alt Hacker NewsThey also took out all the quality, though in pure business terms one can argue that's a kind of "slack" by itself.
The beancounters have cut all the corners on physical products that they could find. Now even design and manufacturing is outsourced to the lowest bidder, a bunch of monkeys paid peanuts to do a job they're woefully unqualified for.
And the end result is just a market for lemons. Nobody trusts products to be good anymore, so they just buy the cheapest garbage.
Which, inevitably, is the stuff sold directly by Chinese manufacturers. And so the beancounters are hoisted by their own petard.
We've seen it happen to small electronics and general goods.
We're seeing it happen right now to cars. Manufacturers clinging on to combustion engines and cutting corners. Why spend twice the money on a western brand when their quality is rapidly declining to meet BYD models half the price.
---
And we're seeing it happen to software. It was already kind of happening before AI; So much of software was enshittifying rapidly. But AI is just taking a sledgehammer to quality. (Setting aside whether this is an AI problem or a "beancounters push everyone into vibecoding" problem)
E.g. Desktop Linux has always been kind of a joke. It hasn't gotten better, the problems are all still there. Windows is just going down in flames. People are jumping ship now.
SaaS is quickly going that way as well. If it's all garbage, why pay for it. Either stop using it or just slop something together yourself.
---
And in the background of this something ominous: Companies can't just pivot back to higher quality after they've destroyed all their inhouse knowledge. So much manufacturing knowledge is just gone, starting a new manufacturing firm in the west is a staffing nightmare. Same story with cars, China has the EV knowledge. And software's going the same way. These beancounters are all chomping at the bit to fire all their devs and replace them with teenagers in the developing world spitting out prompts. They can't move back upmarket after that's done.
Even when the knowledge still lives, when the people with the skills requires have simply moved to other industries and jobs, who's going to come back? Why leave your established job for the former field, when all it takes is the management or executive in charge being replaced by another dipshit beancounter for everyone to be laid off again.
Replies
> And in the background of this something ominous: Companies can't just pivot back to higher quality after they've destroyed all their inhouse knowledge. (...) They can't move back upmarket after that's done.
The knowledge isn't the problem. It can be quickly regained, and progress of science and technology often offer new paths to even better quality, which limits the need for recovering details of old process.
The actual problem is, there is no market to go up to anymore. Once everyone is used to garbage being the only thing on offer, and adjust to cope with it, you cannot compete on quality anymore. Customers won't be able to tell whether you're honest, or just trying to charge suckers for the same garbage with a nicer finish, like every other brand that promises quality. It would take years of effort and low sales to convince the customers to start believing you're the real deal, which (as beancounters will happily tell you) you cannot afford. And even if you could, how are you going to convince people you're not going to start cutting corners again a few years down the line? In fact, how do you convince yourself? If it happened once, if it keeps happening everywhere around across all economy, it's bound to happen to your business too.
I think you’re not blaming political leadership enough. NAFTA, and other programs were always going to lead to the state of affairs we have now. This was a choice. Blaming greed is like blaming gravity.
> Desktop Linux has always been kind of a joke. It hasn't gotten better, the problems are all still there.
Desktop Linux mostly works these days. It does everything most regular people would want of it, with zero fuss. Including playing games. In some respects, it's easier to use than Mac or Windows.
When it has trouble with some things, one must remember neither Mac nor Windows is perfect, and they can be extremely frustrating at times.
Time to update those prejudices!
> E.g. Desktop Linux has always been kind of a joke
And yet I run it every day, and it's by FAR the most enjoyable platform and tooling to use (for me).
> E.g. Desktop Linux has always been kind of a joke. It hasn't gotten better, the problems are all still there.
Desktop Linux has gotten better, though much of the improvement happened decades ago. I believe the first person to prematurely declare "the year of Linux on the desktop" was Dirk Hohndel in 1999: https://www.linux.com/news/23-years-terrible-linux-predictio...
And speaking as someone who was running desktop Linux in 1999, I remember just how bad it was. Xfce, XFree86 config files, and endless messing around with everything. The most impressive Linux video game of 2000 was Tux Racer.
But over the next 10 years, Gnome and KDE matured, X learned how to auto-detect most hardware, and more-and-more installs started working out of the box.
By the mid-2010s, I could go to Dell's Ubuntu Linux page and buy a Linux laptop that Just Worked, and that came with next day on-site support. I went through a couple of those machines, and they were nearly hassle free over their entire operational life. (I think one needed an afternoon of work after an Ubuntu LTS upgrade.)
The big recent improvement has been largely thanks to Valve, and especially the Steam Deck. Valve has been pushing Proton, and they're encouraging Steam Deck support. So the big change in recent years is that more and more new game releases Just Work on Linux.
Is it perfect? No. Desktop Linux is still kind of shit. For examples, Chrome sometimes loses the ability to use hardware acceleration for WebGPU-style features. But I also have a Mac sitting on my desk, and that Mac also has plenty of weird interactions with Chrome, ones where audio or video just stops working. The Mac is slightly less shit, but not magically so.