Andrey_Karpov writes:I wrote an "anti-article". I always write about how to perfect C++ code. But this time I'm on the dark side. So, here are "50 terrible coding tips for a C++ developer". Be careful — there's evil in there. I warned you :).However, some developers may disagree that all these tips are terrible. Therefore, I wrote an overview of the most ambiguous tips in advance. I think everyone has a teammate who should read all this :).Enjoy![Ed's comment - this is a light-hearted view of coding in C++. The thing is, many of us will have seen code like this.... Share your own memories.]Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
fliptop writes:Leaders today must be ready to take a stand on thorny social and political issues. A case study by Nien-hê Hsieh and Henry McGee examines how Apple CEO Tim Cook turned calls for data access into a rallying cry for privacy, and the complexities that followed:
upstart writes:The Weird World Of Liquid Cooling For Datacenters:When it comes to high-performance desktop PCs, particularly in the world of gaming, water cooling is popular and effective. However, in the world of datacenters, servers rely on traditional air cooling more often than not, in combination with huge AC systems that keep server rooms at the appropriate temperature. However, datacenters can use water cooling, too! It just doesn’t always look quite how you’d expect.Cooling is of crucial importance to datacenters. Letting hardware get too hot increases failure rates and can even impact service availability. It also uses a huge amount of energy, with cooling accounting for up to 40% of energy use in the average datacenter. This flows into running costs, as well, as energy doesn’t come cheap.Thus, any efficiency gains in cooling a datacenter can have a multitude of benefits. Outside of just improving reliability and cutting down on emissions through lower energy use, there are benefits to density, too. The more effective cooling available, the more servers and processing power that can be stuffed in a given footprint without running into overheating issues.Water and liquid cooling techniques can potentially offer a step change in performance relative to traditional air cooling. This is due to the fact that air doesn’t have a great heat capacity compared to water or other special liquid coolants. It’s much easier to transfer a great quantity of heat into a liquid. In some jurisdictions, there is even talk of using the waste heat from datacenters to provide district heating, which is much easier with a source of hot liquid carrying waste heat vs. hot air.However, liquid cooling comes with drawbacks, too. Leaks can damage electronics if not properly managed, and such systems typically come with added complexity versus running simple fans and air conditioning systems. Naturally, that improved cooling performance comes at a trade-off, else it would be the norm already.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
Crocodile-faced Dinosaur May Have Been Europe's Largest Ever Predatorupstart writes:Crocodile-faced dinosaur may have been Europe's largest ever predator:
Google Engineer Suspended After Claiming AI Bot SentientFrosty Piss writes:https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoineA Google engineer who claimed a computer chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was thinking and reasoning like a human being has been suspended with pay from his workGoogle placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google "collaborator", and the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system. He said LaMDA engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood, and Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a GoogleDoc entitled "Is LaMDA sentient?"The decision to place Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave was made following a number of "aggressive" moves the engineer reportedly made? Including seeking to hire an attorney to represent LaMDA, the newspaper says, and talking to representatives from the House judiciary committee about Google's allegedly unethical activities.Google said it suspended Lemoine for breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations with LaMDA online, and said in a statement that he was employed as a software engineer, not an ethicist. Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine's claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
fliptop writes:Over at ACM.org, Orit Hazzan (a professor in the Technion's Department of Education in Science and Technology) and Koby Mike (a Ph.D student) make the case that machine learning guides learners to ignore the application domain even when it is relevant for the modeling phase of data science:
hubie writes:Soylent readers, you'll need to click through to TFA to see the illusion referenced below.An illusion new to science shows that the pupillary light reflex, which controls the width of the pupil in anticipation of expected changes in light, depends on the perceived environment rather than the physical reality:
An Anonymous Coward writes:I was browsing my media and decided to rewatch this, as I hadn't looked at it in fifteen years or so.I was mainly struck by the unalloyed optimism of pretty much everyone who contributed, including Linus, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Alan Cox, Ted T'so, Eric Allman and many other original neckbeards (I use that appellation affectionately, and in a bunch of cases, literally).In the 20-plus years since the film was released, much has changed.I think much of the optimism embodied by RMS and the FSF has waned a good deal (and more's the pity), and the complete reversal of Microsoft from Ballmer's "Free Software is communism" to Nadella's embrace of GNU/Linux in both Azure and WSL, to the co-opting of Linux for Google/Android, as well as aging and slow drift towards retirement/death/irrelevance of those who championed Free Software for nearly four decades have really hurt the movement, while boosting Open Source.I think that refocusing on "free as in beer" instead of "free as in freedom" across the development community may have been inevitable as GNU/Linux (although I guess it could have been GNU/Hurd or one of the BSDs) became mainstream a couple decades after the commoditization of IBM PC-like hardware.That got me thinking, where does that leave us and "who are the new neckbeards tht can carry the vision of Free Software into the middle of the century?" Are there really any such folks with the passion and drive to champion Free Software moving forward?Or is Free Software (as originally defined and advocated for by RMS and the FSF) dying a slow death in favor of "Open Source" and more permissive licenses like MIT and Apache?What will Open Source look like in 2050, 52 years after Bruce Perens and the OSI's Open Source definition?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Twitter reportedly will give Musk the full "firehose" of user data he demandedFreeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/twitter-reportedly-will-give-musk-the-full-firehose-of-user-data-he-demanded/