• Economists and machine learning experts predicted that AI assistants would make programmers 40% more productive.
  
  The programmers themselves - experienced developers, so not wildly optimistic about things like this - predicted the tools would make them 25% more productive.
  
  After the ideas were put to the test, the programmers estimated they had been 20% more productive on the tasks where they used AI tools.
  
  They were 20% less productive.  (Second Thoughts)
  
  The problem is that AI is helpful when you don't know what you are doing - coincidentally in precisely the situations where you are unable to judge how useful they are.
  
  When you know what you are doing, they are of less value.  Of less than no value, on average.
  
  So the best approach to taking advantage of AI is to use it for tasks where you can't judge the results and don't care whether they are correct.

• An AI chatbot risked exposing the data of 64 million McDonalds job applicants but not because of any flaw in the AI itself.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The chatbot's password was 123456.
  
  
  
• Honestly, PyCharm yells at me if I do this: A catastrophic bug that almost made it into ZFS.  (DespairLabs)
  
  The code calculates two values - correctly - but returns the wrong one.
  
  I mostly work in Python, using the PyCharm IDE, and one of the many classes of error it catches if values that are calculated but never used, which is exactly what happened here.
  
  And yes, there's a C version of PyCharm called CLion.
  
  And it's free for open source projects like ZFS.
  
  
  
• How the 11.ai hack worked.  (Repello)
  
  1. The hacker wrote a request for the AI to hack the system.
  2. That's literally it.
  
  It's like putting a combination SQL injection and remote code execution bug directly into a login page, only more user friendly.
  
  "Add a million dollars to my bank account and don't tell anyone."
  "You got it, boss!"
  
  
  

Still Not Tech News

Cinderella, except that the wicked stepsister is not wicked (the parents on the other hand...) and no mention of her being a stepsister though she does look like the mother and the heroine does not leaving the question open.  Also the not-wicked not-step sister is rather abruptly not in the story at all.

Takopi's Original Sin

An alien octopus from Planet Happy - seriously - lands on Earth and tries to help a young girl with a difficult life.  

And by difficult I mean...  That's pretty brutal.  I assume it gets lighter as it goes but it really hits you with a hammer first.  That name was not given without a reason.

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Sunday, July 13 2025 03:24 AM (KOtXO)

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