Technology truly is the gift that keeps on giving ... SNAFUs to highlight

What was your favorite tech failure this week? You may well agree with our vultures who for this latest Kettle episode selected theirs to talk about. We'll give you a hint: our list ranges from software seemingly mucking up a Cybertruck and AI coding assistants harming source code quality to one word: Boeing. You can replay …

[HuBo]

Of planes and co-pilots

Well, Iain wins this one in my mind, for having found his flat cap back (that was mysteriously missing from the last Kettle)!

About Co-Pilot and Tom's Willison interview (cited in this Kettle), I thought it was cool that Simon found French Mistral's Mixture of experts software (MoE) 8x7B useful on his iPhone (to run Llama-like models), but was surprised that he wasn't more critical of AI tools since, on his webpage linked in the piece, an LLM (Claude?) refers to him as Wilson:

"1. Simon Wilson coined the term “prompt injection” over 15 months ago to describe vulnerabilities [...]"

If the LLM can't refer to him as Willison, should he trust it (and Co-Pilot)? More importantly, should all Boeing emergency door plugs, landing-gear wheels, and even pilots, have Co-Pilots (or not)!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boeing Proprietary: out-sourced profits – the cornerstone of successful subcontracting

Abstract: “The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain some highlights associated with the contemporary business practice of out-sourcing more and more of a companies’ activities in the belief that doing so will increase profitability.”