What I find the most "enlightening" and also frightening thing is that I see people that I've worked with for quite some time and who I respected for their knowledge and abilities have started spewing AI nonsense and are switching off their brains.
It's one thing to use AI like you might use a junior dev that does your bidding or rubber duck. It's a whole other ballgame, if you just copy and paste whatever it says as truth.
And regarding that it obviously doesn't apply to small fixes: Oh yes it does! So many times the AI has tried to "cheat" its way out of a situation it's not even funny any longer (compare with yesterday's post about Anthropic's original take home test in which they themselves warn you not to just use AI to solve this as it likes to try and cheat, like just enabling more than one core). It's done this enough times that sometimes I don't trust Claude with an answer I don't fully understand myself well enough yet and dismiss a correct assessment it made as "yet another piece of AI BS".
That's one of the issues with these if you ask me.
Either you're a hermit, that really can build that hermit cave in the mountains, far off and all the guns they're stockpiling won't really be used.
Or you're way too close to civilization coz you have an actual family and they'd never do / care about any of that "crazy stuff".
And if you're that close to civilization, it's all about who's got the larger stockpile and larger amount of armed thugs. Are you really gonna fight off 30 guys with AR-15s with a family of four, two of which are children to protect your stash of food and gas and generator(s)?
The only way your "prepping alone" is gonna help you is the hermit case, far far out of sight or if it's "not all that bad anyway".
Agreed. And if deletes are soft, you likely really just wanted a complete audit history of all updates too (at least that's for the cases I've been part of). And then performance _definitely_ would suffer if you don't have a separate audit/archive table for all of those.
I've seen a number of apps that require audit histories work on a basis where they are archived at a particular time, and that's when the deletes occurred and indexes fully rebuilt. This is typically scheduled during the least busy time of the year as it's rather IO intensive.
Oldest I've worked with was a project started in ~1991. I don't recall when they started keeping history and for how long and they might have trimmed history after some legal period that's shorter but, I worked on it ~15 years after that. And that's like what, 15,..., 20 years ago by now and I doubt they changed that part of the system. You've all likely bought products that were administered through this system.
FWIW, no "indexes fully rebuilt" upon "actual deletion" or anything like that. The regular tables were always just "current" tables. History was kept in archive tables that were always up-to-date via triggers. Essentially, current tables never suffered any performance issues and history was available whenever needed. If history access was needed for extensive querying, read replicas were able to provide this without any cost to the main database but if something required "up to the second" consistency, the historic tables were available on the main database of course with good performance (as you can tell from the timelines, this was pre-SSDs, so multi-path I/O over fibre was what they had at the time I worked with it with automatic hot-spare failover between database hosts - no clouds of any kind in sight). Replication was done through replicating the actual SQL queries modifying the data on each replica (multiple read replicas across the world) vs. replicating the data itself. Much speedier, so that the application itself was able to use read replicas around the globe, without requiring multi-master for consistency. Weekends used to "diff" in order to ensure there were no inconsistencies for whatever reason (as applying the modifying SQL queries to each replica does of course have the potential to have the data go out of sync - theoretically).
Or worth buying up. Which in many cases was the "purpose" of doing the startup in the first place.
Sure, we'd all like to think that the goal was an idealistic "startup does things for bettering humankind".
But let's face it: A large amount of startups are literally founded as an "easier" alternative of building a "more agile" sub-organization within an established and more process driven org and then just get bought out by some of those larger orgs.
Whether or not those large orgs are then actually successful in integration and actually properly leveraging what they bought vs. just "crushing competition", is not necessarily the concern of the founders, depending on how ruthless vs. idealistic they are.
Saving on gas money is nice, but EVs are just generally nicer vehicles. Smoother, better acceleration. No screwing around with oil changes or filling up with gas. Etc.
My ev on the track accelerates better - but the turbo charged ice with a stick shift I test drove the same day was a lot more fun. You feel the acceleration more when the shift/power curves force it.
honestly both have far more acceleration than I use or want in the real world. But the fun factor is still there at lower acceleration in the ice.
Not talking about consumers. Car makers, as that's what my parent posited. "The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no.
Which traditional car maker actually cared about EVs before Tesla came along?
(Even Toyota, which was sorta "caring about it" did not believe in going "all in" and for a very very long time would only do Hybrid and nothing more).
Every other established car maker did not invest in this until "forced" by Tesla so to speak. And then spurred on by things like the EU regulations to no longer allow any non-EV new car registrations by ... was it 2035? Which I hear they're now thinking about undoing.
>"The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no.
A "market" includes consumers, almost by definition, so the statement is true. Otherwise it just becomes a meaningless statement where companies can't be said to do anything.
For a slightly less contentious example, consider gaming chairs. I think most people would assume it's something "the market" came up with, considering that there wasn't some government regulation mandating gaming chairs. Consumers demanded gaming chairs, and chair companies filled the gap. A market success story, right? Nope, according to the above definition, chair companies can't do anything. They only made gaming chairs because consumers demanded them. It's actually consumers that made (?) gaming chairs!
But "the market" (i.e. consumers) did not "do it by itself". Regulations had to force car makers to care about fuel economy. And while once Tesla came around (or a bit earlier a Prius) some consumers did buy those vehicles, they were premium vehicles. Prius owners were laughed at not imitated by the general public to an extent where both Toyota and every other car maker suddenly only made Hybrids or started making EVs. Thus my apprehension for my parent's "the market did it!" ;)
Like, let's go back to what made me reply from my parent:
Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing
Yeah, exactly. That is exactly what car maker didn't bother with because buyers had no choice. All of the car makers made cars that didn't really care for fuel economy because (especially in the US) gas was super cheap.
Guess why in Europe smaller cars and cars with better fuel economy were and are more popular? Because gas is more expensive through regulation. "Regulation" there takes multiple forms. The earliest being simply taxes on gas, which are much higher in Europe. But also previously mentioned by me EV mandate, which is a Tesla+ era regulation. And before that the CO2 emission kind of regulations, which made me mention the "skirting". As in, manufacturer are skirting the CO2 emission rules, e.g. because some of those regulations only apply to a manufacturer entire assortment of offers. How is it the poor manufacturer's fault that people only buy their high emission models, when they have a "SMART" type choice on offer too? Essentially the market didn't work (again especially in the US with too cheap gas) with people buying SUVs and F150 type trucks over a Fiat Panda or SMART.
It might depend on what country they're selling to. Maybe petrol is too cheap in America for it to matter much but it's a big deal where I live and fuel economy is a major selling point that people look for in cars, hence the popularity of hybrids despite them costing more up front than conventional cars.
I think noticing other bugs that aren't related to the ticket at hand is actually a good thing. That's how you notice them, by "being in the area" anyway.
What many QAs can't do / for me separates the good and the not so good ones, is that they actually understand when they're not related and just report them as separate bugs to be tackled independently instead of starting long discussions on the current ticket at hand.
so, QA should be noticing that the testers are raising tickets like this and step in and give the testers some guidance on what/how they are testing
I've worked with a clients test team who were not given any training on the system so they were raising bugs like spam clicking button 100 times, quickly resizing window 30 times, pasting War and Peace.. gave them some training and direction and they started to find problems that actual users would be finding
I didn't mean reporting things that you wouldn't consider a bug and just close. FWIW tho, "Pasting War and Peace" is actually a good test case. While it is unlikely you need to support that size in your inputs, testing such extremes is still valuable security testing. Quite a few things are security issues, even though regular users would never find them. Like permissions being applied in the UI only. Actual users wouldn't find out that the BE doesn't bother to actually check the permissions. But I damn well expect a QA person to verify that!
Was I meant though were actual problems / bugs in the area of the product that your ticket is about. But that weren't caused by your ticket / have nothing to do with that ticket directly.
Like to make an example, say you're adding a new field to your user onboarding that asks them what their role is so that you can show a better tailored version of your onboarding flows, focusing on functionality that is likely to be useful for you in your role. While testing that, the QA person notices a bug in one of the actual pieces of functionality that's part of said onboarding flow.
A good QA understands and can distinguish what is a pre-existing bug and what isn't and report it separately, making the overall product better, while not wasting time on the ticket at hand.
Or maybe don't make everyone responsible for the public roadway/sidewalk in front of their house and instead have the people that are responsible for all other things public roadway/sidewalk be responsible?
Works elsewhere, why not in Germany, where taxes should actually be even better able to cover it? [yes I know people in Germany, even specifically in Berlin and no this is not a Berlin specific thing]
Like where I live, the city also says not to use salt whenever you can and use alternatives and they themselves do not salt the roads in our town either, except for the major in and out ones. This is Canada btw. so we do get a load of snow and ice. They use grit and in spring the city sends through a grit cleaning crew (for reuse next winter). Except for the parts that make it onto lawns from snow plows pushing it onto your property. There it's your job i.e. some people put down mats in fall or they use brushes to get it out of the lawn and back onto the street where it can be picked up. Just yesterday, it was above freezing and the city snow plows went and used the warmer weather to scrape lots of ice off the road!
>Or maybe don't make everyone responsible for the public roadway/sidewalk in front of their house and instead have the people that are responsible for all other things public roadway/sidewalk be responsible?
Here in New York the problem is opposite. Every home and business owner is responsible for quickly clearing any walkways/sidewalks/driveways they own and are in front of their homes or businesses. New York is very litigious. As a consequence, unless someone is unable, way off the beaten path or doesn't care about getting sued for huge money, most everyone, especially businesses, made sure that their sidewalks and pathways are completely clear of snow and ice to avoid a ruinous lawsuit. On the flip side, properties owned by the county, city, town or other public entities are far more likely to be unmaintained and covered in snow and ice. In general I'm against living in an overly litigious society, but when it comes to snow and ice clearance it certainly has an impact here. This is all in spite of extremely high tax rates (property, income, sales and otherwise).
I believe enforcement would solve the problem for Berlin as well. Just hand out substantial fines to change the calculus for the home owner. At the moment, the risk/reward is favoring doing nothing, so that's what a lot of people do.
what is bieng nibbled at but not spoken is the fundamental conection between responsabilities and rights of citizens, and the long nasty never ending attempts to seperate and comidify them.
Funny that you would propose such a practical and simple solution. This has been proposed by the Green Party in Berlin and I’m surprised you didn’t hear the wailing choir of house owners across the Atlantic. “Too impractical”, “too costly”, “who would pay for that?”.
Thing is, the current system works well for all people except the ones that want to walk on the icy pavement. Politicians aren’t responsible. House owners shed the responsibility to a contractor. Many contractors regard this essentially as largely free money and just weigh the cost of a potential lawsuit against the accumulated income. It’s extremely good at diluting the responsibility so that no affected individual can effectively do anything about it. Why change a system that works so well for all of the people except the ones affected by the outcome?
Funny indeed. Now that you mention it, I can "hear" the complaining voices in my mind, yes :) So very German of them too!
Funny you mention cost. This year our town actually did not contract out the snow clearing of the roadways to a contractor like they've done for decades past, because it became too expensive (or rather the percentage increase I believe was the trigger). So instead the city is now doing the snow clearing themselves! I would call this very good stewardship of our property tax payments, which is what pays for that. Just now instead of going to greedy contractors (let's face it, most of that money isn't going to the people actually doing the snow clearing) and instead it will go towards paying the salaries of actual city employees (not sure how many temporary) and I guess equipment cost.
Most people here also get a local contractor or in our case it's usually one of the farms around the area, that offer snow clearing of your driveway. Both the actual driveway, which around here can be quite large, and for clearing the large amounts of snow and ice left across your driveway by the city plows clearing the roads. Essentially tractors with snow blower attachments on the back PTO. Like this: https://www.deere.ca/assets/images/region-4/products/attachm...
My recollection--from Ohio, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington, DC--is that in the US the property owner is generally responsible for the sidewalk.
We are wary of salt, having damaged a stretch of sidewalk in a rowhouse development by heavily salting it one winter. Others, and the city of Washington, will put down salt at the least probability of snow.
The same liability issue exists in Belgium, with very similar results. Some people will clear the pavement in front of their homes, others won't. Some don't have the time, some don't have the ability. Some try but make it worse, by brushing aside the snow without salting a thin leftover layer can easily turn into black ice.
Our tax rate is insane. This is a responsibility/liability that should rest with the governments, but they'd never get it done.
My hot take is that the govt ought to facillitate the process, e.g. by providing salt/grit/shovels/salt spreaders, so that people at least have a realistic chance of getting it done.
> Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
In English it maintains its original Germanic meaning derived from the verb give.
The sense of "poison" in German comes from a euphemistic use of "gift". (Literally 'something given' but actually used to calque Greek "dosis", which also literally meant 'something given', but was used to mean 'dose [of medicine]'.)
Summing up, the reason gift is a word in English with an entirely different meaning from what it has in German is that everyone in Germany forgot what gift meant.
(The reason it's gift and not something more like yift is the Danelaw.)
It's probably the same, for example in Afrikaans its just gif. Vergif is the verb action of doing it, and vergiftig the same past tense of it having happened previously.
Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are both Uralic languages along with Estonian and the Sámi languages, but none of these are related to the Indo-European languages common in the other parts of Europe.
And while most of Europe’s extant languages are in the Indo-European language family, there’s still a fair number of differences between Albanian, Germanic, Hellenic, Celtic, Romantic and Slavic languages.
Oh for sure there are many differences, that comes with them being different languages, countries, ethnicity. You can do this on many levels.
The point was essentially what you're showing here: People focusing on all the differences instead of shared history, languages influencing each other and how we're all not that different in the end.
If you want to, even within what are nowadays countries and what outsiders would say is "one language" and "one ethnicity", you can start focusing on differences and make people dislike each other.
Must be a user thing. I have an "older" Subaru (2020) and looking at the linked pictures that's pretty much what my steering wheel looks like. My 2011 did as well.
It's awesome. I've never had a better cruise control button setup than in my Subarus. They're usually slightly different by model/year but we're consistently good and easy to use without looking.
I have never accidentally while driving found any settings menu getting in the way there. Yes there buttons there that do that. But only in the same way as my 25 year ago cars did: basic settings you set once and never again and that are in those menus probably for historic reasons as they were there pre-screen being standard in the car and they just left them.
It's one thing to use AI like you might use a junior dev that does your bidding or rubber duck. It's a whole other ballgame, if you just copy and paste whatever it says as truth.
And regarding that it obviously doesn't apply to small fixes: Oh yes it does! So many times the AI has tried to "cheat" its way out of a situation it's not even funny any longer (compare with yesterday's post about Anthropic's original take home test in which they themselves warn you not to just use AI to solve this as it likes to try and cheat, like just enabling more than one core). It's done this enough times that sometimes I don't trust Claude with an answer I don't fully understand myself well enough yet and dismiss a correct assessment it made as "yet another piece of AI BS".
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