At the time of release, yes. They had to ensure the software worked before printing CDs and floppies. Nowadays they release buggy versions that users essentially test for them.
Also in terms of security, there was generally a much smaller potential attack surface and those surfaces were harder to reach because we were much less constantly connected.
I wouldn't go that far. As soon as you went online all bets were off.
In the 90s we had java applets, then flash, browsers would open local html files and read/write from c:, people were used to exchanging .exe files all the time and they'd open them without scrutiny (or warnings) and so on. It was not a good time for security.
Then dial-up was so finicky that you could literally disconnect someone by sending them a ping packet. Then came winXP, and blaster and its variants and all hell broke loose. Pre SP2 you could install a fresh version of XP and have it pwned inside 10 minutes if it was connected to a network.
Servers weren't any better, ssh exploits were all over the place (even The Matrix featured a real ssh exploit) and so on...
The only difference was that "the scene" was more about the thrill, the boasting, and learning and less about making a buck out of it. You'd see "x was here" or "owned by xxx" in page "defaces", instead of encrypting everything and asking for a reward.
Software has gotten drastically more secure than it was in 2000. It's hard to comprehend how bad the security picture was in 2000. This very much, extremely includes Linux.
Except that when you did connect Windows to anything it was hacked in less than 30 seconds (the user ignored the "apply these updates first, and then connect ..." advice, they wanted some keyboard driver. Hacked, whoops, gotta waste time doing a wipe and reinstall. This was back when many places had no firewalls). IRIX would fall over and die if you pointed a somewhat aggressive nmap at it, some buggy daemon listening by default on TCP/0, iirc. There was code in ISC DHCPD "windows is buggy, but we work around it with this here kluge..." and etc etc etc etc etc
Not just dhcpd. Besides the entire existance of Wine and Samba, Qemu has a workaround for win2k. Mkudffs has a workaround for MS-Windows not being able to read the filesystem without an mbr. Libc can work with local system time for those who dual-boot. Git can work around the difference in line endings. There are probably more of these kludges than you can shake a stick at.
But there was much less awareness of buffer overflows and none of the countermeasures that are widespread today. It was almost defining of the Win95 era that applications (eg. Word) frequently crashed because of improper and unsafe memory management.
I remember opening a webpage and being hacked seemed more likely. Adobe Flash and Java had more vulnerabilities and weaker (if any) sandboxes than JavaScript.
Everyone dislikes pedantically verifying references. However, if you cut corners here then will you also cut corners pedantically verifying research results?
Beyond references, the point of the literature review is to ensure you have read the literature and understand it well enough to accurately summarize it. If you present a literature review, it's likely assumed you did all of this. So at the very least you should be upfront about how an LLM assisted you.
Before LLMs, I've watched in horror as colleagues immediately copy-paste-ran Stack Overflow solutions in terminal, without even reading them.
LLM agents are basically the same, except now everyone is doing it. They copy-paste-run lots of code without meaningfully reviewing it.
My fear is that some colleagues are getting more skilled at prompting but less skilled at coding and writing. And the prompting skills may not generalize much outside of certain LLMs.
Elon at some point threatened to have an LLM rewrite all of the training data to remove woke. I assume Grokipedia is his experiment at doing this (and perhaps hoping it will infect other training sets too?) ...
I highly doubt collaborators are thinking less of you for not having more publications! After all, if they are collaborators they've already decided to work with you.
My understanding is you were awarded a PhD but with the minimum number of papers? This sounds completely normal. If you are trying for faculty positions it may appear "thin", but in industry will make you stand out for many jobs. In AI, there are many researchers who don't have a PhD!
It does sound awkward if asked why you didn't write more papers, but you can just discuss some of the challenges you faced in your existing works rather than getting into personal details.
Recently about half of the items sold to me as "New" have arrived used or counterfeit. The sellers have 5-star ratings, despite numerous reviews about receiving used or fake products. Unfortunately, Amazon crosses out these negative reviews and doesn't count them toward the overall seller rating.
The hypothetical you state only matters once you have a game! The biggest risk by far is not AI assets -- it's finishing the game.
So if AI increases your odds of finishing, go for it. Then once you have a game, more people will care about whether it's good than whether you used AI assets. I suspect there will be lots of interest in how you incorporated AI, maybe even moreso than otherwise. You could alternatively use the AI assets as placeholders and intend later to replace them with hand-drawn, if desired.
When I made games, I had zero interest in making assets but wanted to understand every detail about graphics engines. I just grabbed random mediocre assets from online. I would have definitely used AI to make assets but done the coding myself.
I don't consider any of window apps light. I'd rather open a vim on WSL because anyway I always have WSL open on windows. But I welcome markdown support in fact. I can quickly jot down something that is pleasingly presentable to people, say during presentation or meeting. For bloatware perspective, I would be more worried of LLM support which I had no idea it had. I learned it from a comment.
This happens with every new tech. When websites first appeared, many businesses trusted kids to build their website. The key in applied work is to build a portfolio that shows off your abilities.
The reality is that most people who need services don't know anyone who is traditionally qualified and available. So, a portfolio may convince them to take a chance on a newcomer over an overly expensive firm (that often also just hires newcomers).
Have you tried emailing him? He likely also owns hopding.com, and both domains consistently seem to be at Squarespace. The last commit on his GitHub (Feb 2025) someone commented "Good to see you're still with us :-)", so he may just not update things often.
True, I accidentally posted the date of the comment (1) not the commit. The only thing strange seems to be he used a smiley in the referenced commit message which doesn't seem to be his style.
At the time of release, yes. They had to ensure the software worked before printing CDs and floppies. Nowadays they release buggy versions that users essentially test for them.
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