A college class introduced me to “The Birth of a Nation” aka The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan

Did you enjoy it?

Fuck no. It is a deeply messed up racist pile of shit.

It certainly opened my eyes to it’s place in history.

Since the film itself is best left to the trash heap of forgotten awfulness, here’s two points from Wikipedia that feel worth remembering:

• “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history”
• was the first motion picture to be screened inside the White House (for President Woodrow Wilson)

If I recall correctly, it has been released for moile on and off as experimental builds. Last time I grabbed an APK, it wasn’t ready.

Put any person who has zero computer experience in front of a windows computer or Linux computer and I doubt they would say the windows computer just works and the Linux one doesn’t.

I did this experiment on my own kids. They find Linux more usable, and find it hard to believe people tolerate Windows.

There’s also some indoctrination involved.

But they have access to both, and they prefer Linux. I think that the “Windows is genuinely easier” argument doesn’t hold any water anymore.

Sure, but it’s not quite the compelling argument it used to be.

Today, I’m not sitting here pining for old Linux software that stopped working. And the small amount of old windows software that did finally stop working actually works now only works on Linux with Wine.

That’s another of the decision points that finally switched to fully favoring Linux, for me, in the last decade.

There is such a law, but many of us feel that Microsoft has proven malice a few times, when it comes to open standards.

We can take action. We can grab the die that Joel McHale has tossed into the air.

It also could be they’re both liars and incompetent.

if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.

In fairness, it can be expensive to stock the holy water necessary to fend off the demons that inhabit all printers.

I’ll wait and see if they can add some AI to it. But if they can, I’ll invest my entire life savings.

I see you subscribe to the Wolfwood school of pacifism: “I didn’t kill anyone!”

Yes. That’s what AI actually adds - plausible deniability.

My partner and I used to use location sharing pretty much 100% of the time. We just felt better knowing we could find each other.

But today, we do not, because the trust is shattered.

Google just cannot be trusted with our locations.

I agree. But I mean, WordPress and SquareSpace already did that for about 98% of web traffic. It was a big part of the .Com Boom and Bust.

But we keep coming up with new stuff to build web software for, and there’s still plenty of web developer jobs. And there’s still so so many many shit websites.

Today’s AI can only remix, not do the new stuff. Maybe it’ll get good enough to tackle the novel new stuff, someday. I doubt I’ll live to see it, if it happens.

The root of my crankiness is: If we’re about to no longer need developers, I should be seeing widespread websites whose search, cart and checkout actually work correctly every time.

The snake oil salesmen are bragging that the era of carpentry has ended, from on top of a wooden stage that is falling to pieces with each step.

I would say, it can only get better, but it can really go both ways from here.

why do you guys always just move the goalposts?

“Vibe coding” has a pretty specific definition, which includes not understanding the code. So writing tests, or correcting the code both disqualify a piece of work from being technically “vibe coded”.

“yes”, “no”, and “ship” is hilarious.

Knowing it (well, appearing to, by regurgitating the average) better than many developers, pretty soon. A huge number of us know disturbingly little about how computers actually work. (Edit: Sorry, I’m being needlessly unkind to a bunch of us, since as Snoogums said, the current stuff doesn’t actually know anything at all, yet.)

Knowing it better than top developers is a science fiction fantasy singularity daydream.

And even Heinlein’s and Asimov’s post singularity fiction novels acknowledged that there would likely be roles for expert humans.

But for how much longer?

How much longer will we need people who understand how things work?

kindness seems pretty exclusive to white people.

I suppose big portions of history would nod quietly at this, if they could.

With maybe a clarifying note that the real goal was classism, and racism was just a convenient way to achieve more classism.

THANK YOU. I AM PLEASED TO JOIN THIS DISCUSSION AMONG FELLOW NON-ROBOTS.

" ((Candidate who Lost)) ((Previous Election Year))" bumper stickers after it has been a few years.

It feels needlessly divisive.

Although I saw a “Bob Dole '96” in the wild recently, and I kind of grudgingly admire that level of procrastination.