These are the same lazy dolts that call them selves "Software Engineer" yet don't know shit on how software actual works beyond an ID, don't understand software developer ethics, and think the can be sloppy because "computers have a lot of RAM" completely blind to the idea there janky ass software isn't the only thing running on a computer.

Modern IDEs have lead to this industry being full undisciplined half wits.

I literally do. Stop being bad at your job.

"I know it is counter to modern coding practices"
it is not. It's literally best practice. Coders not doing this are bad at their job, and should be fired.

Chrome is a better product than Firefox, but if I wasn't such a heavy Mac user, I would make the same choice as you. I can take a lot if it means no Google in my life.

LLMs have two effects here:

1. They help the white hats find and fix bugs
2. They help the black hats find and exploit bugs

These two effects cancel each other out to some extent (depending on which "team" is more proactive in its bug-discovery and consequent activities).

Eventually all of the low-hanging-fruit will be picked, and the current deluge of AI-induced CVEs will be reduced to only those bugs that were subtle enough not to be noticeable by anyone except the latest-and-greatest AI models.

Not sure you quite get how dopamine works.

You missed the point. Small enough pieces are already understandable. But... Well... It's like the problem with global variables, a few are really useful, but when they multiply the code becomes unintelligible. There are too many interactions.

Whether we know how they work or not depends on how closely you look. If you look closely enough, every single decision is understandable. But it's so complex that nobody understands the ensemble. Even ordinary programs are sort of this way. The Obfuscated C Contest is just an extreme outlier, but any really large chunk of code written by somebody else (or by you over the last few years ... and not all at once) can be difficult to understand. As it gets bigger, and has more patches, the problem gets worse. These things are at an extreme edge of this problem. But every small enough piece of them can be understood...at least by somebody.

I ditched Firefox and Chrome at least 13 years ago and have used Safari exclusively since. In fact, Chrome hasn't ever been installed on this MBP, which I've had for five years. I don't miss their bloating and battery drain, nor having a privacy raping app from Google. I also appreciate the integration with Messages and Mail for how easy this makes 2FA on web sites that send codes, as well as unified keychain and history across all of my devices. That doesn't mean I'm unaware of the current state of the other browsers: I do have FF, which I dabble with occasionally, but it drives me nuts, it's just shit and it's obvious why it's losing market share, and I get forced to use other browsers on remote Windows machines or in local VMs of Windows and Linux.

In this context inappropriate use of AI is a use that gets unchecked erroneous outputs that you care about or it more expensive than you want to pay.

OK, many people don't know how to use it yet.

AI is such a versatile tool that people keep trying to use it in inappropriate ways/places. Again, like computers in the 1960's & 1970's. I suspect that we're still at the point where most attempts will fail (some horribly), but some will be REALLY successful.

N.B.: Computers didn't become largely successful until structured programming and commodity software took over large parts of the market. That greatly reduced the errors. What's the equivalent for AI? We won't know until after robots become common. (LLMs are just touching the edge of what AIs can do.)

It is (or at least can be), among other things, a good search engine.

The problem is that people don't know how to use it yet. EXPECT most attempts to fail. Most early attempts to use computers failed.

Of course, with AI the problem's a bit worse because it keeps changing so rapidly. Currently the rule of thumb is "You can train an AI do do a good job if it's easy to verify that a proposed solution is correct.",

You already acknowledged the catch when you said "Or, at least, any new ones.". Small groups are really much more interested in the kind that were useful in WW I, because those are easier to make. Doing development for new weapons is dangerous to the developer.

If IQ were valid, it wouldn't be particularly low. Unfortunately, it's sensitive to culture and education, so you are probably right. But don't confuse it with potential intelligence. IQ is basically a measure of how well you could do in school with reasonable effort, so if you didn't pay attention last year, your IQ is lower.

That said, intelligence *is* real. It's just that IQ is a really bad measure of it.