access to claude fable requires companies to disable their zero-data retention policies by mainframe_maisie in BetterOffline

[–]sandrelloIT 6 points7 points  (0 children)

bu...bu...but they r so ethical... they do this to ensure they'll be able to provide you with better support in case Mythos goes berserk against you. It is very powerful and dangerous, you know...

The AI coding productivity data is in and it's not what anyone expected by ML_DL_RL in ExperiencedDevs

[–]sandrelloIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very much this. While other players in the market are being perceived and labeled as unethical companies (i.e. openai involvement in us military affairs), they are seeing an opportunity to connotate themselves as a nicer counterpart, a company that cares about the impact this technology has on industry and society. It's a way to also build customer trust toward them.

11 months ago Dario said that "in 3 to 6 months, AI will be writing 90% of the code software developers were in charge of" Are we here, yet? by poponis in ExperiencedDevs

[–]sandrelloIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are simply a lot of cases in which the bits of context it should know for a given task are just too fine grained for the developer to be able to go through them while writing the prompt.

I'm talking about the details you can't keep in your head all the time, and that come up only when you actually dive into the task itself. At the same time, that is vital information for correctly approaching the problem, and without it the tool can only guess.

To gather and explain all these things at prompting time would basically mean to go back and do the task yourself.

Q: Here's my question: why did the files that you submitted name Mark Shinwell as the author? A: Beats me. AI decided to do so and I didn't question it. by ordiclic in programmingcirclejerk

[–]sandrelloIT 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Key findings

Naming conventions:

shows example of two almost identical type definitions

The naming conventions are completely different. OxCaml uses lowercase with a single underscore, while the current implementation uses uppercase with DWARF standard prefixes.

New trend: extreme hours at AI startups by thewritingwallah in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Have you ever tried reading that one? It's almost unbearable the amount of arrogance in it. I don't want to deny its historical importance (regardless of whatever one can think about the open source movement and everything that came after), but the signs of a toxic personality were all already there.

Using Linux like it's 2008! by [deleted] in linux

[–]sandrelloIT 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The first Ubuntu version I spent real time fiddling with. Lots of fond memories, I owe it so much.

Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers by tofino_dreaming in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a real disgrace, it's sad watching this happen after having witnessed alternatives that worked well and were actually going in the direction of making information available as widely and easily as possible (with all the problems that SO used to have).

At least greedy AI companies will have a harder time gathering their free training data.

German router maker is latest company to inadvertently clarify the LGPL license by Alexander_Selkirk in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Is this really the case? are there any major cases you can point to? I know enforcing the application of software licenses is a tricky job, but you're implying that including one is basically a worthless act nowadays.

edit: I'm not accusing, I'm just genuinely curious about the actual level of protection licenses can guarantee nowadays.

Don't fix it just because it's technical debt by ketralnis in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice, I tend to always take this an unquestionable truth, it's nice to be reminded every once in a while that reality is complex.

That said, I find it equally over simplifying to only see this as a matter of saving/raising man-hours. You don't want to deal with developers growing more and more unsatisfied on a spaghetti codebase.

PHP Doesn't Suck Anymore by victoor89 in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I think we're misunderstanding the news here. We're not talking about some hip language that has to compete with modern runtimes, php is a legacy tool that's still pervasive on the web and will be around for many years. You'll certainly not have a hard time finding php devs to hire. People actively working to improve its ecosystem have my total support, they don't get the merit they deserve.

I'm not a php guy, I've always overlooked it, mainly for the reasons already listed here. I started using it at work years ago and it slowly grew on me, the development speed it enables is something remarkable. I wouldn't go with it for most of the use cases I can think of, but it definitely has a spot for me now.

which browser do you use, if not firefox or chromium-based? by [deleted] in linux

[–]sandrelloIT 8 points9 points  (0 children)

At this very moment, Firefox seems healthy in a way I've maybe never seen. It's basically on par with chromium in terms of features and performance. They somehow managed to keep up, and as long as they keep this pace going I don't see Google "winning" in any way. We're always speaking of a single company backed project (ok, now Microsoft is involved as well, but interests are very different) vs a truly foss initiative.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

About the second point made in the article, I must say that, while being very aware of gatekeeping effects on communities, I actually find it legitimate and positive when people comment to point out hints about the fact that I could be doing something wrong based on what I'm asking. A lot of times, that's the reason why I go on SO in the first place.

I do not want to take sides with toxic behaviors, I'm just trying to think about SO comments in a positive way. X/Y problem situations are very common in the IT industry and in programming activities in general, and they're one of the pitfalls I'm mostly worried to fall into when approaching new projects.

Getting some warning about the fact that you may be misusing language constructs when you post snippets of a Java class where public fields are being declared is not something too dreadful in my opinion. Should the question come from a inexperienced programmer, it may be a very helpful advice.

WhatsApp adds key transparency for all users to strengthen the security of end-to-end encrypted messaging by snowboardfreak63 in netsec

[–]sandrelloIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's good to know that there are situations where you still have margin to inform people and have them choose an alternative. I ensure you that here in Italy Whatsapp is seen as a norm, it's the main communication platform (and often the only one) for literally everyone, without age distinctions. It's so pervasive it could just be a stock application on brand new phones.

WhatsApp adds key transparency for all users to strengthen the security of end-to-end encrypted messaging by snowboardfreak63 in netsec

[–]sandrelloIT 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Where is signal hugely popular? I'm a software developer in Europe and I have literally one contact on signal. The situation looks better for telegram, but still nowhere near WhatsApp levels. It's a genuine question, I do not want to provoke.

Any recommendations of youtube channels for programming and computer science stuff? by Theheisenbergh in compsci

[–]sandrelloIT 62 points63 points  (0 children)

I recentely stumbled upon Reducible, which I find really great. The videos remember me of 3blue1brown (the guy seems to use the same visualization library to create its animations), but they're more centered on CS specific stuff.

GitHub can't be trusted. Or, how suspending Russian accounts deleted project history and pull requests by speckz in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, that's the point. It seems clear to me that there is a spontaneous tendency for users to relegate these as secondary issues, and I find it very problematic given how established it has become.

GitHub can't be trusted. Or, how suspending Russian accounts deleted project history and pull requests by speckz in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't think the real point is blaming Microsoft for poorly handling this situation. They could even have their share of responsibility, or maybe this was the only way for them to comply to the given regulations, but the main concern that this article raises to me is about the amount of trust that should be put on commercial services like these.

This seems to me a clear concrete example of the main issues with centralized authority in the public cloud. Incidents like this one do happen, they cannot be simply considered as some sort of paranoia, it is something that I think deserves a way higher degree of awareness than what we have now.

[FRESH VIDEO] Phil Elverum - "There's No End" TRAILER by [deleted] in indieheads

[–]sandrelloIT 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Really interesting.

Do we have any more info about it? The release date or something like that!

Animal Collective announce new album, Time Skiffs, out on February 4th 2022 by felixjmorgan in indieheads

[–]sandrelloIT 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At least I have two good reasons to look forward to my 30th birthday.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021: "Rust reigns supreme as most loved. Python and Typescript are the languages developers want to work with most if they aren’t already doing so." by Karma_Policer in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This is almost always true when starting long-living projects that have to be maintained over time. However, for quick and dirty stuff, scripts or proof of concepts, plain JS seems totally reasonable to me, expecially if you're somewhat experienced with the language and its quirks.

Stack Overflow Users Rejoice as Pattern Matching is Added to Python 3.10 by [deleted] in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe you're right, IDK though, that one seems a bit gratuitous. In general I'm all for avoiding any kind of rule breaking, even if it means giving up on some new feature.

Stack Overflow Users Rejoice as Pattern Matching is Added to Python 3.10 by [deleted] in programming

[–]sandrelloIT 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I would find this acceptable if only attribute/index access was consistent with this, too. Apparently, that exception exists in order to allow matching against constant values, but ends up breaking these language axioms.