>> We live in a world where someone has to clean the sewers, unblock toilets, maintain electricity lines in snow storms, weld deep underwater, clean, wipe the butts of old people, and 10,000 other thankless, tiring, and dangerous jobs which no one in their right mind would ever do because they found it fun and interesting.
>> I do think AI and robotics will usher in a much more abundant world in the future. It's unclear how we navigate that - economically, politically, socially.
Delusional optimism. If AI and robotics take over, the only effect will be another wave of layoffs and unemployed, not even the willingness to unblock toilets or wipe butts will save you from homelessness and destitution. We're already on the way to Victorian era poverty, if robots take the shit jobs too, we're back to Oliver Twist: please sir, can I have some more ... tokens?
Well, Alt+Tab in Windows is supposed to switch windows. That's unless you're in Microsoft Edge where obviously, it switches tabs. Inconsistent and annoying.
Browser tabs are the fault here and browsers are trying to be OS environment, so Alt+Tab is useful for major task switching. I agree it's inconsistent and annoying, but I like Alt+Tab as a way to try to find the window I'm writing that email to someone.
Android and Chrome worked like this for a hot minute too. I assumed the idea was to promote webapps to look like they're first-class citizens, but in practice it's just bizarre and confusing UX.
I hate this too. You can turn it off. In Settings, go to System->Multitasking and change "Show tabs from apps when snapping or pressing Alt+Tab" to "Don't show tabs."
While I agree with the sentiment that sending manned missions to the Moon is kinda useless, unfortunately diverting those money to "noble purposes" is an utopia because that's not how things work.
In practice if those billions don't fund NASA programs they go into making some billionaires richer, Oracle laying off 30,000 people to fund data centers that will be obsolete by the time they are ready and similar stuff. Not a dime towards noble goals of humanity.
Well NASA cut off on environment programs, I guess the money wouldn't have to go very far.
And to be fair, Artemis contributes to making some billionaires richer. Sending humans to space has always been a great PR stunt to convince the people that they should continue accepting that the taxpayer money gets used for space programs. Turns out that in 2026, space programs are more commercial and less about science. SpaceX is all about commercialising space and making... ahem... one billionaire richer.
Question is weather the guy who got his account banned and lost access to all his data, was paying Google for cloud / hosting services or not.
If it was on the free plan then all bets are off. If he was paying for a service, I believe there is enough case for a lawsuit where Google pays through their teeth for basically taking the client's data hostage.
At some point I'll move my hosted services to one or more companies, which for a cost - essential point if you want legal protection - offer me their services. And if shit happens, I get my data back. And there is someone, a physical person that I can call when shit happens and they can't hide behind AI and automated replies. Otherwise I have real leverage to sue their ass and settle for mucho dinero so they learn to behave.
Seems to me Google is not such a "service provider" company, so it's naive to let them hold your data, with zero legal protection if they decide to take it hostage.
Kids today probably won't get what's the big idea with "just" some TV, no DVD playing capability, no computer games. But in the early 90s I would have sold a kidney for one of these, on a boring 8 hour train trip, they would have been the ultimate gadget. Not just for entertainment purposes, watching TV, but also bragging rights since noone even dreamt of having one of these in that time period and that place (Eastern Europe). At least I didn't see or knew anyone that had such a thing.
>> then the software industry will enter into a self-serving productivity craze building all sorts of software tooling, frameworks
>> Smart organizations will not just deliver better products but likely start products [...]
This is not the 90s anymore when low hanging fruit was everywhere ready to be picked. We have everything under the sun now and more.
The problem with bullshit apps is not that it took you 5 months to build. What you build now in 5 minutes it's still bullshit. Most of the remaining work is bullshit jobs. Spinning useless "features" and frameworks that nobody needs and shove them down the throat of customers that never asked for them. Now it's possible to dig holes and fill them back (do pointless work) at much improved pace thanks to AI.
This is like saying peasants growing vegetables in the field should not mix with philosophers questioning the secrets of the Universe.
Problem is most research is just pissing in the wind. No real results. Show me the cure for cancer. Show me the warp engine.
So it's very nice to sit in their ivory tower doing ivory tower stuff while the peasants feed them with the vegetables they grow plowing the fields.
In reality, let them also teach. That's real, palpable work. I can't do all nice things and never touch shit work, so should professors because unless they cure cancer or invent the warp engine now, they are not a privileged cast.
>> I wonder how this will work in practice. Say I'm a senior engineer and I produce myself thousands of lines of code per day with the help of LLMs as mandated by the company.
LOL, it's the age old "responsibility without authority". The pressure to use AI will increase and basically you'll be fired for not using it. Simultaneously with the pressure to take the blame when AI fucks up and you can't keep up with the bullshit, leading you to get fired. One way or the other, get some training on how to stack shelves at the supermarket because that's how our future looks, one way or the other.
>> I do think AI and robotics will usher in a much more abundant world in the future. It's unclear how we navigate that - economically, politically, socially.
Delusional optimism. If AI and robotics take over, the only effect will be another wave of layoffs and unemployed, not even the willingness to unblock toilets or wipe butts will save you from homelessness and destitution. We're already on the way to Victorian era poverty, if robots take the shit jobs too, we're back to Oliver Twist: please sir, can I have some more ... tokens?
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