Regarding the popular belief that AI will take jobs... If 10 (or 2 or 20...) developers can be replaced by 1 dev using AI, why fire 9 (or 1 or 19) of them when your competitors now could be 10X (or 2X or 20X) more productive by giving AI tools to their 10 (or 2 or 20...) devs?
If you own an organization and can afford to pay the salaries of 10 (or 2 or 20...) souls, you'd have to be very cheap and short-sighted to prefer reducing your payroll instead of boosting your productivity 10X (or 2X or 20X).
I don't see AI taking jobs, I see AI:
- Taking companies/organizations owned by cheap people.
- Taking huge projects ―like building a browser or an OS from scratch― to small groups or even solo developers.
Learning about this for the first time, do you use the TapXR or the Tap Strap? Are there any tasks you do/not use it for, or environments where it functions better or worse? Can it work single hand or with both hands (and a second device)?
I have both, they work pretty well, TapXR looks nicer but has one drawback: doesn't do very well in low light conditions and doesn't work at all in the dark; the old Strap doesn't have this problem, its only drawbacks are the extra seconds it takes to wear it and the weirder aesthetics.
I've only used them as keyboards, so I'm not very familiar with the media controller options, but as far as I can see it's a very easy mode to use.
You can use two of them at the same time, one in each hand, but it probably won't be necessary, you can get to type very fast with one hand.
They are very well supported on iOS. I once plugged one into Windows and it seemed to work fine, but I have not tested it extensively.
That’s interesting, thanks. I a word and meant to ask which you use more, oops. The strap says that it works better on hard surfaces which makes me wonder about how it fares on say, a leg, stiff cushion, or things like that. Also if it’s not using an optical sensor, I wonder what happens when you try playing an instrument with it on. Might have to give it a try.
In "keyboard" mode, you need something to tap on, but it can be the mousepad on your desk, your opposite arm, the underside of your dining room table, the side of your thigh while walking, the handlebars of your bike, etc.
There are also "air gestures" (Smart TV control, air mouse, and media control modes) that don't require a surface. (By the way, there are recent updates in this department that leave out the Tap Strap).
I'm not into gaming, VR sets or the like at all, so I can't say how good or bad these are for that sort of thing, but that market seems to be the main focus and direction the company is taking these days.
After living since forever in what they call an "outlaw state", I can assure you, Mr OP, that all of your concerns are extremely valid, and, indeed, you don't need an open war to start having REAL problems with your digital life.
Something as simple as a few bans or sanctions are more than enough to stop you, for example, from using your credit cards to pay for everything you take for granted, call it Netflix, iCloud or even a $0.99 app. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
My advice on this? Be a pragmatic fuck. For example:
#1 Switch to open source or at least free alternatives for everything you can.
#2 If you see it coming, temporarily suspend your "good citizen" behaviour and pirate what can't be solved with #1. (assume the risks and learn to deal with them).
#3 Stay as local - your house local, not your country/union local - as possible, avoid "the cloud" if possible or create your own if it makes sense for you, a homelab or whatever.
#4 Stay as anonymous and low profile as you can; even if you support your government in a conflict situation, they can turn on you in a blink, for the right or wrong reasons.
#5 Familiarise yourself with things like Tor, VPNs and anything else that can help you bypass censorship and access blocked sites and services.
#6 Consider having additional ISPs as failover options, something as different as possible from your main ISP.
#7 Buy stuff to protect your electrical equipment: regulators, protectors, UPS and so on.
I'm not saying you have to do it all, take only what makes sense for you, but keep an open mind and consider that permanent peace and stability could be your lifelong situation if you are lucky, but maybe not. Says the guy who had it.
Trust me on this, I have become something of a cheap prepper, and not because of a war, it's far from that in here; just a few disagreements between governments, a few nationwide bans/prohibitions/sanctions, or a little bit of government incompetence/stupidity, are all you need to start having problems with international payments, problems accessing certain websites and services, problems with your Internet access, and even power outages, it doesn't take too much to start having a shitty digital life.
Thank you for your real-life insights and recommendations. I’ll consolidate your points one by one. My main challenge is balancing independence with mobility, especially if my lifestyle changes drastically. For example, relying on a homelab wouldn’t be feasible for me. Instead, I prefer to depend on a single laptop and phone while keeping everything else in the cloud. But I’ll check out all the options, thanks.
I think the 'Age of PageRank' could be revived. A few years ago I had this idea about a decentralized, distributed, independent, public, universal, dynamic and searchable directory of websites; I wrote a toy specification document for it [1] - which I had forgotten until reading this discussion - and if I'm not mistaken, implementing it could be a few days project for a regular dev.
If you own an organization and can afford to pay the salaries of 10 (or 2 or 20...) souls, you'd have to be very cheap and short-sighted to prefer reducing your payroll instead of boosting your productivity 10X (or 2X or 20X).
I don't see AI taking jobs, I see AI:
- Taking companies/organizations owned by cheap people.
- Taking huge projects ―like building a browser or an OS from scratch― to small groups or even solo developers.