smsm42

"More" - yes, "deterministic" - well... Have you looked at what modern optimizing compilers do to the source? And how they behave in those places described as "undefined behavior" by the standards? Could you predict, looking at the code you've supposedly written, something like Meltdown or Spectre? We have to face it - there are many layers of complexity between what we feed into the machine and what the machine actually does, and for many of them most programmers have but a passing knowledge. They don't care because it just works, so why bother? But for somebody writing in something as high-level as, say, Python, to puff their chest and proclaim "in our time, we used to strike out bits on a rock with chisel and hammer! Kids these days!" is not exactly appropriate. Yes, LLMs work differently from even the cleverest optimizing compiler or interpreter. But they are still tools for translating programmer's intent into machine actions.

Are compilers writing code? I mean, people hadn't been producing anything that a CPU is actually executing (excepting some very rare special cases) for decades now. So we never wrote code to begin with...

Depends on what do you mean by "writing code". Once, writing code meant punching holes in pieces of paper and feeding that into a machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became entering cryptic numbers into the machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became typing words and punctuation that have some passing connection to English but otherwise meaningless to a non-professional. Then the technology changed. Writing code became much more like writing text but still not resembling any actual text. Then the technology changed... It will change again. It still won't magically produce something sensible out of nothing.

Exactly. I mean, my proton accounts being taken over won't be catastrophic for me, but the whole premise of having them is they are secure enough for the case where it would be. This is not the place to jump head-first into the latest fad. I want them to be as slow and deliberate and conservative as possible. Experiment on something else, "secure email" shouldn't be it. I'm not anti-AI zealot in the least, but this clearly shows under-appreciation of the risks and complexities of using AI in engineering.

> Yen said this is the last year that Proton will hire engineers at all, and instead only hire people to build things with AI.

Uh-oh, I need to look for a different email provider now.

In my experience, SO became useless many years before AI showed up on the horizon. I stopped actively participating about 2019 and about 2022 gave up on it completely.

If phone book publishing were regulated in a way that paid content on the internet is regulated, then absolutely yes. Not only that, people who mention the existence of phone books as means to obtain phone numbers, and people developing software capable of storing phone numbers, would be threatened and harassed too, as enablers of criminal activity. Copyright leeches have enough money to buy laws favorable to them. Which, also, gives them more money to buy even more laws favorable to them. It doesn't have to make sense for you because it's not designed to serve your interests.

It's a tricky balance. I certainly don't want my devices to have a ton of cruft installed which I would never need. But I also certainly don't want to have to spend a month after getting a new device just getting it into usable shape so I can use it for whatever I got it for. I used to think the second concern is very small since I do not get new devices that often, but turns out it's not true, it's often enough that I really want the OS to contain a lot of things from the start. OK, maybe not NetBIOS but wide enough device support and other capabilities so it would be useful for me. And if it's not, I - and most other technically competent, but busy people - would move on to something that provides that service. Goes double for people that are not technical, obviously.

I am sorry, are you demanding cancel culture in defense of Mother Russia? Who exactly do you think is obliged to provide it to you, and why do you think they'd comply with your demand? Good news though - if you live in Russia and say it on Russian site, you will be banned right away and maybe also jailed, for libeling the glorious government or extremism or disinformation or something like that. So I guess if you want it, you know where to find it.

You are losing the topic. We aren't talking about manufacturing capability - which Russia still has a lot - but about safety culture. US and Russia are almost polar opposites here. While there are countries more safetyist than the US, not a lot of them. In current US culture, something "unsafe" just can't be done, and there are a myriad regulations which ensure everything is as "safe" as possible in a thousands of meanings of it. Of course, there are exceptions, there are crazy people everywhere, but the dominant culture is very safety-oriented. In Russia, this culture just does not exist. It doesn't mean there are no rules and regulations - but the cultural space they occupy are completely different. Sometimes it could be a huge advantage - you can move much faster if you don't have to pass 27 inspections each time you retighten a bolt - sometimes it could have very high costs.

Not sure what you mean by "stints" but I grew up there and experienced a lot of this myself. It has nothing to do with Kremlin, btw, Kremlin is not Russia. Kremlin rules Russia, but these are two completely different worlds. I know nothing about the former, but quite a bunch about the latter.

"Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's just the flu". Human capacity for denial is limitless.

This is a human thing, of course, but in different cultures the emphasis on following the rules and taking safety measures is different. In Russia, there isn't one.

She probably didn't tell anybody she broke the tube, because, you know, they might yell at her and it may cost her a bit of money if they discover she was clumsy. So she just went home and when she felt bad, went to the hospital. Where nobody knew shit about the plague, as expected - when a person with respiratory symptoms in the autumn shows up in a hospital, nobody thinks "let's test her for plague". When she died, and when they learned where she worked, probably some major "oh shit!" lightbulbs gone up, but by then it was a done deed.