The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2024

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“Oh shit git” seems to have been succeeded by “Oh shit GitHub Copilot”: ‘Downward Pressure on Code Quality’

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/29

Not sure about you, but when I write code I want it to be better – way beter even – than average code.

The problem with any LLM based Generative AI is that it generates text based on the average of the past corpus they were trained with at the time they were trained.

It is exactly why I have been advocating for a while: be careful when using Generative AI, as you get generated text based on the combination of averaging over the LLM corpus with the relatively small prompt you phased trying to reflect a tiny bit of the model of the reality you are trying to write software for.

So I was not at all surprised by this article: [Wayback/Archive] New GitHub Copilot Research Finds ‘Downward Pressure on Code Quality’ — Visual Studio Magazine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, GitHub Copilot, LLM, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Need to try “@pdfmakerapp grab this” on Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/29

I missed this, hence it is now in my link archive:

[Wayback/Archive] PDFMakerApp on Twitter: “We are experimenting a new way to grab Twitter conversations using Twitter Developer Labs. Please try it out by mentioning us at the beginning of any Twitter conversation with the keyword “grab this” like below!👇”

Via: [Wayback/Archive] Thread Reader Unroll Helper on Twitter: “@francvs Hi! please find the unroll here: @pdfmakerapp: We are experimenting a new way to grab Twitter conversations using Twitter Developer Labs. Please try it…  Have a good day. 🤖”

Saved thread: [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @pdfmakerapp: We are experimenting a new way to grab Twitter conversations using Twitter Developer Labs. Please try it out by mentioning us at the beginni…

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, SocialMedia, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Note the Ziggo Wifispots certificate will often not install on Android the default way

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/26

A long time ago, I wrote about Wifispots instellen | Klantenservice | Ziggo « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

For that, you need a Ziggo VPN certificate, which you can download from [Wayback] www.ziggo.nl/content/dam/www.ziggo.nl/tools/WifiSpots certificaten/WifiSpots certificaat Android en Windows Ziggo.crt .

On many Android phones, that does not install the default way any more as back then.

The reason is that it is a CA root certificate (in this case identifying Ziggo as certificate authority) thereby allowing them to issue any certificate. This can be a serious risk, so you have to be really sure to trust them before installing the certificate.

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Posted in Android Devices, Internet, ISP, Power User, Ziggo/UPC/A2000 | Leave a Comment »

Hopefully the stream capture will become available on YouTube: Insanely Great – CHM – The Apple Mac at 40

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/26

The drawback of evening live USA broadcasts is that most of Europe and Africa are asleep.

The Americas, Asia and Australia are awake, so I get it that [Wayback/Archive] Insanely Great – CHM – The Apple Mac at 40 was streamed live at 04:00 UTC at [Wayback/Archive] Computer History Museum – YouTube: live.

Hopefully the capture will be available soon.

Not holding my breath though as not response whatsoever from the moderator when I asked for it.

Via [Wayback/Archive] David Pogue on X: “40 years ago today, Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh. Tonight, I’m hosting an astonishing event that reunites many of its creators: Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn, Guy Kawasaki, many more. Free livestream at 7 pm PT:”.

--jeroen.

Posted in Apple, Classic Macintosh, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

PRANK: Windows XP Updates

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/25

This one is cool: [Wayback/Archive] PRANK: Windows XP Updates.

Note that unlike the screenshot below, the actual prank does count the percentage. The actual page does.

You can start this one and various other OSes plus Windows versions and other pranks via [Wayback/Archive] FakeUpdate.net – Windows Update Prank by fediaFedia (at the time of writing Windows 98 install, Windows Vista update, Windows 8 update, Windows 7 update, Mac OS boot, Windows 10 install, Windows 10 update, steam and “fake ransomware”).

It is a cool and relatively harmless way of teaching people to use their lock screen when away from their machine (Windows: Win+L, Mac OS: Ctrl+Shift+Power).

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Posted in Awareness, Fun, Power User, Security, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Disturbing replies to Tim Urban on Twitter: “What, if anything, do you regularly use ChatGPT (or another LLM) for that has provided a dramatic improvement over your previous workflow?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/24

Gotten there from the reasonable ChatGPT use below, I was negatively surprised what people use ChatGPT for and totally rely on the ChatGPT responses: [Wayback/Archive] Tim Urban on Twitter: “What, if anything, do you regularly use ChatGPT (or another LLM) for that has provided a dramatic improvement over your previous workflow?”

I think this is about the only reasonable ChatGPT use today: [Wayback/Archive] Barry Kelly on Twitter: “@waitbutwhy – minor scripts for things like ffmpeg or Image/GraphicsMagick – trying to do something with an API I’m not familiar with; often gets screwy when it’s obscure though Things I’m not using it for: any kind of creative writing. Execrable.“

Remember that ChatGPT is a text generation model that averages the quality of the text in its corpus that was obtained in the past which means at it’s release, the “knowledge” was already dated.

---jeroen

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, ChatGPT, Development, GPT-3, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Inline Thinking | Patricia Aas – Programmer

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/24

I wasn’t aware that Java has some some catch-up and now supports user definable inline types: [Wayback/Archive] Inline Thinking | Patricia Aas – Programmer

Inline Thinking

97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Patricia Aas, 16 January 2020
Computers changed. They changed in many ways, but for the purpose of this text they changed in one significant way: The relative cost of reading from RAM became extremely high.
…
These “cache friendly” behaviors are already present in Java when using so called “primitive types”, like ints and chars. “Primitive types” are “inline types” and come with all of their advantages. So even though inline types may seem foreign in the beginning, you have worked with them before, you just might not have thought of them as objects. So when “inline classes” seem confusing, you could try to think: “What would an int do?”

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Posted in Development, Java, Java Platform, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Some links on e-Ink displays and Raspberry Pi or ESP32

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/23

For my link archive:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, ESP32, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, HDMI, Raspberry Pi | Leave a Comment »

bloomberg/memray: Memray is a memory profiler for Python

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/22

For my link archive as one day I will need this:

Via this cool [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @1st1 on Thread Reader App that has these tweets:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “WOW. Bloomberg finally opensourced memray—a new versatile memory profile for Python. Can’t way to use it. Thread 👇”

  2. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “1. It’s fully open source (Apache 2), grab it here: …”

  3. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “2. Until now you never could have such a deep insight in how your app allocates memory. The tool is a must for any long-running services implemented with Python. With memray you can generate flame charts or all allocations and trace absolutely everything.”

  4. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “3. And this must be a Python snippet of the month:”

    Image

    @pytest.mark. limit_memory("24 MB")
def test_foobar():
    # do some stuff that allocates memory
  5. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “4. It’s sophisticated enough to peek into native code. So you can profile your numpy and pandas code with it. And it has a live mode. You can just run your code and see how it allocates memory as it runs. 🤯”

  6. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “5. A little birdie mentioned to me that @pyblogsal is one of the active contributors in memray. Let’s keep it a secret 🫢”
  7. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “6. This is a Python client to @edgedatabase as it establishes a connection to the DB. cc @fantix @elprans”

  8. [Wayback/Archive] Yury Selivanov on Twitter: “7. Wow, this thread is blowing up. Here’s a link to my Spotify… err,”

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

PowerToys Keyboard Manager utility for Windows | Microsoft Docs

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/01/19

It looks like after decades, ReMapKey (from the Windows 2000 and 20023 Resource Kits, see If you miss having the Caps Lock button on your #Chromebook… (via: Google Chrome – Google+)) got a successor:

[Wayback/Archive] PowerToys Keyboard Manager utility for Windows | Microsoft Docs:

The PowerToys Keyboard Manager enables you to redefine keys on your keyboard.

For example, you can exchange the letter A for the letter B on your keyboard. When you press the A key, a B will display.

…

You can also exchange shortcut key combinations. For example: The shortcut key Ctrl+C will copy text in Microsoft Word. With PowerToys Keyboard Manager utility, you can exchange that shortcut for ⊞ Win+C. Now, ⊞ Win+C will copy text. If you do not specify a targeted application in PowerToys Keyboard Manager, the shortcut exchange will be applied globally across Windows.

PowerToys Keyboard Manager must be enabled (with PowerToys running in the background) for remapped keys and shortcuts to be applied. If PowerToys is not running, key remapping will no longer be applied.

The real kicker however, is that the new PowerToys Keyboard Manager can be application specific:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, PowerToys, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

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