The corrupt oligopolists have completely given up on QA; why would they bother when they don’t feel any real competitive pressure.

AFAIK, this has been happening as far back as Windows 8. I believe they had a giant pool of physical PCs (laptops, pre-builts and various popular component combinations for desktop) that they physically tested updates on, but they scrapped all of it because they know they don’t need to worry about competition.

This is one area where I will agree with MS. 32 MB extra RAM consumption is worth it for even a moderate speed boost.

That being said, the vast majority of modern applications run like shit. You have electron apps which are comically terrible in their performance metrics, but even beyond that you often have apps takeing up 100s of MBs and eating up a stupid amount of RAM considering what they do.

Tapet is also good for dynamically created wallpapers.I bought it a long time ago way before the current AI hype cycle.

I’ve used vibe coding in a project where the coding part was small (20% of the total project, with the complex stuff being the remaining 80%) and it had relatively straightforward workflow that could be tested and accounted for without strange edge cases.

It’s not only nepo/conmen types who use vibe coding.

For sure, I am talking about smaller projects where programming elements are relatively low key and critical parts are the business logic and how it impacts UX/UI and use case flows.

I was between projects and I needed money so I accepted a project from a repeat client where I knew 80% of it very well (and how to implement it), but there were parts that I vibe coded (albeit they were simple enough that I could understand the logic of what I was deploying even though I don’t know how to code).

The contract size was simply too small for me to get a subcontractor, I would be giving them most of payment (while doing 80% of the work).

I think it’s fair to use vibe coding in such situations.

I would not risk vibe coding in a situation where I felt I would be undermining the clients’ project (I want repeat clients and I don’t want to have to spend time fixing things for free).

Bill Gates is a horrible person, he is a criminal.

Microsoft’s oligopoly (officially sanctioned and enabled by US society) has cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars if not more.

Not to mention his committed support for the current oligarch regime and global corporate criminality more broadly.

That being said, I don’t think everyone at Microsoft or Google is evil, but a far larger percent of their employees are evil than one would think (i.e. it’s not only the senior executives).

There are specialized niche services/domains in B2B professional services and engineering where it’s honestly difficult to be evil due to the nature of the domain and because it’s B2B.

One could argue you are are still enabling evil companies, which is fair, but at least you’re not really harming anyone.

I could place orders without giving my contact details or payment.

This isn’t a “vibe coding” issue. This is just basic laziness/fraud. Even with vibe coding, you can get by if the project is simple, you know the business/operational elements of the domain, you aggressively test the solution and are aware of at least common edge cases.

Sounds a bit too good to be true.

These genre of articles “China invents magical technological” has become very popular in the last 5 years.

Not saying this isn’t a massive breakthrough or that fundamental research isn’t important (it very much is), but one should always maintain a critical posture to such things.

Trash tier “article”.

You might as well go for the original BBC interview, while looks to be only in audio for now.

Waterworld

A 90s Kevin Costner classic

Data centre capacity, they seem to be making an emphasis on access to independent power sources.

member of a group of wealthy individuals wielding sovereign power

This doesn’t seem right. Russian oligarchs do not wield sovereign power, yet they are still oligarchs.

They wield power, but the term sovereign doesn’t seem appropriate.

Believe it or not, but there are externalities to the polemics you are describing.

The ostentatious posturing (I am a tiny minority that is virtuous, everyone else just wants to punish people and doesn’t want the law to apply to everyone equally) is pretty ignorant. I’ve lived in multiple countries across North America, Europe and Asia, it’s clear that you haven’t thought about this.

It’s comically easy to find well known (locally) examples where even the non polemical version of your arguement doesn’t hold.

EDIT: I would appreciate a counter argument from people who don’t agree. I am genuinely curious, because to me this seems like common sense. And I can provide multiple example from different cultures about why this rhetoric does not sound convincing.

I don’t think the reference to “ostentatious posturing” is uncharitable. Just look at the text. This copytext is pretty standard and clearly aimed at self-aggrandization.

Sure, but he is not an oligarch.

Literally promoting phrenology.

That’s why I said this article was subpar. And I even commented on this in pretty harsh terms:

the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope

I don’t agree with a lot of what they say, but I don’t believe they are malicious, at least to the extent that many American news sources are.

The Economist is generally a pretty good news source, but I thought this article was subpar.

Irrespective of whether this facial evaluation algorithm works or not, as things stand today, it is pointless to discuss its use in the context of meritocracy. A regime founded upon the rejection of personal responsibility, corruption and criminality makes such discussions irrelevant (algorithm or no algorithm).

At the risk of sounding like an accelerationist, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope.

Xi is not an oligarch, to my knowledge, he has always worked in the CCP.

You’re not going to beat the Americans at their own game. It’s a society that does not respect the rule of law, does not believe in true market competition and does not believe in democracy.

If you think I am acting out, consider the following point: recently Meta was found to have directly (in a premeditated manner) promoted scams/frauds that netted them $16B in commission in a single year. We all know that nothing will be done about this even under a hypothetical centre-right US government.

How do we know that? Well was anything done about Microsoft’s anti-competitive behaviour in the 90s?

But for me, the real irony is the polemics about competition and “free market”. In a real free market, MS, Meta, Google would not have hundreds of billions of dollar to burn because competition would drive profit margins to a state of approaching zero. Zuck would not be able to burn $45 B on his weird and disgusting Metaverse Mii autosexuality fetish.

Not a fan of the leadership of China, but I genuinely do believe that one area that we can learn from them is how to deal with oligarchs.

Counter arguement: you need to do your own research/planning/applications and so on. There won’t always be an easy “all inclusive” path. But opportunities are there for those who are looking for them.

That being said, it would massively help to speak at least one other language fluently.

You’re also correct that it’s not easy from a resource perspective. But if people from much poorer countries can make it work, than so can people in the US.