Tags: web-review, programming, distributed, product-management, laptop, microsoft, c++, copyright, productivity, criticism, social-media, automotive, fake-news, copilot, html, patents, htmx, mozilla, economics, frontend, marketing, surveillance, project-management, philosophy, energy, history, system, gpt, commons, performance, research, reliability, safety, rust, map, collaborative, machine-learning, business, mathematics, privacy, tech, foss, ethics, logic, web, freebsd, cognition, tests, linux, neuroscience, advertisement, multithreading, crdt, fake, security, metaprogramming, ai, ecology, public-domain, scam
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-40.
Tags: tech, web, history
Excellent clip for the W3C 30th anniversary. Shows the big milestones and evolution of the WWW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfUBuIZkmQ
Tags: tech, foss, map
An excellent service to provide. Let’s hope it stays sustainable, the risk is commercial leeches not giving back a dime. Be responsible, sponsor it if you use it commercially.
Tags: tech, freebsd, laptop
Unexpected but definitely welcome. Let’s wish them luck in this endeavor.
Tags: tech, copyright, public-domain, commons
Putting things in the public domain voluntarily is indeed more difficult than it should be. The best tool we got is CC0, but it still raises (probably unwarranted) concerns for software.
Tags: tech, patents
Always happy to see a patent troll bite the dust.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-sable-pays-up/
Tags: tech, mozilla, advertisement, surveillance
Mozilla is clearly loosing its way, this is sad to watch. I guess the forks which remove the online advertising measures will become more popular.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/
Tags: tech, microsoft, ai, machine-learning, surveillance, privacy
They’re trying a come back… of course they added layers of security to pretend it’s all solved and shiny. They totally ignore the social implications or if something like this even needs to be done. At least one can remove it… for now…
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, cognition, neuroscience, philosophy, mathematics, logic, research
This is a short article summarizing a research paper at the surface level. It is clearly the last nail in the coffin for the generative AI grand marketing claims. Of course, I recommend reading the actual research paper (link at the end) but if you prefer this very short form, here it is. It’s clearly time to go back to the initial goals of the AI field: understanding cognition. The latest industrial trends tend to confuse too much the map with the territory.
https://www.ru.nl/en/research/research-news/dont-believe-the-hype-agi-is-far-from-inevitable
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, energy, ecology
If you run the number, we actually can’t afford this kind of generative AI arm race. It’s completely unsustainable both for training and during use…
https://wimvanderbauwhede.codeberg.page/articles/the-insatiable-hunger-of-openai/
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, fake, fake-news
Maybe extrapolating a bit more than it should. Still this leads to worrying uses of AI generated images.
https://machinesociety.ai/p/new-ai-trick-synthetic-human-memories
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, ethics
Good article about the ethical implications of using AI in systems. I like the distinction about assistive vs automated. It’s not perfect as it underestimates the “asleep at the steering wheel” effects, but this is a good starting point.
https://jacobian.org/2024/oct/1/ethical-public-sector-ai/
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, productivity
Unsurprisingly the productivity gains announced for coding assistants have been greatly exaggerated. There might be cases of strong gains but it’s still unclear in which niches this is going to happen.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, marketing, criticism
Or why we shouldn’t trust marketing survey… they definitely confuse perception and actual results. Worse they do it on purpose.
https://ideatrash.net/2024/09/lies-damn-lies-and-surveys-about-ai.html
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, productivity
How shocking! This was all hype? Not surprised since we’ve seen the referenced papers before, but put all together it makes things really clear.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/sorry-genai-is-not-going-to-10x-computer
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, business
The arm race is still on-going at a furious pace. Still wondering how messy it will be when this bubble bursts.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/3/24261160/elon-musk-xai-recruiting-party-openai-dev-day-sam-altman
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, marketing, criticism
I definitely agree with this. I’m sick of the grand claims around what is essentially a parlor trick. Could we tone down the marketing enough so that we can properly think about making useful products again?
https://www.ontestautomation.com/i-am-tired-of-ai/
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, research
OK, this paper picked my curiosity. The limitations of the experiments makes me wonder if some threshold effects aren’t ignored. Still this is a good indication that the question is worth pursuing further.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01201
Tags: tech, social-media, scam, ai, machine-learning
Doxxing will get easier and easier. Con men are likely paying attention.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iWCqmaOUKhKjcKSktIwC3NNANoFP7vPsRvcbOIup_BA/mobilebasic
Tags: tech, automotive, security
More details about the KIA security issue. Clearly securing the embedded systems is not worth much if it is then all exposed via unsafe web services.
https://samcurry.net/hacking-kia
Tags: tech, linux, security
This one is definitely a bad one. Looks like CUPS is a weak part of the ecosystem, especially when coupled with zeroconf. I wouldn’t be surprised to see macOS being affected too.
https://www.evilsocket.net/2024/09/26/Attacking-UNIX-systems-via-CUPS-Part-I/
Tags: tests, crdt, collaborative
This could be a game changer to collaborative editing. Clearly a good competitor to CRDTs, should make it easier to build such features without a central server.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14252
Tags: tech, distributed, reliability
Interesting point. You likely need to be careful with fallback modes especially in distributed systems. They might bring even more issues when the system is already under stress.
https://a-nickels-worth.dev/posts/modesharm/
Tags: tech, c++, programming, safety, performance
If you still needed to be convinced you need to use std::array
and std::span
, here is the proof.
https://pvs-studio.com/en/blog/posts/cpp/1164/
Tags: tech, c++, rust, metaprogramming
Interesting comparison of the different choices made in Rust and the upcoming C++26 for code generation. It’s fascinating how they managed to have such facilities in Rust while having no introspection. C++ going the opposite direction will have a very different feel both in term of use or of implementation.
https://brevzin.github.io/c++/2024/09/30/annotations/
Tags: tech, multithreading, performance, system
Nice results. Interesting implementation too. I wonder if some of it will make its way to the glibc or musl.
Tags: tech, web, frontend, htmx
As it gets more adoption people are figuring out ways to use htmx properly and not abuse what should be niche features.
https://unplannedobsolescence.com/blog/less-htmx-is-more/
Tags: tech, web, frontend, html, htmx
Interesting proposals, let’s see how far they go. They could bring most of the benefits of htmx and similar straight in HTML.
https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/
Tags: tech, foss, project-management
We keep saying they’re not the same. This article does a good job highlighting the differences and explaining why you need both.
https://harihareswara.net/posts/2024/changelogs-and-release-notes/
Tags: tech, product-management
Good idea on how product managers should behave to facilitate requirements handling. I wish more of them would do this.
https://kevinyien.com/blog/bs.html
Tags: tech, energy, ecology, economics
Interesting analysis… I wonder if and how Jevons paradox will get in the way though.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency
Bye for now!