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ppolymorphe wrote: What's next ?
Probably the Year 2038 problem[^] - aka the "Unix Millennium Bug".
"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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Teaching computers to learn the way we do is widely considered an important step toward better artificial intelligence, but it's hard to achieve without a good understanding of how we think. With that premise in mind, a new $12 million effort launched Wednesday with aims to "reverse-engineer" the human brain. Because no one ever thought to try that before?
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It World wrote: "reverse-engineer" the human brain.
I fear doing so, they will break a couple patents owned by God (at least in USA). 
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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Yeah, I think I've heard about some small independent project. Human Brain Project it's called, I think. With a mere €1.2 billion of funding from EU. 
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That might almost be enough to almost start the project. 12 million would barely get the labs set up these days.
TTFN - Kent
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Exactly. Just coffee machines alone - to cover everyone's consumption - are more expensive than that.. and then there's that problem with the brain donors. Too few people have one to begin with. 
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As part of the team who worked on the Pixel C, Google engineer Benson Leung took it upon himself to survey the myriad USB Type-C cables being sold for their compliance with the USB specs and accuracy, not to mention safety. Cheap knockoff cables might knock you off
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Sadly, not all of the cables that caused problems were particularly cheap.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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The cable that blew up bensons laptop was a special sort of fail though. Not just the common 10k resister where there should've been a 68k one (which violates spec by falsely indicates that it's USBC on both ends and the charger on the other end can provide up to 3A of power (vs the 2A of compliant high speed USB2 chargers, or the 2.4A of proprietary apple chargers, or WTE the assorted proprietary android chargers do).
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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July 2015 article in Nature by Heyde and Ruder: [^]
"First, we conceptualized a physical system that could be built, consisting of a mobile robotic platform endowed with the capacity to harbor and communicate with a living microbiome."
Futurism.com coverage:
"Incredibly, the models also showed the bacteria-robot hybrid taking on behaviours similar to higher-order animals when the robot was given the ability to talk back to the bacteria."[^]
«In art as in science there is no delight without the detail ... Let me repeat that unless these are thoroughly understood and remembered, all “general ideas” (so easily acquired, so profitably resold) must necessarily remain but worn passports allowing their bearers short cuts from one area of ignorance to another.» Vladimir Nabokov, commentary on translation of “Eugene Onegin.”
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Code lives on indefinitely, actively participating in the fate of an application, and yet we call it “dead.” "Bring out your dead!" (or throw out, as the case may be)
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In my experience, pruning is a perfectly valid code maintenance technique - indeed perhaps one of the most important.
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Where I work pruning has two phases: comment out and leave indefinetely. If no problem arise the code will be eventually forgotten until the successive time - then noone remembers why it was there and assume the new code works equal or better and removes it (usually in a fit of "WTF is this frakking mess *@#§_").
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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Have they never heard of source control?
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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At least 50 customizations / year, several of them spanning more than one week (new algorithms, support for ageing hardware, support for hardware only that customer has) and only two developers means there's usually no time. Add to that the new machines designs (pushed from above by our boss) and the bugfixing... source control is done on a per-needed / per-encoutnered basis. Fear tha serial port manager has issues / need to implement a new functionality to it? If you stumble across something that can be refactored you do it (if needed and not pressed with urgent matter).
Let's add that our technical support often doesn't even TRY to find problems and points directly to the software, meaning we check and recheck things that are working...
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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The problem with commented-out code is that it can be put back in again without going through the human brain on its way in. If I find commented out code I delete it.
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Me too, unless there is commented a reason. For example it cousl be a customization, so the commented line is the standard while the current is the edited. Why comment it out and not leave it there? Because if troubleshooting we find that line and don't remember that it is a customization then we'll "fix" it.
Also many things are changed - for example first there was a class that managed serial ports, then I developed the new one and used side by side, because we did not have the time to fix everything that used the old class, which by the way was thought for those devices. Then time after time each device was converted to work to the proven reliable new class, but we kept the old one as a fallback in case something somewhere stopped working and we couldn't figure out what the problem could be. Then it was deleted when it was reasonably sure that no problem arised from the new calss and eventual problems should be fixed on the new class only.
We tend to be very conservative...
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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Quote: When it comes to pets, there’s a heartbreaking lie that parents often tell little children when they believe that those children are not yet ready to wrap their heads around the concept of death. “Rex went to a nice farm in the countryside where he can run and play with all of the other animals all day!”
Every time I see this bit of rot, I'm reminded of what happened a dozenish years ago when, after their dog died, it was my preschool age cousins who were consoling their heartbroken mother.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Microsoft Corp was recalling about 2.25 million AC power cords, less than a week after Apple Inc said it was recalling AC wall plug adapters due to a shock hazard. Just in case you bought one of these
Yeah, I know. Power cord == shock hazard. Shocking.
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'We will engage on qualified strategic proposals.' Check the seat cushions, we might be able to collect enough
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Lol...watch Micro$oft buy them for a song...
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Selling your workforce is generally frowned upon today.
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bad business decisions of higher up but Worker will be one layoff 
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The majority of cyber attackers are motivated by money, but make less than $15,000 per successful attack Times are tough. Maybe we should start a collection for them?
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Still beats robbing banks[^] though.
"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
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