Shame that people are down voting you, there's an uncomfortable truth to it I don't think people want to face.

Culture is defined by people not borders- simply crossing an arbitrary line doesn't change someone's beliefs and values.

The immigration boom especially on the West coast has vastly diluted assimilation into American culture- coming from an immigrant, who married into another family of immigrants- too many people move here and stick to their own cultural enclave, building a version of their home country in miniature instead of trying to integrate.

It's been years since I've read it but iirc the difference between the book and movie is that in the book voting is limited to those who have done some form of public service- not necessarily military, and it's specified that regardless of your aptitudes, disabilities, etc. the government will find at least SOMETHING for you to do regardless of how hopeless your case is. Perhaps the point OP is trying to make is that that form of democracy is healthy in the sense that the only people leading it are those that, at the minimum, showed an interest in contributing to it.

Strongly agree, I feel like my passion for development as a whole has waned away as AI has gotten more prevalent.

We do things to achieve some end result but it's the journey there that is the most cathartic to me. The "skilled crafts" element of development where careful deliberation and hours of tinkering to get any kind of appreciable output you can admire has been replaced with a one stop dopamine button that skips the whole process that I could find myself getting lost in.

I've taken up carpentry/metal working as a result. Maybe someday we'll have live in robots that do the same for those hobbies that AI did for programmers but I can't see it happening any time soon.

Yeah I feel the same. That's why I've canceled my claude subscription and code everything by hand again, because building skill and mastery in a craft is fun and rewarding. Having a machine do it for me is neither. Fortunately coding is my hobby so there is zero pressure to optimize it.

At my workplace management is pushing AI, so I am using it in order to establish sensible and thoughtful applications of it and in order to know when to call out colleagues for pushing mindless automation out of complacency or blind obedience.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, it's harder to notice this in a field you are a professional in, but what really opened my eyes was noticing how often friction kept me from making mistakes in hobbyist metalworking/woodworking projects. More than once I've either made or didn't make mistakes based entirely on if the tool I "needed" for the next step was in arms reach or a walk across the garage and a search through multiple toolboxes.

Except cheating in games isn't the equivalent of steroids in the gym, since they let cheaters do things that literally no one can without them. And steroids at least have the argument behind them that you still have to put the work in (it's not "free" gains like cheats are, that guy that looks like Arnold is still putting hours into the gym every week to look like that, you can't just take steroids and look the same if you aren't willing to put in the effort)

A much better analogy would be showing up to a weightlifting competition with a construction crane and thinking competing with it against human lifters is fair.

Not just CS, I don't think people realize how prevalent cheating is in any multiplayer game. The issue is compounded by the fact that many high skill ceiling games are plagued by "micro cheats" being used by players that are already fairly decent at the game even without them, making it borderline impossible for casual players to tell if what just happened to them was a fair skill gap or someone cheating.

I don't play multiplayer games anymore for that reason. Too easy to go on an emotional tilt where you feel like you're suffering from paranoia and suspecting too many players of cheating. It's absolutely ruined competitive games for me.

I think you and the previous comment are talking about different types of drones- the smaller commercial quadcopters used in the Russia-Ukraine conflict can be shot down with shotguns fairly effectively.

Both sides have been seen with one member of a squad carrying around an issued shotgun in an anti-drone role- the fact that it shoots pellets in a cone is precisely why it's so effective. Skeet shooting is a great example of how relatively small fast moving targets can be hit consistently at range with a shotgun and they are usually using much smaller/lighter pellets with poorer velocity/range, I would assume the loads used in an anti-drone role are bigger.

I feel like bigger studios have definitely been playing it safer in the last 10-15 years. You used to see a lot more unorthodox ideas and mechanics or just flat out bizarre premises that I'm sometimes baffled even got the green light to go ahead. Today for the most part that kind of daring seems mostly relegated to the indie space. Everyone else looks for the safest option they hope will sell.

I think a large amount of AI skeptics are just tired. I'm what you would call in the AI skeptic camp and the most I'll contribute to in person conversations anymore is feigned indifference towards the topic or something along the lines of "Oh, I haven't really been keeping up with AI news lately."

For me personally (and maybe for others as well?) there's two parts to this. The first is that it's exhausting to constantly be pulled into "debates" with staunch pro-AI supporters who can't accept that you have some reason to be against it or agree to disagree and move on from the conversation. The second is that I've noticed that even mild anti-AI sentiment lately seems to make people (especially tech people) see and treat you as an anti-science luddite or conspiracy theorist.

It's easier to just pretend I don't care or that I'm not interested in public than be a skeptic.

This is always how it is, though. People would get straight up in your face if you told them that the Apple Vision Pro wasn't going to take over the world. People would get straight up in your face if you told them 3D TV was a fad. People would straight get up in your face if you told them there are alternatives to React. People once thought Visual Basic was going to end programming as we knew it. People once thought UML to code (Rational Rose) was going to end programming as we know it.

There are certain types of people who will always do this - and think they're right.

Product/tech fanboyism has always existed, sure, not going to argue that point.

But I don't remember it ever being getting anywhere near as heated or pushed in real life conversations. That kind of borderline religious fanaticism mostly lived in online spaces.

Eat it- plenty of people hunt boar for the meat just like other wild animals. I'm not the biggest fan of the taste but have friends that enjoy it.

Wild boar and javelina (though it's a different species) both make some great breakfast sausage. I tend to like game meat as a breakfast meat in general.