Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 5045

Circa 2018

Debugging code is drudgery. But SapFix, a new AI hybrid tool created by Facebook engineers, can significantly reduce the amount of time engineers spend on debugging, while also speeding up the process of rolling out new software. SapFix can automatically generate fixes for specific bugs, and then propose them to engineers for approval and deployment to production.

SapFix has been used to accelerate the process of shipping robust, stable code updates to millions of devices using the Facebook Android app — the first such use of AI-powered testing and debugging tools in production at this scale. We intend to share SapFix with the engineering community, as it is the next step in the evolution of automating debugging, with the potential to boost the production and stability of new code for a wide range of companies and research organizations.

SapFix is designed to operate as an independent tool, able to run either with or without Sapienz, Facebook’s intelligent automated software testing tool, which was announced at F8 and has already been deployed to production. In its current, proof-of-concept state, SapFix is focused on fixing bugs found by Sapienz before they reach production. The process starts with Sapienz, along with Facebook’s Infer static analysis tool, helping localize the point in the code to patch. Once Sapienz and Infer pinpoint a specific portion of code associated with a crash, it can pass that information to SapFix, which automatically picks from a few strategies to generate a patch.

Continue reading “Finding and fixing software bugs automatically with SapFix and Sapienz” | >

Circa 2021

Suppose you are trying to transmit a message. Convert each character into bits, and each bit into a signal. Then send it, over copper or fiber or air. Try as you might to be as careful as possible, what is received on the other side will not be the same as what you began with. Noise never fails to corrupt.

In the 1940s, computer scientists first confronted the unavoidable problem of noise. Five decades later, they came up with an elegant approach to sidestepping it: What if you could encode a message so that it would be obvious if it had been garbled before your recipient even read it? A book can’t be judged by its cover, but this message could.

They called this property local testability, because such a message can be tested super-fast in just a few spots to ascertain its correctness. Over the next 30 years, researchers made substantial progress toward creating such a test, but their efforts always fell short. Many thought local testability would never be achieved in its ideal form.

Continue reading “Researchers Defeat Randomness to Create Ideal Code” | >

Dark matter is made up of axions, elementary particles that are full of suspense.

About 85 percent of our universe is believed to be composed of dark matter, a hypothetical material that does not interact with light. So it neither reflects nor emits nor absorbs any light rays, and therefore, we can not see this unusual form of the matter directly. However, to understand and explain the nature of dark matter, scientists have created various models.

Surprisingly, a new study has ruled out one such popular explanation of the dark matter, called the axion-like particle (ALP) cogenesis model. The exclusion of ALP means that scientists will now have to consider fewer models while conducting dark matter research. This would increase both the speed and accuracy of their research works and bring us one step closer to understanding the most strange phenomenon of the universe. matter is made up of axons. Recently, scientists from the University of Australia decided to exclude a popular model (ALP cogenesis model) that is used to explain the nature of dark matter.

Read more | >

In an unexpected move, on Wednesday, European lawmakers voted to declare some gas and nuclear energy projects “green.” They also agreed that these projects should receive access to cheap loans and even state subsidies, according to a report by The New York Times.

The proposal was made by the European Commission and the lawmakers present at the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted in favor of accepting it, with 328 votes backing the proposal and 278 against it. This decision was much to the dismay of detractors who argue that these projects are not environmentally friendly.

The policy, known as the “taxonomy,” will give the bloc, a group of 27 industrialized and wealthy nations, support as it struggles to replace Russian energy sources in order to penalize the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine. It will also aim to thwart “greenwashing”, the practice of labeling projects green that are not truly so.

Read more | >

Chinese researchers have reportedly developed artificial intelligence (AI) that can read the minds of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.

A video report detailed the software’s features and attributed it to the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, a relatively new institute focused on health and environment, energy research, information management and artificial intelligence.

The technology essentially tests one’s level of loyalty to the CCP. According to the center, it would “further solidify their [members’] confidence and determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party.”

Read more | >

In an illuminating study, Rentschler et al. leverage data to analyze populations at risk of flood exposure. They explore the overlap between poverty, geography, and flood risk while taking into account pluvial, fluvial, and coastal flooding. Their work reveals that hundreds of millions of people in low-income regions are directly exposed to flood risk. The authors emphasize that efforts towards global flood mitigation should take socioeconomic factors into account since many low-income regions have both high flood risk and poor existing flood mitigation measures in place.

#geography #global #asia #africa #datascience

Floods are most devastating for those who can least afford to be hit. Globally, 1.8 billion people face high flood risks; 89% of them live in developing countries; 170 million of them live in extreme poverty making them most vulnerable.

Read more | >