Since GNOME is the default Ubuntu DE, they have a certain responsibily to listen to the users/devs and leave the system open (to an extent). But their direction is the opposite:
They've been doing massive reduction in functionalities, really insane like limiting copy/past of terminals just to the current screen (which hurts any sysadmin), generally without any way to enable them back.
I haven't heard of any other OSS organization trying so hard to limit freedom of their users/devs, and this is an explicit goal - they don't want to weaken their brand.
GNOME is nothing short of the Oracle of open source.
> Is anyone finding value in these things other than VCs and thought leaders looking for clicks and “picks and shovels” folks?
Mostly (but of course, not exclusively), porn for the techies. Receiving a phone notification every time a PR is opened on a project of yours? Exciting or sad, depends on one's outlook on life.
I think the more useful part is the parts that checks a ticket, fixes a bug, then opens the PR automatically. Whether you get an email or a phone text or call from a voice agent is ... somewhat secondary, im.
In my experience, no - I think the ability to build more complete features with less/little/no effort, rather than isolated functions, is (more) appealing to (more) developers.
I agree in principle, although I personally consider mental atrophy to be far more serious than physical atrophy (and I value physical fitness very high already!).
> Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.
Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.
If your job is that tedious a robot could do it, it's a bad job. Do you think Sam Altman wastes a single minute on operations and the actual minutae of running a business? Fuck no he gets wageslaves like me and yo to do it
Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.
"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.
This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.
Search "Humans are becoming horses" by CGP grey. He's making the exact same point as you except his is 15 years old and still hasn't passed.
I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?
If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does, you can go read about the Gilded Age. Productivity improvements are necessary but not sufficient to enhance human wellbeing. Productivity improvements by themselves appear to simultaneously suppress quality of life for those below the productivity and/or capital ownership bar while increasing quality for those above it.
Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?
It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.
Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.
Again with a strawman. You should consider engaging with the arguments people are actually making, and not the silly versions you make up in your head.
No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)
Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:
> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?
You can't answer it can you? A simple rebuttal to this dystopian future you present, where robots do everything and somehow make a few people rich, but at the same time the economy is fine despite nobody having any actual money to spend.... Make it make sense, you do you, just sayin
In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.
This is exactly what we saw during the Middle Ages (until concluded by the Black Death and broad peasant revolts), early Modernity (until concluded by economically motivated political revolutions all over the world), and the Gilded Age (until concluded by an economic collapse followed by broad social reforms).
It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.
Productivity improvements → extreme wealth inequality → economic, political, or social collapse → repeat
The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)
The smug implication of "well that obviously wouldn't be stable!" is actually not a rebuttal to "this process will produce instability." It's clear you're working in reverse from, "this would be inconvenient if true" to "therefore it cannot be true." But history and current trajectory shows us unambiguously: it is.
> This is exactly what we saw during the Middle Ages
Except technology has been progressing all this time, and has actually increased the lifetimes of populations.
>In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.
You're describing, vaguely, a system with few rich and mostly poor people.... You think that's some kind of insight, except that's how civilised society has operated from day one. This is different from your "tech has always progressed but with robots this time it's different" idea you started out with
> It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.
See above
> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)
You're talking about inequality, which has always existed, and not your original claim. I have no debate here. Robots making humans obsolete has not happened in history. Plenty of people (like you) believed the most recent advance in tech truly was the one that would put humans finally out of a job, but it never comes to pass. See the steam engine. See most big jumps in tech.
> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.
In short, this "conundrum" is no different from the thousands of other times advances in tech made jobs obsolete. You make the same mistake your ancestors made
Good job reading! Yes, that is correct. Technology has repeatedly shown this tendency to produce wealth inequality which, unmitigated, produces instability.
Now the next step is to read this sentence word for word:
> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced
You and I both agree that technology is getting more advanced (where advanced == produces more leverage on human inputs), but for some reason you think this latest wave of technology is somehow different in that it won't produce inequality and therefore (left unmitigated) result in instability.
You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)
> but for some reason you think this latest wave of technology is somehow different in that it won't produce inequality and therefore (left unmitigated) result in instability.
No. I'm refuting you claiming this time is different. I never said anything about inequality.
> You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)
Is this trolling?
You've walked your claims back slightly with this "if left unmitigated" qualifier, so now ai means possibly the end of humans having something to do, maybe...
> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.
This was your op. This is you thinking this is unique.
Wait you think me saying "year after year, thing happens" and then drawing a direct line of patterns all the way back to the Black Plague is me claiming "this time it's different?" Quite a take!
What do you think the word "naturally" means in the following sentence: "[economic] surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced"
What do you think this sentence means?: "which is one of many reasons [tech-driven inequality] should be mitigated by policy and taxation,"
What do you think the italicized just means here?: "If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does"
Or for that matter, what do you think the parenthetical means?
I have been arguing what the natural, unmitigated effects of technological development is the entire time. You've been arguing against some other made up position in your head, as pointed out more than 3 or 4 times now.
It has always been that way. Literally the only distro that encourages an update process with the requisite effort you should be putting in is Slackware. You should be reading the source code you build. You should be building from source. You should fully understand your toolchains. Binary only distros have always been the equivalent of wearing a condom to have sex. Usually fine, but technically outsourcing the hard work to someone that lets be real, 90% never get to know well enough to credibly trust to any degree. NPM & proglang level package management just doubled down on the real-estate you had to shift through.
Being a responsible programmer/sys admin has always been read heavy, as long as I've been alive. Write only code is antithetical to the basis of running a trustworthy system.
The fact that supply chains have always existed is not meaningful. The issue is that the occurrence is considerably increasing. It's factually riskier to administer systems.
> You should be reading the source code you build. You should be building from source. You should fully understand your toolchains.
This is not realistic for the vast majority of the companies.
> Because I would have to reboot into windows including any active applications I have?
In a gaming-only setup, Windows requires virtually no maintenance. Plus gaming itself is a monotasking activity.
I actually find it positive having to reboot, so I start with a gaming session, and I only play, and when I'm done I'm done. I get the appeal of everything-in-Linux (it was my setup) but it's also a hassle.
> In a gaming-only setup, Windows requires virtually no maintenance.
This is not remotely true anymore with Windows updates automatically restarting computers, windows updates pushing breaking changes especially in regards to GPU drivers, and more anticheats requiring secure boot.
These points are not (all) technically correct; for example, Windows does not restart "automatically" - it gives multiple options (this is important for dual booting).
Besides that, the root discussion is having a dual boot vs a virtualized windows; maintenance applies the same to both, it doesn't disappear when virtualizing Windows - the different is (the value one places) to context switching.
I used vfio in the past, and it's not true that setups like vfio or custom kernel/virtualization "just" work. For starters, custom setups need management. There are even latest generation GPUs whose drivers are not fully VFIO compatible.
VFIO had a host of problems that are rarely mentioned, because VFIO "just" works: power management, card driver, compatibility, audio passthrough or maybe not, USB passthrough or maybe not, stuttering, and so on.
VFIO is in a significantly better place than it was 10 years ago though. Proper IOMMU groups are more common on motherboards, flashing gpu bios less necessary, etc. and most importantly the community is bigger and older so there is a more knowledge about parts compatibility and vfio setup.
That said it’s almost entirely unnecessary with the state of Linux gaming now.
Sure, in 10 years we’ve gone from bleeding edge, with server/workstation motherboards being necessary, to immature, with having to do a little homework on which consumer hardware to buy. It’s not like VFIO is something for the general public anyway.
Since GNOME is the default Ubuntu DE, they have a certain responsibily to listen to the users/devs and leave the system open (to an extent). But their direction is the opposite:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210901171117/https://twitter.c...
They've been doing massive reduction in functionalities, really insane like limiting copy/past of terminals just to the current screen (which hurts any sysadmin), generally without any way to enable them back.
I haven't heard of any other OSS organization trying so hard to limit freedom of their users/devs, and this is an explicit goal - they don't want to weaken their brand.
GNOME is nothing short of the Oracle of open source.
reply