locknitpicker

> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.

Dropbox gained popularity because none of us can or want to bother to do it with FTP, with the exception of a very small and determined minority.

Why do you think that even FANG engineers use cloud storage systems such as Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive/etc. Can't an elite software engineer put together a FTP server?

Why do you think Dropbox et al are still a thing in spite of projects such as Syncthing?

This is not the only instance where user experience and convenience show their value. Look at Docker, for example. The "aktually" crowd will be fast to say that anyone can do the same with chroot et al, but they will again be missing the whole point. It's the same thing why Microsoft tried to invest in Aspire even though Docker is here.

It's like complaining that people can buy bread when all they need to make their own is flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's completely besides the point, ain't it?

> id still argue they had a better standard of living than someone that works 8-10h/day and then comes home to cook and clean?

You're somehow succumbing to the fallacy of the edilic life of old.

The same life where you had to have a dozen of kids to overcome infant mortality, and each time a woman gave birth it was like a Russian roulette.

And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years? You didn't had a midlife crisis because you'd be dead by then.

> Technology makes a lot of things better. Like eliminating symptoms of 95% of cystic fibrosis victims.

Counterpoint: any leaking abandoned oil well. Check out YouTube videos documenting the abandoned oil wells in West Texas, which are dumping industrial volumes of water into abandoned land.

> The games are fast and with much better, consistent payoff than other sports such as football and soccer.

Soccer is a slow burn where a game is always standing on a fragile equilibrium. Football and baseball are mainly boring because they are turn-based, with long periods of nothing happening between brief action moments.

Basketball is the only dominant US sports that matches soccer in terms of excitement and teams standing on a fragile equilibrium. Of course the NBA screws this up by stretching finals games into 7-game series, capping soccer-levels of excitement derived from winner-takes-all tournaments. It's no coincidence that NCAA tournaments manages to build up so much attention and such a dedicated following.

> It was hard to ask any question. Sometimes it felt if a few characters match it will be closed off as dupe.

I feel this is the critical bit. People are quick to dismiss this problem as a moderation problem, but I don't agree. I believe it was a query problem, and the absolute lack of support for tying both questions and answers to specific software versions, or range of software versions. So you'd see answers from ages ago marked as the right answer to a question, even though it was using some deprecated version.

Questions on how to address the same issue when new versions were out where closed as duplicates because literally the question was asked before and answered as well. But the answer nowadays would not be applicable.

Then to sidestep this problem you see the phenomenon where ancient questions end up having multiple answers, with newer answers even out voting the accepted answer. And even those would be deprecated as well.

So SO was designed as a system where a single question can only possibly have a single accepted answer. Ever. And anyone asking similar questions would by design be routed to he question that was asked and answered. But the system was designed over the concept of static information and static notion of truth. Which the world definitely doesn't follow.

Yes, ESP32s are not exactly like RPis. And that is fine.

Do you need a full blown Linux desktop to blink a led light? Or drive a servo? Or even have a HTTP server? No.

> Is that a change in the valuation of the pi or of the dollar?

I believe that revenue maximization plays a role. So it's inflation in a way, but not the kind where bom costs are forwarded to consumers.

> Those are entirely different operational models.

In some of the tinkering applications, RPis are shoehorned into the very operarional model that is followed by ESP32s.

ESP32s may be harder to debug but they allow us to remove a big chunk of the complexity that lies between our code and what we want the device to do.

I think your criticism is more in line with "they are not exactly the same as RPis". And that is fine.

> Even at 10€ it was tantalizing. Please, give us something in that price range.

A few years ago we could get our hands on a Orange Pi Zero, with wifi, Ethernet, and 512MB of RAM, for less than $10. I think I bought mine for slightly over $5.

Now they sell for a tad over $30. What a shame.

We now have the ESP32 line of microcontrollers. That should scratch some of the itches.

> The not so good ones, are doing the same bullshit they did before, but now the don't even bother to check it.

What bothers me greatly is how the not so good ones are now delegating all their contributions, code and otherwise, to AI assistants, and fail to to any cursory check in what they are delivering. It's sheer laziness and irresponsibility.

So far I've seen junior developers who found sudden passions for code reviews to post high volume of comments on any PR to showcase their technical prowess, but the comments clearly don't match the code or context and we're obviously posted without looking. I've also seen old but barely competent developers leaning quite heavily on AI assistants to formulate troubleshooting theories that are based on scenarios that deeply contrast with the actual problem, and go to the extent of announcing they identified root causes when they didn't even tried to reproduce them in the actual system, because if they had tried they would notice the whole theory is impossible.

Everyone talks about high productivity gains, but these types manage to use AI to waste everyone's time.

You're trying too hard to play the role of the "aktually" guy. Assuming good intentions and taking a pass at replying would have been a better contribution to the discussion.

I don't know about the US, but not even FANGs pay six figure salaries to most of their European employees. Perhaps L7 and up.