theodp writes: "My advice to all the young tech enthusiasts, future engineering managers, and CTOs is simple," writes Vadim Kravcenko in The Surprising Power of Documentation. "Cultivate a love for documentation. You may view it as a chore, an afterthought, or a nuisance. But trust me when I say this: Documentation isn't just a task on your to-do list; it's a pillar for success and a bridge that connects ideas, people, and vision. Treat it not as a burden but as an opportunity to learn, share, and create an impact."

So, what would Goldilocks make of your organization's documentation -- Too much? Too little? Just right? Got any recommended tools and management tips for creating useful and sustainable documentation?

"I keep reading and hearing about calls for regulations on artificial intelligence," writes long-time Slashdot reader bartoku , "and it pisses me off."

"I want more so called artificial intelligence, not less, and I do not want it to be regulated, filtered, restricted in anyway." I love that Deep Fakes are now available to the masses, and I stopped believing anything is real in 1997 after Hoffman and De Niro scared me in " Wag the Dog".

I love automation and I want more of it; robots please take my job. I want robots to go fight wars for me instead of our sons.

Surveillance is already terrifying, adding "Artificial Intelligence" does not really make it that much more scary; we all need to just starve the system of our personal data anyway. All the other arguments like crashing economic systems and discrimination just seemed to be based on stupid "Artificial Intelligence" hooked up to something it should not be...

Please scare me, or vote on your favorite sci-fi "Artificial Intelligence" scenario. I will be being boring and hope we can have a "good" Matrix; one where I am rich and sexy.
The original submission notes that they posed this question to ChatGPT — and to Google — but "I did not get a single compelling answer."

So share your own thoughts in the comments: why should this Slashdot user be afraid of AI?

NOTE: Though they didn't feel it conveyed the right tone, they also submitted their original post to Microsoft's Bing AI, which delivered this rewrite:

What are the real dangers of artificial intelligence? I am not convinced by the common arguments against it, such as regulation, deep fakes, automation, war, surveillance, economic disruption, or discrimination. I think these are either exaggerated or solvable problems. I actually want more artificial intelligence in my life, not less. Can you give me some compelling reasons why I should be afraid of artificial intelligence? Or what are some sci-fi scenarios that you find plausible or interesting? Personally, I would like a Matrix-like simulation where I can live out my fantasies.

Longtime Slashdot reader Okian Warrior writes: There's been a lot of discussion about regulating AI in the news recently, including Sam Altman going before a Senate committee begging for regulation. So far I've seen only calls for regulation, but not suggestions on what those regulations should be. Since Slashdot is largely populated with experts in various fields (software, medicine, law, etc.), maybe we should begin this discussion. And note that if we don't create the reasonable rules, Congress (mostly 80-year old white men with conflicts of interest) will do it for us.

What are some good AI regulation suggestions?

I'll start: A human (and specifically, not an AI system) must be responsible for any medical treatment or diagnosis. If an AI suggests a diagnosis or medical treatment, there must be buy-in from a human who believes the decision is correct, and who would be held responsible in the same manner as a doctor not using AI. The AI must be a tool used by, and not a substitute for, human decisions. This would avoid problems with humans ignoring their responsibility, relying on the software, and causing harm through negligence. Doctors can use AI to (for example) diagnose cancer, but it will be the doctor's diagnosis and not the AI's.

What other suggestions do people have?

Fines for overdue library books were eliminated more than three years ago in Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco — as well as at the Los Angeles Public Library system (which serves 18 million people). The Hill reported that just in the U.S., more than 200 cities and municipalities had eliminated the fines by the end of 2019: Fines account for less than 1 percent of Chicago Public Library's revenue stream, and there is also a collection cost in terms of staff time, keeping cash on hand, banking and accounting. The San Diego library system did a detailed study and found the costs were higher than the fines collected, says Molloy.
And this week the King County Library System in Washington state — serving one million patrons in 50 libraries — joined the trend, announcing that it would end all late fines for overdue books.

A local newspaper summarized the results of a six-month review by library staff presented to the Board of Trustees: - In recent years, fines made up less than 1% of KCLS' operating budget.
- Late fine revenue continues to decrease over time. This trend correlates with patrons' interest in more digital and fewer physical items. Digital titles return automatically and do not accrue late fines.
- Collecting fines from patrons also has costs. Associated expenses include staff time, payment processing fees, printing notices and more.
- A majority of peer libraries have eliminated late fines.
Now Slashdot reader robotvoice writes: Library fines were assessed since early last century as an incentive for patrons to return materials and "be responsible." However, many studies have found that fines disproportionately affect the poor and disadvantaged in our society...

I have collected several anecdotes of dedicated library patrons who were locked out of borrowing because of excessive and punitive fines... I get daily use and enjoyment from library books and materials. While I personally have been scrupulous about paying fines — until they were eliminated — I support the idea that libraries are there to help those with the least access.

What do you think?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Should libraries eliminate fines for overdue books?

Replacing their main machine, long-time Slashdot reader shanen had a sobering thought. "Considering how many years it's lasted and adding that number to my own age, I wouldn't want to bet on who will outlast which." And this prompted a look back at all the computers used over a lifetime: I've purchased at least 15 personal computers over the decades. Might be more like 20 and couldn't even count how many company computers I've used for various classes and work. Then there were the computer labs filled with my students.
But this ultimately led them to two questions for Slashdot's readers:

(1) What was the brand of your longest-lived PC?
(2) What is the brand of your latest PC and how long do you expect it to last?

Some answers have already been posted on the original submission.

• I think the longest-lasting computer that I used on a daily basis as my main device was a Lenovo ThinkPad R500. I bought it in 2010 and used it until 2019. It still worked when I retired it, but it was getting a bit slow.

• The longest lived was a PDP11/34A. Made in the late 70s or early 80s, it was still running when I sold it in 2005. Did a couple of component-level repairs, and I reckon there's every chance that it still runs today. Not sure if it counts as "personal" though. I have a polycarbonate Macbook from 2007 still going strong, so I guess that makes the answer "Apple".

There's also an interesting story about a long-running server from days gone. But what's your own answer to the question? Share your own stories in the comments.

What was the brand of your longest-lived PC — and how long do you expect your current PC to last?

Anyone have career advice for this anonymous Slashdot reader? I've had a great career from 1992 to today. I've been a front line coder for most of that, but also a team lead, a supervisor, a project manager, a scrum master, etc. My career has been marked by expediency — I did whatever needed doing at the time, in whatever tools necessary.

However, now I'm 52, and I'm getting tired of leadership and project management, and I would like to return to that front line again. The legacy skills I have are no longer in demand. (They aren't Cobol.) Here's the rub: I am happy to do the work nobody else wants to do. Dead languages, abandoned codebases with little documentation, precariously built systems with rickety infrastructure... I've worked in them before, and I would be fine doing it again.

I'm afraid of nothing, but I don't want to keep climbing the bleeding edge of the technical mountain. I'd be happy to be silently, competently keeping things moving. By 55 I would like to make that move. It's either that or retire, which is an option... but I love the technical work.
They're soliciting suggestions from other Slashdot readers. ("Where to focus? How to prep?") So share your own best advice in the comments.

How can an aging project manager return to coding on unpopular legacy codebases?

Slashdot reader Prahjister knows what a system on a chip is. But that's part of the problem: I recently started hearing the term SoC at work when referring to digital signage hardware. This has really triggered me.... It is like when I heard people refer to a PC as a CPU.

I tried to speak to my colleagues and dissuade them from using this term in this manner with no luck. Am I wrong trying to dissuade them for this?
Maybe another question would be: Are there technical malapropisms that drive you crazy? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

And when should you call hardware a 'SoC'?

OpenAI's ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its ability to give solutions to complex problems almost instantly and with nothing more than a text prompt. Up until yesterday, ChatGPT was based on GPT-3.5, a deep learning language model that was trained on an impressive 175 billion parameters. Now, it's based on GPT-4 (available for ChatGPT+ subscribers), capable of solving even more complex problems with greater accuracy (40% percent more likely to give factual responses). It's also capable of receiving images as a basis for interaction, instead of just text. While the company has chosen not to reveal how large GPT-4 is, they claim it scored in the 88th percentile on a number of tests, including the Uniform Bar Exam, LSAT, SAT Math and SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing exams.

ChatGPT is extremely capable but its responses largely depend on the questions or prompts you enter. In other words, the better you describe and phrase the problem/question, the better the results. We're already starting to see companies require that new hires know not only how to use ChatGPT but how to extract the most out of it.

That being said, we'd like to know how Slashdotters are using the chatbot. What are some of your favorite prompts? Have you used it to become more efficient at work? What about for coding? Please share specific prompts too to help us get similar results.

After debating the term in a recent Slashdot subthread, longtime reader Tablizer wants to pose the question to a larger audience: what exactly are 'microservices'? Over the past few years I've asked many colleagues what "microservices" are, and get a gazillion different answers. "Independent deploy-ability" has been an issue as old as the IBM hills. Don't make anything "too big" nor "too small"; be it functions, files, apps, name-spaces, tables, databases, etc.

Overly large X's didn't need special terms, such as "monofunction". We'd just call it "poorly partitioned/sized/factored". (Picking the right size requires skill and experience, both in technology and the domain.) Dynamic languages are usually "independently deployable" at the file level, so what is a PHP "monolith", for example?

Puzzles like this are abound when trying to use the Socratic method to tease out specific-ness. Socrates would quit and become a goat herder, as such discussions often turn sour and personal. Here's a recent Slashdot subthread debating the term.

"I think the answer is no, but there are some clever people around here," writes long-time Slashdot reader shanen, "so...

"Is there any firewall or router or some other device that can adequately protect an old and no longer supported computer?" I have at least two of those that come to mind, and I might use them more often if there was a safe way to connect them to the Internet.

The specifics probably matter, though that's like opening a can of worms, but... One is a little old machine running an old and no longer supported version of Linux. Another is a Windows XP box that's too customized at a low level to run Linux.

But the big concern involves a couple of old boxes that are only alive now because Windows 10 saved them from the end-of-service of Windows 7. Right now it looks like they might outlive Windows 10, too, but two of them are not suitable for Windows 11. Plus my spouse has an old Windows 8 box now running under 10...
What happens when you combine missed security updates with internet connectivity? Share your best thoughts in the comments.

Can you use an unsafe computer safely?

"It's time for me to build a new Linux PC," writes Slashdot reader eggegick, complaining that while Dell (and Amazon) sell systems with Linux pre-installed, it feels like they're tacking on an unnecessary extra expense.

But then who sells a desktop PC where Linux is still easy to install? Windows seems to make it difficult to use your own (Linux OS) boot media: I guess this is a security measure, but I can think of better ways to implement this, for instance ask the user to type in "yes" or "fire the explosive bolts", or some sort of simple override).... As it is, I hit the F12 key during the boot to enter the BIOS, hoping to tell it to enable booting from the CD. Well I have not looked at a BIOS screen in a long time, and there is no "enable boot from CD option" anymore. There are some options for booting from other devices but it is all fubar magic to me.
One Dell user discovered it's as simple (or as complicated) as going into Settings / Recovery / Troubleshoot / Advanced options / See More Recovery Settings / Advanced Options / UEFI Firmware Settings / Restart to Change UEFI Firmware Settings. (And then under the Boot menu there's a choice called "Secure Boot" with an option labelled "Disabled," after which under the Boot menu the third choice becomes File Browser Add Boot Option / Select Media Driver...)

Is that simple enough — or is it fubar magic? "My question is, who builds a desktop PC these days that is user friendly in this regard (i.e. lets me install the OS I want)," asks the original submission.

Share your own experiences and suggestions in the comments. Where can you buy a desktop PC that makes Linux easy to install?

An anonymous reader writes: This column about a writer's struggle to find the perfect note-taking app resonated a lot with me. "A singular productivity tool that works for everyone is a unicorn -- beautiful, perfect, and completely fictional. Still, there has to be some sort of middle ground between an unachievable fantasy and the current landscape. I would happily settle for two, maybe three apps. Honestly, less than 10 is all I'm asking for. Until then, my phone and laptop will be a cluttered mess of productivity apps that only do half their jobs," writes Victoria Song.

Over the years, I have tried Notion, Apple Notes, the good old Windows' Notepad, Roam Research, Obsidian, Google Keep, Google Docs, and OneNote among possibly many more that I am unable to recall anymore. Some support Apple Pencil, which is one of the usecases I find useful. Roam Research did not even have a native app for mobile devices for the longest time. Some applications are good, but they don't support online syncing, or support syncing with only a particular storage service. And have you noticed just how expensive some of these apps could get? As much as $15-$30 a month! Out of curiosity, and forget my usecases -- as I admit I have not mentioned many -- how do you maintain your notes for work and personal life. (I have been using physical notepads a lot more in recent months but would like an app for digital notes.)

Slashdot reader SoftwareArtist writes: Terminal emulators have barely changed in 30 years. They're still just scrolling windows of unstructured text. Why is there so little innovation in an application we use every day?

There are so many ways they could be modernized to help us be more productive. For example:

- If I type ls to show a directory listing, I should be able to right-click on a filename and get a list of operations to perform on that file, just like a file browser.

- If I start to type a filename and press tab twice, it shouldn't just print a list of possible completions. It should provide a popup to select the one I want.

- Why can't I cat an image file and see the image right in the terminal window?


Are there any modern terminals that update this important tool for the 21st century? And if not, what prevents them?

couchslug writes: Mozilla's Firefox once commanded a large chunk of the browser market share, but now it stands under a pitiful 5 percent. Google money removes need to compete from a management POV as they'll get paid either way but they're still leaving money on the table.

What should Mozilla do to help Firefox regain its lost market share? Not so long ago Internet Explorer was only used to download Firefox when geeks reloaded Windows machines for others. Today, Edge, however pathetic, still outranks Firefox. Were FF not arguably the best available browser for Linux, share would be even less.

Were you the king for a day what would you do to make Firefox great again? If you dropped or deprecated Firefox what shooed you off? This is not about Firefox being good or bad but about regaining casually discarded market share.

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen has a question: What makes a decent social web site? If you don't like the original form of the subjective question, how about something like "What is the best social site you know of?" or "What criteria would you use to recognize a good social site?" or even "How could a good social media website even survive...?"
Their original submission lists their own criteria for a good social site:

• Efficient to use (without wasting your time)

• Has educational value, "perhaps measured by questions like 'How frequently has this website justified changing my mind about something?'"

• The size and permeability of filter bubbles formed by people using the site

But if you have different priorities for a social site -- what are they? Share your own best thoughts in the comments.

What makes a good social media site?

New submitter cj9er writes: Considering all the privacy issues in today's online climate (all the issues with Meta right now), what is the best high-end smartphone to select?

Apple: No way they don't sell your data... Sure, they have privacy for third-party apps, but what about the data they collect from the phone itself? Consider what the revenue is on a single smartphone (say $150), how do you think they have all that cash on hand?

Google: Yeah right, Pixel is probably collecting [data] 24/7 considering their main business is selling ads on Search. They have developed the Pixel line because they probably realized they were missing out on the direct collection of data from their own hardware (cut out the middle players using Android).

Samsung: Their TVs even collect and sell data on you. I don't really understand the price premium on Galaxy phones anyways.

I have kept my data and Wi-Fi turned off on my phones for years. Initially it was for battery reasons but now add in data collection. Ultimately, if we could turn off the GPS feature at will on our phones, maybe we could prevent all tracking (except for cellular triangulation). If we then think about safety, GPS is great and now with satellite-tracking on Apple phones, even better. But then what is going on behind the scenes 99.99% of the rest of the time when you don't require those options for safety reasons?

What phone manufacturer can be trusted?

An anonymous reader writes: Haven't seen recommendation threads on Slashdot of late. Was curious what my fellow readers have watched and read this year that you enjoyed?

Google is still useful for many, but the harder question is why its results feel more sterile than they did five years ago. From a report: SEO expert Marie Haynes's theory is that this is the result of Google trying to crack down on misinformation and low-quality content -- especially around consequential search topics. In 2017, the company started talking publicly about a Search initiative called EAT, which stands for "expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness." The company has rolled out numerous quality rater guidelines, which help judge content to determine authenticity. One such effort, titled Your Money or Your Life, applies rigorous standards to any pages that show up when users search for medical or financial information.

"Take crypto," Haynes explained. "It's an area with a lot of fraud, so unless a site has a big presence around the web and Google gets the sense they're known for expertise on that topic, it'll be difficult to get them to rank." What this means, though, is that Google's results on any topic deemed sensitive enough will likely be from established sources. Medical queries are far more likely to return WebMD or Mayo Clinic pages, instead of personal testimonials. This, Haynes said, is especially challenging for people looking for homeopathic or alternative-medicine remedies.

There's a strange irony to all of this. For years, researchers, technologists, politicians, and journalists have agonized and cautioned against the wildness of the internet and its penchant for amplifying conspiracy theories, divisive subject matter, and flat-out false information. Many people, myself included, have argued for platforms to surface quality, authoritative information above all else, even at the expense of profit. And it's possible that Google has, in some sense, listened (albeit after far too much inaction) and, maybe, partly succeeded in showing higher-quality results in a number of contentious categories. But instead of ushering in an era of perfect information, the changes might be behind the complainers' sense that Google Search has stopped delivering interesting results.

"Email system are quite capable of sending and receiving large attachments," writes long-term Slashdot reader Stonefish "However, size limits are generally tiny."

And then he tells a story... In the late 1990s I worked for a research organisation maintaining their mail system, and had recently introduced mail size constraints. Within the first day it had blocked a number of emails — including a 700MB attachment.

Being a master of all thing Internet I called up the sender to tell him firstly how such a large email would cause problems for the receiver, and secondly how there were far more efficient ways of sending things. Given that he was on the same campus he invited me down to his lab to discuss this further. (After showing me round his lab, which was pretty impressive apart from the large "Biohazard" and "Radioactive" materials labels on the doors.) He told me that the facility he was sending the attachments to was a supercomputing hub with similar "Fat" pipes to the Internet so the large emails weren't a problem. I then spoke about the "efficiency" of the mail protocol and he said that he'd show me what efficient was and did a quick, "drag, drop and send" of another 700MB file of his latest research results.

He was right, I was wrong, it was efficient from his perspective and all his previous emails were easily available demonstrating when and where they were sent. As a result of this we changed our architecture and bought bulk cheap storage for email as it was a cheap, searchable and business focused approach to communications.

However 20 years plus later, even though networks are tens of thousands of times faster and storage is tens of thousands of times cheaper — email size limits remain about the same. Email remains cheap, efficient and ubiquitous — but we expect people to upload a file to a site and generate a link and embed in a manner that means we lose control of our data or it disappears in 12 months.
What's missing from this analysis? (Wikipedia's page on email attachments notes the intermediate "mail transfer agents" that store and forward email "and may therefore also impose size limits.") But even that page admits some attachment limits are arbitrary.

I always assumed it was an anti-piracy measure. Anyone know the real answer? Share your own thoughts in the comments.

Why haven't they increased size limits for email attachments?

Long-time Slashdot reader united_notions is trying to envision "the 'human-machine era', a time when the tech has moved out of our hands and into our ears, eyes, and brains." Real-time captioning of conversation. Highly accurate instant translation. Auto voice mimicry making it sound like you speaking the translation. Real-time AR facial augmentation making it also look like you speaking the translation. Meanwhile, super-intelligent Turing-passing chatbots that look real and can talk tirelessly about any topic, in different languages, in anyone's voice. Then, a little further into the future, brain-machine interfaces that turn your thoughts into language, saving you the effort of talking at all...

Slashdot has long reported on the development of all these technologies. They are coming.

When these are not futuristic but widespread everyday devices, what will language and interaction actually be like?

Would you trust instant auto-translation while shopping? On a date? At a hospital? How much would you interact with virtual characters? Debate with them? Learn a new language from them? Socialise with them, or more? Would you wear a device that lets you communicate without talking?

And with all this new tech, would you trust tech companies with the bountiful new data they gather?

Meanwhile, what about the people who get left behind as these shiny new gadgets spread? As always with new tech, they will be prohibitively expensive for many. And despite rapid improvements, still for some years progress will be slower for smaller languages around the world – and much slower still for sign language – despite the hype.

"Language in the Human-Machine Era" is an EU-funded research network putting together all these pieces. Watch our animations setting out future scenarios, read our open access forecast report, and contribute to our big survey!