The only person I've worked with over the past 20+ years who used Perl was a bioinformatics guru. When he taught students in the lab, however, he'd switch to Python.
Bioinformaticisn here. While Perl has been popular in the field, R, Python, C/C++, and recently Rust are more common these days. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that bioinformatics used to be mainly dealing with huge text files (FASTA, FASTQ, SAM, BED, GTF/GFF, etc.), and for that purpose Perl is not a bad choice.
As the cost of sequencing keeps coming down, we sequence deeper, and the computational demand goes up. Plain-text is replaced with binary formats, and most of the heavy lifting is now done by compiled libraries. The benefits of Perl aren't really relevant anymore, and given the choice most of us simply prefer writing Python or R.
This is my go-to process whenever I write anything now:
1. I use dictation software to get my thoughts out as a stream of consciousness.
2. Then, I have ChatGPT or Claude refine it into something coherent based on a prompt of what I'm aiming for.
3. Finally, I review the result and make edits where needed to ensure it matches what I want.
This method has easily boosted my output by 10x, and I'd argue the quality is even better than before. As a non-native English speaker, this approach helps a lot with clarity and fluency. I'm not a great writer to begin with, so the improvement is noticeable. At the end of the day, I’m just a developer—what can I say?
The market may simply require less engineers. I think entry levels are cooked (they kind of already are anyway). I'm quite confident that the near future of SW development will bean experienced engineer working in tandem with these systems, guiding, reviewing and correcting their work.
Further future (>2030) if AGI actually pans out then white collar work is mostly cooked.
> Further future (>2030) if AGI actually pans out then white collar work is mostly cooked.
"White collar work" is no less cooked than horse & buggy drivers were when the car was invented. They'll still have jobs, they'll just be doing the same thing but for a new technology.
Either creating data for the AI, interpreting data from the AI, or developing further AIs and that's only the single surface level that works with AI. You are still going to have 'human touch' jobs where an AI or robot is unable or disallowed from doing because of tastes (ie: someone prefers a human do it; childcare, cooking, etc.), boundary-passing (ie: there is no data yet on how to do a certain task), or sensitive (ie: working with sensitive content or at a top-secret site).
I don't predict we are going to have AIs negotiating or interpreting contracts single-handedly unsupervised. We aren't going to see self-piloting planes that have no human workers onboard.
With that said, the job market will be more tight because we'll just need less people because 'shit work' & glue work will be largely done by AI. Short of a nuclear war, developed countries' governments are going to need to come up with something fast if they want to stay.
Israel is pretty stable and has better life expectancy than the US. Thanks to its technology Israel can be at war and be mostly unscathed.
Intel has been building in Israel since the 70s and has huge infrastructure here. A lot of its most innovative work originates from Israel. This isn't unique, pretty much every global company has major R&D in Israel.
Chips come on wafers. Wafers come in lots. To miss a wafer is to deliver a wafer later than promised, delaying the lot. Intel Israel has never delivered a wafer late.
Would it matter? There's no response that will magically rebuild a fab overnight. Better to build it somewhere it's unlikely to be bombed in the first place.
The entire fertile crescent is a desert that is being reclaimed by the planet. I don't see how Israel is in any better of a position, there: despite old narratives to the contrary, desertification is not any less of a problem in Israel than in other deserts, and as global warming continues there is growing evidence that in fact anti-desertification efforts in Israel are backfiring. Given the political situation, it's more likely that desertification can be obviated for the purposes of a fab in an American desert than in really any other in the world.
In a way different than they are now? Or do you mean literally put troops on the ground there to protect an offshore branch of a US multinational corporation?
Drove through Be'er Sheva in 2019 while Hamas was sending rockets (earlier the same day I was there, not at exactly the same time) and would go back again without hesitation.
The tourism industry is effectively dead [1]. If your visit - even at the risk of losing a limb or death - can feed a single Israeli for a day, you must visit.
Israel is tiny. Tel Aviv which is "much" farther has also been hit by rockets from Gaza. The longest range rockets I believe are 155 miles (Ayyash 250) which can reach any point in Israel (and fly over Israel into Lebanon). From Gaza to the northernmost tip of Israel is 135 miles. Israel is long and narrow, this is the "long" part.
Your telling me the US destroyed its international reputation and credibility over a landmass the size of NJ? We really are living in the dumbest timeline.
Nor does the moral value of protecting a region hinge on its size. You'd think someone with an opinion on either side of the Israel/Palestine conflict would understand that.
Exactly. It's almost like our foreign policy has less to do with moral principles and more with picking and choosing where our 'values' apply based on convenience. Funny how that works out.
Taiwan and Ukraine are wedges against global US adversaries. An invasion of either one would threaten our influence in Europe or the Pacific. Israel isn't strategically important to us, and actually we'd have more control over the Middle East without prioritizing it, not that we have serious interest in the region to begin with.
And about Kuwait, remember why we built up their aggressor Saddam.
Not sure why Taiwan is that much of a wedge, or Ukraine for that matter. Ukraine used to be under effective Russian control anyways up to fairly recent times and Putin being pissed off about the change that's partly behind the war. Naturally now the stakes are higher given the price of the war on all sides. Re: Taiwan China is determined to get it one way or another and it's going to be hard for the US to keep resisting that.
Support of Israel goes back to JFK.
It used to be strategically important during the cold war when the US and the Soviet Union were fighting for influence. Egypt and Syria e.g. were aligned with the soviets. Israel as one example, was testing ground for western weapons against soviet weapons. The US got a lot of information out of Israel about those weapons and how to defeat them.
Weapon technology is still something important today. Israel and the US collaborate on anti-missile systems and share the testing results those systems are getting in the field. That's just one example. Americans follow Israel's tunnel fighting tactics as well. Israel has always had more human intelligence in the area and also shares that with the US.
The middle east is still important today. I guess there's oil. And as we can see shipping. Saudi Arabia that used to align with American interests has been looking in other places, has always been a somewhat questionably ally, and the stability of its regime is always a question. Egypt has been sort trending a little back to Russia but for the time being put in place. It's also not the stablest place given the Muslim Brotherhood had control and the army took over. Turkey is also becoming less US oriented. And that's practically Europe.
The US under Obama has tried to reduce its involvement in the region which indirectly led to the civil war in Syria, to Iraq aligning with Iran, and other movements. Bin Laden was from the region and so is/was ISIS/ISIL. It feels like the US "disconnecting" from the region would be a destabilizing move felt everywhere and other parties like China or Russia would fill in the vacuum.
Study some geography. The US is blessed with wide open coastal access to, not one, but two oceans, with innumerable natural harbors on each coast (Chesapeake Bay, the San Francisco Bay Area, Puget Sound, Port of NY&NJ, Port of Los Angeles, etc. etc. etc.). The US has more and better natural harbors than all of Africa. We tend to take this for granted, and forget that other countries are severely limited in comparison. These limitations are exploitable.
Russia needs Crimea because without it they have very limited access to the Black Sea, and by extension the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; their other coasts, on the Baltic and in East Asia, are not adequate substitutes. The Baltic ports in particular tend to freeze in the winter -- not good if you have global superpower aspirations.
In the case of Taiwan, look at a map of China. Although China is comparable in land mass to the US, their sea access is limited to an eastern coast enclosed almost entirely by the South China Sea / East China Sea. Look at all the countries on the other side of the Chinese coast: Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and of course Taiwan. The US has military and naval bases in most of them. In the case of Philippines, Japan, and South Korea, the US has a LOT of naval bases, notably in Okinawa, halfway between Japan and Taiwan. This is no accident. In the event of conflict, the US could easily blockade China. A quick glance at the map shows how critical Taiwan is to this calculation. If the US controls Taiwan, it owns a huge island (a.k.a. unsinkable aircraft carrier) staring down the middle of the Chinese coast. If China owns Taiwan, the east coast of Taiwan has direct access to the rest of the Pacific.
US geography is so OP that we don't realize how bad other countries have it.
(By the way, the other countries mentioned are also geographically strategic assets. Kuwait has 10 times more coastline than Iraq. Without Kuwait, Iraq has only a few ports available to ship out their oil, and no other ocean access anywhere. Israel also controls a huge chunk of the Middle East's Mediterranean coastline.)
Russia doesn't need to have territorial sovereignty over the Crimea.
The ideologues currently running Russia desire to have the Crimea for its symbolic significance -- as a means of projecting power, and of thumbing its nose at the West. And for their various internal narratives (Наш Крым and all that). Which gets a lot closer to the core issue of what the war is actually about.
It was never about Russia "needing" the Crimea in any meaningful sense. Any more than WW II was about Germany "needing" to annex the Danzig Corridor.
To the contrary, Russia does need Crimea, although military naval ports is not the main reason why. Crimean waters contain huge natural gas and oil deposits. If Ukraine were left to develop Crimea unhindered, it would overturn Russia's gas monopoly in Europe, which is practically their only source of cash. The same motive lies behind Russia's interference in Eastern Ukraine -- therein lies the rest of Ukraine's fossil fuel resources.
Russia does not actually need to extract oil and gas from Crimea, although it would be a nice bonus for them if they could. The main imperative is to prevent Ukraine from having it.
Once Russia captured Crimea, the "land corridor" to Crimea became a necessary next domino. Crimea's only source of fresh water is overland via Ukraine. Obviously the first thing Ukraine did when Russia annexed Crimea was turn off the taps. (Would you keep sending freshwater into enemy territory?) In order to maintain power in Crimea in the long run, it is necessary for Russia to invade enough of Ukraine to take over the freshwater canals that supply Crimea.
Not sure what to make of an analysis that amounts to: "To the contrary, Russia does need the Crimea, because natural gas reverses. Although it actually does not need to extract them, it would just be a nice bonus of they could." In any case we're talking about an augmentation of some 180 bcm in the offshore regions of the Crimea it is claiming, on top of Russia's proven reserves of some 40000-50000 depending on whom you ask.
So no, Russia doesn't need the Crimea's resources either. It is however definitely very hurtful to Ukraine to not have access to those resources -- which speaks more to the true intent behind the annexation move.
It is necessary for Russia to invade ...
It isn't necessary for Russia to do anything at this point -- other than pick up its toys and go home.
Gas isn't easily shippable like oil. Most of Russia's gas is in Siberia, inaccessible for purposes of shipping to Europe. Ukraine holds the only other gas reserves in Europe other than Russia. Gas supply is inelastic, meaning that even minor competition can lead to a big drop in prices. So yes, Russia "needs" to keep Ukraine out of the European gas market.
Yes, there's an incremental point to be made about the location of the gas reserves.
But to get to the real point here - why do you keep defending the actions of a blatant 19th century-style imperialist bully, as if it's some kind of calm, rational actor?
Then you could perhaps be more precise in your choice of actors here:
In particular -- Russia most certainly does not "need" to dominate its neighbors. It's just what the current regime feels it needs to do to maintain its chances of survival.
You're deeply misreading the English language. When I say "I need my phone" I am obviously not claiming that my phone is necessary for basic survival. There are different levels of need, and there exists a level where Russia (believes it) needs Crimea.
In the case of the United States, it's not appropriate to equate the country with the current regime, since the party in power (Democrat / Republican) changes every few years, and although you may disagree, I do not view the two parties as equivalent or as forming one party.
In the case of Russia, it is completely appropriate to refer to the regime by country name, since Putin has been in power forever.
Anyway, this is a useless tangent. It should by now be clear to you and anyone else reading what I mean, even if it was not initially clear.
Russia also has Novorossiysk on the black sea which is a bigger port than Sevastopol anyway. Putin had planned to move the black sea HQ there but then got a leasing arrangement with Ukraine. Was apparently still too expensive though.
>Not sure why Taiwan is that much of a wedge, or Ukraine for that matter. Ukraine used to be under effective Russian control anyways up to fairly recent times and Putin being pissed off about the change that's partly behind the war. Naturally now the stakes are higher given the price of the war on all sides. Re: Taiwan China is determined to get it one way or another and it's going to be hard for the US to keep resisting that.
I could understand Ukraine being more of an issue for Europe rather than the US but Taiwan? Without them the hottest sector in the US collapses. In fact, how much of the US current meteoric rise is due to tech vs the rest of the economy? Probably a decent chunk. Taiwan is holding some of the most important "cards" in the world.
>Support of Israel goes back to JFK.
Well you could make the argument that the US has been wrong since JFK and it is finally catching up to them. Its not the first time they have supported a state that is in direct contrast to its stated ideals.
>The US under Obama has tried to reduce its involvement in the region which indirectly led to the civil war in Syria, to Iraq aligning with Iran, and other movements. Bin Laden was from the region and so is/was ISIS/ISIL. It feels like the US "disconnecting" from the region would be a destabilizing move felt everywhere and other parties like China or Russia would fill in the vacuum.
Like it or not that has been the stated path of the US for two administrations now and will likely continue into the next one regardless of who is elected.
I'm not saying the US should disconnect, but our obedience to Israel isn't doing us favors. Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is the one counterexample I can think of, and it ended.
Syrian Civil War started only 3 years after Obama took office, and I don't see any connection to Obama reducing our involvement, if that's what he did. The US funded Syrian rebel groups both secretly before the war (leaked later) and openly afterwards (the FSA), though this stopped when ISIS formed and they began defecting, then we built that coalition to defeat them.
Btw, Israel has never fought ISIS. We fought a war against the largest terrorist group in history almost adjacent to our supposed weapons-testing, anti-terrorism ally without them being involved.
