It's like visual coding or RAD all over again. Whenever suits and PHBs are told there's a magic wand that'll allow them to do without paying people for the nitty-gritty bits, they get all excited and convince each other in their echo chamber that their dream of a company of all managers and no workers is just around the corner.

Then reality says "hi", the hype dies down, a few scam artists got rich and the world continues as it was, with a couple new cool tools in the toolbox of those who know how to use them correctly - which is generally the same people that were supposedly being replaced.

That's how I see AI. I've been writing software for the better part of 40 years. What I see from AI is sometimes astonishing and sometimes pathetic. I would never, ever, ever put AI generated code into production software without carefull checking and refactoring, and I would fire anyone who does.

Code completion is mostly in the "astonishing" part. If I write a couple lines of near-identical stuff, like assigning values from an input to a structured format for processing, the AI most of the time gets right the next line I want to write. Anything more complex than that is hit-and-miss.

Mostly, I use AI the way I would use an intern. "Can you look up how to use this function correctly? What are the parameters and their defaults?" or "Write me some code that's tedious to write (like lots of transformation operations) but not rocket science by far.
Essentially, it does faster and a little bit better what previously I'd have done with Google and Stackoverflow.

I have no fear it'll replace developers anytime soon. Half of the time the code is outright wrong, most of the time it has glaring security issues or isn't half as fault-tolerant as it should be, and for any case where I know how to do it without any research, I'd be faster writing the code myself then going through several iterations with an AI to get it done.

It doesn't matter how big a reactor is or isn't, it's a target.

Flying shaped charges are cheap and feasible.

This is yet another predictable side effect of people misunderstanding the stimulus and response reflex of capitalism: Apply dollars, make things happen more.

I have played a handful of FTP games and put a not insignificant amount of time into them... but never any money. If I don't get to own the thing, defined by being able to use it (not even "as I see fit", just at all — but on my schedule) then I won't pay more for the thing than it's worth to me right now, like going to see a movie. If I don't get the server, or if there's DRM which requires activation, that severely reduces what I'll pay.

LLMs invent invalid moves. It is somewhat miraculous that they can sometimes generate valid ones, but the real miracle is that people think there is intelligence there. It's a miracle for the people selling "AI" anyway.

It's very common for mechanics to be required to provide their own tools.

It's California law that you cannot require an employee to provide their own tools, unless you are paying them at least twice the minimum wage. This is true in general, not just for auto shops. I worked in an RV shop. I had to provide my tools. I got in a wage dispute over it. I received a settlement.

Only the low-end guys in the shop don't typically have to provide tools.

"No. That is a rare skillset."

It's less rare now than ever before, and becoming less rare thanks to howtos and cheap equipment.

As we have seen, the 2a nuts mostly don't do shit. The only time he's allegedly been attacked is one of the most obvious false flag operations of all time. I wish I were shocked to see so many on this site fall for it, but I already knew there were loads of idiots here.

This EXACTLY. They are getting NOTHING. In fact they are losing everything, and owning themselves HARDER than "the libs." And they're asking for it to happen more.

Apparently the bill just passed, so it looks like they are getting it.

You never worked in a shop, I take it.

Not given how bad you are at explaining it, no.

Science is the study of, if you are religious, HOW God hung it up there. In no way does that fundamentally conflict with the idea of religion.. However, it can easily conflict with some religions when they are stupid enough to try to describe science even though that's not what they are for.

If you are a maggot, yes, except you only read scientific journals to find out what to be mad about because you don't understand it.

I bought a $300 laptop almost two years ago, it still does all the things I want it to do, and quickly too. It's got a 2C4T AMD and I was able to upgrade the RAM to 8GB with a perfectly matching used module from eBay for $15. (IME they have to match exactly for modern integrated video to work reliably.) It's no game console, but video encode and decode work well.

None of those things you listed are open to the general public, so there is no reason not to use a self signed certificate.