It has started already. Look at the stock market alone, USA economy, gold/silver all time high even before the biggest crash yesterday.

USA is no longer a superpower, they just haven't noticed it yet.

> USA is no longer a superpower, they just haven't noticed it yet

Well, I feel sorry for the first country that tries to test that theory.

One can make an argument the global dollar is losing its hold, or that the world is expanding away from US trade, which are both objectively true.

But to say the US is not a superpower is rather foolish.

When the USA ceases to be a superpower is different from when it ceases to be a powerful threat. Russia is a powerful threat, despite being only a mid-tier power.

IMO, the USA probably is still a superpower. But the UK and France didn't realise they'd stopped being superpowers until the Suez Crisis, and I suspect the USA will only discover the loss of superpower status in a similar way. Though not exactly the same, given what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan, let alone TACOing out of using force to take Greenland.

It's a heavyweight and will remain so, but it's ability to influence what other countries do is in freefall. Whether that disqualifies it as a superpower is a matter of definition, I suppose.

> Well, I feel sorry for the first country that tries to test that theory.

I took exactly one British military officer in Greenland to stop the entire US Department of War.

I will grant the US is a superpower, even the largest. But they aren't the only one.

There are two types of engineers right now:

1. This category understands what they do and use AI to make their processes faster, in another world, less time spent with boring stuff and more time spent having fun.

2. This category fully replaced their work with AI, they just press a button and let AI do everything. A friend of mine is here, AI took full control of their environment, he just press a button, even his home cookware is using AI.

I know which engineer still learning and can join any company. I also know which engineer is so dependent on AI that he won't be able to do basic tasks without it.

But you have to get the software somehow? Once you get it, it works offline. The same here I guess: once you download the source code/binaries into browser's cache (that can store things indefinitely) it's offline.

True, but you are at the whims of the browser cache, and how long it wants to keep it around.

If you are worried, download and self host. As suggested on the website (when discussing trust and PII).

> But you have to get the software somehow?

We call this: download. Usually better than RCE.

You're misunderstanding how websites work. You can install it locally on your computer and run it via localhost https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps

There's an electron build, although why you'd use it over a native slicer is beyond me.

Umm, I’m confused about this comment… the concept of a web app that gets saved into browser cache and then can be loaded and used while offline definitely isn’t new. See Photopea etc

With a stand-alone application once you download it in your file system you know exactly where it is and how to create backups etc.

A "browser cache" is just an opaque bit of storage. What if you need to update/reinstall your browser or want to switch? I wouldn't trust important data to it.

I generally feel uncomfortable how so many applications are browser-only these days. The thought of having important data in a tab that you might close by mistake at any moment is uncomfortable. Browsers should really only be used for fleeting content, not productive work.

That used to be the case, but there’s a new API worth checking out, you can read and write files right on your computer https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...

>LLM output is expressly prohibited for any direct communication

One more reason to support the project!!

Btw, my first computer was an Intel Pentium MMX 166Mhz IIRC, massive 64MB of SIMM ram, and impressive 8GB of disk. Trident "graphic card", Creative sound card and the ultra fast Motorola 56k modem haha

"I installed CachyOS .... It wasn't a painless process. In fact, sleep mode was broken from the start"

This is the problem with newbies into Linux world, they follow hype instead of installing a stable distro.

As it stands in 2026, Linux Mint Cinnamon is by far the best distro to use, no matter if you are into IT field, heavy gaming, video editing and 3D design, it just works.

It follows the well known stability of Debian Linux, while being up-to-date like Ubuntu but without all the bloatware, kernel panic and privacy issues from Ubuntu.

If you are following hype or those distro so called "rolling releases" aka Arch Linux, don't complain that you are having problems. They are everything but stable and "just works" lmao

AI can be good under the right circumstances but only if reviewed 100% of the time by a human.

Homelab is my hobby where I run Proxmox, Debian VM, DNS, K8s, etc, all managed via Ansible.

For what it is worth, I hate docker :)

I wanted to setup a private tracker torrent that should include:

1) Jackett: For the authentication

2) Radarr: The inhouse browser

3) qBitorrent: which receives the torrent files automatically from Radarr

4) Jellyfin: Of course :)

I used ChatGPT to assist me into getting the above done as simple as possible and all done via Ansible:

1) Ansible playbook to setup a Debian LXC Proxmox container

2) Jackett + Radarr + qBitorrent all in one for simplicity

3) Wireguard VPN + Proton VPN: If the VPN ever go down, the entire container network must stop (IPTables) so my home IP isn't leaked.

After 3 nights I got everything working and running 24/7, but it required a lot of review so it can be managed 10 years down the road instead of WTF is this???

There were silly mistakes that make you question "Why am I even using this tool??" but then I remember, Google and search engines are dead. It would have taken me weeks to get this done otherwise, AI tools speed that process by fetching the info I need so I can put them together.

I use AI purely to replace the broken state of search engines, even Brave and DuckDuckGo, I know what I am asking it, not just copy/paste and hope it works.

I have colleagues also into IT field whose the company where they work are fully AI, full access to their environment, they no longer do the thinking, they just press the button. These people are cooked, not just because of the state of AI, if they ever go look for another job, all they did for years was press a button!!

>but I can feel my brain engaging less with the problem than I'm used to

With me it has been the opposite, perhaps because I was anti-AI before and because I know it is gonna make mistake.

My most intense AI usage:

Goal: Homelab is my hobby and I wanted to setup a private tracker torrent via Proton VPN, fully.

I am used to tools such Ansible and Linux operating system, but there were like 3 different tools to manage the torrents, plus a bunch of firewall rules so in case Provon VPN drops, everything stops working instead of using my real IP Address snitching me to my ISP.

I wanted everything to be as automated as possible, Ansible, so if everything catches on fire, I can run Ansible playbook and bring everything back online.

The whole setup took me 3 nights and I couldn't stop thinking about it during the day, like how can I solve this or that, the solution Perplexity/ChatGPT gave me broke something else so how could I solve that, etc.

I am using these tools more like a Google Search alternative than AI per se, I can see when it made mistakes because I know what I am asking it to help me with, homelab. I don't wanna to just copy and paste, and ironically, I have learned a ton about Promox ( where I run my virtual containers and virtual machine ). I always say that I don't wanna just answers, show me how did you get to that conclusion so I can learn it myself.

As long as you are aware that this is a tool and that it makes mistakes the same way as somebody's reply in any forum, you are good and should still feel motivated.

If you are using AI tools just for copy/paste expecting things to work without caring to understand what is actually happening (companies and IT teams worldwide), then you have a big problem.

Countries are learning that the USA is no longer what it used to be, on the surface they are trying to please Trump to avoid getting more tariffs but on the ground they are no longer depending on the dollar.

Wait until Greenland drama goes sideways, then you will see the dollar getting washed out as the international currency.

The problem of doing this now is that no company will care, they will be happy that you are doing more for less, so no salary increase, no job tittle change.

I used to love my job (DevOps, Platform, DevSecOps Engineer) but I learned the hard way to disappear after 4:59PM and never get online before 8:59

Also, no more e-mail, teams, slack, etc, on my personal phone. While working be in the office or WFH, I do my best but outside that, you won't find me.

I am addicted to being useful culture died in early 2000s.... I am seeing projects where the goal is to have AI Teams managing AI Teams without human intervention, so enjoy your life and take workplace less seriously, we are gonna be replaced and you will regret spending more time working than living!!

1. Disagree. Plenty of companies still care about impact as a key metric in promotion processes so if working more increases impact, then it can increase rewards.

2. Not all this type of work is transactional. I’ve “worked” many extra hours for the pleasure of it, in which case it’s not working instead of living, it is living. This is the spirit of OPs article IMO.