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Comment Re:25,000 lines of code (Score 2) 50

It might take one person one year to write 25k lines.

A year? I've regularly written that much in a month, and sometimes in a week. And, counter-intuitively, its during those sprints when I'm pumping out thousands of lines per day that I write the code that turns out to be the highest quality, requiring the fewest number of bugfixes later. I think it's because that very high productivity level can only happen when you're really in the zone, with the whole system held in your head. And when you have that full context, you make fewer mistakes, because mistakes mostly derive from not understanding the other pieces your code is interacting with.

Of course, that kind of focus is exhausting, and you can't do it long term.

How does a person get their head around that in 15 hours?

By focusing on the structure, not the details. The LLM and the compiler and the formatter will get the low-level details right. Your job is to make sure the structure is correct and maintainable, and that the test suites cover all the bases, and then to scan the code for anomalies that make your antennas twitch, then dig into those and start asking questions -- not of product managers and developers, usually, but of the LLM!

But, yeah, it is challenging -- and also strangely addictive. I haven't worked more than 8 hours per day for years, but I find myself working 10+ hours per day on a regular basis, and then pulling out the laptop in bed at 11 PM to check on the last thing I told the AI to do, mostly because it's exhilarating to be able to get so much done, at such high quality, so quickly.

Comment Re:Children shouldn't be on social media (Score 1) 51

Unions are a real-life strategy because they work. Divide-and-conquer is also a real-life strategy, because it works too.

Thus, I think the truth of your statement all depends on whether you look at this conflict between government and the the people, from the point of view of the attacker, vs the point of view of the defender.

Comment Re:Children shouldn't be on social media (Score 1) 51

Children do not have the maturity that is required for unfiltered access to the adult world

But they used to. In the 1980s, nobody dared to say in public, that 17-year-old me should not be allowed to visit public (or even university) (or even medical) libraries. (Or if someone did, they were still very obscure and unpopular, little more than a glimmer in the left's eye.)

Comment Re:"Harmed by end to end encryption?" (Score 1) 51

If I may, could I narrow down which of these two things you think is best? First, there's exactly what you said above..

Kids have no right to use end-to-end encryption without parental consent

..but I've altered it:

Kids have a right to use end-to-end encryption unless denied by a parent

Did I make it better, or did I make it worse?

Comment Re:Was not expecting them to admit that (Score 1) 54

They had to say it that way, because the more accurate statement is that the dealership law unfairly advantages existing automakers.

Even the entrenched automakers don't want dealerships to exist, they would all prefer to sell directly. They have better ways to keep down competition at the federal level. Dealerships just take a cut of what they could be keeping all of if they didn't exist.

That's a valid point, though right now while they're facing competition from startups the dealerships do provide them with a moat that they want to preserve. If/when the startup threat is gone, the automakers will go back to hating the dealerships.

I think people forget how everyone laughed at Tesla because everyone knew that starting a new car company in the United States was impossible. Now we also have Lucid and Rivian. Maybe someday Aptera will manage to get off the ground. This is a novel situation for American carmakers.

Comment Re:Was not expecting them to admit that (Score 4, Informative) 54

>arguing it unfairly advantages startups

Way to say your dealers suck.

They had to say it that way, because the more accurate statement is that the dealership law unfairly advantages existing automakers. It's not about the dealerships being good or bad, it's about the fact that setting up a dealership network takes a lot of time and money and requiring it is a good way to keep new competition out.

Comment Re:The old guard bribed these restrictions (Score 4, Interesting) 54

into place to protect their oligopoly. Some blame it on "socialism" when it's really crony capitalism.

The correct term is "regulatory capture". Private businesses use the power of the state to protect, subsidize or otherwise benefit them and harm competitors and potential competitors. It's extremely common and the more pervasive the regulation is, the more common it is. Red tape and government procedures benefit entrenched players who have built the institutional structures and knowledge to deal with them.

This isn't to say that all regulation is bad... but a lot of it is. There was never any consumer benefit to banning direct sales. All regulations should be thoroughly scrutinized for their effects on the market, direct and indirect.

Comment Re:For me, it is last few months... (Score 1) 40

In fairness, this is the Kernel we are talking about, and those dudes actually do know what they are doing.

Kernel code is fucking hard. The last kernel coding I ever did was on Minix in the early 1990s for Operating Systems class at University. That was a total brain bender. But heres the thing, Minix was an intentionally simpler kernel designed for teaching and included an extremely comprehensive textbook, that just doesn't exist (I think) for Linux.

The Linux Kernel may well be the most complicated code by some of the most skilled coders on the planet. To claim they "can't code" is frankly, hubris.

Not that I think AI can code either. But it DOES seem to be quite good at finding bugs and code smells. You wouldn't want to rely on it as your everything, but don't be surprised if it finds whoopsies by even Torvalds himself.

Comment Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score 3, Insightful) 61

Oh I dont know. Some of the scenes at the gas giant in Tau Ceti where pretty spectacular. Was it *Dune* spectacular? No. But I think the immersion of the theatre certainly helps.

Plus it sends a nice signal to the studios saying "more of this please!". Support hard sci-fi, its a frigging rough environment for films in general, and double rough for genre films like this.

Comment Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score 2) 61

Yeah I saw it , and it was actually really good. Gossling is kind of comical at times, but he actually does really well in this, and the comedy is more in service of the premise that he's a competent scientist and not-so-competent unwilling astronaut, and that he's got a weird friendship with the alien.

From a hard sci-fi point of view its really good, good enough that the few places where it does seem to veer off from known science (The solid xenon that the aliens use as a construction material) seems a little jarring.

And as a drama, yeah... it works. You'll definately find yourself rooting for the two main characters (goslings character and "Rocky" (as he dubs the alien)) and I wont spoil where it goes, but it'll get you.

Go watch it. It was easily one of the best films of the year.

Comment Re:Good but they 'summarized' al the science. (Score 3, Insightful) 61

Anything that wasn't action, drama, or comedy was largely dropped and almost all of the science was quick summary explanations.

I think that's necessary. Providing explanations of depth comparable to the book would require a 10-hour movie. Squeezing the story down to feature length requires cutting a lot of exposition. In many books there's a lot of description that can be replaced with visuals, but it's pretty hard to do that with a lot of the science.

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