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Programming in the Apocalypse

matduggan.com

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Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#71

Post by avgcorrection »

luxuryballs wrote: post #21

“we have to accept immense hits to the global economy and the resulting poverty, suffering and impact. The scope of the change required is staggering. We've never done something like this” This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global leadership please know that it didn’t have to be this way and somebody is taking advantage of all of us for p…

Slowing down the global economy wouldn’t benefit the elites. Still though they might have their liferafts planned that none of us are going to be welcome onto.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#72

Post by soco »

imwillofficial wrote: post #40
luxuryballs wrote: post #21

“we have to accept immense hits to the global economy and the resulting poverty, suffering and impact. The scope of the change required is staggering. We've never done something like this” This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global leadership please know that it didn’t have to be this way and somebody is taking advantage of all of us for p…

Notice those who have the most information, policy makers and the rich in control have not changed their jet set lifestyle by one iota. Still polluting the skies on their way to Davos

Because they don't need to care about consequences. No matter how high the sea level rises, enough money gets you a higher place to stay.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#73

Post by nyanpasu64 »

nostrademons wrote: post #27

For me, the big story is going to be supply-chain breakup and de-globalization. The author touches on this a bit, but completely misses the implication. The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly-efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for this, C will still…

I could not imagine running rustc on a Rust program, let alone building a 200-crate dependency graph or all of rustc, on a 2000s car entertainment system microcontroller.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#74

Post by dixego »

grej wrote: post #66

>>> “On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this year.” As an aside, seeing things like this in climate change articles always bothers me. FYI Asheville being minutes from the beach would imply a 650m+ (2000+ft) sea rise in the next 25 years. This kind of hyperbole makes it easy for people who deny climate change in to…

Fiction is a tool used by humans to elicit, experience and process feelings under (mostly) safe circumstances. The details (such as how much the sea level would have to rise for this to be accurate) are not quite relevant; the point is to make the reader think about how they would feel if this sort of concern was just a commonplace consideration in their daily life. Is it not shocking? Uncomfortable? Sorta nihilism-inducing?

In summary: doesn't it make you want to act towards preventing this from ever being close to happening?

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#75

Post by avgcorrection »

warning26 wrote: post #11
black_puppydog wrote: post #9

So... anyone else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things going on around the world people will keep their appetite for mindless distraction and will still be able/willing to one-click buy random stuff on a whim? When they might have to expect waiting weeks for the delivery, and/or pay humongous transport fees? Asking because that seems to be what much of modern IT is angling for and why there's so much mo…

> else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things going on around the world people will keep their appetite for mindless distraction and will still be able/willing to one-click buy random stuff on a whim Wouldn't people in the described apocalyptic scenario want mindless distraction? Anything to keep their minds off the, well, apocalyptic things going on.

I can’t even go and browse message boards as a distraction any more, sigh.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#76

Post by verisimi »

If there is an apocalypse, it looks entirely contrived to me.

Spending untold billions to shut down the economy for most of 2 years is something I saw with my own eyes.

Sea level rises, and whatever else, not at all. The dire predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al Gore)? And nothing.. I suspect its just a trick that means we hand over greater control and money to the worst of us (government). And if it were real, I have zero trust in any governance structure to do the right thing as opposed to serving itself and its 'stakeholders' (aka corporations).

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#77

Post by mellavora »

formvoltron wrote: post #17

At some point, we'll have to put a fine dust in the upper atmosphere. We seem to have most of the building blocks already for renewable energy. Just need to focus on it and assemble them together... and decide it's worth giving up fossil fuel related things that are still functional.

"But we do know it was us that scorched the sky."

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#78

Post by poulpy123 »

ajuc wrote: post #6

I doubt global warming will negatively affect amount of time spent on open source/programming language design. Currently we're wasting a lot of time on social media, Netflix, games, etc. There's lots of fat to cut. Also historically bad conditions were when people wrote books and focused on studies. If OS is important - it will develop. On the other hand x as a service and cloud based stuff will likely die off. Good…

Economical collapse will affect how much free time people can donate to open source. Paying open source (like Linux kernel) will not be more impacted that closed source but the rest yes

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#79

Post by vkou »

Filligree wrote: post #52
mcculley wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization How do you imagine human extinction being an outcome? It seems to me that the worst case scenario is large loss of population which would decrease greenhouse gas output. There would still be some increase in temperature even once we stop emitting, but wouldn't people in colder climates still survive?

True human extinction doesn't seem plausible, but in a worst-case scenario we can imagine a > 99% drop in population, roughly to what is sustainable without technology, in a dramatically harsher world. ("Without"? Well, nobody today knows how to build a cast-iron plough.) I don't believe this scenario is likely. For one thing we're not headed for 8C of heating; for another, technological change seems to be coming jus…

> assuming we struggle hard enough.

We aren't struggling at all, though. We just eased off the accelerator a little. (Assuming that our accounting is correct, and that methane leakage isn't worse than we think. [1])

[1] It's worse than we think.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#80

Post by cmdli »

dixego wrote: post #74
grej wrote: post #66

>>> “On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this year.” As an aside, seeing things like this in climate change articles always bothers me. FYI Asheville being minutes from the beach would imply a 650m+ (2000+ft) sea rise in the next 25 years. This kind of hyperbole makes it easy for people who deny climate change in to…

Fiction is a tool used by humans to elicit, experience and process feelings under (mostly) safe circumstances. The details (such as how much the sea level would have to rise for this to be accurate) are not quite relevant; the point is to make the reader think about how they would feel if this sort of concern was just a commonplace consideration in their daily life. Is it not shocking? Uncomfortable? Sorta nihilism-i…

It only makes you want to act in the short term. In the long term, it either promotes denial (from those who think that its all hyperbole) or doomerism (from those who think that none of it is hyperbole). Hyperbole does not promote hope, which is the primary motivating factor to solving problems like this.
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