Observing that some people aren't responsible enough to work without someone breathing down their neck is a wildly different claim than saying the work itself couldn't be done remotely.

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, if you're talking about physical possibilities for single instances. But those aren't anything other than a bound because you have to have people to do the tasks. Once you've got low to mid skill people in a dull, dead end job, you have a problem. For certain kinds of job, I reckon it becomes more or less impossible to motivate the majority of people who will actually do the job.

At that point what does it matter if someone could in theory do it remotely?

No, I mean because I care about Slashdot and having an interesting, insightful debate here. I know, I'm expected too much, but it happens sometimes.

We are going through a transition where these tools are just becoming available and a massive number of bugs are being fixed, but in future they will be standard for software developers as part of the QA process.

I fully agree, but I do think this might actually be an improvement for customers, at least in some cases.

I've been talking to some AI chatbots for a couple of companies I have been dealing with, to get stuff sorted out. They are much better than multiple choice menus or the old dumb chatbots that just scan for keywords and then print out an FAQ entry. I don't need to guess the special magic words to make them do what I want, and if they are doing down slightly the wrong path I can correct them.

The ones I have used hand off to a human when necessary. I'm sure that will get enshittified, but at least for now I find they are more reliable at either resolving the issue for me, or at least getting the right information to the right people to get it resolved.

I don't have a side here. I use both Windows and Linux. Windows pisses me off, Linux pisses me off.

What I care about is how it's hard to have an honest conversation about any of this stuff without it becoming a Microsoft hate-fest or ridiculous assumptions about open source being somehow inherently more secure.

Yeah, I know, no EV will ever work for you, you simply must emit CO2 and dump pollution into other people's lungs, 6 minutes and saving time by not going for petrol is just something you can't abide. Give you convenience or give you death.

Yeah, I'm asking which model of Ioniq have 6 seats? I thought they were all 5, so maybe your definition of a seat is different and actually there are a lot more cars that fit your needs.

Anyway, no charging at all on a day trip... Well, 6 hours of driving and 6 minutes of charging seems reasonable to me. I'd have filled up a fossil car too, maybe the day before and again after or something, which would doubtless have cost me more than 6 minutes total time. Not that it cost me any time because I needed to pee anyway.

You have to be realistic, not just arbitrarily set the bar slightly above where you think EVs are today.

My original statement, just a statement without anything incendiary in it, has ignited a firestorm of profanity, personal insults and general anger. Because people disagree with me, their rage is somehow appropriate.

I have encountered much the same. I think on a previous thread I stated that I tried WFH, hated it and even though I was a solo contractor, paid for a desk in a co-working office so I could be out of the house and have other people to talk to, and that actually proved incredibly and let to me doing a startup (didn't work out but that's another story).

Yo wouldn't believe (well hyperbole, obviously you would) the batshit insane things people here were saying to me, such as I'm a shit manager and a worthless employee who leans on other people's work and steals credit because what other possible reason could there be to be in work?

I am honestly not sure what part of "independent contractor in a co-working space" they didn't understand.

But it's this incredibly blinkered view that WFH is GOOD and RIGHT and anyone who has any alternative experience or opinion is (a) out to get them (b) stupid and (c) evil. All for the crime of being a human with only very mild introversion (I like and need socialising, but too much is draining and I need quiet focus time too).

But maybe it's this too:

Maybe it makes them feel better living in a world where competence is inversely proportional to ones place on the food chain.

The LLM thing comes up in a lot of "switch to Linux challenge" scenarios. The issue is that a lot of the Linux community is sadly very toxic. Someone says they want to use X, and the response they get is "why? Just use Y instead". They google an error message and get an out of date Reddit thread where the copy/paste solution bricks their OS (happened to Linus of LTT a couple of years ago).

LLMs try to be helpful and sift through all the outdated forum posts for you. They make using Linux a lot more pleasant and, ironically, human.

With Windows having enshittified, while Linux isn't perfect it does at least feel like some distros are trying to do the right thing, and aren't outright hostile to the user.

but we now know virtually all white collar work can effectively be done remotely;

Do we know that? I sometimes have to interact with some particular people in a non IT white collar profession. They ain't good at replying to emails and so I phone them yet "lunch break" now seem to extend from about 11 to 3. Those fuckers need to be back in an office with someone actually watching over their shoulder so that they are actually at their desk and actually answer the phone if it rings. Oh and I only ever have to call because of paperwork that hasn't been done for too long.

I have a friend who's pet theory was HR's main goal was to tune compensation to keep the attrition level where the company wanted it.

Your friend's pet theory is predicated on HR being both really smart and working in complete lock step with management.

I get sent Word and Excel documents at work. I've found that if I reply in ODF format, people just start using ODF without realizing it.

The only real issue is Excel programming, which isn't supported by ODF. There doesn't seem to be an open standard for spreadsheet macros or whatever they are called, and Excel uses some kind of BASIC variant that nothing else supports.

It's like nuclear power. Sure, only 1.25% of civilian reactors have ever melted down, but the consequences for individuals of those meltdowns can be extreme. Anywhere from massive loss of property and community to death.

While 500 stalkers might be a small percentage of 800k officers, for the victims they probably don't find much comfort in the fact that there are only 499 other victims of the same thing. Especially when the technology is relatively new and still rapidly expanding.

You'll argue "If I'm doing my job, I don't need managers." A good manager should be taking care of the sh*t you don't need or want to be doing. Either doing it themselves or seeing that someone else is taking care of it and not blocking you.

And also ensuring that what you're working on is the right thing to be working on. A good manager should have some idea of what direction product development is going in the short, medium and long term and what other teams and projects are doing that may effect the manager's team.

For all the comments about how the kernel and Debian developers are a bunch of incompetent morons who couldn't code a secure OS if their life depended on it.

Or does that only apply when Microsoft patches a large number of bugs found with AI tools?