Bill Pugh

Over the last two years we have seen an acceleration on AI, but if AI is going to enable humans in their day to day tasks, it most probably will be via XR. The issue then is if a selection has real-world consequences, we will need great precision to interact.

“Both of them.”

Motherfucking wind farms…

And I’m delighted that Derek reached out, and that he’ll be helping me offer the course. It is going to be better and more fun with Derek involved.

www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall20...

This billionaire’s fortune is built atop research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and yet he seeks to destroy that agency and its investments in the scientific engine that has fueled our tech industry since the 1950s. And why? Because it tried to include more diverse scholars?

Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.

Risky post!

(This is great, fun to read and the frustrated tone throughout really does capture how it feels sometimes to be an experienced programmer trying to argue that "LLMs are actually really useful" in many corners of the internet)

Error in the report: Louisiana, where subsidence is causing between 25 to 35 square _feet_ of land loss per year.

Should be square _miles_.

Given how LLMs work, I’m not particularly surprised by these weird small errors. More, I’m surprised that these kinds of errors occur so rarely that it isn’t an obstacle to using them for writing code.

Playing with using Gemini for code generation. Overall smart, but occasionally wrong in weird ways. In some Java code in one place, it threw in an extra right parenthesis.

In Swift code, it used calls to checkedMul to avoid integer overflow, but that is a Rust feature and not supported in swift.

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.

Peter Sellers as James Bond

Repost with your favorite James Bond (Wrong answers only)

also got my first NSF grant terminated! what emoji do i put in my handle to signify this?

for anyone else in the united states, and quite possibly for jordan wick as well, this is a go-to-prison-forever level offense

niche but here goes: if you met your sugar daddy/mama online but NOT on a dating app — I’d like to talk.

Plz RT, this is a tough one journalistically lol

Person holding a cardboard sign which reads "Hand off working COBOL code"

Now there's a protest sign you don't see often.

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I’m avoiding coming down on the question of whether coding assistants are already widely used, or are too flawed to be used for anything other than code completion. I’ve seen both viewpoints.

At this point, I think it is clear that it is very possible that they will be widely used in 3-5 years.

ChatGPT - AI Coding Assistants Impact Shared via ChatGPT

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I asked ChatGPT to do a deep research to prepare a report. It was useful, but didn’t identify any efforts at universities other than the UCSD link above.

chatgpt.com/share/67ed92...

In This Era of AI, Will Everyone Be a Programmer? ChatGPT and Large Language Models are viewed by many as a threat to the field of computer science education because they’re able to produce code on command. But the retooled, foundational course, “Int...

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I know that UCSD has updated their intro course, but I don’t know if they have made changes throughout their curriculum.

today.ucsd.edu/story/in-thi...

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4) Developers will spend less time doing what typical programming assignments ask them to do: given a precise description of a project, write code that implements it. However, assignments like these might be helpful in building up the intellectual scaffolding needed in software development jobs.

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3) Less focus on details of syntax and APIs, when tools will be able to fill in many of those details.

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2) More focus on higher-level tasks, such as given an ambiguous problem statement, working to figure out exactly what is needed to address the problem (including discussions with users and other stakeholders).

🧵My thoughts:
1) More focus on reading and critiquing code; useful even before coding assistants, but even more useful when developers will need to review code generated by coding assistants.

Does anyone have pointers to efforts by CS departments to update their curriculums in anticipation of the changes in tasks and skill sets that will be needed by software developers when/if coding assistants become widely used?

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It would be really nice if BlueSky didn’t put 60 different posts in my feed all sharing the same news article. Maybe group them some how (here are 60 different posts all commenting on this article).

Particularly bad is @wired.com reposting every single post commenting on one of their articles

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

U.K. Tourist Returns Home in Chains Like ‘Hannibal Lecter’ Becky Burke was released in chains and handcuffs after spending 19 days in an ICE detention facility

U.K. tourist Becky Burke finally returned home to Wales on Tuesday after spending 19 days in a U.S. ICE detention facility. Her parents relayed their daughter’s description of her release from ICE, saying how she was taken in “leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs,” which left her “traumatized.”

Trump’s Battles With Colleges Could Change American Culture for a Generation Many in higher education worry Trump’s efforts to bend academia to his will could end American leadership in research and science. Universities are not finding many allies to defend them.

Many in higher education worry that President Trump’s efforts to bend academia to his will could end American leadership in research and science. Universities leaders are not finding many vocal allies to defend them.

Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

Trump moves to close facility that helps track planet-warming pollution The lab is connected to the Mauna Loa Observatory, where scientists gather data to produce the Keeling Curve, a chart on the daily status of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

The Trump administration is planning to cancel its lease at a government laboratory in Hawaii, a site where scientists support key observations of surging greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, according to a list obtained by Democratic members of Congress and shared with The Post.