Why you should not use AI to write your code

Who would have guessed ten years ago that artificial intelligence would ever, much less in less than a decade, become so incredibly advanced that not only can it program, but it can do it astonishingly well. Not only does it know how to write a program, but it doesn't even require a meticulous explanation and point-by-point specification of what the program needs to do, but a more vague description suffices. What's even more incredible is that you can actually have a fluent back-and-forth conversation with the AI about what is it that you want to achieve, just like you could do with a really smart person, the AI making suggestions and asking questions, and at the conclusion you can ask it to write the program for you, and it will understand everything that was talked about, and not only write the program, but might even do it better than you even imagined.

If you had told me ten years ago that in a decade AIs will be able to do that, I would have laughed at you. I think almost any experienced programmer and tech nerd would have. It seemed absolutely unthinkable back then, especially given the short timeframe.

Yet, here we are. Modern AIs can do exactly that, and can often do an even better job than a human programmer could, and much, much faster. Want to, for example, create a simple interactive web app, which you can upload to eg. GitHub Pages for anybody to use? Do the above, and you'll likely get a good working result.

Given that, it's extraordinarily tempting to just delegate everything to AI. Why spend weeks and months coding something when an AI can do it in a minute, based on a ten-minute conversation and refinement session? You'll get in 15 minutes something that you yourself would have probably spent a week coding. And the AI might even produce a better and richer result than you would have thought of.

However, here are some reasons why you shouldn't just start delegating everything (or even anything) to an AI, instead of writing the code yourself.

1) "Use it or lose it."

Computer programming, especially when you are implementing something that requires thought and perhaps even research, is an intellectual exercise. It requires thinking, planning, possibly some research. If, for example, the program in question implements something related to geometry, it may require you to solve some geometry problems, and think of ways to implement those solutions in code. It also often requires reaching into what you know and remember, about the programming language itself, about programming in general, and about the subject matter that you are solving in your program.

Intellectual exercise is similar to physical exercise. If you spend years not doing any physical exercise, your muscles will atrophy and lose strength and constitution, and your overall fitness and health goes down.

Lack of intellectual exercise is similar: If you spend years and years never engaging in cognitively and intellectually challenging tasks, the ability to do those tasks will slowly but surely deteriorate. If you spend years and years never accessing your memories about particular subjects, it will slowly but surely become harder and harder to access them in the future.

Your cognitive and intellectual skills are not something you cannot lose, or that cannot become weaker. They absolutely and most definitely can become weaker because of disuse, and you may even start losing things you knew, if enough time passes without you accessing and refreshing those memories.

This happens with everything. Including your very native language. Most people are actually not aware of it, and never become aware of it, but you can become extraordinarily poor at speaking and even writing your very own native language, the language that you grew up speaking and have spoken your entire life, if you never use it for many years. Spend 10 years in an environment where you never hear nor use your native language, and then try to use it again, and you'll be surprised how difficult it will have become (so much so that it's outright scary.)

Your native language (and any other language you speak with native fluency) is, however, something that comes back relatively quickly once you start actively hearing and using it once again. However, not all cognitive and intellectual knowledge is like that. Computer programming and especially algorithmic thinking may be much more laborious to relearn once it has deteriorated due to prolonged disuse.

If you have some other cognitively and intellectually challenging activities that you like to engage in, and you don't really care so much about computer programming and developing algorithms, then great. However, if programming is your passion, I would strongly recommend not shoving that passion aside and throwing it away, just because it's more convenient to delegate your coding tasks to an AI.

2) Computer programming is not just a job, it's a passion.

Sure, for many people programming is just a tedious job that they have taken in order to bring food to the table, and they'd rather be doing anything but, and they are not very interested in it.

However, for many avid programmers, coding is a hobby and a passion.

Compare it to other hobbies that people are passionate about: 

Why do painters keep painting by hand, when a computer can print you a high-quality picture in mere minutes? Why even go through the trouble of drawing a picture, when an AI can do that for you? In fact, an AI can generate a hundred versions of the same idea, and will do it much faster than you would be able to draw even one.

And the answer is: Because the passion is in the craft, in the doing, not just the end result. To a professional painter, the joy is in the manual painting process itself. The painting process is not just a tedious nuisance that one is forced to do. Instead, the painting process is the entire idea! That's where the joy is. The end result, the finished painting, is rewarding precisely because of the work you put into creating it. If you had just commissioned the painting from someone else, there would be no joy in it, there would be no sense of reward in it.

Or consider, for example, people who spent hours and hours every day tinkering with some old car. One could ask: Why spend so many hours every day, and why spend so much money, in something so useless? If you want a good car, just buy one. If you want your car fixed, then just take it to a shop where they will fix it for you.

And the answer is, once again: Because the passion is in the craft, not the end result. The passion is in the doing. It's the process that's the joy. It's the process that's rewarding. Seeing your own handiwork in action is what it's all about.

Same goes for programming. For many coders, it's the programming itself that's the passion. The thinking, the planning, the solving of problems, the act of expressing your solutions in the program code, and then see it work as it should. Even if it takes three weeks to do something that an AI could do in three minutes, so what? It's not the speed of writing the code that's the main point: It's precisely the crafting of the code.

3) Programming is an opportunity to learn something new.

This is actually something that professional mathematicians in particular are worried about, and the reason many of them have grown such a big distaste for AI-generated mathematical proofs: When an AI gives you a readymade proof for some mathematical problem, you have learned nothing in the process. When you are given the final end result of the proof, and the process of coming up with that proof is completely missing, very valuable stuff has been completely lost.

That's actually one of the primary reasons why professional mathematicians love to try to solve big and complicated unsolved mathematical problems: While the proof itself is nice, it's actually not the most important thing about it. The most important things are all the tools, techniques and new knowledge, new mathematics, that were developed in order to come up with that proof. In other words, what was learned during the process. Those new techniques are often useful in more than just that one proof.

Computer programming is not completely dissimilar to this. Very often, when you write a program, it's an opportunity to learn new things, things that you didn't know before. They might not be groundbreaking completely new territory in computer programming, but it may well be something that you yourself did not know, learned during the process of developing the program, and may be able to put to good use in the future for further programs and, perhaps, even something outside of programming.

If, however, you delegate the development and writing of the program to someone else, or something else, you will be denying yourself this opportunity to learn new things. 

Why, Nintendo? Just why?

When Nintendo announced the remake of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, using modern graphics and improved modern gameplay and controls, and showcased screenshots and trailer videos, I was excited. I have never actually played the original, I have only seen speedruns of it, and I was actually excited by the prospect of this modern remake of the game.

Then the character models appeared in the trailers and... oh boy...

And those are not the only characters that look like that. Pretty much all of the characters do.

They just look so... uncanny. There's just something wrong about them.

A lot of people have commented on how Link looks like a glossy porcelain doll, which does not look natural. It's like he is made of wet plastic. In fact, he looks like one of those badly and cheaply made Chinese knock-off figurines that just look wrong and ugly.

And Zelda... Oh my f'ing god... Zelda.. What have you done to her? Just compare with the original:

In the original, even at very low-poly, she looks normal and cute. In the remake her face looks very strange. It has a very pointy angular design, she has a gigantic nose, gigantic ears, a gigantic jaw, and very weird eyes. In the original she looks like a relatively normal 10-or-so-years-old (which is what she actually is), while in the remake she looks like some really weird small 30-years-old with pointy angular facial features.

Every facial feature is just slightly off. Especially the eyes look... strange and off-putting. It just looks so... uncanny. It looks weird and unsettling.

And, as mentioned, it's not just her. Pretty much all the characters shown in the trailers look strange, uncanny and unsettling like this. 

Just... why? Why did you do this, Nintendo? I'm seriously reconsidering whether I will actually buy the game. I would love to play the game, but those character designs are just... weird. They just look bad. I'm not sure I could play the game without being constantly bothered with how unsettling all the characters look. It could well ruin the gaming experience.

The 2025 Superman film is a strange movie

When the new 2025 movie Superman was announced and teased, I was mildly curious (even though, honestly speaking, it's by this point quite tiresome how many times they have rebooted the franchise.) When it appeared on Netflix recently, I watched it.

I was left quite perplexed.

This is not the noble, stoic, highly moral, "boy scout" True American Hero that Superman has been traditionally depicted as.

This is also not the grittier, brooding, anguishing, struggling-with-moral-and-personal-dilemmas Superman of the previous reboot movie series by Zack Snyder.

This is a quite strange alternate-universe Superman that's a bit different from that. And not only Superman himself, but the other characters and the world around him too.

As far as I know, this is not officially some kind of "alternate universe", in other words, something like "the Superman of Earth-751" or something like that, but it certainly does feel like it. In other words, this isn't the normal regular "Earth-One" Superman that we all know and love.

There are some significant differences in this Superman compared to his normal characterization, but before going into that, let me describe the overall tone of the movie itself, which left me a bit perplexed.

At points the movie almost felt like a parody of Superman movies (and superhero movies in general). However, I did not really get the feeling of the movie not taking itself too seriously, but more like it's not taking the source material seriously enough.

The movie has significantly more humor in it (and in my opinion not even very clever humor), in a way that's uncharacteristic of more recent Superman movies (and superhero movies in general). It's very reminiscent of the classic Richard Donner movies, especially the ones after the first, which often had silly humor that didn't really fit the mood all that well (nor the entire concept of a superhero movie based on the DC universe.)

In fact, the movie is very clearly a homage to the Donner movies, even using in its score a repeating leitmotif that closely resembles the famous Superman theme by John Williams. (It's very clearly not some kind of remake of them, or some kind of continuation or prequel to them, but there are very clear references to them.)

The movie also leans more towards the wackiness and silliness of the Golden Age and the silliest Silver Age of DC comics. Perhaps in this particular aspect the movie does indeed not take itself too seriously, like the Zack Snyder movies do, and is pretty much the opposite of "gritty" (that was the defining characteristic of the Snyder movies).

However, where it stopped being less of a "the movie doesn't take itself too seriously" and veered significantly more towards "the movie doesn't take the source material seriously" is in the characterization of Superman himself, which for some reason deviates significantly both from the Donner movies and the Gold/Silver Eras of the comic books. I didn't really like much the wackiness and "Golden Age" antics of the movie, but the characterization of Superman himself, which deviates from everything before, is the thing I liked the least.

Physically, this Superman can be injured, to the point of almost death. He bleeds, his body can be damaged, and ostensibly he could probably even die if damaged enough. (This is not just speculation, as the very first minutes of the movie very clearly establish this.) He can heal super-quickly with a hefty dose of yellow sunlight, but he seems to be extraordinarily and unusually weak in this respect. He also actually needs to breathe air and can asphyxiate (which is a deviation of the comics canon.)

But fine. I can attribute that to this happening in some "Earth-751" or something, not the primary "Earth-One" canon. Not really that huge of a problem.

What I did like much less was his characterization. (Yes, there exist even worse characterizations than this in the DC multiverse, but this movie is not actually clearly established as happening on an alternate Earth, and officially this is supposed to be "the" Superman. An official reboot of the franchise.)

The normal canonical traditional "Earth-One" superman is a gentleman, always polite, always with high ideals, the epitome of "lawful good", a "boy scout" and American hero, someone to look up to.

This Superman, however, can be a bit petty and argumentative, and in fact gets into bickering arguments with Lois Lane. Nothing really bad, mind you, but it just feels so uncharacteristic of Superman.

And one of the most shocking differences with the original comics (and previous movies) canon is his backstory. Yes, he is still from Krypton, which was destroyed, he was still sent to Earth by his parents (still without explanation to why only him and not everybody), and the parents still sent a message alongside his ship telling him how much they love and how they sent him to Earth to do good and to help people.

Except... as is revealed later in the movie (spoiler alert), part of the message had been corrupted and wasn't playable, but it's later restored and turns out that he was actually sent by his parents there to rule the Earth as its supreme leader under his iron fist, and to gather himself a harem of countless wives in order to repopulate Krypton.

Yes, I'm not making that up. And yes, the movie very clearly establishes that as the actual genuine message by Superman's parents (ie. it's quite clearly established that it's not eg. a fake message fabricated by Lex Luthor, but that it's the actual original genuine message.)

While Superman himself is very shocked, upset and depressed by this reveal, and the lesson is (delivered by his adoptive father) that "you choose your own destiny, don't let others dictate what you have to do", that's still an astonishing deviation from the original canon. Turns out that Superman's biological parents were actually quite douchebags. And nothing in the movie contradicts this, and on the contrary seems to reaffirm it. This is astonishingly disrespectful to the source material.

What is the singular of "dice"?

For quite a long time I had the strong notion that the singular of "dice" is "die". After all, Julius Caesar said "the die is cast", not "the dice is cast". It also follows a somewhat common pattern of irregular plurals in English, where for example "mice" is plural, never singular (in this case the singular quite obviously being "mouse").

It, thus, always bothered me when people (eg. in YouTube videos) used the word "dice" in singular, to refer to one single die.

One day, however, I did a bit of research on this subject, and turns out that it's not actually that simple.

The thing is, whether "dice" is an acceptable singular form of the word depends on the source. It also depends highly on the source whether it considers "die" to be the primary singular form, and "dice" to just be a vernacular form that's "sometimes used", or whether it's the other way around.

Even dictionaries vary on this, depending on the dictionary. Some of them list "die" as the primary form and just make a passing mention of "dice" also being used for that role. Some of them, however, do quite the opposite, and a few of them even list "die" as an "archaic" form, ie. not in use any more.

Bottom line is that there appears to be no strong consensus. Some sources say one thing, others say another, and there is no definitive rule.

This is probably, once again, a case of the English language changing over the decades to conform to the most common use of words, even if those uses start as "incorrect" uses. There is no hard rule that says that words are set in stone and can never, ever change (in form or meaning). They change constantly due to how they are widely used. 

Sometimes movie adaptations actually do things better than the original material

And I'm not here referring to some more obscure works of fiction that some film studio decided to make into a movie, creating a much better end result. I'm actually referring to renowned books that are widely considered masterpieces or, at a minimum, are extremely popular.

Let's take Tolkien's works as an example. Many Tolkien fans would consider it outright heresy that the movies did something better than Tolkien himself. However, I think that at least in a few cases they actually did.

For example, in the original The Fellowship of the Ring book, Gandalf has no qualms about touching and handling the One Ring, and he does so pretty casually at the beginning of the book, when he is at Bilbo's home.

In Peter Jackson's movie, however, he clearly doesn't dare to even touch the ring. He avoids direct contact when throwing the ring into the fireplace and then handing it to Frodo. Earlier, when Bilbo had dropped the ring onto the floor, Gandalf comes close to touching it but then stops himself, when he sees a short vision of The Eye.

I think this version fits the situation better: When talking with Bilbo, who is leaving the Shire, he suspects that there's something dangerous about the ring, and later he confirms that it is, indeed, the One Ring. He knows that the ring could affect him and seduce him if he touches it, making it too tempting to take it and guard it himself, and perhaps use it.

Many people have the misconception that Gandalf is one of the most powerful beings in the Tolkien universe. However, that's just that, a misconception. In reality Tolkien wrote him as being somewhat average as a Maia, maybe even perhaps a bit on the weaker side. Definitely much, much weaker than Sauron. Gandalf fears that Sauron's power could be too much for him to resist, so he doesn't dare to even touch the ring.

I think this is a better depiction of the situation than in Tolkien's book.

There's another example, this time in Jackson's first movie of The Hobbit trilogy, where I think the movie does a better job than the original book.

At the beginning of the book, when the dwarves are visiting Bilbo's home, they sing the famous Misty Mountains Cold song. The book describes it as the dwarves taking out all kinds of musical instruments like violins, flutes and percussion instruments, and overall the ambience is jovial. (I don't remember now if the book actually describes them dancing, but it might have.)

The movie, however, has no instruments and the tone of the singing is very solemn and somber, with the dwarves, who earlier were extremely lively and rowdy, now being very serious, still, quiet and somber, singing the song with thought and seriousness.

I really, really like this depiction more. And that's because of how meaningful the song is. It's not just some random song that they just happened to start singing. It means something to them. It's remembering their long lost home, and their longing to reclaim it and restore it to its former glory. The song represents loss, longing, and sadness, and also hope for the future. It's an extremely meaningful and profound song to them. Thus, the solemn mood fits it perfectly.

A lively singing-and-dancing routine with musical instruments would have completely ruined it. It would have absolutely not conveyed the same deep meaning that the song has.

On a completely different franchise, one of the most famous duels in the Harry Potter series happens in The Order of the Phoenix, when Dumbledore fights with Voldemort in the main hall of the Ministry.

In the movie, they are about equally matched, with Dumbledore having the extra handicap that he needs to constantly protect Harry, especially from the stray lightning bolts emanating from Voldemort's spells. Dumbledore succeeds in keeping Voldemort at bay, defending against his attacks, but barely.

In the original book, however, the scene plays completely differently. In the book Dumbledore is essentially an all-powerful god who has no trouble with Voldemort at all. He deflects all of his spells with ease, and Voldemort is no threat to him or to Harry. It's depicted pretty much as a leisurely walk-in-the-park for Dumbledore.

I really like the movie's depiction more. It does not diminish how powerful Dumbledore is, but it elevates Voldemort to the threat that he is actually supposed to be. In other words, the scene depicts him as, indeed, being one of the most powerful wizards who have ever existed, being able to fight on equal level with the likes of Dumbledore (who, besides he himself also being one of the most powerful wizards who have ever lived, is also wielding the Elder Wand to boot.)

It really shows that Voldemort is a credible threat to the entire world, and a villain of epic proportions, not easily defeated by even the strongest of wizards. Just like he should be. 

I really think the movie did it better. 

I kind of regret buying an OLED gaming monitor

Recently my previous gaming monitor was showing clear signs that it was breaking (after warming up for a minute or two after being turned on, the picture would disappear for a second every 10-or-so seconds, for all input devices, regardless of which input it was connected to, ie. be it DisplayPort or any of the HDMI ports), so I decided to buy a new one.

The previous one was a pretty high-end IPS gaming monitor, 120 Hz, g-sync. Picture quality was very good, and I had nothing to complain about, but alas, it was breaking and unusable.

Researching a bit about possible replacements, I noticed a very noticeable sale on a very high-end Asus OLED gaming monitor, which normally costs 1200€, but was on sale in a local online shop here for just 800€. After considering a few alternatives, I decided to purchase it, as the sale was too good to pass.

On paper this monitor is far superior in every aspect: 240 Hz, 0.03 ms pixel response time (the old one was 4 ms), g-sync, and of course being an OLED panel, pretty much infinite contrast: Blacks are actually black, not a very dark gray.

However, I am a bit disappointed and regretting the purchase a bit.

Yes, the picture has higher contrast, and blacks are really black (which really shows in games like Elite Dangerous), but it's actually not all that mind-blowing and awesome as people make it sound. After a while I don't even notice the difference. Sure, maybe the picture looks a tad bit more vivid and high-contrast, if I pay attention to that, but it's not all that different in practice.

Also, I literally have no use for a 240 Hz refresh rate compared to a 120 Hz. It brings me no benefit whatsoever. Nothing. Likewise for the 0.03 ms pixel response time. I see no practical difference in practical games.

So why am I regretting this? It's not like those things are drawbacks. Is it the high price (even if it was greatly reduced)?

No, it's not that. I was completely ready to pay the same amount for a good high-end IPS monitor.

The problem is the OLED technology. Particularly, the problem with pixel degradation.

Asus provides a 3-year warranty for the monitor, but only if you run the "pixel cleaning" process every 8 hours of use. Which the monitor automatically reminds you of with an OSD popup.

It's a bit annoying to suddenly get that popup in the middle of an intense gaming session. And if you run the pixel cleaning process, the monitor is unusable for 6 minutes.

Yes, you can make the interval longer, but that doesn't really solve the issue. You can even disable the reminder, but you do that at the risk of Asus deciding you didn't run it often enough and thus voiding your warranty.

I used my old IPS monitor also for my work at home, which consists of programming. Which, of course, means completely static elements on screen for hours and hours on end. I'm not sure I dare to use this OLED display for that work anymore, because of the dreaded OLED burn-in problem, even with the "pixel cleaning" process every 8 hours. I'm kind of worried that doing 8-hour days of work, with the static stuff on screen for that long, day after day, week after week, month after month, will degrade the pixels far quicker than they should.

IPS does not suffer from this problem. You can have a static picture being shown 24/7 for literally years, and while in some older IPS panels it might have left a temporary "ghost image", it was always that: Temporary. It would go away in minutes (particularly if you used a completely black screen). In more modern IPS panels you don't get that almost at all.

So it's an actual hassle. I have two choices: Just keep using this OLED display in the same way as I used my old IPS display, and perhaps risk uneven pixel degradation and image burn-in (regardless of the regular "pixel cleaning"), or set up myself a separate working space using a different monitor for that work.

I'm regretting this purchase. I'm not convinced the minor increase in image quality is really worth the hassle. In retrospect I should just have purchased a modern top-of-the-line 800€ IPS monitor. 

North Korea is the weirdest country in the world, part 3

The two previous articles:

• Part 1, where I describe the insane lengths to which North Korea goes to pretend like it's a rich prosperous country to foreign visitors and tourists, even though everybody knows it's all just a huge facade and acted show.
• Part 2, where I describe the North Korean concentration camps, and how insane that system is, outright resembling a dystopian sci-fi story.

Of course North Korea's weirdness does not end there. Let's take, for example, the huge dilapidated factories that are completely broken down and can't produce anything, but where every day thousands of people still pretend to work at, doing absolutely  nothing, because they are forced to.

And no, that's not some people trying to defraud the government to get a salary while actually doing nothing. They are doing it because the government forces them to, and are not doing it willingly.

You see, all the way back during the early years of the first Supreme Leader, Kim Il Sung (ie. some years after the second World War), North Korea adopted a very Soviet-style form of economy, where every single citizen is provided a job by the government, in exchange for the government also providing them a complimentary home, food and a monetary allowance for everyday expenses.

And just like in the Soviet Union, refusing to work was illegal and would easily land you in one of those concentration camps (although North Korea made this even stricter than the Soviet Union ever did.)

This system worked surprisingly well for several decades, and in fact for quite a while North Korea was much richer than South Korea of the time was (before this wealth status made a complete swap some time in the era from about the 70's to the 90's).

However, some time in the mid-90's things changed, and the economy of the country completely collapsed. Deals with the United States and several other countries fell through, and those countries stopped exporting oil and raw materials to North Korea. The economic collapse was so drastic that it ended up causing millions of North Korean citizens to die of starvation because the government couldn't provide for them anymore.

Factory after factory stopped production because of the sheer lack of this oil and raw materials. There was literally nothing to do. Some factories could keep up using locally mined and produced materials, but only some of them. A large number of factories, however, just stopped completely, and started to become more and more decrepit and dilapidated because of lack of maintenance, and after some years they became so broken that they couldn't have restarted production even if the supply of raw materials problem had been fixed. All the machines and infrastructure just broke and rusted. These factories were a complete loss.

However, and this is where the weirdness starts, the law about refusing to work didn't change. People were still mandated a job by the government, and they were still mandated to do that job or face the concentration camps.

The thing is: There were no new jobs to reassign those people to. Thus, they just didn't. In other words, most of those workers were never reassigned, and had to still attend, by law, those same factories that they were originally assigned to, because nobody had changed that mandate. The guards and government officials at the factories were still making a head count, were still looking if anybody was failing to appear for work, were still enforcing the mandated job at that factory assigned to each citizen, because nobody was telling those government officials otherwise either (and if they failed to do their duty as commanded, it would be them facing the concentration camps.)

So for decades, from about the mid-90's forward, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of North Korean citizens have been going every day, six days a week, for 12 hours per day, to those crumbling factories, going through the initial rituals of praising Dear Leader, then sitting at their designated place for 12 hours doing absolutely nothing, and then at the end of the work day going through the mandated struggle sessions (yes, those are also a thing there), and going home.

And all that for an absolute pitiable allowance and an abysmal amount of food (that's just a small fraction of what it was in the heyday of the system.)

Indeed, all those tens or even hundreds of thousands of North Korean citizens are pretending to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, doing absolutely nothing, because the guards and government officials are forcing them to, they themselves not being able to stop it because else they themselves would be facing the consequences, and because nobody higher-up in the government has bothered to change the system.

Although something has changed in the last few years, actually.

You see, for almost all of its existence, North Korea has had a huge black market consisting of people doing privately business with each other, secretly from the government. For example a fisherman could secretly sell fish to people for money, a housewife could secretly sew clothes and sell them to people, and the black market for illegally imported western goods is huge (yes, somehow some people do manage to smuggle illegal items into the country, past all the security measures. And by "illegal" we are not talking about drugs, tobacco or booze, but about everyday items common in the west that are not officially allowed, such as snacks, books, small electronics and so on. Heck, some even own entire VHS players and have some western movies in VHS format, something highly illegal in the country.)

In the past few years the North Korean government has got a great idea: Rather than try to fight the black market, take advantage of it!

They are doing that by telling those factory workers (both in the factories that don't produce anything and some of those that do) to go to out there and sell stuff to people for profit, and bring a certain amount of money back to the factory. Besides the threat of the concentration camps if they refuse or fail to do so, they have the bonus incentive that the citizen can keep any extra money that he makes from those sales. In other words, the higher the price that the worker can get from the items, the more money he himself  will earn. How generous!

(Unfortunately, and very unsurprisingly, people are not actually making much money this way. They can barely get enough to cover the required amount they need to bring back. Very rarely will people buy the stuff for a significantly higher price. But they need to keep selling or face the concentration camps.)