As it stands though the whole "the public hates AI" is about as credible as that phase from a decade ago where random tweets were used to justify any position they wanted to.

I don’t know a single non-tech person who has positive feelings about AI in that sphere.

Admittedly that was just a couple of guys, but it takes something to be so obviously toxic yet still chosen to represent the values of your company at a third party.

Arguably the Google ones were guilty of naivete, but that's not a crime you'd want to punish too hard, and I was myself guilty of far worse.

One factor is that there are just enough smart monolingual francophones that they cannot really effectively leave, which means that the brain drain effect, while present, is nothing like as extreme as in the rest of Canada.

Someone had to do it, distasteful though it may be. Could be quite hilarious what it learns in the process.

Do service providers not think customers have other things to do than simply maintain their existing infrastructure?

Plus migration is super easy with Cirrus CLI -- tool to run our CI task definitions locally or in any CI. See https://github.com/cirruslabs/cirrus-cli

> We are no longer accepting new customers for Cirrus Runners but will continue supporting the service for existing customers through their existing contract periods.

This is the risk we run when we get services from companies that aren’t Microsoft, IBM, etc. (I would say Google but LOL, they obviously kill products even faster than the startup death cycle).

This is obviously logical. If I know how to program in Python or JS but not C and am familiar with SSH, I can do something with a SBC in a few minutes.

I get paid $200/hr. If I spent even one hour to learn what I need to deal with a microcontroller, the time cost is four times the cost of materials if I stick with what I know.

How many small projects do I need to do in my free time before it's financially smart to learn a whole new technology?

I find it remarkable that they haven't tried to make all of that easier. Any board with arduino support is easy to start using, with pared down c++, boards similar to the micro:bit support micropython and javascript as well as a few others, and a ton of modern development boards have UF2 support.

UF2 is a step change in how easy it is to flash a binary onto a microcontroller. You hold down a button before connecting it to a USB port, and then it appears as a USB drive for you to drop a file onto, once it's done "copying" the board is flashed and will run your code as soon as it resets.

If you want to gain familiarity with a board, you can drop a .uf2 file with a REPL on it and run code on the board a line at a time.

(Anyway, I still remember the thrill of writing assembly for a 68HC11 and getting a pair of hobby servos to respond.)

These days, with ESP32, Pi Pico W etc... things have changed a lot.

But before they got popular, Why deal with MCU + wiring some weird peripheral for wifi / ethernet when you get a Pi Zero W / Clone with built in wifi for the same price?

  void setup() {
    pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
  }
  
  void loop() {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);  
    delay(1000);                     
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);   
    delay(1000);                      
  }

It is c++ though. Just limited in similar ways to the US air force's requirements for using the language.

(Of course, there are those to whom an Arduino is an overpriced piece of junk and they don't understand how I can't solder a three cent chip myself.)

But let's be realistic - all of these things are like my Steam library - purchases made but never used (I have a drawer full of Pis and other SBCs, and Arduino dev kits, etc. Someday I'll have time time time!).

  int main() {
    setup();
    for(;;) loop();
  }

I'd assume the average user on HN should be able to figure it out pretty easily.

In fact it's a lot more straight forward to not have to deal with Network Manager config files or systemd unit files or read only rootfs headaches of Linux world.

You can usually find libraries for your language of choice to speak GPIO and expose the pin's state as a variable in your code.

Now what I would have loved to have done is come up with some crazy analog circuit to implement an arbitrary transfer function from potentiometer input to LED voltage, but I didn't know how to do this at the time and the dev cycle would be a lot more painful than with software.

I would not have fallen in love with microcontrollers without Raspberry Pi and PocketCHIP as stepping stones.

The messaging of "it's a tiny computer, make whatever you want with it" is so much more approachable than anything I've found on the microcontroller side. Even Arduino. I dismissed it for a long time because I misunderstood it. I thought I had to buy Arduino devices, then Arduino shields, then program them in the Arduino language using the Arduino IDE.

Either way those elected to supposedly serve are the only ones winning.

Sounds like they're all just different brands of scum.

But really, the admissions were really nothing much, I'm actually surprised that's all they got. The former minister was forced to resign under allegations of corruption and was/is under investigation for it, no big surprise. And the talk about having access to Ljubljana's mayor (and that he is "for sale") - well that's been in the news for years, he's under several open investigations and many more were already closed (he always comes out victorious - either because he's innocent and it's all just hearsay, or more likely because he's extremely good at dodging liability and covering his tracks). The rest is just people who used to have some power trying to appear like they still have in order to impress a potential employer or get a business deal (that was the agents' cover).

Again, I hope the authorities are combing the tapes for evidence, but it really wasn't anything bombastic. That the Israelis were doing this on the other hand...