This joke is pretty damned old at this point. This video was posted 15 years ago, but I think I saw it earlier than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3avaYymFHrE

and prevents alphabet agencies from just brute forcing into your Laptop or whatever

Inserting relevant XKCD as is required by internet law: https://xkcd.com/538/

They are trolling, it doesn’t matter at all.

A table saw is for lengthwise cuts, for cutting long things like these you need a cut-off saw.

Fun fact, you don’t really need to tap soft aluminium like this. You can just drive the bolt straight in with an impact driver. I thought it was sketch at first, having always tapped them beforehand. But my buddy said it’s a waste of time, just drive the bolts in right away. So I tried it and he was right, it works perfectly every time. They form perfect threads so you can easily remove and re-add the bolt just like when it was tapped beforehand.

Is that a tail or a penis?

Or, you know, FUCKING DEAD

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What’s that Zuck? You are in the pool and the ladder has somehow vanished? Oh no… how terrible for you…

The ways they say they are going to use AI is exactly what they said was causing harm. If that isn’t hypocrisy, what is?

They call out the issues, only to completely ignore those issues in their own use.

Good video, one bit of criticism tho.

They state that AI summarizes websites instead of sending those website traffic, which is true. This is obviously a bad thing, since those websites can’t exist without that traffic (on top of being bombarded with requests from bots collecting data for AI training). They also state AI plagiarizes without giving credit, also a true and bad thing. But then on the part where they explain how they are going to use AI, they say they will use it to write little scripts for their animations and such. And as a quick Google alternative.

Have to call out the hypocrisy here. Those things you said were bad, that contribute to the end of the web and the end of your channel, you are going to simply use? OK it’s a good thing you aren’t going to use the AI in the research and writing stage of the video, but elsewhere is just fine?

we end up with lost history

Oof, I felt this in my soul

There are a couple of things I do agree with in regards to the comments in code. They aren’t meant as a replacement for documentation. Documentation is still required to explain more abstract overview kind of stuff, known limitations etc. If your class has 3 pages of text in comments at the top, that would probably be better off in the documentation. When working with large teams there are often people who need to understand what the code can and can’t do, how edge cases are handled etc. but can’t read actual code. By writing proper documentation, a lot of questions can be avoided and often help coders as well with a better understanding of the system. Writing doc blocks in a matter that can be extracted into a documentation helps a lot as well, but I feel that does provide an easy way out to not write actual documentation. Of course depending on the situation this might not matter or one might not care, it’s something that comes up more when working in large teams.

Just like writing code, writing proper comments is a bit of an art. I’ve very often seen developers be way too verbose, commenting almost every line with the literal thing the next line does. Anyone who can read the code can see what it does. What we can’t see is why it does this or why it doesn’t do it in some other obvious way. This is something you see a lot with AI generated code, probably because a lot of their training was done on tutorials where every line was explained so people learning can follow along.

This also ties in with keeping comments updated and accurate when changing code. If the comment and the code doesn’t match with each other, which one is true? I’ve in the past worked on legacy codebases where the comments were almost always traps. The code didn’t match the comments at all, sometimes obviously so, most times only very subtle. We were always guessing was the implementation meant to be the comment and the difference just a mistake? The codebase was riddled with bugs, so it’s likely. Or was the code changed at a later point on purpose and the comments neglected?

Luckily these days we have good tools in regards to source control, with things like feature branches, pull requests with tools that allow for discussion and annotation. That way at least usually the origin of a change is traceable. And code review can be applied before the change is merged, so mistakes like neglecting comments can be caught.

Now I don’t agree with the principle of no comments at all. Just because a tool has some issues and limitations doesn’t mean it gets banned from our toolbox. But writing actual useful comments is very hard and can be just as hard as writing good code. Comments also aren’t a cheat card for writing bad code, the code needs to stand on its own and be enhanced by the comments.

It’s one of those things we’ve been arguing about over my entire 40 year career. I don’t think there is a right way. Whatever is best depends on the person, the team, the system etc. And like with many things, there are people who are good and people who suck. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Yes context is very important in Dutch. Which is why translations are almost always off. A Dutch speaker can almost instantly recognize whether a translation was done by someone with a native speaking level, or a machine. That’s why a lot of Dutch folk prefer English on their computers and phones. The Dutch translations are often terrible, or as the Dutch would say “tenenkrommend”.

Dutch is also a language you can very easily unlearn, even as a native speaker. I’ve experienced this firsthand, where I mostly use English and German every day. My Dutch has gotten terrible over the years.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of how weird the Dutch are. See this translation isn’t really accurate, “Geef me een klap papa” translates to “Hit me father”. A more accurate translation would be: “Geef me billenkoek pappie”. (Even though this stil isn’t completely accurate, the daddy thing got borrowed from US culture, so would still be daddy even in Dutch)

Now this might be a bit stranger, but not all that different. However when we zoom in on the word billenkoek it gets real weird. Just like other languages, for example German, the Dutch can just omit spaces and create longer and longer compound words. Billenkoek is one of those words, comprised of two words namely “billen” and “koek”. The first word translates to buttocks, which makes sense, spanking involves hitting the butt. However the second word doesn’t have a direct translation in English, but is a collection term enveloping baked goods such as cookies and certain kinds of cake. So it could be translated into “butt cake” .

What do spanking and cakes have to do with each other? And what exactly is a butt cake? Who knows, the Dutch are just very very weird.

(for all my etymology nerds, the term comes from rewarding good children with cookies and bad children with a different sort of cookies, namely corporal punishment)

The thing that annoys me about this, is the BS Monsanto is pulling puts GMO in a bad light. Humans have been genetically manipulating crops and animals for thousands of years. But in the past it was a messy, slow and imprecise process. These days we have the tools to quickly and precisely adjust what we need to adjust. This is and has been critical for supporting the number of people alive today. Faster growing crops, with better yields, more resistance to diseases and climate change. GMO is absolutely a tool that we need and should continue to use.

But these days so many people believe that when a crop or animal has been genetically modified, it’s somehow less healthy to eat. There has been a real wave of people who listen to social media about what is healthy and what is not. Blaming things that are perfectly fine, neutral or even good for you, on a precieved poor health. In reality we (especially in rich countries) are healthier than ever. These people look to things like ‘organic’ or weird diets such as Paleolithic (but instead of berries and nuts they eat like a cows worth of meat each day) to improve their lives. Companies that used to use chemicals created by mixing some precursors in a clean reactor, are switching over to organic sources. This might sound like a good thing, but I’ve seen them genetically modify insect that already create the chemical they need in their shells to create lots of that chemical. The insects get bred, boiled and filtered and the chemical is extracted. This leads to a less pure product, with more contaminants, a larger cost, a bigger impact on the environment and more bio-industry. And it’s often a chemical that’s very common and has been in use for over 50 years with zero impact on health.

Well you might say, let people do their own thing, it’s a free country right? Yes, but also no. People having weird diets or listening to Facebook to put olive oil on a dry patch of skin is fine. But it’s a slippery slope. These people are losing their faith in science and truth, but instead rely on whatever people say on social media. A place where more and more scammers are active, saying whatever just to get clicks, get sponsors or actively scam people out of their money. This slope then extends into something like homeopathic medicine and nature healing. Which has convinced people in the past that needed real medicine to instead opt for the “natural” option. People have died because of this.

In the past I was still in the camp of let the people chose, who am I to say what is the truth for other people? I don’t have all the answers, if they want to do something stupid, that’s on them. I also do stupid stuff all the time, just in other ways, should I be disallowed from living my life as I want to? But then the pandemic happened and the people listening to social media instead of science and government started to shout we shouldn’t be in lock down, we shouldn’t use masks, we shouldn’t vaccinate. So my view changed, it’s so easy for people to trust what’s being said on social media. Foreign actors abuse social media to influence the people, destabilize countries and impact elections. Scammers convince people of nonsense, just to get a few bucks. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I have started to believe we actively need a solution.

Seeing a large company like Monsanto abuse GMO in the ways they do pisses me off. We do not need to feed the fire against using tools like this. We desperately need those tools if we want to continue to exist in the numbers we are today. They should be made an example of and their abuse should be stopped.