One could easily argue that the CEO's comments about employees being "losers" are quite abusive. He's not acting as a responsible leader. Sounds like a terrible place to work. Glad I never moved any services to Proton.
Do we really need humans writing code anymore though? Another year of development and AI is just going to be superior to a human writing code. It's already about 90% there.
Humans still write the code, we just do it using AI tools.
If we abdicate and let all software development and operations occur through the use of fully autonomous agents, someone is still ultimately responsible for the agents work/screw-ups. Thus, there is still a human writing code, from an ownership perspective. We all know it won't be the capital/manager class holding the stick there.
> Humans still write the code, we just do it using AI tools.
That's literally the opposite of what TFA quotes in Proton's "Engineering Manifesto"
> Your job has fundamentally changed. It is no longer to write code, and LLMs are not here to help you write better code faster. Your job is to help the LLM write better code faster
It goes on to say
> Every engineer is now a team leader, a manager, and your direct reports are the models and agents you use.
They don't want their engineers and programmers to write the code. They want LLM handlers.
>If we abdicate and let all software development and operations occur through the use of fully autonomous agents, someone is still ultimately responsible for the agents work/screw-ups. Thus, there is still a human writing code, from an ownership perspective.
That isn't what "writing code" means. The responsibility is for using the AI, or being negligent in doing so, but the AI is obviously writing the code. That's the entire point of it.
Are compilers writing code? I mean, people hadn't been producing anything that a CPU is actually executing (excepting some very rare special cases) for decades now. So we never wrote code to begin with...
"More" - yes, "deterministic" - well... Have you looked at what modern optimizing compilers do to the source? And how they behave in those places described as "undefined behavior" by the standards? Could you predict, looking at the code you've supposedly written, something like Meltdown or Spectre? We have to face it - there are many layers of complexity between what we feed into the machine and what the machine actually does, and for many of them most programmers have but a passing knowledge. They don't care because it just works, so why bother? But for somebody writing in something as high-level as, say, Python, to puff their chest and proclaim "in our time, we used to strike out bits on a rock with chisel and hammer! Kids these days!" is not exactly appropriate. Yes, LLMs work differently from even the cleverest optimizing compiler or interpreter. But they are still tools for translating programmer's intent into machine actions.
Prototype self-driving cars where able to handle 90% of driving around 1990. Sometimes it is very hard to go from something that works very often to something that works always.
Depends on what do you mean by "writing code". Once, writing code meant punching holes in pieces of paper and feeding that into a machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became entering cryptic numbers into the machine. Then the technology changed. Writing code became typing words and punctuation that have some passing connection to English but otherwise meaningless to a non-professional. Then the technology changed. Writing code became much more like writing text but still not resembling any actual text. Then the technology changed... It will change again. It still won't magically produce something sensible out of nothing.
I don't even care about that. Sure, use LLMs to write code. But the way Andy talks to his employees and treats them is so disrespectful, I find it actually despicable.
Unfortunately, it's not super easy for me to migrate away from Proton, but it's the next personal tech project I'll undertake.
You are right. Let's just hand the keys to everything to the AI companies. They've proven to be trustworthy and ethical. I trust them so much, I'm just going to stop thinking and say yes.
IP/subnet reputation. Either someone in your house has a hacked device, or someone in your neighborhood or IP subnet does, or maybe they were used as a residential proxy due to a router with a hardcoded password or something.
funny - the vpn through work gives me lots of verification. At home I don't get that, but cloudflare/edgesuite does block me for browser/extensions I use.
Don't forget having to take a picture of yourself to pass a Recaptcha check. Ideally, that'll be acknowledged as a bad idea and just go away, but we'll see.
I tried Neostore. All the info it shows is pretty cool, but ultimately I felt the expierence suffered from all the extra information shown compared to the simpler UI in Droid-ify.
I love Neo Store, because in my book complex > simple. Simplicity of interface = process handcuffs most of the time (IMO). Complexity done right permits so much diversity in composability. I would never ever want a 'simpler' After Effects or GIMP or Blender or Siemens NX. GNOME did it back with GNOME 3 and it has been trash in my book ever since! vomitface.gif
Sometim... err more times than not... there should be a "Your IQ must be at least this high" bar for good software. Stop appealing to the lower common denominators!
AFAICT in ~Dec 2024 the reasoning was that they had a paywall.
I don't know what percentage of their articles were behind a paywall back then, or the relative change to now. (Well, except for the fact that clearly some of their stuff is public today since we're looking at it.)
If I had my 'druthers, "paywall" and "register-wall" would be little icons on individual submissions. Then people would choose whether to upvote a more-accessible option instead, whether the hard-to-read stuff was still important enough to commenting on, etc.
404 Media is one of the few news organizations that actually file FOIA and fight for information in courtrooms.
By comparison, the likes of the Verge only run the most mainstream kind of articles. There is no deep, technical analysis of any complex topic. The most technical stuff they post may be those benchmarks they run for laptops. And they certainly don't file for FOIA despite how much (negative) coverage they do for US government agencies -- they leave the hard work to others.
(A quick Google search will confirm all of above.
And put your objections in comments instead of downvotes you cowards.)
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
The choice is play ball with the USG, or be dead in the water. Once you’re large enough, simply abiding by the laws is insufficient to remain unmolested - you must actively play ball or you’ll find that suddenly a TON of regulations now apply to you that didn’t before.
Do you think Apple or SpaceX like dealing with the NSA/CSS/CIA? Or the CCP for that matter? (Apple has backdoored all of iCloud in China for the CCP to be allowed to operate there.) Coinbase and the IRS is one. All the telcos turn over all call metadata and IP backbone taps to the feds without a warrant. Google Joseph Nacchio to see what happens if they don’t.
They’re the only game in town, and you gotta play by their rules if you want to operate at scale at all. No amount of billions of private money will get Trump and his administration un-pissed-off at you.
It’s not a free market, all large industries entirely serve exclusively at the pleasure of the court. This is why we overpay for broadband in every major market, why we overpay for mobile data nationwide, why retail banking sucks, etc.
And the boycott is to deliberately inflict a narcissistic injury to Trump. His attempt to create a state-owned news outlet is an attempt to reduce/minimize that injury. Personally, I think the best defense by the media would be to display his senile rambling conversations - show everyone how insane his actual words are.
Which is a really lazy way of looking at the world. If you haven't been paying attention, Trump kicked CNN and a couple others out of the press room, and the rest of the networks banded together to say "nu uh". That's not to say the head of the board of media companies aren't compromised, just that there's more nuance than that.
In my experience many execs know what they're talking about.
Where I feel you may see real variance is ethical and capability standards: willingness to stick to a line, and competence in analysis and execution based on what is known. Sometimes, hidden agendas can be misread as lack of competence, ie ethical lapses cause actions that are misread as capability lapses.
Knowledge alone is less often a factor.
Of course this varies widely across companies. I've been fortunate to work with some excellent folk at executive and C-level.
Here, an exec clearly (a) understands or can make a clear, direct assessment and (b) was willing to do so in writing. Kudos on both grounds.
I think a different variant/opposite of Hanlon's razor applies when it comes to corporate or political decisions: Don't attribute to stupidity when it can be adequately explained by malice or greed.
This sounds rather obvious, but I feel people forget it far too often.
Oh, I think MS execs (and all other execs, top-level politicians, and pundits for that matter) know what they're talking about, but they'll tell whatever lies they need to enrich and empower themselves.
Criminal behaviour is in Windows’ very DNA. Microsoft openly taking advantage of its customers and treating them like cattle is perfectly on brand for them. Always has been. Always will be. Windows and Office only gained traction via nefarious acts on Microsoft’s part and now we live in a world where Microsoft is relevant.
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