Is anyone actually surprised by this? It’s one of those things that any semi-competent programmer could have told you would be the case. The study just formalizes it and adds specifics.

Thing is, that means you don’t really own the hardware that you buy, because a corporation is dictating what you can do with it even though it doesn’t belong to them. Most of us consider that unacceptable.

Pretty noticeable that Gentoo Linux doesn’t offer an option to compile OnlyOffice locally—it’s only available as a -bin package, which means that it’s precompiled by upstream. That tells me that either the available source is too incomplete to actually compile the software from, or it has some really strange licensing. Either way, it can’t be open-source software in the accepted sense.

The chain of trust starts with the owner of the hardware, not some random corporation that happens to make an OS. The owner can, if they wish, outsource the root of the chain of trust to a corporation, but that should be an active decision on their part, not something that happens just because the hardware was shipped with some random OS preloaded.

. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can’t pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.

Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.

Actually, I’d interpret it as him losing his job in 18 months regardless of whether he succeeds or fails, since management is a white-collar job.

How concerned should I be when the documentation for complex devices coming out of China always seems to be so bad that no one except the people who designed them can program them anyway?

Telemedicine: better than nothing, already used a fair amount in the more inaccessible parts of Canada (ideally in combination with a nursing station so there’s someone with some training available to do things that absolutely need hands on location).

AI medicine: likely worse than nothing, some people are going to get killed.

They do make hardware in most of those categories, actually, but they don’t sell much of it direct to consumer in the West. And unfortunately, the way things are going, they’re going to be able to get better prices for it from the AI-entranced idiots too.

They’re really optimizing for the income of the people who make the apps. No surprise there.

And thus begins the three-legged race between imaged-based age verification and kids. (Prediction: the kids will win, but it will take the other side a looooong time to admit it.)

LLMs need to have the same warnings attached as the old psychic hotlines: “Must be 18. For entertainment only.”

That being said, I’m not sure that this is any more ridiculous than an ad asking for ten years’ experience with a piece of software that’s only existed for three. HR departments have never had much contact with reality.

With the LLM pushers driving hardware prices through the roof, will any of us be able to afford these?

Speaking based on my own PC in that era: it had 512MB RAM and the video card was capable of running FFVII PC version with hardware drivers, so there was some very modest and primitive 3D capability buried in there somewhere. I believe the CPU was a ~500 MHz P3, so I’ll grant you that one, and the one about RAM speed. Well, I did only claim they were “somewhat similar”.

Wi-Fi 7 Marketing is Lying About it’s Biggest Feature

Truth in advertising is pretty much nonexistent these days. Assume they’re lying until proven otherwise.

Except that it isn’t really the first iteration of any of those things. Java did most of 'em more than a quarter century ago: browser-embedable, multiple languages could target the JVM, and, yes, sandboxed—the only issue was startup (not runtime) performance. That wasm doesn’t share those startup performance woes makes it useful, but not revolutionary.

As for tiny environments, a typical desktop system from around 1999 is somewhat similar to a Pi Zero W in terms of ability.

At that point, you’ve put multiple man-hours into analyzing the response required to placate it, and it isn’t a “cheap” device anymore. Easier to return it.

Double your traffic congestion, or your money back!

. . . or not, since I’ve never heard of Tesla voluntarily refunding anything.

If they’re auditing that many of them, there will be a queue, too.

Only in the US. But they do tend to be measured and sold by volume (rather than weight) in contexts like farmer’s markets and pick-your-own operations.