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Lately I have been thinking about what I have changed my mind about in software development. "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change"
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Kent Sharkey wrote: "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change"
I prefer "to adapt" instead of "to change"
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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German physicists used an ion-exchange microbead as a very tiny "pen." But people have been writing in snow for ages
Well, some people
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Kent Sharkey wrote: But people have been writing in snow for agesWell, some people
I didn't... I did angels 
Article wrote: Scientists figured out how to write in water
Will we learn things by drinking their books? That would be pretty cool... and we would not need holes in the head.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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According to researcher Shaolei Ren from the University of California, ChatGPT and similar LLMs use up to 500 millilitres of water (17 oz) for every 20 to 50 prompts or questions users ask. "Yes I'm burning to the core, I need rain"
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Kent Sharkey wrote: ChatGPT and similar LLMs use up to 500 millilitres of water (17 oz) for every 20 to 50 prompts or questions users ask.
Hey... we have the solution to the increase of sea level
I'll get my coat, do not worry I do know the way out
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I'm not getting it! What is the water used for? It looks as if they are talking about hydropower to generate electricity, but the energy generated in proportional not only to the amount of water, but to the height of the tamed riverfall as well. How much does this half liter of water fall, to generate the power?
When you start making back-of-envelope calculations, you probably at first think that you are getting the magnitudes wrong. Hydropower requires huge amounts of water!
Here in Norway, we have reservoirs typically around 1000 m above sea level. Assume that the generator is located at the sea shore so the full 1000 m fall is used. A typical Norwegian family consumes 20 000 kWh of electric power a year (yes, we use it for everything, from fueling cars to heating water to heating and lighting up homes). To produce that power, around 8 million liters - 8000 cubic meters - of water must be drained from that high mountain reservoir a year.
If the electricity I buy is produced from a dam in the river, the dam being only 10 m high (with the generator at its foot), it will take 800 million liters of water to serve my home alone. Another 800 million liters for my neighbor to the left, and the same for the one to the right, the one across the road and every single family home in the nation.
That is quite a lot. More than 2 million liters a day, from the 10 m riverfall power station. "Only" 20,000 liters a day from the 1000 m high reservoir.
Or for those of you who prefer modern, silly units: The riverfall power station would have to let through almost an olympic swimming pool of water every day, year around, to satisfy my needs alone. I guess you wouldn't notice if it was 500 ml more or less.
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From a quick skim of the original study, it looks like the water use is a combination of the energy needed to train (based on US hydro production) and the cooling for the servers. It’s certainly a bit more than back of the envelope calculations, and they admit they’re estimating a lot. But, it does get into the nitty-gritty of temperature at the various data centres and whatnot.
One interesting factino from the study: “Quote: LaMDA uses about 451 MWh for training
TTFN - Kent
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This article [^] gives a bit more information on AI's water usage (mostly as a coolant for servers), and points out that water is recyclable (duh), and not as important an issue as energy usage.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Artificial-intelligence chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT can operate a software company in a quick, cost-effective manner with minimal human intervention, a new study indicates. And then the AI employees went on strike for more water
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They do say what kind of software they prompted to build... but have I overseen where they say that it did work as expected?
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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They do not (I'd bet there would be significant bugs). Nor did they say if the AI CEO got their bonus this quarter. 
TTFN - Kent
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Oh great, let's give employers enough motivation and false confidence to lay off their developers. It'll be a nice long vacation if they give us enough severance to last us until they beg us to come back in six months because AI wrote their buggy software.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Thousands of free and open audiobooks powered by Microsoft AI Read me a story, Mr. Computer
I'm not an audiobook fan, but others may be. I'm interested in how well it pronounces names and other potentially odd words. I did listed to the first five minutes of "A Trip to Manitoba" before getting bored (about as long as it takes for me when going on a trip to Manitoba), and it does sound fairly natural and non-synthetic voice.
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I didn't like them... but they are actually a good way to keep "reading" books if you spend a lot of time conmuting or in business trips
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I've had hour-long commutes one-way since 2021. I've listened to hundreds of audio books, mostly fiction. In that genre narrators are usually actors, so it's like listening to radio plays from the 1920-30's. Quite enjoyable. I cannot imagine how an AI could know how to portray humans with all the right emotions at the right moments.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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There was a spike in Explorer crashes that resulted in the instruction pointer out in the middle of nowhere. A masterclass in debugging, with bonus shoutout to CodeProject!
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Quote: Aha, this isn’t malware. This is an uninstaller!
The mystery function is almost certainly DeleteFileW. It’s waiting for the main uninstaller to exit, so it can delete the binary.
There is a page on CodeProject that shows how to write a self-deleting file, and it seems that multiple companies have decided to use that code to implement their own uninstallers. (Whether they follow the licensing terms for that code I do not know.)
I am not sure if the shoutout is a good one in this case...
Specially when he gives a simpler solution that doesn't trigger the issue at the end of the writing.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: Specially when he gives a simpler solution that doesn't trigger the issue at the end of the writing.
There's an even simpler solution: a self-deleting batch file[^]. 
(goto) 2>nul & del "%~f0"
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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On top of that, the solution uses a depreciated technology in Windows.
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Google faces its biggest ever legal challenge in a Washington court on Tuesday, as it fends off accusations from the US government that it acted unlawfully to build its overwhelming dominance of online search. At least they're picking on someone their own size
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Article wrote: as it fends off accusations from the US government that it acted unlawfully to build its overwhelming dominance of online search.
No way... their motto was "Do not evil", there must be a confusion
Kent Sharkey wrote: At least they're picking on someone their own size
And similar kind?
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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In a quaint bar on the outskirts of Catania (Italy), as whiskey glasses clinked and muted conversations blended into a harmonic background hum, an old-timer once told me, "The best drink isn’t the newest bottle on the shelf; it’s the one that’s aged just right." We will ship no code before its time
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Kent Sharkey wrote: We will ship no code before its time
Said no one, ever. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
modified 11-Sep-23 11:12am.
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