I also like old carburetors and simple electronics, but we're in the vast, vast minority. Most people want a car they don't have to think about or understand, looks pretty, and will take it to a shop when something goes wrong.
It’s also possible for a system to both be a “carburetor type” while also being well-considered and elegant in design and function so it’s easy to tinker on if you want to, but doesn’t need that 99% of the time. I just don’t think that’s ever been a serious goal of any desktop-oriented Linux distro or DE. They all embrace the complexity and add to or multiply it.
I agree about system design, but I think - especially in the context of your networking example - the complexity lives below the OS and not a case where it's a lack of effort.
Networking protocols, connections, error states, etc are inherently complex and require equally sophisticated handling that linux may not always do. Some software chooses not to handle at all and expose directly to the user - but others like KDE simply lack the millions of dev-hours of polish that Windows and Mac have.
Is it that simple though? There could be so many other reasons. Maybe the particular issue is related to a specific hardware or network configuration that the developers have never run into or can't reproduce.
Linux needs polish for sure, but given a finite amount of time, energy, and money the reasons are likely more complicated than "they don't care"
From my ~25 years of using Gentoo Linux, I'd say that it's exactly what you describe in your first sentence. The complexity is there if you want it, but only if you want it.
Gentoo is quite a bit more work to get set up than other distros, but
* Once you get it set up, it just keeps on going
* If you're already fairly familiar with Linux system administration, the setup process isn't hard... it just involves a lot of waiting, unless you use the distro-provided precompiled packages
* There's really good documentation that walks you through the installation process and leaves you with a computer with a functioning bootloader and kernel, Internet access, and some pointers towards what you might want to install next
ag is also a little more ergonomic with its default flex casing: your query is case-sensitive if it has any uppercase letters, otherwise case-INsensitive. rg defaults to case-sensitive (but does have flags for insensitive and flex casing)
I don't see this mentioned enough! Wood glue will improve the stability massively.
Obviously beds and huge bookshelves might need to come apart again, so use your best judgement. But chairs, dressers, end-tables, etc. are completely worth it.
I've started wood-gluing together my IKEA and other flat-pack furniture to try and increase its usable life since - as you said - it's counterproductive to dis/re-assemble most of it anyways. I've not been at it long enough to claim effectiveness, but so far nothing has started to wobble.
Even the cheapest cardboard-filled IKEA units hold together much better when glued, and makes moving the units less stressful (no more "it's creaking / skewed when I pick it up").
I do the same. I don’t plan to take it apart but wood glue is part of any woodworking shop and I don’t see why assembling Ikea should be qualitatively different. I want my assemblies to stay together, not vibrate, to feel sound. Gluing joints is fundamental.
> AI by Hand is the research publication of By Hand Research, founded by Prof. Tom Yeh. By Hand Research studies model interpretability and explainability at the math and algorithm level. Subscribers receive free new articles and join live seminars. Members get access to our full research library.
How do you know when it's not written by LLM except to take someone's word? If I got caught slopping I'd be too embarassed to admit it. "I wrote it all myself! I actually majored in slick writing and minored in tenuous metaphor."
This entire subsection of the discussion is about the apparent fact that some people just can't tell whether they're reading AI slop or what. And this surely applies to the haters just as much as the lovers.
Anyway, I've no doubt your blog posts from 2009 or whatever were not generated by an LLM. But this fuckin shit right here from 2026 though? LLM. 100%.
(By which I don't mean it generated 100% of it, as there's the odd sentence that sounds vaguely human, just that I am 100% certain that the LLM was allowed to far more than merely breathe on this writing. And that's enough to get me complaining, because it makes it a real headache to read.)
Be grateful. I couldn't spot AI writing for a while, and I was suddenly enjoying reading clear and punchy text about all kinds of topics that people hadn't been talking much about.
Then at some point it "clicked" and I was suddenly unable to not see it. Articles that I had thought sophisticated now came across to me as if they were written in crayon.
Enjoy it while you still can!
(And yes, the article here is very clearly AI written. Great content, written in crayon.)
If we also consider LLM developed software to have exponential growth, then the CVEs will also grow at an exponential (if proportionally limited) rate. Squash some, create some, repeat. An ever revolving door of vulnerabilities. Will they resolve (and patch and deploy) them faster than they can create them? One can hope.
(disclaimer: I'm not anti-ai nor do I think ai automatically makes something bad, _but_...)
To me, it's all fairly human-ai neutral except for this sentence which is oh-so AI cliche and casts doubt on the rest of it:
> This volume of The Art of 64-Bit Assembly closes the gap between a plausible explanation and genuine understanding.
"closes the gap" is a favored phrase by our artificial friends and the phrases "plausible explanation" and "genuine understanding" are just... so ... dramatic for the context.
The rest of it is pretty tame in comparison. In my armchair opinion, I'd guess it's mostly a composite of (professional) human-written/ai-revised and/or vice versa. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I asked for short form functions! Neovim has a ton of apis that accept functions as configuration. Having to write `function(x) return x > 3 end` is so much more annoying than `|x| -> x > 3`. I'd prefer just `|x| x > 3` but alas. I agree that a `|x| -> do ... end` lambda variant is redundant to normal anonymous functions though.
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