dev

I was using git in the terminal just now and copy-pasted what I thought was a filename. I ended up issuing

git diff Taco Carne Asada

and was told

fatal: ambiguous argument 'Taco'

😢

#tech #dev #software #git #danger

Judge Mehta's decision in the Google antitrust case is so bad I think he should be prevented from working in the law in any capacity. He just threw off his clear responsibilities and let an illegal monopoly maintain its illegal monopoly and continue harming everyone, based on "reasoning" that a child could debunk. It's embarrassing, it's cowardly, it's self-contradictory, it's lawless, it violates precedent, and it will harm countless people and businesses in the tech sector. A staggering achievement really. It even violates Supreme Court precedent, which dictates that judges must apply remedies that end illegal monopolies (and, I believe, confiscate the illegal gains, though I am less clear on whether that's Supreme Court precedent).

Here's an except from a post on Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter, which is very good on the subject of antitrust:

The last meaningful reference point for an antitrust remedy is the Microsoft case. In that one, the break-up was overturned, and a weak interoperability mandate was imposed. But the real penalty to Microsoft was embarrassment and fear within the executive suite; no longer would the company crush its rivals, from then on, lawyers would cautiously oversee product design. That’s not ideal, Microsoft should have just been broken up and set free to compete. But a chastened leadership did have the effect of not killing the next generation of companies, who ended up creating Web 2.0. That’s deterrence, which is one goal of antitrust remedies.

This remedy, by contrast, is obviously going to fail. And the main reason is that, unlike Microsoft, Google’s leadership is utterly unchastened. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and chief legal officer Kent Walker will get bonuses for what they did. They see this conflict as one in which they fought bitterly, and kept at it, and shredded documents, and the result was… victory. They will have no compunction continuing to engage in unlawful behavior. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? Would a rival or the government really go before a weak judge who doesn’t want conflict, and convince him to act? I don’t think so. In other words, this decision isn’t just bad, it’s virtually a statement that crime pays.

(emphasis mine)

Stoller recently wrote a post titled "Why Is Google Still in One Piece? The Terminating a Monopoly Problem" with the subtitle: "Google has lost three separate antitrust cases, and more are on the way. Why does this company still exist in one piece? It shouldn't, but we're still dealing with the hangover of the 1990s."

The problems with the tech sector go all the way to the tippy top.

#Google #monopoly #IllegalMonopoly #antitrust #dev #tech #Gemini #android #Chrome

Finally reviewed LazyGit!
Amazing #dev & #devops tool for #git
https://jelloeater.me/review/lazygit/

Downdetector wants to issue a cloudlfare challenge, but cannot because of the current cloudflare outage. Instead of letting me through or supplying a useful error message, this is what it says. As if I, and my ad blocker, are to blame.


Screenshot reads:

downdetector.com
Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.

#tech #dev #web #DarkPatterns #DownDetector #cloudflare #CloudflareOutage #EverythingIsBroken

I am 100% convinced just from my own experiences that tech companies are knowingly, purposely putting "AI" buttons and links near commonly-used buttons or links in user interfaces to encourage accidental clicking and increase their usage numbers. AI usage numbers are dismal, and surveys repeatedly show large majorities of people do not want these features.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #DarkPatterns #UI #UX #UserInterface #tech #dev

I'm glad to add Firefox to the list of apps I have to constantly check to make sure they haven't turned back on all the anti-features I disabled.

#firefox #mozilla #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #SmartIsSurveillance #tech #dev #web

In the past couple days on LinkedIn I've seen two distinct people declaring that StackOverflow is "dead".

Meanwhile, I use it almost daily and it seems very much alive and still useful, to me.

I smell PR.

#StackOverflow #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #astroturf #dev #tech #programming

Programming properly should be regarded as an activity by which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more common notion, that programming should be regarded as a production of a program and certain other texts.

Peter Naur in Programming As Theory Building, 1985.

A computer program is not source code. It is the combination of source code, related documents, and the mental understanding developed by the people who work with the code and documents regularly. In other words a computer program is a relational structure that necessarily includes human beings.

The output of a generative AI model alone cannot be a computer program in this sense no matter how closely that output resembles the source code part of some future possible computer program. That the output could be developed into a computer program over time, given the appropriate resources to do so, does not make it equivalent to a computer program.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #Copilot #AgenticCoding #dev #tech #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #programming #coding

Another new intrusive AI anti-feature popped up in Atlassian Jira today. I zapped it with uBlock Origin.

This is so much like when ads started flooding everything online, right down to the tools I'm using to de-clutter sites and webapps. At this point Jira is pimpled with terrible AI links nudged right next to legitimately useful features. Like it has acne, or maybe buboes.

#atlassian #jira #uBlockOrigin #uBlock #NoAI #AIAntiFeature #AIDarkPattern #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #dev #tech

As with crypto, so with AI:

A $1.5 billion AI company backed by Microsoft has shuttered after its ‘neural network’ was discovered to actually be hundreds of computer engineers based in India.

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ai-company-files-for-bankruptcy-after-being-exposed-as-700-human-engineers-3208136/

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #crypto #scam #grift #dev #tech #con #AICon

Applications for the 25/26 program of the Apple Developer Academy in Napoli 🇮🇹 are open! Meet hundreds of people from all over the world, make friends for a lifetime and grow as a human.

https://www.developeracademy.unina.it/en/enrollment/

Especially non tech people applying, don’t be worried! You’ll learn tech here. Diverse interests in other fields will help you much more. I would love to see you in our wonderful community here in Napoli one time ☺️

#buildinpublic #indiedev #swift #swiftui #iOS #dev #iosdev

Penpot is a free open source interface design platform based around open standards. It's web-based and can be used collaboratively on any OS. You can follow their video account at:

➡️ @penpot_app

There are already over 80 videos uploaded. If these haven't federated to your server yet, you can browse them all at https://peertube.kaleidos.net/a/penpot_app/videos

You can also follow their non-video account at @penpot

#FeaturedPeerTube #UI #UX #Interface #FOSS #Dev #Prototyping #PeerTube #PeerTubers

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣|
|  Don't Push To Production On Friday   |
|＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿|
                      \ (•◡•) /
                        \      /
                       ——
                        |     |
                        |_   |_

#productivity #product #push #ascii #it #asciiart #friday #dontpush #dev #reallife #hotfix #git #codejokes #nerdjoke

Regarding the last couple boosts: among other downsides, LLMs encourage people to take long-term risks for perceived, but not always actual, short-term gains. They bet the long-term value of their education on a chance at short-term grade inflation, or they bet the long-term security and maintainability of their software codebase on a chance at short-term productivity gains. My read is that more and more data is suggesting that these are bad bets for most people.

In that respect they're very much like gambling. The messianic fantasies some ChatGPT users have been experiencing fits this picture as well.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #tech #dev #ChatGPT #GPT #Gemini #GamblingAddiction #nihilism

I don't know what was going on with me yesterday, but so far this morning I have found cd .. in three different text files I'd left open.

#tech #dev #linux #terminal

Nowadays programming in a programming language I don't use daily seems to always require an upgrade cascade of editors, tools, plugins, dependencies, libraries, my DNA, ??? I put some effort into keeping my environment static but all it takes is one autoupgrading thing I missed to kick off one of these cascades, and it feels like whack-a-mole trying to find and lock down every possible cause. This time it looks like a newer version of scala metals might have stopped supporting Java 11 and somehow got updated without my knowledge (maybe? I'm guessing).

P.S. This is not an invitation to post critiques about any of these technologies or recommendations about what I should be doing instead.

#scala #dev #tech #SoftwareDevelopment #coding #programming

I just had to "prove" I am human to view a shop listing for a refrigerator.

#captcha #bot #human #CloudFlare #web #tech #dev

Just performed a technical interview and during one of the discussions the candidate end up with the following code in codepad: struct S { int x = x; };

A bit to my surprise it compiled successfully with the codepad built-in GCC 12.

Then I was wondering what does that even mean.

It turns out that in C++20 this is a syntactically correct designated initializer for a non-union aggregate. And no one explicitly forbids it from being self-referential!
So basically that's attempt to assign the x value to the same x. Before it was initialized. And yes, that's possible, and yes, that's UB.

The more I see C++ code the more I grow an opinion "You can type any random string into modern C++ compiler and it would compile successfully. And it will contain at least one UB."

#dev #cpp

It suddenly struck me the other day that generative AI used in government and media has a very Memoirs Found in a Bathtub quality about it. One of the premises of Lem's (amazing) novel is that paper disintegrates for unknown reasons, leaving very few hard records of anything. The book is a mock diary of a person who lived through the disorienting chaos that ensued.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #tech #dev #StanislawLem #fiction #SciFi #ScienceFiction #cybernetics

Nothing is more valuable than a clear-headed understanding of which particular lies are most likely to succeed in the present environment, and which are just evanescent byproducts of the generally mendacious atmosphere. Dodge the decoys, save the right kind of energy to counter the real blows. Turning up the heat in lamenting the current crisis risks mistaking a mere mirage for a more substantial threat.

From “LYING IN POLITICS”: HANNAH ARENDT’S ANTIDOTE TO ANTICIPATORY DESPAIR https://www.publicbooks.org/lying-in-politics-hannah-arendts-antidote-to-anticipatory-despair/

I found this to be an excellent and orienting read for anyone concerned about the US right now.

While folks are understandably worried about this administration, which has already inflicted significant harms, it's important to stay level headed and aligned with the actual facts and truths. That's our primary defense against what's happening which, as Arendt argued in the 1970s, hinges on a process of defactualization. Shouting "fascism!" and drawing analogies with the Nazis, as this essay argues, is going too far, turning up the heat about a mirage. Much as we wish they'd do better--and they could do better--in point of fact we do still have a functioning judicial system and media ecosystem, and there are significant numbers of people, including politicians and judges, fully willing to challenge every lie the administration emits. As dangerous as these times are we are nowhere near as far along the authoritarian trajectory as shouting "fascism!" makes it sound, and we should really stop doing that. Doing so grants bluffs and bluster more power than it actually has, which is ultimately a form of surrender. We should recognize our own strength and save it for real threats.

This is one of many reasons why I relentlessly call BS on generative AI and the claims about it coming out of the technology sector. There is a defactualization process at work there that plays into the broader political one; some of the individuals enacting this defactualization in tech are personally involved in doing the same in the federal government. If you've been watching you probably know some of their names and the companies they came from. Generative AI is itself a defactualization machine; that's one of its primary appeals to this crew.

Dodge the decoys and save your energy for the real blows.

#USPol #HannahArendt #authoritarianism #despair #tech #dev #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM

It seems to me that the ability to read source code will become more and more important over time. This skill is rarely taught, as far as I can tell. The learning situation resembles that for natural language: knowing how to produce/generate text does not immediately translate into the ability to read it, let alone read it well.

#tech #dev #code #CodeLiteracy