Posts by ChrisMarshallNY

If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this

Re: Corpo-ration

Like Louie Anderson said in Coming to America:

"In a year or two, I'll be assistant manager, and that's where the BIG BUCKS start rolling in!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEnp84dgNfs

Terminators: AI-driven robot war machines on the march

Robocop

Hey, it worked well for these folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REC-ZYWL1to

AI Darwin Awards launch to celebrate spectacularly bad deployments

Let's Play "Global Thermonuclear War!"

Have to be "of a certain age" to get the reference...

FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'

Re: If everybody is compromised

It's older than that.

Many years ago, the film "Taking Care of Business" riffed on the power of the personal datebook:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Care_of_Business_(film)

Meet President Willian H. Brusen from the great state of Onegon

How About David Niven?

Asking for a friend...

Caught a vibe that this coding trend might cause problems

Re: They [programming languages] require us to learn to think in programming terms

> Does anyone still recall the eye wateringly expensive CASE tools that were going to solve all your software engineering problems overnight

Like Rational Rose?

Whatever happened to that? I never encountered one application that ever shipped from it.

Tim Cook's Tim Cook stepping down from Apple

Re: Those who refuse to learn from...

+1 for Durian.

That would be the perfect Musk computer company.

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Re: How to profit from Tariffs

And PCs age badly.

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

Eager and Helpful, but Not Always Directly Useful

My experience (very experienced developer):

I use AI (in particular, a couple of LLMs, not coding agents) every day, but as an “AMA desk.”

It’s like having a really, really effective personal assistant nearby. I can ask for coding suggestions, documentation assistance, debugging help, etc.

I have to review any code that I get, VERY carefully. It tends to be fairly “naive,” and can often contain silly bugs (like hallucinated API calls).

But it’s like having a direct Stack Overflow feed, from about eight or nine years ago, when people rushed to answer any question, within seconds. The first answer was often not perfect, but might have the information I need.

The important thing, is that I can ask ANY question that I want, no matter how silly, and get an IMMEDIATE, highly relevant, answer. The fast response is the important part.

US Transpo Sec wants air traffic control rebuild in 3 years, asks Congress for blank check

Anyone Remember the Ada Rewrite, in the 1980s?

I had a friend that was an engineer on that project.

Spoiler: It didn't fly.

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Smoke Seller

That's pretty much Nasrudin's "The Smoke Seller" story:

Amazon sued for allegedly slurping sensitive data via advertising SDK

Re: You can complain all you want...

My experience is that, when discussing the privacy protections of my software, with non-techs, I get the standard “Oh, I don’t care what people know.” thing. Then, I detail, exactly what these data harvesting companies do with the data.

Suddenly, privacy becomes quite important.

In this case, the end-users don’t really have any idea. The ones going for the anglerfish lures are the app devs.

A Kansas pig butchering: CEO who defrauded bank, church, friends gets 24 years

Probably Not

These scammers are usually slaves, in Myanmar boiler rooms. Their boss made out like a bandit (because they are), but the actual pig butcherer is probably only getting extra portions of rice for all that work.

WhisperGate suspect indicted as US offers a $10M bounty for his capture

Gee, I Wonder Which One?

> a US Government Agency located in Maryland

China shows off machine-gun-toting robot dog and its AI-powered puppy

Looks Like the "Mechanicals" From the War Of The Worlds

In the new European version of the show, the "aliens" have these robot dogs that run around, nailing people in the forehead.

ASML could brick Taiwan's chipmaking machines in case of uninvited guests

Heck, They Just Need to Open the Door

Chipmaking fabs run at BSL3 cleanroom.

All they need to do, is open an emergency exit, while the machines are running. Maybe have someone running a leafblower, outside.

The whole thing turns into an expensive doorstop.

Logitech MX Keys Mini: Svelte keyboard takes cues from Apple in more ways than one

Re: Price?

Beat me to it.

I know how much it costs (from other reviews), and was bemused that the article fails to mention the cost (or display the usual affiliate link).

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Was Wondering

I saw stuff about “the hack” on a couple of clickbaity sites, but not on reputable ones (like this one). It also did a steep dive on HN, despite a lot of upvotes and comments. That’s usually not a good sign.

Swift tailored for Windows no longer folklore: Apple's programming language available for Microsoft OS

> Optionals (marked by ?) are discouraged in swift

Really? I use them all the time. The discouraged ones, in my experience, are implicitly unwound optionals (!).

It’s entirely possible for an experienced Swift programmer to write completely inscrutable code, but we’ve been able to do that in C for decades. In fact, I remember a yearly contest to generate the craziest one-line C program. Not sure if it’s still going on.

Really, when it all boils down to it, ASM is the most readable language, because each step is so primitive, that it can’t get too crazy.

Fancy some fishy-chips? Just order one of these sensors: Research shines light on suspect component sources

Re: Indeed

Amazon has been dealing with this (maybe not as aggressively as some would like) for years.

Their fakes tend to be manufactured goods, but you can also buy components from them, like AliExpress.

MacOS on Arm talk intensifies: Just weeks from now, Apple to serve up quarantini with Kalamata golive, reportedly

> Curveball option is they start making ARM Macs running a souped up iPadOS (Which getting closer and closer to a general purpose OS), and keep mac pros running x86 MacOS.

If they port Xcode, I’d be willing to give that a try.

Stack Overflow banishes belligerent blather with bespoke bot – but will it work?

Re: Chicken Wings and other body parts:

I once made a Sir Terry reference “and Björn Stronginthearm’s your uncle.”

Totally relevant, and lightened up an otherwise dull thread.

It was edited out.

It doesn’t really bother me that much, as humor doesn’t translate well, but it was still disappointing.

Re: Perhaps ...

I was raised by an English mother, and was exposed to posh culture for all my childhood.

No one can insult, quite the way the British can. One of my favorite TV shows is “The Prime Minister’s Questions,” on C-Span.

A good toff can rip you to shreds, without using a single obvious insult, and, quite often, by complimenting you.

There’s a very well-known text, called “The Insult File,” by Guy Macon (no I won’t link it, because it is often considered NSFW -Google it).

Ironically, it will pass most “troll filters,” because it uses archaic and rather convoluted language. Not a single cuss word in the whole thing.

No, I’d say that it’s more like 80%. Moderating question quality comes very early in the game, and a downvote from someone with a 3-digit score is just as effective as from someone with a 5-digit score.

Re: If you phrase your question intelligently...

I’ve asked almost twice as many questions as I’ve given answers, and, even before the new increase in question scoring, had a fairly respectable score; based almost entirely on my questions.

I believe that my questions are phrased quite well. In only a few instances, I have made errors, and have been careful to amend the thread with the correct information, and a note that I am leaving the question as a caution to others.

One of the real values of the site to me, is that I get “showstopper” problems solved very rapidly; often by realizing that I was going about it wrong. I really don’t mind realizing that I had made a mistake, neglected to read some document, or assumed incorrectly, as long as I get the right answer, in the aggregate.

In almost every instance, I could have figured out my problem, given time. Time is the one coefficient that I strive to reduce, and SO is a valuable tool in keeping that factor as low as possible. I’m very smart, and very experienced. Much more so than many of the folks there, but I am also constantly finding that I “don’t know it all,” and need to stay humble. Being condescended and patronized can be galling, but it’s a price that I’m willing to pay, in order to get the information that I need, in a timely manner.

But I’m fairly tough. I can deal with the criticism, and quickly learned to disengage, and let them “have the last word,” even if it seems to reflect badly on me.

I am very “results-driven,” and I get very good results from asking questions on SO.

Somewhere, there's a very famous answer in Meta that some high-score member made, in which he states that (paraphrasing) any question asked should be so thoroughly researched and presented, that it basically answers itself, and anything less should be discouraged.

I do find SO to be an extremely valuable resource, and sincerely wish them luck in cleaning things up, but they don't have a problem with lowbrow trolls, spewing rancor.

They have a problem with the "1%," treating everyone else like plebes, and no one will have the guts to address that. A 'bot sure won't be able to do anything about it.

To be fair, there are a lot of facepalm questions, but I seldom encounter them. They don't seem to come up in my searches for solutions. In my experience, they aren't much of a problem.

Latest bendy phone effort from coke empire spinoff Escobar Inc is a tinfoil-plated Samsung Galaxy Fold 'scam'

"coke," as opposed to "Coke"

I was puzzled, at first, as I was wondering why Coca-Cola would have a subsidiary that produces phones...

Carry on, then (Rolls bill)...