I didn't realize that an 805 meter wide asteroid has enough gravitation pull to drag along a 170 meter wide asteroid (and vice versa, as they orbit around each other).
Honestly, I thought you were quoting an SNL skit, but now I see this quote in a transcript from his 2026 state of the union speech.
That being said, over my lifetime I've heard many TV talking heads, people I assume are much more well informed than me, claim that presidents don't really have that much to do with the state of the economy, despite the levers they pull, and it's all a matter of timing whether they reap the benefits of a good economy or get pummelled for a bad economy. That doesn't stop them from taking credit when things are good (or pretending that things are great with things are actually pretty meh).
Arguably never has their been a Potus willing to destroy the economy. Potus can pull levers to try and boost the economy which is more or less at the whim of everyone else participating. That is the truth that was being referred to before. Now we have a Potus bent on destroying it so the levers he pulls are actually effecting the economy in ways. But he still doesn’t control it.
Presidents don't. That's because presidents don't unilaterally dictate trade policy, or start wars, or micromanage immigration policy. Congress is supposed to do the work of running the country. However, this president has side stepped all the usual ways that the US runs under the guise of "emergency" powers.
In my 20s and 30s, I used to turn on the TV to cover up my tinnitus so I could fall asleep. The TV probably didn't help the quality of my sleep, so maybe that's why my tinnitus got progressively worse (especially in my right ear). Once I got a TV with a sleep timer, I would set it so the TV wouldn't be on all night.
My tinnitus is much worse now, but I don't have a TV in my room anymore, so I just play a podcast on my iPad. That tiny built-in speaker doesn't really cover up the tinnitus, but the voices lull me to sleep (which is probably what the TV was doing all along).
I had no idea I was in such an exclusive group back in 2000. Everyone I knew was a software engineer or in tech one way or another so I suppose I got a warped sense that I belonged to a larger group.
I'm not sure the nation wide raw statistics are that reliable in the field of software engineering without interpretation.
In the 90s tons of people who were de facto software engineers were listed as "Information Technology Workers". I suspect a lot of that still hasn't been shaken out of the system.
According to the BLS in the year 2000 there were 3.4 million information technology workers.
BLS had some classification changes over the years. I think it's interesting in the "this is how people thought about the role over the decades."
Today there are computer programmers (15-1251), and software developers (15-1252), and web developers (15-1254).
In 2018, there was a reclassification - https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/oflc/Presentation... where 15-1132, Software Developers, Applications and 15-1133, Software Developers, Systems
Software where reclassified into the software developers (15-1252) group.
The other thing that confuses this is that a lot of positions were classified as Computer systems analysts because that's a position that a TN visa can be hired for (there is no software engineer in there... and it wasn't until relatively recently that one could be a "software engineer" in Canada without being an Engineer.
Computer programmers 1010 15-1131
Software developers, applications and systems software 1020 15-1132, 15-1133
Where the "Computer programmer" was the more junior classification and Software developers working on a word processor were classified differently than a software developer working on the operating system... and they were the more senior positions.
Software Developers
Research, design, and develop computer and network software or specialized utility programs. Analyze user needs and develop software solutions, applying principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis. Update software or enhance existing software capabilities. May work with computer hardware engineers to integrate hardware and software systems, and develop specifications and performance requirements. May maintain databases within an application area, working individually or coordinating database development as part of a team.
Computer Programmer
Create, modify, and test the code and scripts that allow computer applications to run. Work from specifications drawn up by software and web developers or other individuals. May develop and write computer programs to store, locate, and retrieve specific documents, data, and information.
I'm glad I am no longer in tech because I just don't want to do this.
This is not a dig at AI. If I take this article at face value, AI makes people more productive, assuming they have the taste and knowledge to steer their agents properly. And that's possibly a good thing even though it might have temporary negative side effects for the economy.
>But the AI is writing the traversal logic, the hashing layers, the watcher loops,
But unfortunately that's the stuff I like doing. And also I like communing with the computer: I don't want to delegate that to an agent (of course, like many engineers I put more and more layers between me and the computer, going from assembly to C to Java to Scala, but this seems like a bigger leap).
I'm a developer who was made redundant, and I'm now casting around for an entirely new job because, likewise, I have no interest in working with AI. It sounds boring, and the concept squicks me out, to be honest.
as of this moment I
officially resigned from my job as
software engineer and will take up work
on the farm shoveling pig shit and
administering anal suppositories to sick
horses because that will be a thousand
times more tolerable than being in the
same industry as dipshits like you
Currently computer networking or perhaps security. Or something else. In an ideal world, I go back to college and retrain as a sign language interpreter. But I can't afford that.
I work in tech, and I think the worst part is seeing all the pieces of catastrophe that have had to come together to make AI dominate
There's several factors which are super depressing:
1. Economic productivity, and what it means for a company to be successful have become detached from producing good high quality products. The stock market is the endgame now
2. AI is attempting to strongly reject the notion that developers understanding their code is good. This is objectively wrong, but its an intangible skill that makes developers hard to replace, which is why management is so desperate for it
3. Developers had too much individual power, and AI feels like a modern attempt at busting the power of the workforce rather than a genuine attempt at a productivity increase
4. It has always been possible to trade long term productivity for short term gains. Being a senior developer means understanding this tradeoff, and resisting management pressure to push something out NOW that will screw you over later
5. The only way AI saves time in the long term is if you don't review its output to understand it as well as if you'd written it yourself. Understanding the code, and the large scale architecture is critical. Its a negative time savings if you want to write high-long-term-productivity code, because we've introduced an extra step
6. Many developers simply do not care about writing good code unfortunately, you just crank out any ol' crap. As long as you don't get fired, you're doing your job well enough. Who cares about making a product anymore, it doesn't matter. AI lets you do a bad job with much less effort than before
7. None of this is working. AI is not causing projects to get pushed out faster. There are no good high quality AI projects. The quality of code is going down, not up. Open source software is getting screwed
Its an extension of the culture where performance doesn't matter. Windows is all made of react components which are each individually a web browser, because the quality of the end product no longer matters anymore. Software just becomes shittier, because none of these companies actually care about their products. AAA gaming is a good example of this, as is windows, discord, anything google makes, IBM, Intel, AMD's software etc
A lot of this is a US problem, because of the economic conditions over there and the prevalence of insane venture capitalism and union busting. I have a feeling that as the EU gets more independent and starts to become a software competitor, the US tech market is going to absolutely implode
I can't read the article, but Jack Dorsey said on twitter (seen via nitter):
"we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly."
and
"i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. "
I have no idea what these AI tools are that enable a company to lay off nearly half of its staff. That's not a dig at AI tools: I just have no reason or interest to go near them, so I really don't know what they are (beyond the headlines about vibe coding and agents with souls).
I actually just got rid of my landline (most recently a VOIP line) after having one for maybe 40 years (in one form or another). I am so late to the party that the thing I thought was old is now new again.
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