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Comment Re:Great at finding bugs with a caveat (Score 1) 92

" And AI whipped it up in a few hours of me going back and forth with it."

This is the key. You are no doubt, a capable programmer, and you used this tool to do more work. Which is what most good tools do. Woodworkers don't buy chair making machines, etc. So many are touting that you can just say, "I want an app that does..." and get that app. Or that a junior programmer can suddenly be far better.

I see a weird future where junior programmers are going to be lured into a very bad place, some senior reject the new tech and become comparatively useless, and some seniors become fantastically productive.

Comment Great at finding bugs with a caveat (Score 3, Insightful) 92

I use various AI tools to not only identify bugs I am presently hunting, but to just give my code a code review for performance issues, and bugs in general.

The tools I use are fantastic at this. But, there is a massive caveat. I can look at the bug identified, and I can then proceed to fix it. Great. But, if I use the AI tool to provide me the "fixed" code, it is often very broken. To the point of not compiling, or leaving out major functionality. Along with it may very well introduce major bugs of its own.

One of my favourite examples was where I was using threading very correctly. It then yanked out everything which was there to prevent obvious race conditions and other critical aspects of threading. It was hot garbage. But, the original bug I had been hunting was correctly identified.

AI is a very useful too, but it is not a programmer. I'm sick of seeing people think it is a programmer by "proving" this with apps with about the complexity of a TODO app.
EU

New Large Coral Reef Discovered Off Naples Containing Rare Ancient Corals (independent.co.uk) 13

Off the southwest cost of Italy, a remotely operated submarine made "a significant and rare discovery," reports the Independent — a vast white coral reef that was 80 metres tall (262 feet) and 2 metres wide (6.56 feet) "containing important species and fossil traces." Often dubbed the "rainforests of the sea", coral reefs are of immense scientific interest due to their status as some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, harbouring millions of species. They play a crucial role in sustaining marine life but are currently under considerable threat...

hese impressive formations are composed of deep-water hard corals, commonly referred to as "white corals" because of their lack of colour, specifically identified as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata species. The reef also contains black corals, solitary corals, sponges, and other ecologically important species, as well as fossil traces of oysters and ancient corals, the Italian Research Council said. It called them "true geological testimonies of a distant past."

Mission leader Giorgio Castellan said the finding was "exceptional for Italian seas: bioconstructions of this kind, and of such magnitude, had never been observed in the Dohrn Canyon, and are rarely seen elsewhere in our Mediterranean". The discovery will help scientists understand the ecological role of deep coral habitats and their distribution, especially in the context of conservation and restoration efforts, he added.

The undersea research was funded by the EU.

Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.

Comment PMI and agile are two cancers being removed. (Score 2) 61

PMI and agile are sure signs you have a serious micromanagement problem. With any luck this reversion to flatter hierarchies will also see the death of Jira, the micromanager's preferred nuclear weapon.

I love the bleating sound these micromangers are making now that they are being fired from their "cat herding" BS jobs. If they had the slightest clue, they would have long ago realized you don't manage programmers, you lead them. This means you don't "herd cats" you get a treat, and lead them to where they want to go anyway.

One good leader can "manage" the same number of people as a dozen or more PMI trained micromanagers.

A friend of mine who fired 100% of his managers and replaced them with a few leaders, said, "I could tell who was a manager, and who was a leader, simply because the managers were always complaining about stress and overwork; whereas the leaders were comfortable with how things were going, even when bad outside things impacted their projects. They had no problem with having their teams deal with any problems."

Comment They should be forced to opensource (Score 2) 23

Without a doubt various top executives got "retention bonuses", the liquidation company probably got a bunch of money, with the employees and creditors probably seeing nothing, or very close to nothing.

When a company goes TU like this, and leaves customers in the lurch, they should be forced to go full open-source. With, the patents licensed to all owners where they are immune from patent issues as are any organizations which build things on their behalf. But, every engineering document, every software document, etc should all be wide open.

Comment Fit and finish (Score 2) 92

I was in Canary Wharf the other day showing someone the concept of fit and finish. They have the perfect pairing. A BYD dealership right across from a Range Rover one. I showed how the gap in the various external panels just doesn't change on a BYD. That the plastic fittings line up, etc.

Then we went to the RR dealership and my companion was OMFG, these are trash. Then she pointed out that one of the panels had a clearly sweeping design which was supposed to line up with another panels design, but didn't. It just was made wrong.

So, I'm not sure how RR even noticed their systems were hacked. Did they suddenly start making good vehicles and were forced to investigate?

Comment WTF would you let the power company ruin batteries (Score 0) 104

Batteries, even LiFePo ones have a limited number of charge discharges. Why would anyone let the power company wear that down? This is a classic case of a crap power company not building or maintaining a proper grid, so they fool their customers into building it for them.

Comment I would love the fold out computer. (Score 1) 39

That would be a great form factor fora powerful GPUs and a solid keyboard.

A couple of 15" portable screens would be just fine. I can see a long skinny machine like that with that pair of monitors fitting into my carry-on and not displacing too much other stuff.

I want one.

Comment I always assumed this was the case. (Score 1) 25

While many of the worst terrorist plots are somewhat domestic, I would assume that there are less flashy, but otherwise very hard to solve crimes like assassinating political defectors, (cough, russia, cough russia) and that combined with a a good CCTV system, that this would be pretty much the only chance to identify the culprits before they were able to get out of the country.

This, along with the more routine serious crimes where the window between offence and escape can be hours.
Programming

The Toughest Programming Question for High School Students on This Year's CS Exam: Arrays 65

America's nonprofit College Board lets high school students take college-level classes — including a computer programming course that culminates with a 90-minute test. But students did better on questions about If-Then statements than they did on questions about arrays, according to the head of the program. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp explains: Students exhibited "strong performance on primitive types, Boolean expressions, and If statements; 44% of students earned 7-8 of these 8 points," says program head Trevor Packard. But students were challenged by "questions on Arrays, ArrayLists, and 2D Arrays; 17% of students earned 11-12 of these 12 points."

"The most challenging AP Computer Science A free-response question was #4, the 2D array number puzzle; 19% of students earned 8-9 of the 9 points possible."

You can see that question here. ("You will write the constructor and one method of the SumOrSameGame class... Array elements are initialized with random integers between 1 and 9, inclusive, each with an equal chance of being assigned to each element of puzzle...") Although to be fair, it was the last question on the test — appearing on page 16 — so maybe some students just didn't get to it.

theodp shares a sample Java solution and one in Excel VBA solution (which includes a visual presentation).

There's tests in 38 subjects — but CS and Statistics are the subjects where the highest number of students earned the test's lowest-possible score (1 out of 5). That end of the graph also includes notoriously difficult subjects like Latin, Japanese Language, and Physics.

There's also a table showing scores for the last 23 years, with fewer than 67% of students achieving a passing grade (3+) for the first 11 years. But in 2013 and 2017, more than 67% of students achieved that passsing grade, and the percentage has stayed above that line ever since (except for 2021), vascillating between 67% and 70.4%.

2018: 67.8%
2019: 69.6%
2020: 70.4%
2021: 65.1%
2022: 67.6%
2023: 68.0%
2024: 67.2%
2025: 67.0%

Comment Ah ha moment (Score 1) 111

I've been waiting for a long time for when someone comes up with an "ah ha" moment with physics. I don't say quantum physics, but physics.

I have long read about people stumped as they pursue a GUT, but my feeling is that we have long just asked the wrong questions.

Something like going back in time and, after proving we are a legitimate time traveller. Giving Newton one question. He would ask the same question we are still asking: "What truly causes gravity?"

That suggests to me that something is wrong with the question.

Comment Killing Pocket is a good thing (Score 1) 150

I never even liked the name. Pocket is the sort of thing that I want in some sort of plugin, not a core feature. As in, I don't want it, don't waste time making it, let someone else make it. I don't know what fakespot is, but I also don't want it in firefox. I don't even want picture in a picture, or it taking over my media keys, or almost anything other than things which are core to browsing.

I can see the password thing being good for people who aren't using an alternative.

Comment Anyone can look rich with a big enough credit card (Score 1) 181

The US has had the ability to borrow absurd amounts of money. Of course this makes them look rich.

After the Euro became a thing in Greece, the country appeared wildly successful, everyone was clamouring for the high paying government jobs, borrowing like crazy, and "modernizing" by dumping ship building, olive growing, olive processing, etc.

Then the party ended, and they realized it was all a mirage, and not only did they have a debt problem, but that they had not been "investing" in a future.

I truly believe that the US is going to get cut off from this debt firehose, and the world is going to realize that a huge amount of their "success" was entirely predicated on the world being stupid enough to keep shipping our riches to the US for their crap currency and debt.

Right now all kinds of economists spend endless amounts of time looking at the US being apparently successful, and then coming up with ways to explain that success without using debt as the explanation.

I see it as little different than if you gave Joe Average a 1 billion dollar CC with low interest rates. In short order Joe would look very successful; nice house, well dressed, fantastic lawn, kids going to the right schools, being seen in the right clubs, but when that CC fails, it would all fall apart. For a while they could sell the fancy watches, but the reality is that all the things they "invested" in like the best nightclub in town would all turn out to be money pits.

Maybe Joe did buy a burger joint, and it is still profitable, but it won't keep him in his 50,000 square foot mansion.

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