I am in software and a software engineer, but the least of my concerns is being replaced by an LLM any time soon.

• I don’t hate LLMs, they are just a tool and it does not make sense at all to hate a LLM the same way it does not make sense to hate a rock

• I hate the marketing and the hype for several reasons:

  • You use the term AI/LLM in the posts title: There is nothing intelligent about LLMs if you understand how they work
  • The craziness about LLMs in the media, press and business brainwashes non technical people to think that there is intelligence involved and that LLMs will get better and better and solve the worlds problems (possible, but when you do an informed guess, the chances are quite low within the next decade)
  • All the LLM shit happening: Automatic translations w/o even asking me if stuff should be translated on websites, job loss for translators, companies hoping to get rid of experienced technical people because LLMs (and we will have to pick up the slack after the hype)
  • The lack of education in the population (and even among tech people) about how LLMs work, their limits and their usages…

LLMs are at the same time impressive (think jump to chat-gpt 4), show the ugliest forms of capitalism (CEOs learning, that every time they say AI the stock price goes 5% up), helpful (generate short pieces of code, translate other languages), annoying (generated content) and even dangerous (companies with the money can now literally and automatically flood the internet/news/media with more bullshit and faster).

Java is IMHO one of the most underrated platforms outside of enterprise environments.

Most people also forget, that Java is not only a language, but also a platform, an ecosystem and active research is applied to many parts of Java.

Concerning Oracle: OpenJDK is actively supported by very different but big and capable companies (IBM, Amazon, Eclipse Foundation…). The quality of the language, libraries and documentation needs people which are payed to work on this, full time.

Bring to this the free IDEs one can get for Java - Eclipse and Netbeans are a little bit old school, but offer everything to build/debug and develop complex software.

Java is not my favorite programming language, but when I want to write interesting software and ensure it will be running for the next decade w/o significant changes, Java is really hard to beat.

Of course, in hindsight we know how to do a lot of things better as they were done in Java. Still, what other open source Language/Platform/documentation with the backing of capable companies and really independent and interoperable builds are out there?

One last note to all people which were damaged by Java in university or school: Usually the teachers/professors/lecturers have no real world experience of software development besides the usually university projects, and for the usual university projects which basically means getting small to midsize projects to run Java is total overkill.

Don’t confuse this with real world software projects in the industry, which are mission critical and need to work a decade from now on. Java was always a bread and butter language, but one which learned from other languages and even the verbosity makes sense, once one dives into code written a few years back by another person.

• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
• Slay the Spire
• Tetris Effect, Connected
• OpenXCom
• Olli Olli

Thanks, you are spot on: Playing Street Fighter 6 casually and even bought a SteamDeck to have a computer with enough power to run it. :-) For me it is the 3rd, after 3rd Strike (ha ;-)) which hooked me, although I have to confess Fightcarde and 3rd Strike are still peak Street Fighter for me. Street Fighter IV never ‘clicked’ for me, and I didn’t like the presentation of Street Fighter V at all.

Hope we run into each other in an online match, though I hail from Europe so we might not be in the same region.

Yeah, for DS1, I totally respect the artistic vision and that they simply created a game against the trends (back then) … at the same time I made it trough the swamp under the Orc-City w/o the ring which allows immunity to the swamp poison. When I looked up how to get this ring (back to the Asylum) I was just like: WTF, I have a real life, how should I have figured this out by myself? … this turned me away, although I still have a lot of respect and love for DS1!

• Street Fighter II in basically any edition. Was my entry point in fighting games and to this day it just feels ‘right’
• Street Fighter III, 3rd Strike (It is that good and to this day one of the highlights)
• Slay the Spire
• Contra (NES)
• Super Mario Brothers (NES) (What an utterly brilliant game)
• Castlevania 3 (NES)
• Vampyre Survivors (Ok, maybe just pure dopamine addiction)
• Sudoku
• Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster
• XCOM
• Open X-COM
• Olli Olli
• rogue
• Tetris
• Into the breach … and Quake

Contra (NES) is my all-time-favorite action game, ever. Just the absolute perfect pacing and difficulty. Back in the day I could basically play it endlessly and flawlessly. Just the perfect game to relax and have a good time.

Nice, what an underrated gem of a game! One of my favorite NES cartridges back in the day! I have never played anything like it afterwards. Any recommendations for a combination of Zelda and Top-Down shooter beside Guardian Legend?

Yay, on of my top 5 games of all time! :-) I just cannot play it as a comfort game, when I replay it, I have to have time for uninterrupted immersion and enjoyment of this masterpiece! :-)

Scrolled too far down to find one of my favorite comfort games… bought it multiple times so I can play it on every device I own. Works perfectly on everything from my smartphone over my netbook, laptop to my SteamDeck. Just brilliant game design and I am looking forward to part 2! :-)

Shame on me, never finished even Dark Souls 1, but damn I had a lot of fun failing and dying. :-)

Nice, and I fully agree: The best turn based 4x Civ I have played so far. Music, fractions and the story are all perfect. The factions play quite different and allow for diverse strategies to win. Surprised that there are not more copy-cats that try to pull it off.

… I do not want to argue with you and Linux hardware support certainly is much better than decades ago (I was there, I know :-P) … but even my hardware, which was bought with Linux support in mind, I have several problems… one of my laptops WIFI card has problems with Linux sleep mode, one of my Lenovo machines has audio trouble with the microphone after being used for longer online calls and the list goes on. I hope that I am just very unlucky with my hardware picks, but when you have known hardware components in a mass produced device like Google Pixel, I hope we get Apple level support of hardware.

Unless you invested a lot of money and time, you are certainly already running an OS with a lot of BLOBs at the most important parts (WIFI driver, etc).

Given AOSP and a decent smartphone, I am basically at exactly the same level I am with running Linux on my desktop. Actually, the smartphone could be better, if it is a Pixel, because at least I’ll have 100% hardware support. … and again, AFAIK one will be able to run Debian in a virtual environment.

Long story short: I would never buy hardware with vendor lock in, but middle to high class Android smartphones are actually standardized hardware which run excellent with Linux. Total win for me.

To the best of my knowledge they give you a full Debian Linux in a container. Combine this with AOSP, and IMHO this is totally cool. Especially since my Netbook has worse specs than my current smartphone! :-)

lol I take it as a compliment, because my country of origin is not known for its kitchen. :-P

Basically everything sweet with hot seasoning. One of my favorites: Mango with Chili! :-)

When was the US the last time a democracy?

You can vote democrats or republicans, which mostly get bankrolled by the same rich assholes. As a normal citizen of the US you have almost no influence at politics at all, because the media is controlled by rich people, the biggest internet platforms are controlled by rich people, elections are paid for by rich people, …

The current situation is not a spontaneous, miraculous, magical result of Trump and his gang, it was years in the making by lobby groups, influential/rich/powerful people and neo liberal brainwashing of the masses.

Same holds true for most other western so called democracies.

Thanks a lot!

Accuracy for the western world and for an academic who comes from the working class. Most people I work with are academics and see things different, because they could always afford a lawyer and/or had and have connections themselves. Their whole life and lived experience tells them another truth.

I feel sad, that I have to disagree with you on the honest signal, I see several problems here:

• Define ‘disinformation’: There are obvious black-is-white lies, but most propaganda in the west is not ‘disinformation’, it is simply emphasizing the facts that favor your point of view. If you add another signal, you are just one more signal producing propaganda (although most probably I would be very happy with your propaganda)
• Cryptography … even IT people have trouble understanding this, and even worse: You cannot solve a social problem with technology
• ‘good people’ - a handful philosophers in the west alone had a very thorough discourse about ‘good’ over the last centuries. The discussion is still going on. ;-)
• One of the most important insights is, that it is harder for a group of people to agree than for a few to take power and enforce it. If this wouldn’t be a human/social truth, our western societies wouldn’t be such a shit show by now.

IMHO one of the roots of the problem is how humans are wired and how bigger societies develop in a sociological way. The best way we have found (so far) is democracy, and AFAIK especially democracy with a mostly even wealth distribution (see the northern countries of Europe). AFAIK it is a social rule, that as soon as a group gets bigger, subgroups will be built. It is a human rule that attractive people will be treated better than non attractive one, you will want to help your friends even when it comes at a cost for someone you don’t even know or dislike.

My recipe would be a more even wealth distribution and a way to stop the wealthy force others to do labor for them. Thanks to police and military, I have the strong feeling, the ones with the guns and military will win.

p.s.: I recommend the following books if the topic interests you:

• The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
• The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems

Thanks a lot for your kind words! :-)

I think it is pretty accurate of the system we have in Germany and perhaps in other western countries.

The problem is, one has to experience for oneself a lot of this things, to really understand them. By the time most people understand enough of the system, they probably have children/other liabilities which force them to play along. (Sadly I am not the exception.)

Life is short and ignorance is bliss.