#computer madness

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Women pulling Lever on a Drilling Machine, 1978 Lee, Howl & Company Ltd., Tipton, Staffordshire, England photograph by Nick Hedges image credit: Nick Hedges Photography

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Tim Boudreau 

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.

[queerpanicking]

so…that was an interesting episode

[oldschoolfrp]

Ye basic and elite adventurers in Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord -- easily created and deleted in the Training Grounds and added to your party at Gigamesh's Tavern (Will McLean illustrations from the game manual, Sir-Tech Software, 1981)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

They got divorced again

[yuwuta]

katsuki might be a little rough, brash to those who don’t know him, he might bluff with fake threats but even then it’s all talk and much milder when directed at you than at his friends. because katsuki is kind, he’s reasonable, he’s gentle, he’s a lover through and through. he doesn’t even ever really get mad at you, and when you’re mad at him, he doesn’t let that be either. the only time he’s mean is when he’s being nice to you; when he’s being so gentle and willing and willing and willing to be kind to you even amongst your frustration that it feels smothering, almost as if you’re undeserving of his rationality and patience. he doesn’t think so, and he won’t change his mind on it, either. he loves you and you’re precious to him so you’re going to have to get used to it and get over it because he won’t stop

[egophiliac]

hiii im sure you’ve answered this before but in regards to your twst x Pokémon, how do you choose which Pokémon go give to the cast?? really curious since your choices are unique :O

unique in a good way, I hope? 😅 (jk jk I haven't come across too many pokemon AUs, so I was going in without preconceptions, I guess!) I was sorta aiming somewhere between doing, like, a full AU with internal consistency and everything, and just picking entirely based on theme/character, so maybe that's why! basically I just set some arbitrary rules (no legendaries/no repeats/evo stages based on year) and then went on ~vibes~. a couple were also suggestions (thank you guys!) and last-minute decisions, so it was a bit of a delightful mess of ideas!

my one regret is that I should have given Riddle a Togedemaru after all. ...you know what, he can have one now, why not

[problemnyatic]

Yeah yeah linux having problems is a big joke but honestly have you considered that linux wouldn't run like shit if it didn't have to reverse engineer byzantine proprietary drivers and hardware architecture and deliberately hostile BIOS firmware and one thousand other things that exist solely to force everything that isn't a corporate OS to suffer miserably on every computer ever

[taciturn-therian]

Pretty much as soon as Tenna showed up I was making comparisons between him and Mettaton, you have no idea how delighted I was when I found out I could give Tenna to him. <3

[yes-no-maybe-soo]

This face is the strongest economy in the world btw. It'll never decline no matter what.

[xxacidnekoxx]

fish boyfriend fish boyfriend!

[sillydeimos]

hes so funny for this i dont care

[oldschoolfrp]

Locations in Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord -- the Castle, the Adventurer's Inn (Visa and Mordorcharge accepted), the Temple of Cant where dead adventurers can be raised for a fee, and Boltac's Trading Post which has a monopoly on adventuring gear. (Will McLean illustrations from the game manual, Sir-Tech Software, 1981) In actual game play each of these is a short text menu, with commands input by single letters, so the manual illustrations and text help suggest a more detailed world.

[wikinley]

Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?

Nope. Paradoxically (and theoretically), the more you save on a flash drive, the lighter it gets.

USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of the data are stored on transistors.

When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge.

To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams.

This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight.

[horrorshowing]

I've been rewatching Hannibal and I realized it has been four years since I drew any of them and man does everyone on this show have an insane face (a good quality)

[ibunyang]

i finaallly got to play one of my dream games WEEEEEEHEEEEEEEEE

[cacw]

unfinished collection