and governments, for mandating this bullshit nonsense.

Ask ShanghaiBill how much he cares about his wife's $150K Cayenne EV using more electricity while charging.

...total fucking fraud...

In the last couple years, I've had to return items that were definitely not the specs advertised. One was a USB sound card advertised as stereo input but turned out they just duplicated the left channel to the right. One other item was a SATA DVD recorder that claimed certain speeds, but after 3 burning failures, I checked the specs with "wodim -prcap" and found those claims were complete BS.

The one that was truly dangerous though was the burner replacements for my propane grill. The originals were showing their age after 4 years so I made a purchase and accepted the Amazon sponsored choice. Big mistake. They looked OK, but after using twice a month for 4 or 5 months, I noticed the flame pattern looked off on part of the grill and food was flaring up on one spot. I checked the burner in that spot and found a crack in the top of the burner blasting out a solid flame. I ordered replacements again, but this time directly from the grill manufacturer. The burners I got look the same, but I found they weigh at least 50% more. When I took the old replacements off, the cracked burner crumbled the rest of the way in my hand. If I hadn't caught it, the eventual outcome would have been explosion and fire.

When in human history has this ever happened?

"So it's going to drive demand for more software creation, and that's going to drive demand for highly skilled software engineers who can do it..."

No it's not. It can only work by reducing demand for human programmers, it would break itself if there was a net increase. You don't cool yourself off on a hot day by taking a hot bath and drinking coffee.

"There's so much software that isn't created today because we can't prioritize it,"
Then why isn't there demand for more programmers already?

"That's simply not happening. The quality is not there. The robustness is not there. The scalability and security of the code is not there,"
It's not there WITHOUT "vibe coding" either, because those skills aren't valued by a large part of the market for new software.

"These tools reward highly skilled technical professionals who already know what 'good' looks like."
Except these people don't exist and any motivation to produce them will be destroyed by the use of AI to eliminate their jobs.

"We definitely want to make it very clear that the responsibility, at the end of the day, is in the hands of the engineers."
AND NOT US, the creators of vibe programming tools!

"Wu said she's told her younger sister, who's still in college, that software engineering is still a great career and worth studying."
Right, because 20-something experts on such consequential matters isn't the core of the problem.

Sad times at /. when we have a scheduled Steve Jobs circle jerk and SuperKendall cumstains are nowhere to be found.

"So I don't think you can really blame Jobs for walled gardens."

Yes you can, walled gardens are not merely about software publishing. Jobs forced non-standard SCSI parallel ports and networking on the earliest Macs, he did that because the Mac was always a walled garden. Steve Jobs was the king of the walled garden, the Apple II was quite the opposite.

Do people think history started in the 21st century? Hell, Jobs had already disowned family and fucked over his partners by then.

And Safari was stolen from open source, where it had to be actively crippled to comply with Jobs walled garden.

Wow, what shallow horse shit. Jobs wanted no such thing, Jobs promoted "web apps" because he got called out in public for not supporting 3rd party app. And that was on a device that Jobs never wanted in the first place.

And walled gardens date back earlier than web browsers.

What about it? You think buying and iPhone or a Mac requires devoted tribalism? Or is that just a you problem?

This is not true, the "western capilalist system" is ruthless because it rewards these types of people. It is because we tolerate and reward these types of people that ruthlessness is intrinsic. You have cause and effect backward.

And what is good about the "western capilalist system" anyway? Isn't modern society suffering under its "ruthlessness"? Maybe what you mean is that you need people like Jobs to destroy the lives of children so that you can live a better life?

All that and more.

"He wasn't the richest technology CEO to die..."
Which as we all know, is the only measure of a man, right?

"But the reaction showed that his life — faults and all — meant a lot to a great number of people"
It meant suffering for a lot of them.

In life, Jobs was the hero to Gates's villain, yet while Jobs died spitting in his daughter's face and stealing organs from more willing people, Gates became the world's greatest philanthropist. Stop celebrating the life of one of the world's great cretins.

Both would have failed in the market if Jobs remained in charge. Jobs didn't even want the iPhone and refused to increase its size, either the iPhone or Jobs were going to die, fortunately it was Jobs.

But at least you dropped that stupid word like Doctorow wanted you to, right?

Amazon is what it is and what it has always been. What has changed is the increase in grifters trying to profit from negative criticism of it, Cory Doctorow among them. It's more of the same game, Doctorow is just grifting off public resentment, resentment he is encouraging.

a true grifter and exploiter of other human beings

"The article writer invented it."

No he didn't. He may have coined the term, he sure claims he did, but it's an insight older than the internet. Cory Doctorow thinks it's a clever term and his career is defined by his attempts to convert that word into money.