There’s a problem with use of generative AI chatbots that I think isn’t getting enough attention. Recently I saw someone had posted an issue against an open source project, saying that the maintainer’s use of generative AI to create code could lead to intellectual property issues. The maintainer did what you might expect — they asked their favorite cutting-edge AI chatbot for a…
Foreword: I’ve tried to make sure the numbers below are correct. However, if I (say) miscounted the number of instructions in the Z80 instruction set, please don’t feel obliged to let me know, as the precise numbers aren’t the point. A lot of people are talking about whether we should use generative AI to generate code. I want to talk about the valid reasons why people want to…
Polls of Linux users suggest that vi family editors are the most popular. The vi editor is a terminal-based text editor which dates back to 1977. If you’re wondering why so many people would choose to use a fifty year old text editor with a notoriously steep initial learning curve, it’s because once you learn it, you can be ruthlessly efficient with your editing. There’s also the…
The problem: Hyperscale data centers are a major source of noise pollution. A lot of the noise is very low frequency noise or infrasound — noise that is below the measured range of human hearing. Infrasound can still have negative effects on the human body, and some people seem to be very sensitive to it. Minnesota’s standards for noise pollution specify dB(A), A-weighted decibels, as the…
In the 1990s it became clear that the world would run out of IP addresses. A new version of the Internet Protocol was developed, known as IP version 6, or IPv6 for short. Starting in 1995 it began to be published as a series of draft RFCs, and vendors began to implement it. RFC 5211 , An Internet Transition Plan (2008), called for a switch over to IPv6 between January 2010 and December 2011. In…