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Submission + - New GitHub Copilot Research Finds 'Downward Pressure on Code Quality'

theodp writes: Visual Studio Magazine reports on new research on the effect of AI-powered GitHub Copilot on software development which sought to investigate the quality and maintainability of AI-assisted code compared to what would have been written by a human. Countering the positively-glowing findings of some other studies, the Coding on Copilot whitepaper from GitClear cites some adverse results.

"We find disconcerting trends for maintainability," explains the paper's abstract. "Code churn — the percentage of lines that are reverted or updated less than two weeks after being authored — is projected to double in 2024 compared to its 2021, pre-AI baseline. We further find that the percentage of 'added code' and 'copy/pasted code' is increasing in proportion to 'updated,' 'deleted,' and 'moved 'code. In this regard, AI-generated code resembles an itinerant contributor, prone to violate the DRY-ness [don't repeat yourself] of the repos visited." The paper concludes, "How will Copilot transform what it means to be a developer? There's no question that, as AI has surged in popularity, we have entered an era where code lines are being added faster than ever before. The better question for 2024: who's on the hook to clean up the mess afterward?" Further complicating matters, Computing Education in the Era of Generative AI (Feb. 2024 CACM) notes that "generating and inserting large blocks of code may be counterproductive for users at all levels. This requires users to read through code they did not write, sometimes at a more sophisticated level than they are familiar with."

Interestingly, the AI-generated code maintenance worries are reminiscent of concerns cited in the past for 'Google programmers', Stack Overflow copy-and-pasters, and stitchers of not-quite-compatible libraries, as well as earlier iterations of code generators, including C++ and other 'Next-Next-Finish' code wizards of the 90's and COBOL and PL/I applications generators of the 80's. Everything old is new again, including code maintenance challenges.

Submission + - German railway company is looking for Windows 3.11 admin (tomshardware.com)

betso.net writes: The news hit several German speaking media and here is an exert from "tomshardware":
A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy."

Submission + - Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found in The Human Digestive System (sciencealert.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. "It's insane," says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science Magazine. "The more we look, the more crazy things we see." These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents.

So Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev and colleagues argue their strange discovery may not be viruses at all, but instead an entirely new group of entities that may help bridge the ancient gap between the simplest genetic molecules and more complex viruses. "Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes," the researchers write in a preprint paper. Named after the highly-symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by its twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size. In fact, this brevity is likely one of the reasons we've failed to notice them previously.

In a study that has yet to be peer reviewed, Zheludev and team searched 5.4 million datasets of published genetic sequences and identified almost 30,000 different Obelisks. They appeared in about 10 percent of the human microbiomes the team examined. In one set of data, Obelisks turned up in 50 percent of the patients' oral samples. What's more, different types of Obelisks appear to be present in different areas of our bodies. "[This] supports the notion that Obelisks might include colonists of said human microbiomes," the researchers explain. They managed to isolate one type of host cell from our microbiome, the bacterium Streptococcus sanguinis – a common human mouth microbe. The Obelisk in these microbes had a loop 1,137 nucleotides long. "While we don't know the 'hosts' of other Obelisks," write Zheludev and colleagues. "it is reasonable to assume that at least a fraction may be present in bacteria." The question of the Obelisks' source aside, all seem to include codes for a new class of protein the researchers have named Oblins.

Comment Re:Okay, but the footprint should be small (Score 1) 95

it does not up the security posture that much. It helps in case a lot of key exchange traffic must be collected in order to derive the key progressively.
But in practice, it merely mitigates the impacts in case of compromise. Thats the reason why we are bugged with password and key rotation: so that in case its compromised, it cannot be reused (much longer).

Comment Re:SSH is less secure as a practical matter (Score 1) 95

people connecting to lots of servers often enable an option to skip checking host keys
By doing so, people understand they don't validate the host in any way, and expose themselves to mitm. I don't know anyone who does that. Its like going beyond the big fat warning while navigating to https://wrong.host.badssl.com/; or rather like disabling this warning in your browser settings.

HTTPS connections allow overlaying extra authentication methods
Once the ssh client authenticated the server, the server must authenticate the user which can be provided by various means. Moreover, the extra authentication methods you mention have nothing to do with tls, and in case the tls connection is compromised, you would be sending your credential in plain text. At the tls level, your server can validate a client certificate, thats it.

Comment Re: Mandated ID for social networks (Score 1) 194

What does the digital id have to do with banning or shadow banning accounts from social media for whatever reason? Under my interpretation of current EU legislation, if social networks rely on this new id (which I think is likely), they would have to allow any citizen to join and participate without discrimination. Just like any business open to the public

Comment Re:...And this is why we like our Walled Garden (Score 1) 32

One unsafe application on Android is less likely to cause problems for you than an unsafe application run in your user space on a desktop OS.

correction: one unsafe android application is less likely to cause problems to another application running on the same device than applications on a desktop OS. Also note considering: people usually grant all sorts of permissions to mobile applications without reason, so your silo is kind of falling apart already.

Comment Re:The rules are idiotic (Score 1) 32

I agree such scanning lacks the context of the why the crypto is used. At the same time, the faulty code is most likely in a library, which is also lacking that context, and a good library should only rely on solid algorithms.

It sounds to me half of those hits are developers using outdated libraries still supporting broken crypto. I mean, I dont see any excuses for still using http without tls (rule 22, 593 hits), especially on a mobile device, and even if it is to communicate to a local server.

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