Americans: Fireworks are illegal? Fuckoff, I'm lighting them in the street then.

Worse: some dumbass caused a fire near LA by buying professional show grade fireworks without knowing how to use them.

If he had access to a fireworks store (like I shop at in New Hampshire) he probably would have just bought those.

I buy consumer mortars and those are *plenty* big for home use.

Much kudos to the Chinese who make very reliable pyrotechnics at quite a fair price. I only spent $160 this year despite the tariffs.

Two theories that seem reasonable from what I've been hearing:

1. Contaminated fuel combined with high temps causing the fuel to become gaseous before getting to the engine.

2. Apparently a solar storm hit exactly at the time of the crash, raising questions about induced currents causing an electrical failure.

The emergency turbine shouldn't have deployed if it were bad gas, so that leads to the sudden electrical failure causing the crash.

That turbine works fine at altitude but not at take-off because at least you can glide to a landing if you have electrical/hydraulic power.

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.

The systemd version takes a similar approach - only handling the 99.9% use case of running a local command as a different user based on some basic rules and only really providing a userspace implementation without suid.

IIRC that use case is about 15% of OG sudo's code but most distros carry around all the features. I dunno, maybe it can be compiled without those but I don't see that in distros I've used.

Corporatism is a distinct concept from Capitalism. That's the one you're describing. There's been a psyop by Socialists to describe corporatism as capitalism so they get more of a merger of business and State (fascism).

Corporations are creations of a government in which governments get a cut and politicians get bribes in exchange for protection from justice for the corporate actors' crimes.

If you read Adam Smith he described this as Mercantilism in his time and recommended free market capitalism as its antidote with an emphasis on the accumulation of capital and investment into more competitive production.

Von Mises fleshed this out more a couple centuries later (followed by Hayek and Rothbard). The definitive work is /Man, Economy, and State/ which breaks it all down in tremendous detail.

Notably corporations in the early USA were limited to public works projects and had time-limited grants (e.g. for building a bridge or later the railroads).

JD Rockefeller bribed Congress during Reconstruction to make corporations permanent, so he wouldn't lose his charter for Standard Oil. He later wrote the Sherman Anti-trust Act to hurt his competition.

Today we have immortal psychopathic corporations with a legal mandate to be depraved and with legal personhood. The Dulles brothers created the CIA to fight wars and conduct assassinations on behalf of the corporations. cf. United Fruit or the Pepsi War.

After the Revolution remember to forbid corporations. The Gini Coefficient is too damn high.

Your neighbors leave dead things on your stoop?

I would call the cops.

"It's a trap!"

Hot dog on a bun with glyphosate, chips with BHT, ketchup with HFCS, pickles with Polysorbate 80, and a large Coke.

Hot dog caused Diabetes! Q.E.D.

This is why every civilization for thousands of years have made sausages. To make everybody fat and insulin dependent!

TRUST THE EXPERTS.

The quality level that you are talking about is not merely a matter of skill on the part of the developer, but also time. The formal methods used that produce that level of performance and perfection take a long time to apply, no matter how good one is.

The *primary* reason why most software doesn't perform at that level is this: time costs money. Software that is thrown together quickly, and as a result has bugs, will be available for purchase much sooner, and will cost far less (mainly because it cost far less to develop). People are willing to buy buggy software if it is going to save them a fortune.

For most applications, the level of perfection that you are talking about is simply not necessary. People don't need their software to be that perfect in order to do their jobs. Of course, too MANY bugs will be ruinous, so there is a sweet spot to find.

And that's my main point: there is a sweet spot, and for MOST (not all) software applications, it is nowhere near as high as what you are talking about. Therefore, there is no market for top quality software. Any business that tries to aim for that quality level will price themselves right out of the market and go bust before they even get their first product out the door.

So, don't blame the developers. They are simply doing what the market is paying them to do.

Life is competitive, and always has been. And nobody owes you a job.

Tech changes over time and everyone must adapt to it. That's going to put some people out of work. It's not a happy moment for them, but seriously, that's is how it has always been.

There is this nice theory that, by working together, we can all make sure everyone has enough without ever facing the horror of being put out of a job and needing to take unpleasant work to earn a living. Well, human nature doesn't really make this tenable, which is why it consistently fails when it is attempted.

For now, the essential survival strategy is the same as it has been for millions of years: adapt or die.

I am sorry if this news makes you unhappy. But that doesn't make me (or anyone else who understands this) a jackass. We are just adapting like everyone else.

After an Iranian missile hit, at least, the parking lot of Microsoft Israel, several reports came out saying that they were helping the IDF with genocide operations in Gaza.

I don't know if it's true but those are the real reports.

The timing and 'quiet' character suggests Pakistan might have told them to get the hell out.

"Developing story" as they say.

How common of a name is Soham Parekh in India?

At one time I was in a tech group with three Mike Johnsons. Assuredly different people, though slightly confusing.

But I don't really feel sorry for these startups going for global minimum wage and getting burned.

Hire an American named Steve from Akron and you'll be less likely to be scammed.

Probably depends on its characteristics.

He had quite an amusing series of papers popping the bubbles of all the 'debunkers'.

He never proved what it was but he sure proved many things that it wasn't, as claimed by ThE eXpErTs.

Midwit scientists abhor an unknown and run to bad ideas like a safety blanket.

FWIW his grad student at the time had the better ideas, involving relative motion of solar systems within the Galactic Plane. His models were the best fit for the available data.

Apple is not a completely closed ecosystem. You can use a Dell keyboard and a Logitech mouse with your Mac Mini, for example. There are legal battles being fought right now to make it even more open.

You have no basis whatsoever for your prediction "If Nintendo was open back in the day, they would not be the Nintendo we know now." That statement is based on nothing but pure imagination.

Open ecosystems provide consumers with more choices. That is an awesome benefit! I like the option to use Dell keyboards and Logitech mice with my Mac Mini. And I would like the option to use other-branded docks and/or converters with my Nintendo Switch 2 as well. It would sure be nice to be able to plug an XReal headset directly into a Nintendo Switch 2 for example. But thanks to this arbitrary limitation, I need a rat's nest of power cables and converters to get that to work.

Asking for this is not "crying," and there is nothing immature or entitled about it. Your penchant for insulting those who disagree with you, rather then presenting sound arguments, isn't going to win any hearts and minds.

There are clear consumer benefits to open ecosystems, so we are absolutely right to want them, and (if we choose) to use legislation to force them.