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Submission Summary: 1 pending, 6 declined, 1 accepted (8 total, 12.50% accepted)

Submission + - The Criminality of AI Translation on your Phone 1

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: Hey all, I am asking slashdot for your thoughts. I live in Japan where there are laws protecting your privacy and usage of your likeness. Along with laws enforcing Portrait Rights, in 2026 Japan has also started to extend this concept to voice.

One of the outcomes of this is that (along with laws that enforce phone cameras make a shutter sound), people have the right to approach you and force you to delete any photo or video you have taken of them on the spot. If you don't, you are under grounds for legal action.

At my work, it has become popular for Americans to use AI translation, where the audio is sent to a external server where it may be stored and used for training data. I never gave consent for this and as a YouTuber I can sense that this may be used to reproduce my license in the future without permission. I have given a request that the team members remove my audio and give me details of the app in hour it stores my voice. One team member left the Teams chat and the other has avoided giving a response for a week.

My next steps are to next go to HR before filing a police report. If you were me, what would you do? Do you have similar protections in law in your country for protecting use of your likeness? Why do people ignore common sense in this age of AI? I mean... one Team member has said I am not allowed to take a photo of them.... but hey are sending my voice to a non-company authorized app using their phone and that is somehow different?

Submission + - Do AI Datacenters have a PR problem? (youtube.com)

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: "Technology's elimination of "traditional jobs" could make universal basic income necessary in the future." This is a quote from Sam Altman I think it is worth considering how it effects the public sentiment surrounding AI.

One of the growing problems surrounding the AI datacenter boom is increasing pushback from local communities, especially when facilities are planned near residential neighborhoods.Business Insider recently reported on how datacenter ownership can be obscured from public view through shell companies, NDAs, and other legal structures, making it difficult for residents to know who is building massive industrial facilities near their homes.

Despite often lacking transparency about ownership, nearby residents are left dealing with the constant noise and environmental impact of these facilities. Reports from affected communities describe persistent low-frequency hums and concerns about associated health effects, including stress, sleep disruption, cardiovascular issues, respiratory problems, still-births, and other quality-of-life impacts. Critics also point to rising utility costs, with some regions seeing major increases in electricity prices tied to growing datacenter demand.

Adding to the dystopian optics, some facilities are now being guarded by robot dogs and other automated security systems. AI executives continue discussing the likelihood of large-scale job displacement and proposals like universal basic income as a response to automation-driven unemployment.

So the question for Slashdotters is:

Up to 50% of planned datacenters are canceled or delayed. Is the backlash against AI datacenters primarily a PR problem fueled by secrecy and terrible optics? Or is the resistance justified given the environmental, economic, and quality-of-life concerns being raised by local residents? Alternatively, are some of the claims being made against datacenters exaggerated or based on questionable numbers?

Submission + - I Canceled My Cursor Subscription (linkedin.com)

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: I prefer Vim. Not VS Code. Not IntelliJ. Not Atom. Not Sublime Text. Not whatever tool is popular this year or being pushed as mandatory. I've seen so many come an go.

Vim has been my primary editor for decades.

My first professional role was at Slalom. I used Vim with no completion while surrounded by IDE users. Despite that, I consistently delivered strong results and high client satisfaction.

I've found that when you get surrounded by words like "Intellisense" and IDE and other jargon in your working environment, it's secret speak for the source code not being maintainable by humans without special proprietary tools. In my experience, the more advanced an editor becomes, the harder it is to understand what's going on. And yes, AI is becoming another layer of that. So why am I not all-in on AI tools for engineering?

When using Copilot-style completion, it often feels like rolling dice and hoping the model guesses what you want next. It might impress you occasionally, but in practice it does not reliably save time. That limitation is not entirely the AI’s fault. It simply lacks sufficient context to predict intent at that level.

Conversely, Cursor should, in theory, have enough context if you provide detailed instructions. In practice, I rarely use its output. Too often it is incorrect, and I still end up consulting official documentation to fix the result.

So where is the time savings?

My preferred workflow is grounded in primary documentation sources, where behavior and expectations can be verified. AI adds another layer of indirection between me and the source of truth. Unlike a human collaborator, the tool does not meaningfully learn from repeated corrections in a way that improves trust over time.

This raises a broader question about the growing stack of abstractions and tooling that require increasingly specialized roles to manage. There is a cost.

There is also an ethics dimension. In formal software engineering education, ethics are a core topic. Engineers sometimes work on systems where failures can cost lives. When AI is part of a professional workflow, where do we draw the line on responsibility? At what point does engineering ethics become important again?

For those curious

One of my primary languages in Vim was C with GTK. I would not choose that stack again for a project because of the heavy boilerplate. Selecting the right language and libraries is often the most impactful decision for reducing complexity and time to delivery. Understanding what is busy work is one of the most important parts of engineering.

Slashdotters what do you think? Do you think there is a responsibility issue with engineers using AI tools?

Submission + - The Ideology of Demonification (politico.com)

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: Recently Politico (a left leaning paper) put out an opinion piece on Dick Cheney, The Myth of Dick Cheney, Supervillain.

In the Slashdot article, Dick Cheney, Powerful Former VP, Dies at 84, it is filled with comments like,

Even after a heart transplant, he was still heartless.

or

Luckily, reliable sources assure me that he will be greeted as a liberator in hell; so things should go fine.

One of my memories of my other was calling Bush, the "Anti-christ." One of my questions for Slashdotters here is, when you're calling people the worst thing you can, do you think it eventually leads to other people to stop listening.

If Cheney and Bush JR were the devil to you, does that mean empirically, Trump can't be any worse because you already used your worst words? Was Obama in on this evil if he was friends with the Bush's?

Normal conservatives do consider Trump a threat to Democracy. But I feel like t he Democratic party has turned into the "boy who cried wolf" where no one will listen and for good reason.... using the worst words they can think of just because they don't like the people on the other side.

Cheney was a normal person, who made his own mistakes. He had his own personality trains that helped to make him a target for hate. But does the hate help the conversation, or water it down on what's important for America. Hate is not he same as disagreement. People make mistakes as we are all human.

Submission + - SPAM: The Problem with the Political Discourse I'm the USA

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: Hey all, I've been studying the political behavior here in Slashdot to see and understand the state of America. (I don't have a want to create a Facebook or Twitter account...I can only take so much toxicity.)

There were some interesting outcomes and I'll share them here. Some are expected and some are less so.

By far the strangest outcome, as well as the most concerning, is that for the extreme complaints about the safety our democracy, there os no interest in trying to increase collations. There seemed to be predawn conclusions that are used to try to alienate and dehumanize these other Americans as unsavable. "Sinners who can't repent," if you will. "These people who voted # are all #." Or, "They will be the dog that caught the car."

This leads into another interesting finding: It's anyways assumed that catching the car wasn't an intentional outcome or that there may be reasons. I don't see people being able to put themselves into other people's shoes leading to strange anger. It's highly irrational.

The next interesting outcome is that the most angry of these groups are usually repeatedly referencing speculative information or using facts without context. What I mean to say here is, news that tells you how to interpret events is used to create a vacuum with only one correct answer, ignoring other view points and tradeoffs. Also ignoring that there are many cultures in America which is in no way homogenous.

For all of social media we seem to use, we seem to have forgotten basic social skills. You are likely to be pulled into bubbles of our own media and friends, decreasing the ability to emphasize with someone different from us. And if you watch the news, you are likely getting a constant stream of information intended to scare and lock you into listening.

Slashdotters, what do you think is required for Americans to have healthy conversations again? I feel that the current behaviors will just continue to rip the US apart.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Did Democrats Campaign for Trump?

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: This isn’t a conspiracy theory—it’s been covered by outlets like NPR, Newsweek, and USA Today: Democratic organizations actually spent money to promote Trump-aligned Republicans in GOP primaries. Why? The idea was to elevate “unelectable” opponents who’d be easier to beat in general elections. Sounds clever—unless the plan backfires. And with Trump winning in 2016 and still holding serious political sway, it’s worth asking: Did Democrats help create the very threat they claim to fear?

If Democrats truly believe Trump is an existential threat to democracy, why play with fire? Promoting candidates they think are too extreme to win assumes voters will always choose “correctly.” That’s not only arrogant—it’s dangerous. If he wins again, that strategy looks more like sabotage than strategy. Let’s also be honest: a lot of people who voted for Trump probably didn’t even like him. They just saw a bad system and chose the person they thought might shake it up. If Democrats helped make him the only viable alternative, that’s not just a Republican problem. It’s an American one.

I'm a big fan of ranked-choice voting. It gives people more options and weakens the two-party death grip that lets tactics like this work in the first place. If voters weren’t so locked into “lesser of two evils” thinking, parties wouldn’t be able to rig the system this way.

Serious question for Slashdotters: If you donated to the DNC or supported these tactics, do you think it was worth it? Do you think boosting Trump-aligned candidates was a responsible strategy? There are a lot of political comments here and I'm genuinely curious.

Submission + - How I fix the performance and complexity problems in your code using Javascript

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: I’m going to be honest: TypeScript/Javascript isn’t so bad.

I’ve been doing software engineering for a while now. Most of my current work revolves around using TypeScript and AWS to help companies struggling with inefficient software stacks and a lack of engineering expertise. I’ve been consistently surprised by how often legacy systems — built with bulky, slow, and overly complex stacks like Java or C# combined with some version of SQL — bring engineering velocity to a grinding halt.

One client told me it took them three months to implement MFA. Java. Another couldn't get acceptable draw performance from a canvas app. C#. My own TypeScript solutions routinely outperform these setups — with less money and less development time.

The Strengths of TypeScript

TypeScript has clear strengths. Development is fast, and modern runtimes mitigate many of the downsides you’d expect from a scripting language. TypeScript and JavaScript have also evolved to meet other languages in the middle. The syntax and structure borrow from C, Go, and Python. Honestly, you could argue that programming languages are converging.

TypeScript is also a relatively small and straightforward language. Like Python, it favors simplicity, which makes it approachable and easy to teach. It can also be used in your infrastructure, web frontend and backend.

AWS + TypeScript: A Natural Fit

If you’re working in AWS, TypeScript (or JavaScript) is often your best option. Unless you’re using C, C++, or Rust, you'll consistently see faster cold start times with TypeScript compared to most other languages. JIT engines and garbage collection in languages like Java and C# add significant startup time — sometimes up to three seconds.

Consider this: for 100,000 one-second AWS Lambda invocations, using concurrency on a single Lambda function will cost around $13.14 with Java/C#, versus just $1.69 using a lighter runtime like Node.js. Multiply that across services and scaling events, and costs add up quickly — not to mention the UX hit when users start wondering whether your app is down.

While the V8 engine is great, it’s not optimized for small Lambda environments (e.g., 128MB RAM). Fortunately, new engines like QuickJS offer alternatives. At just 367KB compared to Node.js at over 80MB, QuickJS skips the JIT and focuses on fast cold starts. In my experience, performance is still more than acceptable for many use cases. In fact, using a lightweight runtime like LLRT, I’ve seen API call latency drop from 1.4s to 700ms — fast enough that you don’t need a spinner. After warm-up, those calls often return in 200–300ms depending on your memory allocation. All with only using about 30MB of memory.

But What About WebAssembly?

You might be thinking, “Why not just use WebAssembly for everything?” In theory, that sounds great. WebAssembly supports many languages — but in practice, converting languages like C#, Go, or Python is still problematic due to the lack of garbage collection in the current spec. These languages have to bundle their own GC runtimes, bloating your app and undermining the performance gains.

Languages like C, C++, and Rust, however, fit perfectly within WebAssembly’s model. If I hit a case where I need extreme performance in a Lambda, I’ll write just that one in Rust to get the most out of it.

Why I Recommend TypeScript

The biggest reason I push TypeScript, especially for non-tech-focused companies, is that you can train almost anyone to use it. Give someone a good pattern to follow and they can just run with it. Copy. Paste. Go. I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of enterprise languages that require reading something like Design Patterns in C# just to understand what’s going on.

Despite 10 years of C experience, I wouldn’t go back. I do want to learn more Rust and add it to my toolkit, but for most of the problems I solve, TypeScript is the most sensible choice.

Let’s be honest: TypeScript and JavaScript have had the messy job of democratizing programming. They’ve gone through a slow evolution to support basic features. And sure, you’ll encounter a million junior developer blogs acting like gospel. But even with that noise, the language itself isn’t bad — and it’s only getting better.

What About You?

What do you use for writing serverless code? Does your choice of language limit your performance or scalability? Do you have any tricks I should know about?

Submission + - Welcome the Low Latency Runtime.... who thought Javascript could feel so native?

Submitted by BitterEpic
BitterEpic writes: Traditional JavaScript runtimes like Node.js rely on garbage collection, which can introduce unpredictable pauses and slow down performance, especially during cold starts in serverless environments like AWS Lambda. LLRT's manual memory management, courtesy of Rust, eliminates this issue, leading to smoother, more predictable performance.

LLRT also has a runtime under 2MB, a huge reduction compared to the 100MB+ typically required by Node.js. This lightweight design means lower memory usage, better scalability, and reduced operational costs. Without the overhead of garbage collection, LLRT has faster cold start times and can initialize in milliseconds—perfect for latency-sensitive applications where every millisecond counts.

For JavaScript developers, LLRT offers the best of both worlds: rapid development with JavaScript’s flexibility, combined with Rust’s performance. This means faster, more scalable applications without the usual memory bloat and cold start issues.

Still in beta, LLRT promises to be a major step forward for serverless JavaScript applications. By combining Rust’s performance with JavaScript’s flexibility, it opens new possibilities for building high-performance, low-latency applications. If it continues to evolve, LLRT could become a core offering in AWS Lambda, potentially changing how we approach serverless JavaScript development.

Would you consider Javascript as the core of your future workflow? Or maybe you would prefer to go lower level with quckjs?

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