No, most people are stuffing everything into the application layer, or worse, a web/mobile app these days and don't know how to fix anything below it. I know many "programmers" who can neither configure a SME/Enterprise firewall or switch nor build their own PC or server from parts.
Also, during the 90's everything was easy to find and access. Piracy was the norm and FOSS was booming.
The field exploded though, both in terms of complexity and of number of people involved. I know many engineers that can do from compiler optimizations to web apps. I also know "programmers" that don't want to learn a new library because it stresses them.
Lots of tech we currently rely on is built under FOSS model (thinking web stuff, mobile stuff, os stuff, data center stuff). Of course you must choose to use it, but I find nowadays using Linux daily on desktop as easy as using Windows or MacOS. 20 years ago you had to fight drivers, file formats, browser issues, media formats, lack of software (I mean we run many Windows video-games on Linux without issues, how cool is that?!)
I did not check piracy lately because I find FOSS alternatives (or I can afford to buy some stuff).
> I know many "programmers" who can neither configure a SME/Enterprise firewall or switch
This is a very weird baseline to use for qualifying a programmer. Firewall configuration is completely irrelevant for most programmers and has been for decades. It is objectively not a programming task, it's just something that might get foisted upon a programmer if there is nobody else to do it.
Not op but how I understood it is that until recently the majority of programmers were geeks and liked to tinker and understand the systems they were writing and deploying code on.
Not sure that this is the case now, nonetheless it can be a good thing that people are specializing and concerned just on the frameworks or design patterns.
Only applies to people with a degree. Institutionalised nepotism. Just like how your chamber of commerce keeps out the competition. Typical western decay/corruption. Closing the ranks and drawing in other peoples money.
Apparently the UK government estimated that in 2016 and 2019 the average household saved £11 on their bill due to this feedback from smart meters. This page estimates the cost at £15 so 2/3rds is recovered just from that effect.
There's no way it only cost £15 in total to install a smart meter. The cost of the meter has to be at least that much and then you have paying a guy to actually install it (which in my case took 3 attempts and caused a gas leak, which took 4 or 5 guys several hours to fix - although hopefully that's unusual).
15 pounds cost per year, 11 pounds saving per year, for an average user.
Not sure how many years the cost is assumed to be spread over and what the ongoing running costs are but that's the per average customer cost apparently.
Shotguns are being used for that purpose. Single buckshot from the top of a AR barrel are in vogue too.
Someone should use a cheap arduino and a mike for aiming and shooting at fpv quadcopters.
I really don't understand why that's not here yet. They can literally convert a toy from github.
They are "being used" but shotguns are the last line of defense. Good luck stopping a little FPV drone with one. If you do not disable it by 50ft you dead. And you have like 10% odds. Way better than 1% odds you might have with a rifle or nothing but...
Jamming is first line of defense, a million times more effective FWIW.
One counter measure is no counter measure. If you look at toys like https://hackaday.com/2023/06/13/arduino-powered-missile-syst... and scale it up with bigger and stronger servo's for holding a shotgun instead of fake missiles; you'll have a second war - with the arms industry. For a bonus you'll also win the war of economy because the bill of materials costs less than a mad maxed FPV drone given you source the shotgun from the land.
To add to this: ask people around you what they think you are good at. Often you will find they mention things you never even thought about. You don't think about it because they are so easy for you that you can't even imagine someone having trouble with it.
Your own innate strengths can be a huge blind-spot.
Parent his suggestion is probably one of the best choices if stability is what you are looking for.
Personally, I run arch for lazy people on a bunch of old intel macs.
https://garudalinux.org/downloads
It just performs a bit better being somewhat tweaked out and comes with what i need by default yet is still stable enough doing rolling releases despite being arch based.
On top of that, the aesthetic are also a match.
