If you walk into someone’s home and it’s full of the latest and greatest tech, that’s a tech enthusiast. If you walk in and the most advanced piece of tech is a printer from 2005, that might be a senior software engineer.

As an engineer, I can understand your sentiment. Unfortunately, it’s a field that attracts a lot of smart and socially awkward people. Those whose heads enjoy engineering challenges often lack self awareness, and it results in either being really awkward or being obnoxious, or both. The “good ones” are less loud, so you don’t hear from them as much.

Marketing is an industry built around manipulating people to buy things they otherwise wouldn’t be interested in buying. There’s no redeeming quality; the entire premise is shitty.

Assemblers can come from the CPU manufacturer, but they can also come from a third party. They’re most often bundled into the compiler, since it’s rare to need to compile without also assembling (many compilers skip the assembly step and convert directly to machine code). There’s actually a third tool involved I didn’t mention, which is a Linker (takes pieces of machine code and combines them together, so you can separate your software into different parts).

Some CPUs are more niche, and the assemblers/compilers for them sometimes are created by the manufacturer. But there are a few “standard” processor architectures that many CPUs follow, and because they’re common between many brands of CPU (and the architectures are published and well known), the compilers are often created by third parties. And there are some compilers (like gcc) that can compile to dozens of different architectures.

As an example, you might have heard terms like x86, x86_64, armv7, or RISC-V – these are all processor “architectures”, which means that any processor that meets a particular architecture can run machine code built for that architecture. Currently, x86/64 architectures are common among desktops and most laptops (Intel and AMD processors), while ARM architectures are common for tablets and phones and some laptops (Snapdragon processors, for example).

It might be helpful to understand the connection between hardware and software better. There are various ways we can create something that a machine can interpret that have evolved over time. We group these into “generations.”

Generation 1: writing machine code directly. Either using things like punch cards, or typing in the 1s and 0s directly (more likely hex code, but close enough). This is difficult and error prone, because it’s hard for us to make sense of it. So we came up with…

Generation 2: human-readable machine instructions (aka assembly). We write code in something that’s easier for us to understand, but it’s still explicit instructions to the processor. Then we use a software tool (an assembler) to convert that to machine code. Assembly is still specific to the processor and requires knowledge of exactly what registers are available and such. And then we thought: what if we could write software in a generic way that could work on any processor? So we came up with…

Generation 3: procedural code. With this, we create a new language that is independent of any processor, which means we’re not giving direct instructions anymore. Instead, we specify a general procedure, and that generic code is passed through a new tool (a compiler) which converts the generic code to processor-specific instructions. When people say “I’m a programmer” they usually mean Gen 3 programming.

There are additional generations, but this should help provide a background as to why a language like C exists and how it relates to the actual hardware.

A statement like while (1) might not seem terribly elegant, but that’s because it probably wasn’t anticipated to be a common use case when the language was created. A normal while loop would likely be converted into something like a jnz (jump if not zero) instruction, checking the result of the argument, but any modern compiler would likely convert while(1) to a simple jmp (jump, no conditions) instruction.

I understand your fascination with the point where software and hardware meet. I did my undergrad in electrical engineering, and there was one class where we used a simulator to take transistors (the simplest eletrical “switches”), build logic gates from the transistors, then build processor components like registers and a math processor from the logic gates, then finally a simple calculator out of those components. Super cool.

As a Canadian who recently moved back to Canada from the US, I’m gonna throw my anecdotal evidence around and say this is horseshit. Even my tax person has said she’s never seen so many returning Canadians in her decades of work.

Information pollution.

Saying “AI pollution” would be like saying “microplastics pollution” – we generally refer to the thing being polluted, not the pollutant.

You might be able to use something like distrobox instead of a full VM. That would at least put it in a container that you could either run from an encrypted partition or something.

Different users would be the “simple” way you’d normally do something like this under Linux. But if your regular users have sudo access, you can’t really lock anything down.

I looked into WiFi 7 a few months ago, doesn’t seem ready for OpenWRT.

I got a Cudy WR3000 and a couple of M3000s, and they’ve been great. The manufacturer provides OpenWRT images to flash, and the coverage is great. And they have PoE access points available as well. Tried with both a wireless and wired backhaul.

0.224, less than a quarter.

Got your attention dinnit

society as we know it is at risk

They say this as if it’s a bad thing.

Oh no, our wonderful society with absurd wealth distribution and normalized pedophile leaders is at risk? Albert, fetch me my pearls that I may clutch them!

Pain. It notifies you that your body is injured in some way, and generally in what area so that you can do something about it.

That being said, I think your original premise is oversimplified. I agree that emotions aren’t instructions, but they’re more than notifications–they’re part of the inner workings of our brains that can happen for a multitude of reasons. The common denominator is that most of them help us survive in some way.

It’s okay, he’ll just get another one.

Believing that poverty is a moral failure. Though that’s been an issue for millenia.

I hope to one day be a boullionaire

I just spoke to my coworkers about this yesterday. It is a useful analogy.

Imagine you walk into work one day, and your boss explains that you have a new coworker. His name is Dave. Dave is very eager to do work, but needs constant and unceasing direction. Dave is being hired on contract through a firm, and your boss very excitedly informs you that they only have to pay Dave pennies per hour, which means your boss fired half of your team. When you ask whether the firm will eventually charge more for Dave’s services, you are brushed off and told that you’re “afraid of progress.”

When you log in to start working, you find a new email from IT. They’ve put a lot of new policies into place. Now, in order to send an email with an attachment, your boss has to manually approve it. You may no longer upload files to anywhere on the internet. You used to be able to install software that passed the security checks on your own, now you need to file a ticket for manual review. When you ask your boss about these new policies, he informs you that it’s because Dave had, on several occasions at other companies, sent nonsensical emails to clients. Dave had also deleted one company’s entire customer database; and at another company, he had uploaded a lot of sensitive information to a public server. When Dave was instructed to not send sensitive data outside the company, he apologized profusely and enthusiastically agreed to never do that again. He then proceeded to do it again. Hence, the information lockdown policy. You ask your boss if this won’t negatively affect productivity, but your boss assures you that Dave will more than make up for it.

Dave proves to be sickeningly productive, and never ceases rigidly smiling. He constantly affirms how correct you are on everything. Out of curiosity, you try obliquely contradicting yourself. Then you try convincing Dave that the sky is colored magenta. After some very mild pushback, Dave affirms the validity of your statements. Your boss likes Dave.

You ask him to read and summarize a stack of reports, and Dave returns in about a minute with a succinct writeup. Dave’s writing style is incredibly verbose and he uses certain words and phrases weirdly often, but whatever. Later, you ask Dave to do a search on power suppliers in the area. Dave returns a minute later with a large list of power adapters, their detailed specifications, and where they are manufactured. You clarify your request and send him back. Dave returns, and after one more round of clarification, he manages to get the information you requested. You probably could have done that in less time yourself, but Dave’s a new hire and some learning is to be expected.

But unlike other new hires, Dave doesn’t get any better over time. There are some tasks he can do well and quite quickly, but he clearly doesn’t understand the gist of what you’re actually doing. For every minute of time he saves you, you find you’re spending at least as much time directing him or fixing his work. Once in a while, he’ll spout gibberish for a few minutes, and you’ll have to walk out of the room and back in to restart the conversation from the beginning. And whenever you ask Dave a question, he responds with absolute confidence in his answers (even though you discover that an alarming number of them are completely made up). Unless you contradict him, in which case he will immediately and unquestionably forfeit his previous position to adopt yours. Dave’s firm ensures you that they are continuing to train Dave further. You wonder where the trainer’s paychecks are coming from.

Your workload becomes overwhelming because your boss fired half of your team. Whenever you attempt to bring this up with your boss, you are instructed to make Dave do it. You express concern that there are some things Dave can’t do well despite your best attempts at direction. Your boss looks at you skeptically, then calls Dave into the room and asks him if he can accomplish the task you’re working on. Dave assures your boss that he can do it. You are dismissed from the meeting, and your boss spends some time listening to Dave tell him how great of a boss he is.

Dave doesn’t seem to have much concept of personal space. You are constantly finding that he’s looking over your shoulder at your work. When you address his presence, he makes suggestions about how to improve your work. Sometimes he suggests that you eat an entire jar of mayonaise. When you book a conference room and close the door behind you, you’re suprised to see messages come in from Dave offering further suggestions (plus an apology about the mayonaise, realizing he never considered whether you might have an egg allergy). When you ask IT why Dave seems to have access to your PC at all times, they respond that it’s part of the new policies.

Would you want to work with Dave?

They do.