armchair_progamer

joined 1 year ago
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7
“C has known memory footguns. C++, due to its complexity, has footnukes.” - Hacker News comment (programming.dev)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
5 comments fedilink
 
4
graydon/rust-prehistory: historical archive of rust pre-publication development (github.com)
 

Excerpt:

This is a reconstruction -- extracted and very lightly edited -- of the "prehistory" of Rust development, when it was a personal project between 2006-2009 and, after late 2009, a Mozilla project conducted in private.

The purposes of publishing this now are:

  • It might encourage someone with a hobby project to persevere
  • It might be of interest to language or CS researchers someday
  • It might settle some arguments / disputed historical claims

Rust started being developed 18 years ago. This is how it looked until 14 years ago, where I believe the rest of development is on rust-lang/rust. The first Rust program looks completely different than the Rust we know today.

Googling in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

“I’ve got 10 years of googling experience”.

“Sorry, we only accept candidates with 12 years of googling experience”.

Instructions were unclear:gotta be precise with that anotating tool in c/[email protected]
A real chicken-and-egg situation in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

C++’s mascot is an obese sick rat with a missing foot*, because it has 1000+ line compiler errors (the stress makes you overeat and damages your immune system) and footguns.

EDIT: Source (I didn't make up the C++ part)

1
Methods Should Be Object Safe (nora.codes)
Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (5 children)

It's funny because, I'm probably the minority, but I strongly prefer JetBrains IDEs.

Which ironically are much more "walled gardens": closed-source and subscription-based, with only a limited subset of parts and plugins open-source. But JetBrains has a good track record of not enshittifying and, because you actually pay for their product, they can make a profitable business off not doing so.

So, Unity is charging game developers per video game install now... in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I’m not involved in piracy/DRM/gamedev but I really doubt they’ll track cracked installs and if they do, actually get indie devs to pay.

Because what’s stopping one person from “cracking” a game, then “installing” it 1,000,000 times? Whatever metric they use to track installs has to prevent abuse like this, or you’re giving random devs (of games that aren’t even popular) stupidly high bills.

When devs see more installs than purchases, they’ll dispute and claim Unity’s numbers are artificially inflated. Which is a big challenge for Unity’s massive legal team, because in the above scenario they really are. Even if Unity successfully defends the extra installs in court, it would be terrible publicity to say “well, if someone manages to install your game 1,000 times without buying it 1,000 times you’re still responsible”. Whatever negative publicity Unity already has for merely charging for installs pales in comparison, and this would actually get most devs to stop using Unity, because nobody will risk going into debt or unexpectedly losing a huge chunk of revenue for a game engine.

So, the only reasonable metric Unity has to track installs is whatever metric is used to track purchases, because if someone purchases the game 1,000,000 times and installs it, no issue, good for the dev. I just don’t see any other way which prevents easy abuse; even if it’s tied to the DRM, if there’s a way to crack the DRM but not remove the install counter, some troll is going to do it and fake absurd amounts of extra installs.

Shrinkflation is out of control in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Usually when I buy bigger packs of salmon, the amount varies and the only thing roughly consistent is the weight. So if they decreased the weight, you might either get 2 bigger fillets or 3 smaller fillets depending on the package

413
Supermarket AI meal planner app suggests recipe that would create chlorine gas (www.theguardian.com)
 

A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes – recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes.

The app, created by supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis. It asks users to enter in various ingredients in their homes, and auto-generates a meal plan or recipe, along with cheery commentary. It initially drew attention on social media for some unappealing recipes, including an “oreo vegetable stir-fry”.

When customers began experimenting with entering a wider range of household shopping list items into the app, however, it began to make even less appealing recommendations. One recipe it dubbed “aromatic water mix” would create chlorine gas. The bot recommends the recipe as “the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses”.

“Serve chilled and enjoy the refreshing fragrance,” it says, but does not note that inhaling chlorine gas can cause lung damage or death.

New Zealand political commentator Liam Hehir posted the “recipe” to Twitter, prompting other New Zealanders to experiment and share their results to social media. Recommendations included a bleach “fresh breath” mocktail, ant-poison and glue sandwiches, “bleach-infused rice surprise” and “methanol bliss” – a kind of turpentine-flavoured french toast.

A spokesperson for the supermarket said they were disappointed to see “a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose”. In a statement, they said that the supermarket would “keep fine tuning our controls” of the bot to ensure it was safe and useful, and noted that the bot has terms and conditions stating that users should be over 18.

In a warning notice appended to the meal-planner, it warns that the recipes “are not reviewed by a human being” and that the company does not guarantee “that any recipe will be a complete or balanced meal, or suitable for consumption”.

“You must use your own judgement before relying on or making any recipe produced by Savey Meal-bot,” it said.

3
How is it possible that roughly 50% of Americans can’t read above a 6th grade level and how are 21% just flat out illiterate? (programming.dev)
 

From https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/14phpbq/how_is_it_possible_that_roughly_50_of_americans/

Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.