The big vendors of AI are certainly claiming that human software engineers will be replaced very soon. But they have a direct financial incentive to make that claim, even if it is not true.

Industry experts have said otherwise in articles published right here on Slashdot.

Of course, I don't know if these "industry experts" actually know what they are talking about. I am sure they know more than I do about the situation, but experts have been wrong before.

All I know is: time will tell. I am not panicking to adapt to some future where my skills are obsolete. I am just waiting for that future to arrive. I can then retool my skillset to whatever is in-demand, since I am smart and my brain is flexible and can learn new things. That's exactly what I did when I lost my last job and got this one, so I can just do it again when the time comes.

I thought it had to do with the very small number of credit-card providing companies operating as a cartel so they can all jointly price-gouge us without competing against each other.

But I don't actually know much about the industry. I just infer that from what I know about human nature. It seems totally plausible that there would be other factors at work as well.

I, for one, just don't pay credit card interest. I pay mine off every month which avoids any interest. Debt is one trap I can easily avoid, so I do.

The movie theatre experience isn't very good. Sound quality seems to be oddly bad these days, and of course the prices are high, and it's full of strangers who make noise and spread diseases and so on. It is much more comfortable and affordable to watch movies at home.

Of course I am an antisocial geek. Maybe normal people like being in crowded rooms full of noisy strangers.

Why the acrimony?

I've had great success getting both to work. Maybe the problem isn't where you think.

Use Linux.

Or Mac.

It's just human nature. A big business includes a whole lot of people, and the highest positions are most attractive to toxic self-promoters, so they are always present and climbing the ranks. And even for leaders who are not intrinsically toxic, the position of power they hold has a natural impact on their mind, making them see those beneath themselves as little more than pack animals.

Of course, big businesses also have good people working in them and also produce products and services that we want. So they are a natural mix of good and evil and all kinds of other things in between.

But, fundamentally, we can count on all big businesses being as evil as they think they can be. What they expect they can get away with is exactly what they attempt. Any thought that the good-person elements at work in the business will stop top leadership from doing ghastly things (if they expect they can get away with it) is just naive. Law enforcement and regulation needs to apply to them with eternal vigilance.

We cannot stop the rise of technology, and it is folly to try.

We also cannot employ people by giving them work that no longer adds value. That is also folly to try.

Since new tech renders obsolete old skills, economic upheaval is a totally predictable result. It's simply gonna happen. Efforts at stopping it by clinging to the past are doomed to fail.

We DO need to address these problems. I am just saying that we should not address them by trying to restrict innovation or preserve displaced jobs, because those methods will only make matters worse. We will need a more forward-thinking way of ensuring that people, by and large, have their needs met.

This will require an adjustment of values in some form. And that will bring resistance, both political and social. There's simply no way around it. All we can do is prepare for it.

I discovered the "fake movie trailer" problem on youtube long ago. I just stopped going there to watch movie trailers at all. IMDB posts real ones, so I go there when I feel inclined.

But if people like watching fake movie trailers, I guess, more power to them.

They chose computer science as their major so they could become programmers. The school councilor told them that this major would prepare them to become programmers. They then sought out jobs as programmers, with "computer science degree" on their resumes.

The exact same way I did when I went to college, and then got my first job, many years ago.

Once upon a time, "software engineering" didn't exist but "computer science" did, and it was focused on how you use teams of human beings (who had the job of "computer") to perform very large number-crunching tasks quickly and accurately. But those days are long gone, and these days the distinction between "computer science" and "software engineer" is quite blurry.

I have interviewed many computer science majors who could not program their way out of a brown paper bag. I asked them for details about what their classes were like, what kinds of exercises they did, a summary of the topics covered, etc. And what I found was that nearly all of them had a very surface-level education in computer science with very little depth. In particular, they simply weren't made to write enough code that solves actual problems to develop the core skill that software developers need. It was kind of a joke compared to what I had to go through to get my computer science degree, long ago.

I can't assert that all schools nor even all degrees are like this. All I have is an anecdote, after all, and I have heard similar anecdotes from others. But my experience is directly the opposite of what you are implying. It looks to me like the schools just wanted to scoop up all the student loan money that was available from people who wanted those high software developer salaries but simply weren't cut out for the job, so the schools just watered down the curriculum.

This article is not the first one I have seen lamenting that what schools are churning out, by and large, doesn't match what employers want. So I am inclined to believe there is a problem here.

I also wanted to mention that ending the department of education is not ending education, by any stretch of the imagination. It's just ending the federal government's interference with education, letting the states run more independently. Which is good, because I think the department is responsible, at least in part, for the sorry state of education in America. It simply was failing at its job, so if we can't fix it we should end it. Maybe at least some states will come up with a better way.

If the ultimate impact of this technology is that it enables one person to accomplish more (and perhaps enables lower-skilled coders to accomplish more than they otherwise could), the net impact will be a reduction in the cost of software development (even if salaries don't come down; the cost reduction is in the need for fewer people on a per-task basis).

Generally speaking, when costs go down, consumption goes up. It's basic supply-and-demand at work.

The primary determinant of how much demand there will be for software developers won't be how much AI can help with, but rather, how many businesses there are that need software written. Lowing the costs of development can create opportunities for smaller businesses and more start-ups to get their feet in the door, and thus increase demand for software developers.

If we want to see the demand for software developers rise, the best thing we can do is lobby the government to break up monopolies and cartels and help protect a competitive environment. A market dominated by two or three "big tech" companies and basically nobody else will result in a low demand for software developers, whether AI tools exist or not. But a market full of competing middle sized and small businesses will result in high demand, and that demand will be bolstered by the lower cost (thanks to AI tools). There are side benefits to, like more consumer choice and lower prices.

Making this actually happen is hard though. Big businesses always lobby for anything that lets them attain an even stronger monopoly, which is the exact opposite of what's healthy for the economy.

Entertainment is subjective. Whatever it is you like to do, someone somewhere finds it boring and pointless.

It IS a wrong thing to do. People turned the feature off for a reason. Turning it back on them for them is an act of direct disobedience. It shows utter disrespect for the end user and, depending on details, may be compromising their privacy in ways that the specifically chose Apple products in order to avoid.

Apple knew what the right behavior was here and deliberately chose to reject it in an effort to push their users around the same way Microsoft does!

It's a big deal, Apple is in the wrong.

Any given person may wind up as an unwise adult for a multitude of reasons. But when it is a widespread trend, we probably have a failing in public education.

Of course, we already know we have a failing in public education, in the USA at least. We have a very bad system in place that hands out diplomas to utter idiots, largely in response to political pressure that is intended to produce smarter students but instead just causes grade inflation.

So, we usher young-adults into life with no idea how to manage their finances (among other deficits) and this widespread debt epidemic is one entirely predictable result of this.

Putting in some legislation to cap interest rates and reduce swipe fees will not solve this problem. It will just make things even easier for people who already know how to avoid this trap. Until we address the root cause, this (and other problems associated with an ill-educated populace) will continue to be a problem.

So....retailers collect the tax as part of sales?

What if I order stuff from another country online? Or from a catalog by mail like in the old days? Who pays the tax in that case and how is that enforced?

If payment is not enforced this will give a significant competitive advantage to foreign businesses who can sell their goods and services tax free (any time the tax would be more than shipping fees, I guess). That could have unintended economic side effects.