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Submission + - IOCCC 28 starts tonight UTC! (fosstodon.org)

Submitted by achowe
achowe writes: The IOCCC.org web site has been completely overhauled and made ready for the next contest to start later tonight UTC. From IOCCC Mastodon account `@ioccc@fosstodon.org` :

```
The IOCCC28, the 40th anniversary of the IOCCC is now scheduled to run from **2024-12-29 23:58:13.213455 UTC** to **2025-04-01 23:29:31.374143 UTC**!!!.
```
Participants should join Mastodon to keep track of announcements of Rules, Guidelines, and tools update notices.

Comment Good programmers work with a plethora of languages (Score 1) 370

My strength and love is "C" and more recently come to enjoy Erlang. Currently work in NodeJS Javascript. Been studying Rust with growing admiration, though not had occasion to use it yet. Wrote a hosted Forth interpreter in C (yeah I know) just for fun and curiosity. Worked with Lua and Rexx, both of which are great. Have done lots of Shell (Ksh, Bash) scripting. Wrote cyber cafe time management system for Windows in Java. Done some work in C#, which is surprisingly good given it was created by Microsoft. Dabbled with Ruby and Python, probably will again. Done many a web site using PHP. Worked with WSL (Waterloo Systems Language, now discontinued I think) for a co-op job. Long ago wrote a Pilot interpreter in Z80 assembler. Know some C++, though I avoid it like a plague. Once learned Perl, but have come to despise it and intend to kill those brain cells with booze.

Comment Vegetarian Headhunters (Score 1) 477

by achowe (#57153702) Attached to: Recruiters Are Still Complaining About No-Shows At Interviews

In all my professional life, I've never once found work through an employment agency, which I think are disgusting parasitic, often offshore outsourced, rancid vermin. Every job I've had has come from word of mouth or direct ad by the employer. Intermediary agents are horribly stupid. I've never blown off an interview with a company that does show interest, but would happily do it with a recruiter given I have zero respect for them.

On the other hand I understand being ignored by employers who don't reply to job seekers. I think I've had only three negative replies to job inquiries in my life, the rest just leave you hanging. So I can understand the "bale if not better" mind set. If employers want to be taken seriously then they need to at least play nice with potential employees.

However in today's thrifty world, sending out N negative replies by post or even email is often too much a burden (hassle) for a business, so they leave applicants hanging; only fair turn around if an applicant does like wise.

Comment CERT Secure Coding Standards (Score 2) 220

by achowe (#56184357) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Would You Teach 'Best Practices' For Programmers?

Start with the CERT Secure Coding standards, especially for C programmers it covers many of the "gotchas" to watch out for.

        SEI CERT C Coding Standard: Rules for Developing Safe, Reliable, and Secure Systems (2016 Edition)
        https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/...

Apparently they them for other languages like C++, Java, Perl.
Facebook

Facebook To Autoplay Videos With Sound On By Default (androidandme.com) 116

Posted by BeauHD from the things-no-one-asked-for dept.
Currently, Facebook videos autoplay on your News Feed as you scroll up and down. While they eat data and various resources, the saving grace is that they are silent -- that is, until now. Facebook has announced several new changes to its video platform today, including a setting that will autoplay videos with sound turned on by default. Android and Me reports: The audio of videos will fade in and out as you're scrolling through your feed. Fortunately, Facebook will at least make it so that audio won't autoplay if your phone is set to silent. If you're not a fan of this change, there will be a setting to turn audio autoplay off. The change is that it will now be on by default for everyone. Other feature introductions are larger previews for vertical videos, a picture-in-picture mode for videos so you can watch and continue scrolling (and even exit the app without interrupting the video on Android), and a Facebook Video app coming to smart TVs.
Microsoft

Microsoft To Lay Off 700 Employees Next Week, Report Says (geekwire.com) 168

Posted by BeauHD from the heads-up dept.
According to a report by Business Insider (Warning: may be paywalled), Microsoft will cut about 700 jobs in conjunction with its quarterly earnings release next week. GeekWire reports: The latest layoffs are part of the company's previously announced plan to cut about 2,850 roles globally during its current fiscal year, according to the Business Insider report. The company declined to comment this afternoon, but we understand the report to be accurate, based on our own sources. Next week's cuts will be spread across a variety of job functions inside the company. The company's previous job cuts have come in areas including its smartphone business and global sales team. Microsoft announced its largest cuts in July 2014, eliminating 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of the company at the time.
Facebook

Zuckerberg Sues Hundreds of Hawaiians To Force Property Sales To Him (msn.com) 284

Posted by BeauHD from the mine-for-the-taking dept.
A user writes: Apparently, owning 700 acres of land in Hawaii isn't enough -- Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has filed suit to force owners of several small parcels of land to sell to the highest bidder. The reason? These property owners are completely surrounded by Zuckerberg's land holdings and therefore have lawful easement to cross his property in order to get to theirs. Many of these land owners have held their land for generations, but seemingly Mr. Zuckerberg can not tolerate their presence so close to his private little slice of paradise. Landowners such as these came to own their land when their ancestors were "given" the land as Hawaiian natives. If successful in his "quiet title" court action, Mr. Zuckerberg will finally have his slice of Hawaii's beaches and tropical lands without having to deal with the pesky presence of neighbors who were on his land before he owned it. Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans? CNBC reports: "The cases target a dozen small plots of so-called 'kuleana' lands that are inside the much larger property that Zuckerberg bought on Kauai. Kuleana lands are properties that were granted to native Hawaiians in the mid-1800. One suit, according to the Star-Advertiser, was filed against about 300 people who are descendants of an immigrant Portuguese sugar cane plantation worker who bought four parcels totaling two acres of land in 1894. One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."
Programming

Are Flawed Languages Creating Bad Software? (techcrunch.com) 531

Posted by EditorDavid from the blaming-C dept.
"Most software, even critical system software, is insecure Swiss cheese held together with duct tape, bubble wrap, and bobby pins..." writes TechCrunch. An anonymous reader quotes their article: Everything is terrible because the fundamental tools we use are, still, so flawed that when used they inevitably craft terrible things... Almost all software has been bug-ridden and insecure for so long that we have grown to think that this is the natural state of code. This learned helplessness is not correct. Everything does not have to be terrible...

Vast experience has shown us that it is unrealistic to expect programmers to write secure code in memory-unsafe languages...as an industry, let's at least set a trajectory. Let's move towards writing system code in better languages, first of all -- this should improve security and speed. Let's move towards formal specifications and verification of mission-critical code.
Their article calls for LangSec testing, and applauds the use of languages like Go and Rust over memory-unsafe languages like C. "Itâ(TM)s not just systemd, not just Linux, not just software; the whole industry is at fault."
Oracle

Oracle Is Funding a New Anti-Google Group (fortune.com) 156

Posted by BeauHD from the shadow-group dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Fortune: Oracle says it is funding a new non-profit called "Campaign for Accountability," which consists of a campaign called "The Google Transparency Project" that claims to expose criminal behavior carried out by Google. "Oracle is absolutely a contributor (one of many) to the Transparency Project. This is important information for the public to know. It is 100 percent public records and accurate," said Ken Glueck, Senior Vice President of Oracle. Fortune reports: "Oracle's hidden hand is not a huge surprise since the company has a history of sneaky PR tactics, and is still embroiled in a bitter intellectual property lawsuit with Google." One would think Microsoft may be another contributor, but the company said it is not. Daniel Stevens, the deputy director of the CfA, declined to name the group's other donors, or to explain why it does not disclose its funders. Why does this matter? "When wealthy companies or individuals pose as a grass-roots group like the so-called 'campaign for accountability' project, [it] can confuse news and public relations, and foster public cynicism," writes Jeff John Roberts via Fortune.

Submission + - Oracle may have stopped funding and development efforts on Java EE (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ArsTechnica is reporting that Oracle has quietly pulled funding and development efforts away from Java EE, the server-side Java technology that is part of hundreds of thousands of Internet and business applications. Java EE even plays an integral role for many apps that aren't otherwise based on Java, and customers and partners have invested time and code. It wouldn't be the first time this has happened, but the implications are huge for Java as a platform.

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