The year of Linux desktop will come after the desktop is no longer relevant, but I'll be honest, I've been AI-pilled, and it's never been a better time to run a Linux desktop. Instead of going sleuthing every time I hit a papercut that previously I'd have spend hours consulting a how-to or a wiki to find the subsystems and config files to fix the problem, I can now just describe the problem to an AI agent that runs around on my system that just fixes it while I go off and do something else.
I'd love to see a screencast of this working if you're so inclined one day to make a walkthrough. If it's mostly walking away, that's even better because you could show the prompt and a before/after of it working. (Just a casual observation, and less of a request, not trying to assign work :)
I've seen so many people claim this is the future we're living in, but I've never seen it actually work as described. It's always more hand holding than I'm willing to put into an llm
Fun coincidence to see this mentioned today, just recently I rescued my DroidWorks disc from my basement and was looking into how to get it running on a modern system. Obviously Wine/Proton are probably an option but I saw that there have been some efforts to build open implementations of games like Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and Grim Fandango that ran on the same engine or a modified version of it, I wonder how much of that pre-existing work would be transferrable.
I used this service before it rolled out widely and these boxes were a mixed bag. On one hand they worked really well, they were essentially insulated hard totes with styrofoam lining and often had dry ice in them for anything that needed to be kept cold. On the other hand, I lived in an apartment, so storing 3-4 totes for a week or more was a real chore.
The funniest thing I remember though is that the totes weren't optimized for the size of some of the products available very well - if you put a frozen pizza in it, it sat diagonally, and without enough room to really put anything above or below it. You order four frozen pizzas, and you're allocating many cubic meters of apartment space for them until the next time you order.
They must have been using different crates for you (different region or perhaps era). For me they were standard plastic bins[1] with a separate “cold bag” inside for frozen stuff. No actual styrofoam I recall, although this was also over 10 years ago so I could be misremembering.
The style of plastic bin definitely looks the same. The ones we were getting looked something like this[0], same folding-flap top as in your link but form-fitted insulation inside:
Yeah. I’m not certain if the Amazon ones were actually the same as the ones I linked. But extremely similar at least.
It’s been a long time. Very plausible that we did get the ones with the styrofoam sometimes and I just don’t remember. I know we got the cooler bag sometime.
I'm glad to see more of this approach to modernizing education. I roll my eyes seeing people argue that we should go back to pen + paper or other weird rose-colored regressive approaches to preventing AI usage. It's part of education now, it's part of work now, and learning environments that don't acknowledge that are going to be dragged kicking and screaming into a future with empty classrooms.
Both things can be true at the same time. The article mention switching to shorter reports and oral discussion but other courses may not have the luxury, especially the introductory ones.
Assuming this is true (others have already addressed a few of the many reasons it might not be), wouldn't that imply that practically all existing tests are already flawed? If you want to grade on time, every exam should be graded with a formula taking both the time and the correctness into account. A binary "fast enough" vs "not fast enough" is about as useful as a pass/fail class grade.
The exams that felt like the fairest reflections of my own knowledge were proctored in-person, closed book, and time unlimited. Of course, being time unlimited works better for quantitative/engineering exams. I haven't put much thought into more qualitative/liberal arts type exams.
In my experience, it was common to test speed - my favorite was solving 100 arithmetic problems in, I think it was 3 minutes? Perhaps shorter. The point was that it was basically impossible to solve them all, so it evaluated both your speed and your self-assessment: if you move too quickly, you'll make errors. If you spend too much time second-guessing yourself, you won't get enough problems finished.
It always struck me as an ingenious way to get a feel for a new group of students, since it's quick to administer and equally quick to grade, while revealing quite a lot of information.
Certainly we hold speed to some regard, since a lot of academic accommodations involve granting extra time. If we aren't testing on speed, then surely we should give that to anyone that asks?
> "smarter" here means how well the student will perform in a career in their chosen field. Fast + accurate is the ideal.
Still dubious.
Also, I don't know where you work, but in most of my jobs, career growth is not limited by speed with which you do the work. It's one factor among, say, 10. Most of the people who got ahead were not the fastest.
They're not trying to gauge who is the fastest. Or even the smartest. Just those who have the skills. In the real world, you'll rarely (as in, never) have to solve those same problems with the same speed you will in the exam.
In a lot (all?) of the jobs I worked, taking a day to solve a Medium level Leetcode problem was quite OK.
Those are all proxies for "is smarter". They have better memories, perform better under pressure, etc. Universities are meant to prepare students for the real world where these things matter.
Arguably someone who is faster is more likely to just be recalling memorized things faster, while someone who's slower may have a deeper understanding but needs time to actually think it through.
Memorization is already hacking the rules of the game that's supposed to be gauging understanding. An ideal test is resistant to rote memorization as well as outright cheating.
See my other comment. I want my doctor/plumber/etc to be able to recall faster, type faster, work better under pressure. If you're better at those things you should get better grades and be paid more.
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