Next you’ll be seeing bs gaslighting articles saying “American carmakers are being driven to bankruptcy thanks to millenials’ changing preferences”

why do we insist on giving this guy so much free advertising? move on already lol

i don’t doubt that linux has its uses and command-line is powerful. What I’m saying is >80% of users only know how to use a GUI, and that is why linux won’t go mainstream without having a GUI for everything user-facing.

I haven’t seen any ads, so my feelings about Windows might change at some point. But I’ve tried linux in the past, and there’s a reason why it just doesn’t get as much adoption.

First of all, linux seems to be built around the command line. I hate using the command line, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Everytime there’s something to troubleshoot I have to figure out command line inputs and outputs.

Second, the annoying issues with windows are annoying, but I’ve learnt to figure it out. No, I don’t want to set as default, no I don’t want to send data, no i don’t want to create a MS account. Even if I didn’t figure it out, I can still change it later - sending data is annoying af and i don’t like it, but it doesn’t stop me from doing something. On the other hand, i encounter issues with linux that stop me from actually using the OS all the time. Everytime I do, I have to post in forums asking for help, wait 12-36 hours while using an alternate OS/workaround, and dread the inevitable use of command-line that follows.

Most cobol systems have more code that doesn’t do anything vs code that actually does something.

What values do variables ROBERT1, ROBERT2 and ROBERT3 hold? Whatever ROBERT wanted.

And when that system is storing high-risk and/or sensitive data, do you really want to be the person who deletes code that you think “actually does nothing”, only to find out it somehow stopped another portion of code from breaking?

The reason why these things still exist is business laziness. They don’t know and don’t care what cobol is or isn’t doing.

That’s the thing - tor a risk-averse industry (most companies running COBOL systems belong here), being the guy who architected the move away from COBOL is a high-risk, high-stress job with little immediate rewards. At best, the move goes seamlessly, and management knows you as “the guy who updated our OS or something and saved us some money but took a few years to do it, while Bob updated our HR system and saved a bunch of money in 1 year”. At worst, you accidentally break something, and now you have a fiasco on your hands.

don’t you know, apple invented wireless charging!

It’s never been a technical reason, it’s the fact that most systems still running on COBOL are live, can’t be easily paused, and there’s an extremely high risk of enormous consequences for failure. Banks are a great example of this - hundreds of thousands of transactions per hour (or more), you can’t easily create a backup because even while you’re backing up more business logic and more records are being created, you can’t just tell people “hey we’re shutting off our system for 2 months, come back and get your money later”, and if you fuck up during the migration and rectify it within in hour, you would have caused hundreds/thousands of people to lose some money, and god forbid there was one unlucky SOB who tried to transfer their life savings during that one hour.

And don’t forget the testing that needs to be done - you can’t even have an undeclared variable that somehow causes an overflow error when a user with a specific attribute deposits a specific amount of money in a specific branch code when Venus and Mars are aligned on a Tuesday.

That doesn’t sound right at all. How could the amount of COBOL code in use quadruple at a time when everyone is trying to phase it out?

Because why they’re trying, they need to keep adding business logic to it constantly. Spaghetti code on top of spaghetti code.

Not a cobol professional but i know companies that have tried (and failed) to migrate from cobol to java because of the enormously high stakes involved (usually financial).

LLMs can speed up the process, but ultimately nobody is going to just say “yes, let’s accept all suggested changes the LLM makes”. The risk appetite of companies won’t change because of LLMs.

if someone offers you $200k for a 2020 Toyota Camry would you sell it?

He was doing so well as the world’s capitalist hero right up to the point where he called that British diver involved in the Thai cave rescue a pedo because people who were more experienced than him told him that his harebrained idea wouldn’t work.

This is commendable, but is 7 years really necessary? I think 5 years is plenty long before phones get outdated.

bunch of downvotes with no comments? interesting.

“vandalism” is really stretching it.

Beehaw got their knickers in a twist because of some spammers, back when lemmy.world and shitjustworks had… maybe 30,000 registered users in total. The solution there was adding more moderators. You don’t chop your leg off because you got a few papercuts.

If you look at the volume of bots (some instances went from hundreds of users to >12,000 overnight), that’s potential for worry. There’s ~500,000 bot accounts sitting out there waiting to be activated. No amount of moderators can block that fast enough, and that’s when de-federation should be considered.

You’re right that captchas can be bypassed, but I disagree that they’re useless.

Do you lock your house? Are you aware that most locks can be picked and windows can be smashed?

captchas can be defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless - they increase the level of friction required to automate malicious activity. Maybe not a lot, but along with other measures, it may make it tricky enough to circumvent that it discourages a good percentage of bot spammers. It’s the “Swiss cheese” model of security.

Registration applications stop bots, but it also stops legitimate users. I almost didn’t get onto the fediverse because of registration applications. I filled out applications at lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, and then forgot about it. Two days later, I got reminded of the fediverse, and luckily I found this instance that didn’t require some sort of application to join.

Haven’t you heard of the “Swiss cheese” model of security?

The best way to ensure your server is protected is to unplug it from the Internet and put it in an EMF-shielded Faraday cage.

There’s always a tradeoff between security, usability and cost.

captchas can be defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless - they increase the level of friction required to automate malicious activity. Maybe not a lot, but along with other measures, it may make it tricky enough to circumvent that it discourages a good percentage of bot spammers.