175361037
submission
davecb writes:
This month's CACM has a brilliant idea that I just tried out, " AI Should Challenge, Not Obey".
Advait Sarkar suggest that instead of using AI to write, you use it to review your work. I tried it out using Claude and asked for things like "what is unclear in the following?" and "what question does this answer?".
I previously speculated that AI might be good for code reviews, and it looks like you can invent prompts that really will help improve your code, writing and videos. You get it to critique you!
OK, folks, what prompts can you think up?
175221537
submission
davecb writes:
I have an article in at the November Communications of the ACM (the print magazine), and a 5-minute video about it at https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F1017926413
This is a follow-on from Dave Taht's "bufferbloat" work, now a project called LibreQoS, where QoS stands for Quality of Service.
If you are having trouble with unintelligible con-calls or gaming lag, have a peek.
133018296
submission
davecb writes:
OK, not the whole answer, but I argue that /. is part of a defense in depth against the propagation of lies, sophistries and deliberate disinformation in discussion groups like ours and Facebook's.
128548334
submission
davecb writes:
From face-sheilds to respirator valves, 3-d printer owners pitch in to the efforts to provide PPE to Australian hospitals. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fwo...
60122777
submission
davecb writes:
At Guido von Rossum's urging, Mike Bland has a look at detecting and fixing the "goto fail" bug at ACM Queue. He finds the same underlying problem in both in the Apple and Heartbleed bugs, and explains how to not suffer it again.
55154303
submission
davecb writes:
The Toronto Star's lead article today is Canada courting U.S. web giants in wake of NSA spy scandal, an effort to convince them their customer data is safer here. This follows related moves like cisco moving R&D to Toronto. Industry Canada will neither confirm nor deny that European and U.S. companies are negotiating to move confidential data away from the U.S. This critically depends on recent blocking legislation to get around cases like U.S. v. Bank of Nova Scotia, where U.S. courts "extradited" Canadian bank records to the U.S. Contrary to Canadian law, you understand ...
54912753
submission
davecb writes:
Slaw was kind enough to post my fable on how to not have a probblem with the NSA, Thank Goodness for the NSA, and a link to the more technical MAC paper, http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2013/12/where-were-ye-orange-book-in-w.html.
My challenge to the Slashdot community: what's the first big step to making this all come true?
54580107
submission
davecb writes:
The Obamacare sign-up site was a classic example of managers saying "not invented here" and doing everything wrong, as described in Poul-Henning Kamp's Center Wheel for Success, at ACM Queue.
46807927
submission
davecb writes:
Paul E. McKenney, one of the Linux RCU implementors, addresses the problem of synchronization using structured deferral on, what else, Mr Schrodinger's famous cat. Courtesy of deferral/procrastination, the cat can be both alive and dead at the same time.
46543777
submission
davecb writes:
The Canadian Intellectial Property Office (CIPO) warns patent examiners that ..."for example, what appears on its face to be a claim for an “art” or a “process” may, on a proper construction, be a claim for a mathematical formula and therefore not patentable subject matter.” (Courtesy of Paula Bremner at Slaw)
18005136
submission
davecb writes:
The woman who faced down Facebook and was dissed by Silicon Valley business boys as "an old-fashioned scold" is really one of the early advocates for using the internet for access to information, and to open up government.
The Globe and Mail has an interview today with Jennifer Stoddart, the privacy commisioner of Canada, who went up against Facebook for all of us, and made them back down.
13337634
submission
davecb writes:
Think you've mastered the art of server performance? Think again.
Poul-Henning Kamp, in an article at ACM Queue finds an off-by ten error in btrees, because they fail to take virtual memory into account. And he solves it in the open source "Varnish" HTTP accelerator, for us all to see and use.
