Ever since I read Steve McConnell's After The Goldrush, I've been listening to people tell me why software engineering should be exempt from the kind of controls that e.g. electrical engineering or medicine or plumbing are subject to.

The reason is almost always "Their work can do real harm".

Yeah? Look around you, dude.

Microsoft are removing the Copilot integrations in Notepad, Snipping Tool etc in Windows.

Turns out telling PMs to bake Copilot into everything was a dumb idea.

the pressure from social media worked. In systemd, age verification has finally been reverted and removed for good. Linux is always for privacy conscious users, it isn't just another Microslop SlopOS https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179 thanks @reddy_1975 for the heads up!

EDIT: they rejected the PR. So keep fight on! systemd folks are cowards and enabling this mess.

The extent to which core linux projects are laying the groundwork for age verification is very concerning.

I understand why some believe they are compelled to do so, and why others feel that it may be better to implement the most minimal conforming implementation in the hopes of fending off something worse.

But the line must be drawn such that no threat can obligate an OS to collect/store personal information - without that freedom, we face an uphill fight to protect general purpose computing.

It really bums me out that I keep seeing blog posts from technical people like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical implications of LLMs, I'm interested in evaluating whether they can be useful for my work."

Like "putting aside the obvious moral and ethical concerns of breaking into my neighbours' houses, I'm interested in evaluating whether this can be useful for acquiring other people's valuables."