>Google, Facebook, Apple clearly care deeply about the quality of their code.
Yea, idk about that one.
They definitely did care in the past. They had to if they wanted to get users. But they've stopped caring a good while ago. Especially Microsoft. The costs that bad code would bring them is lower than the cost of developping good code, because they can mostly rely on monopolies and anti-competitive practices for user retention. Their users are more like hostages than anything else.
Is Google much better? I don't see, for example, the care that used to go into the quality of organic search results.
They seem fine with the output of the current hodge-podge of the original algorithm results plus massaging by many downstream ML pipelines that run one after the other without context of how each stop might affect the next.
I'm not sure about op, but as someone who agrees with their comment, yes, I absolutely am. I despise 99% of all digital """services""" that exist. Whether it's cloud, music/movies/series/whatever streaming, subscriptions of almost any kind... They're all extremely dystopian and anti-human. I sail the high seas for almost everything I consume digitally. When I want to support a creator I enjoy, I pay them directly (buy their merch, buy a physical copy of their album, purchase their game and dlcs, or simply directly donate).
In my opinion, corporations being allowed free reign and control over the internet and digital world in general without guardrails was *THE* biggest legislative mistake (although I believe it was done on purpose )in the past century, considering how the internet will most definitely be the defining factor of the era we're currently living in in future textbooks; if we make it that far at least.
I don't think most people understand the sheer magnitude of the damage that corporate slop, control, anti-competitiveness and pursuit of infinite growth at all costs has done to our technological capabilities and advancement.
Hardware is the only area of tech that continually gets better, whilst software continually regresses and gets worse. 90% of "new" code is web-based slop (and now AI generated web slop) that hogs memory and cpu usage, completely undermining all advances in hardware just because companies weren't willing to pay the extra buck to program a native solution that wouldn't force its users to purchase new machines.
If it wasn't for corporate (and many programmers') lazyness, computers from over a decade ago would still be fully functional, fully usable machines that could do the most bleeding-edge of tasks, safe for maybe the most graphically-demanding games and rendering.
And then maybe programmers could focus on actually advancing the science that is writing code, instead of building yet another fucking REST API and React UI. And don't forget to package it all in electron to fuck your users as much as possible, and dodge any need for real engineering.
Companies can just keep offloading costs unto the user, making users buy machines 10x as powerful as the ones they had 5 years ago, just to do the exact same tasks, but 20x slower. But at least they have a nice looking UI right?
Not much yet, that's pretty much what I do, although I run void linux and arch on my machines.
But even Linux isn't safe; what if other countries adopt the OS-level age-verification laws that california is pursuing? very few distros will be safe.
And then all they need to do (and you can bet that's exactly what they'd do) is keep squeezing, taking away freedom gradually until most linux distros require you to submit a digital ID on install. And chances are, the few distros and maintainers that go against that would be completely cut off from the mainstream tech ecosystem (which would make them barely usable in this day and age, at least as long as you live in a city with a job and rent and all).
This may sound like a slippery slope fallacy and it may indeed be that, but I can't think of any other possibility if we just let stuff like this keep happening.
It may seem like we're just giving an inch now but in 5 years you'll suddenly realize they've taken a mile.
because there isn't really that much to change that high up the stack. It's all the same. True innovation happens at the low levels of programming and hardware.
It didn't though.
Not good software at least.
AI (which is what I'm guessing you're referring to here) is simply incapable of writing such mission -critical low-level code, especially for a niche and/or brand new ISA. It simply can't. It has nothing to plagiarize from, contrary to the billions of lines of JavaScript and python it has access to.
This kind of work can most definitely be AI-assisted, but my estimate is that the time gained would be minimal.
An LLM is able to write some functional arduino code, maybe even some semi-functional bare-metal esp32 code, but nothing deeper than that.
Yes it does, especially when you remember the fact that developers are also consumers. But even if they (we) weren't, it would still impact consumers. I, android user who's completely ignorant when it comes to android development or even mobile in general, would be heavily impacted by this.
My custom youtube clients would never be approved by google. My (free) apps for watching anime and reading manga would never get approved by Google.
And something that's approved today could stop being approved tomorrow. it's up to Google / Microsoft / Apple to decide after all, they're the ones in control of our devices. If they stop liking my open-source ad-free minesweeper game, then I can't play it anymore. I'll have to download their bloated proprietary version with ads and a subscription to keep playing.
> My custom youtube clients would never be approved by google. My (free) apps for watching anime and reading manga would never get approved by Google.
Google isn't approving apps though. A developer provides identity verification and a set of apps (apk names & keys) they are responsible for. There is no verification process or approval from google. The entire process as outlined in https://developer.android.com/developer-verification is that you prove you own signing keys for an apk name.
I don't see how people are against this. Especially tech-savvy people who browse HN. It really seems to me like everyone here who's on Google's side is just a bot in a botfarm somewhere. they can't possibly be real
this. just like how when you start playing a hard esoteric game like an RTS or MOBA, they ask you what your degree of comfort/experience with the genre is to avoid making a pro player go through the tutorial and vice versa.
In an ideal world where governments and corporations weren't trying to lock us into a closed system for massive surveillance and control, during the installation/setup of a mobile phone should be a question about tech literacy and protection. Selecting any option that isn't "I'm tech illiterate, please protect me" should be very annoying. There should be many warnings in uppercase bold red letters telling the user it can be dangerous and listing those dangers. But if I'm a developer and want to patch my kernel or modify the system as I please, I should be able to do so. If i want to install a malware app in a burner phone to study its behavior (or just for fun) I should be able to do so.
There would probably be one or two grandmas that would still somehow choose the pro hacker mode and get scammed down the line, but I think that minuscule amount of harm done is very much preferable to closing out *literally everyone else* from using the devices THEY BOUGHT.
You’re not wrong. But in America there is only one party that is thoroughly owned by Russia and that’s the party in charge of the executive branch right now.
Owned by Russia? How'd you reach that conclusion? Just take a look at the sanctions imposed on them and the US support for Ukraine in the war.
Also: it seems you've fallen into the "Russia is our enemy" propaganda trap.
>> it seems you've fallen into the "Russia is our enemy" propaganda trap.
Well, we did have an entire decades long war about it. That we magically assume ended November 9, 1989 but doesn't look like it really ever did, for them.
As long as russia bombs apartment buildings and terrorizes a soverein nation while waging hybrid war against a multitude of others, it's going to be the enemy. I hope russia crumbles, and people like you stop pretending that russia is innocent.
From the first Trump campaign, to Jared Kushner, to Tulsi Gabbard, to all the things happening with this campaign, its abundantly clear that conservatives are communicating with Russia very much. The question is if it is illegal or not, and generally, considering Superme Court and DOJ are Trumps puppets, it really doesn't matter.
Also, I would highly urge you to consider the fact that you are defending pdf files running the government. You really don't want to go down the road of political arguments and out yourself as one.
But both are owned by corporate interests. I don't really give a crap about Russia, they have thrown so much capital away on Ukraine that they have no chance against anybody else. I find large corporations and billionaires as the biggest, strongest, and most threatening actors. Even some of the US's most leftist politicians, like AOC, voted against allowing rail workers to strike, which only benefits the investor class and corporate interests.
If you look at voting distribution by income level this doesn't make sense.
And if you are gonna make the argument that people are brainwashed to think its left vs right, then you are automatically in favor of an authoritarian ruling class because people can't be trusted to make the right choice.
Ah yes, because your side is a dumpster fire, the only way out that doesn't make you look like a complete fool is just to claim "both sides are bad".
Point to any such activity under the Democratic rule where federal government was specifically requesting data on in individuals that are simply critical of them if you wanna prove me wrong.
It could be a net gain for civilization if it stayed open, decentralized and off the hands of private companies, but that's not at all the case. Only tecchies care or even know about open models
LLMs can be quite useful in reverse engineering - there's typically a lot of steps which are not really difficult, but are hard to script, and still require a bit of an idea what's going on. Quite a bit of that can be automated with LLMs now - so it's also a lot easier now to figure what your proprietary blob does, and either interface with it, or just publish an implementation of the functionality as open source, potentially messing with your business plan.
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