What I found interesting this time

by: Artur Dziedziczak

April 21, 2024

“Learning to Code with and without AI,” n.d. https://austinhenley.com/blog/learningwithai.html

Interesting research about how students improve while using AI for code generation.  
Tldr; it seems to help, but also it creates issues  
Most importantly, it encourages student to read more about programming!

“🪦 Emacs 2011-2023,” n.d. https://bastibe.de/2024-03-24-rip-emacs-2011-2023.html

Short story of a person who used Emacs for more than 10 years and eventually gave up in favor of VS Code. Apparently, pair programming features of VS Code were too good to go back to Emacs.  
What can we take from it?  
I think the era of old editors like VIM, Emacs, NetBeans, Eclipse is already gone. New editors have super hard time competing with VS Code, which has massive community that build plugins.  
When you think about VS Code and its issues, there is only one. It comes with proprietary spyware from Microsoft. There are versions without it as Code is Open Source but then you cannot use its Marketplace.

“Humane AI – Pico Laser Projection – $230M AI Twist on an Old Scam,” n.d. https://kguttag.com/2023/12/06/humane-ai-pico-laser-projection-230m-ai-twist-on-an-old-scam/

So imagine me, 8:27, sun is shining, and slowly the whole house is waking up for another fucking day to survive. I made my coffee, sat down, took a sip and started to read the article which got my attention. Is usually don’t read clickbait articles, but this one got me due “Old Scam” mention. I love to read about old technology ideas that fail, fail and fail when the money is pumped, pumped and pumped regardless of how stupid the idea is.
Humane AI concept of this AI pin that does not have screen is one of those ideas. What I was not aware of is the way big tech sharks decided to solve accessibility issue. And ooh god, what a solution they provided.
So they mounted a laser screen projector on it and decided its good design to display data on your hand.
Imagine you put this pin close to your nipple, try to find the right angle with your hand to display the data but due to sunlight, it makes it unreadable so either way you take out your smartphone and say "Google create me an Amazon auction for this garbage nipple pin".
But now for real. The article about its issues is really good and shows different perspectives on the problems created by this stupid idea. Worth to read.

“Ten Years of Improvements in PostgreSQL’s Optimizer,” n.d. https://rmarcus.info/blog/2024/04/12/pg-over-time.html

PostgreSQL optimizer researcher is comparing performance benefits of major #PostgreSQL versions in 10 years time window.
On average with each version there is a 15% performance improvement so…
Update your database!

“12 Map Happenings That Rocked Our World: Part 9,” n.d. https://maphappenings.com/2024/04/11/story-of-etak/

Amazing, detailed and story-based article on "Etak". First electronic car navigation system.
I already knew about some things about it, but this article allowed me to explore the whole technology more deeply.
Here are some things I learned about it.
The entire system was using multiple sensors to detect car position but none of them were based on GPS. For example, to detect how far the car drove and display it on the map, a special sensor was mounted within the wheel itself.
Next, since the error of such sensors accumulated quickly, there was a need for something to still keep position right on the street. That’s where Map Matching comes in. I was not aware that the team behind Etak designed and implemented the first map matching system that later was sold commercially.
The map was recorded on cassettes which had issues when left in the sun. Basically, the plastic was melting due to high heat at the back windshield. The team was aware of this and created many tests to ensure the cassettes were usable also during extreme heat waves.
There are many more interesting facts about it which I won’t cover in this simple note. I highly recommend you to read the article as it’s extremely detailed and easy to read!
#map #mapmatching #productdesign