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What Go Programmers Think of AI

"Most Go developers are now using AI-powered development tools when seeking information (e.g., learning how to use a module) or toiling (e.g., writing repetitive blocks of similar code)." That's one of the conclusions Google's Go team drew from September's big survey of 5,379 Go developers.


But the survey also found that among Go developers using AI-powered tools, "their satisfaction with these tools is middling due, in part, to quality concerns."


Our survey suggests bifurcated adoption — while a majority of respondents (53%) said they use such tools daily, there is also a large group (29%) who do not use these at all, or only used them a few times during the past month. We expected this to negatively correlate with age or development experience, but were unable to find strong evidence supporting this theory except for very new developers: respondents with less than one year of professional development experience (not specific to Go) did report more AI use than every other cohort, but this group only represented 2% of survey respondents. At this time, agentic use of AI-powered tools appears nascent among Go developers, with only 17% of respondents saying this is their primary way of using such tools, though a larger group (40%) are occasionally trying agentic modes of operation...

We also asked about overall satisfaction with AI-powered development tools. A majority (55%) reported being satisfied, but this was heavily weighted towards the "Somewhat satisfied" category (42%) vs. the "Very satisfied" group (13%)... [D]eveloper sentiment towards them remains much softer than towards more established tooling (among Go developers, at least). What is driving this lower rate of satisfaction? In a word: quality. We asked respondents to tell us something good they've accomplished with these tools, as well as something that didn't work out well. A majority said that creating non-functional code was their primary problem with AI developer tools (53%), with 30% lamenting that even working code was of poor quality.

The most frequently cited benefits, conversely, were generating unit tests, writing boilerplate code, enhanced autocompletion, refactoring, and documentation generation. These appear to be cases where code quality is perceived as less critical, tipping the balance in favor of letting AI take the first pass at a task. That said, respondents also told us the AI-generated code in these successful cases still required careful review (and often, corrections), as it can be buggy, insecure, or lack context... [One developer said reviewing AI-generated code was so mentally taxing that it "kills the productivity potential".]

Of all the tasks we asked about, "Writing code" was the most bifurcated, with 66% of respondents already or hoping to soon use AI for this, while 1/4 of respondents didn't want AI involved at all. Open-ended responses suggest developers primarily use this for toilsome, repetitive code, and continue to have concerns about the quality of AI-generated code.




Most respondents also said they "are not currently building AI-powered features into the Go software they work on (78%)," the surveyors report, "with 2/3 reporting that their software does not use AI functionality at all (66%)."

This appears to be a decrease in production-related AI usage year-over-year; in 2024, 59% of respondents were not involved in AI feature work, while 39% indicated some level of involvement. That marks a shift of 14 points away from building AI-powered systems among survey respondents, and may reflect some natural pullback from the early hype around AI-powered applications: it's plausible that lots of folks tried to see what they could do with this technology during its initial rollout, with some proportion deciding against further exploration (at least at this time).

Among respondents who are building AI- or LLM-powered functionality, the most common use case was to create summaries of existing content (45%). Overall, however, there was little difference between most uses, with between 28% — 33% of respondents adding AI functionality to support classification, generation, solution identification, chatbots, and software development.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic's $200M Pentagon Contract at Risk Over Objections to Domestic Surveillance, Autonomous Deployments

Talks "are at a standstill" for Anthropic's potential $200 million contract with America's Defense Department, reports Reuters (citing several people familiar with the discussions.") The two issues?

- Using AI to surveil Americans
- Safeguards against deploying AI autonomously


The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration, the details of which have not been previously reported... Anthropic said its AI is "extensively used for national security missions by the U.S. government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue that work..."

In an essay on his personal blog, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned this week that AI should support national defense "in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries.


A person "familiar with the matter" told the Wall Street Journal this could lead to the cancellation of Anthropic's contract:


Tensions with the administration began almost immediately after it was awarded, in part because Anthropic's terms and conditions dictate that Claude can't be used for any actions related to domestic surveillance. That limits how many law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could deploy it, people familiar with the matter said. Anthropic's focus on safe applications of AI — and its objection to having its technology used in autonomous lethal operations — have continued to cause problems, they said.



Amodei's essay calls for "courage, for enough people to buck the prevailing trends and stand on principle, even in the face of threats to their economic interests and personal safety..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is Meta's Huge Spending on AI Actually Paying Off?

The Wall Street Journal says that Meta "might be reaping some of the richest benefits from the AI boom so far."





Meta's revenue grew 22% year over year in 2025 to $201 billion, and the company expects even bigger gains in the current quarter, potentially as high as 34%. That is huge growth for a company that brought in nearly $60 billion in the latest three-month period. And Zuckerberg signaled that Meta was just scratching the surface of AI's potential. "Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon," he said on a call with investors and analysts...


[Meta's Chief Financial Officer Susan] Li said the company doubled the number of graphics-processing units that it used to train its ad-ranking model in the fourth quarter and adopted a new learning architecture. Those actions led users to click on ads on Facebook 3.5% more often and to a gain of more than 1% in conversions, meaning purchases, subscriptions or leads, on Instagram, she said. Other AI-related improvements led to a 3% increase in conversions across its family of apps. On the ad-buying side, Meta has also been working toward using AI to automate ad creation for businesses that want to advertise their products or services on Facebook and Instagram. On the call, Li said the combined revenue run rate of video-generation tools hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter.



In short, CNBC reported, Meta's stock price surged over 10% this week "after showing signs that AI investments are boosting the bottom line."

Benjamin Black, an internet analyst at Deutsche Bank, explained the connection to the Wall Street Journal. "The more compute the ad platform gets, the far better it performs, and that's a real structural advantage that Meta has. If you can see that yesterday's spend is driving this month's growth, then as a good business person, you're going to continue to feed the beast."

CNBC says now Meta "plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on its AI build-out this year. That's nearly double what it spent in 2025."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I'll Call You at Four

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

I'll Call You at Four

Found Kodachrome Slide

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Kodachrome Slide

date stamped on slide September 1959

Meiji-Jingumae Station , February 2019

mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo:

Meiji-Jingumae Station , February 2019

Orange on the Bay

Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

Orange on the Bay

Sunrise over San Francisco Bay

Trump sluit Kennedy Center twee jaar voor grote renovatie

De aankondiging komt na maanden van onrust rond het toonaangevende cultuurcentrum in Washington, dat vanwege Trumps verregaande bemoeienis wordt geteisterd door annuleringen en boycots.

Meiji-Jingumae Station , February 2019

mikeleonardvisualarts has added a photo to the pool:

Meiji-Jingumae Station , February 2019

Sunset at the baseball field

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Sunset at the baseball field

Japan hosted 2025 day 2

Raffles Terrace has added a photo to the pool:

Japan hosted 2025 day 2

14613 20260131_115232 id goose pic cropped

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14613 20260131_115232 id goose pic cropped

14612 20260131_084006 That would make a nice painting

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14612 20260131_084006 That would make a nice painting

14611 20260131_083919 the family that crops together

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14611 20260131_083919 the family that crops together

Fokke & Sukke

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it felt weird writing Sam using swears

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

India dangles 20-year tax holiday for clouds that serve offshore users

PLUS: NTT offshores to Vietnam; Japan adds AI interface to space data; Samsung cashes in on memory boom

Asia In Brief  India wants to offer big tech companies tax breaks that last decades.…

The Guardian

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Grammys red carpet 2026: Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Huntrix and more – in pictures

Musicians stepped out in ruffles, lace and trains – and the red carpet saw the return of the free the nipple movement

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Grammys 2026: the winners, the losers, the performances – live

Tonight has already seen wins for Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny with major performances and big awards still to come

There have already been some celebrities speaking out against ICE on the red carpet as well as a smattering of pins following on from similar activity on the Golden Globes red carpet.

Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Justin Vernon, Jason Isbell, Rhiannon Giddens and Margo Price were all wearing some form of protest wear and Kehlani also spoke about her feelings in an interview.

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Kennedy Center will halt entertainment operations for two years, Trump says

DC arts venue, which has seen wave of canceled events after Trump’s takeover, will start renovations in July

The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Donald Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social.

The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.

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