Coders spent more time prompting and reviewing AI generations than they saved on coding. On the surface, METR's results seem to contradict other benchmarks and experiments that demonstrate increases in coding efficiency when AI tools are used. But those often also measure productivity in terms of total lines of code or the number of discrete tasks/code commits/pull requests completed, all of which can be poor proxies for actual coding efficiency. These factors lead the researchers to conclude that current AI coding tools may be particularly ill-suited to "settings with very high quality standards, or with many implicit requirements (e.g., relating to documentation, testing coverage, or linting/formatting) that take humans substantial time to learn." While those factors may not apply in "many realistic, economically relevant settings" involving simpler code bases, they could limit the impact of AI tools in this study and similar real-world situations.

Warning: Think of this as a shitpost. This, seriously speaking, is my experience. But it's horrible quality. You'll gain nothing but written entertainment from reading it. This is a very long post. You've been warned. I tried to keep this as accurate as I remember. Some stuff I don't precisely remember was compromised with words describing what I felt then.

How do I begin?

I decided to split various phases of my actions with ellipses (...). First-person thoughts are shown with the Reddit quote mode, and (second-person?) thoughts are in the text body.

...

I first tried to understand the game.

I went through the tips in the game. I chose to be a fixer. It showed how to adjust various aspects of the level. Then I tried changing the first setting for adjusting the difficulty, then I realized I forgot what the setting meant. I just read its tutorial 20 seconds ago.

Note: I'm a college student, 21 credits through a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, with a cGPA of 3.92/4.00. Precalculus and Calculus 1 were not hard.

...

I decided that I understood enough since the tutorial turned off and it highlighted the (co-op?) button. So I clicked it, and it went into matchmaking mode. I was confused. Like, is it fine to dive straight into a co-op game being an absolute beginner?

Well, the game tutorial guided me to this. So, I guess it's fine.

I clicked the button and waited. It seemed like the game was searching for a third player? I don't even know how many players are in a party. Eventually, nothing happened. It stopped matchmaking.

Then the session just sat there, paused. I thought the game was doing something. I waited. Nothing. I was confused again.

notices the text "Ready" and "Not Ready."

Oh.

selects "Ready."

Then the game started loading and then it froze. I thought it would recover. I waited for a full minute. Still frozen. Even the taskbar didn't pop up.

I decided to force shut down my laptop. I felt bad for the guy who was with me, but oh well.

I was kicked out of the party in my second matchmaking session.

You can do that????

Third matchmaking was successful.

Note: I did not modify my loadout as I trusted the game's defaults.

Then I successfully entered the game with no freezes (a few freezes for a few seconds maybe).

Note: These freezes lasted only till here. Rest of the game was a smooth 60+ FPS average on low settings

So I spawned. What do I do? idk. I tried to look for something in my HUD that indicated a goal. I didn't find anything obvious. I saw my teammates just standing around doing nothing. Well, I'm off.

Outside my spawn room stood a guy with a gun, swaying like a drunk. He had a kinda red outline. He did nothing for a few seconds. I ignored him, thinking he was some random guard, and ran. I was shot.

WTF?

I shot him. At least I attempted to. My main weapon was some weird shit that only flickered some electricity. At the time of writing, I still don't know what it does. I somehow figured out how to change to my revolver and shot him.

I saw some other drunkards. I realized they were some kind of zombies, so I rained bullets on them. I wasted a lot but didn't mind, thinking I had infinite bullets.

Note: I do remember the mobs being introduced in the beginning cutscene. But I was unfamiliar with their behavior. The beginning cutscene explained... pretty much nothing about how they behave. The behaviour shown in the cutscene looked like comical idiocy and so, I disregarded it. It didn't say what they really look like outside of a simplified drawing. Hell, I even forgot what they were called. Fireblazer? Firebreaker? Isn't that us? Whatevs, I'll refer to them as zombies for now.

I continued wandering around, searching for a goal and killing zombies. I ran out of bullets. idk what to do. I got knocked down. idk wtf I should do. I see a force respawn or something button and I use it.

enters spectator mode

waits to spawn

nothing else happens

sees respawn button and uses it to respawn

respawns with revolver locked and loaded

goes out and attacks more zombies

cycle 2x

I tried attacking with my useless main weapon several times.

I decided to stick with my teammates. I regrouped and attacked the zombies with them. I still didn't know what the goal was. I ran out of bullets again. I decided to kill myself. I wondered how. I opened the menu and saw force respawn. I attempted to do so. Somehow in the middle, I got knocked down again. idk how but I was happy. Then my teammate attempted to revive me.

NO, YOU FOOL. I'M TRYING TO KILL MYSELF TO RELOAD.

I was revived. I went to some corner and committed suicide. Once again, I regrouped with my trusty teammates.

At some point, I saw a diamond pointer that seemed like it wanted me to go there. I also saw a sentence indicating the goal on my HUD. So I did. My teammates were lagging behind. I'm off again. We regrouped at the target location.

I saw some kind of fire hydrant that was next to the target. It was leaking water and flickering electricity. Me being the fixer, tried to fix it. I couldn't. I tried pointing my "electricity creating" main weapon at it. I clicked all sorts of buttons. Nothing happened.

I didn't know what to do. I don't know what we did. After a while, a ton of zombies spawned and it was attack time. The diamond pointer and the sentence explaining the goal had both disappeared. I was, once again, a man without a goal. I stuck to my trusty teammates.

After a while, they went to a room that looked like the spawn area. There, I saw them draining water down the sink. I was confused. Then I did as they did. I saw my health bar going up. I realized that it was a water level bar. I decided to also think of it as my health bar.

After the drink, I wandered around the room looking for ammo. I mysteriously found some. Wondering whether I'm fully reloaded or not, I left the room.

After some time, another goal sentence and a diamond pointer appeared. My teammates were lagging behind again. I went off on my own again. Halfway through, I turned back, worried about my crew.

I found one of them being chased by a horde. I shot the horde.

Shit, I shot my teammate.

I thought my brother in idiocy was a zombie. I didn't even know friendly fire was allowed. We ignored what happened (we couldn't talk to each other anyway. idk how), and attacked the horde.

We all regrouped and reached the target location, an elevator. Nothing happened. Some more zombies spawned. Killed, still no improvements.

Later, I opened the elevator, I think. Actually, we did some random shit and there was a warning of some sort of explosion. I ran, fearing for my health. One bozo stood right next to it. He didn't die.

The elevator opened. We went in. I waited for more zombies and for the others to prompt the elevator to move. Nothing happened. I turned around, saw a lever. I tried pulling it, wondering why these idiots didn't. It was broken.

It's fixer time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Me, still struggling with the controls and the instructions, tried fixing it, fixed it, broke it (I think), fixed it, pulled it down, pulled it up, and pulled it back down. More zombies spawn. We attack as the elevator closes.

Mission accomplished

...

I am using the Game Pass free trial. I was testing various games to see if they were fun. And if they were, I'd buy them after the free trial ends. That's how I found this game. I only watched some gameplay footage. I didn't read any reviews before playing.

It is a fun game despite me not knowing a lot of things about it. I thought I'd buy it when it gets at least 50% off on a sale. I don't mind waiting for it. Then I thought about how long I could play it. Completion time?

That question doesn't make sense. Isn't co-op in this like the competitive mode in CS:GO?

I was wrong. It's fine tho. Then I looked for the reviews of the game just to check. I also noticed that it was just released a month ago. This guaranteed I should wait for a year before buying. I based this decision on my personal beliefs about good games. I decided I'm fine with the game even with all the bad reviews I read.

...

So I looked for a guide on the game.

I looked at the fandom for details on weapons and other stuff. Didn't see much info.

Then I watched a guide on YouTube. But it was actually a video about tips despite being named a guide. I tried searching for another video, then found one named "FBC Firebreak - The Complete Guide". I went with this.

I interrupted the YouTube guide as it was time to do my daily chores. I was about to do it, but then I paced around for half an hour, thinking about what just happened. I started to doubt my own sanity. Like, why am I doing this? Usually when I play games, the tutorial gives most of what I need to know to play at a basic level. Here, I didn't even know what my main weapon does.

Then I did an introspection:-

Physical Health:

Am I high on drugs?

No, I don't do drugs.

Am I drunk?

No, I don't drink alcohol.

Am I high on caffeine?

No, I didn't and I don't drink that much coffee.

Am I sleep-deprived?

Not really? I have a light headache? I have a horrible sleep schedule and occasional light headaches are normal to me. Maybe the answer is along those lines?

Mental Health:

Am I mentally sound?

Usually.

What was my most stressful experience today?

It was an event at my relative's house. I was sitting awkwardly in a room filled with people I don't know. For half an hour, I distracted myself with my phone.

What was my most irritating experience today?

I spent 40 minutes waiting for my order at McDonalds. My brother's order was fresh and piping hot, while mine was cooled down. I didn't know what to say to the staff as I already completed the feedback before I received my order. Completing the feedback gives you a free Americano.

Did I drain my head with something?

Usually when I study a lot for exams and I am at my peak performance, I have a headache, I feel sleepy, hungry, and am finished off with a raging boner for absolutely no fucking reason. That didn't happen here. Maybe the answer is along those lines?

...

I did the job.

OK, first off I know about get_iplayer and it doesn't suit my needs but thanks for the thought.

I'm trying to download entire seasons of a particular show I can't find quality torrents of all 26 seasons anymore. I'm using a tool called yt-dlg which is simply a GUI for yt-dlp which is a fork of YouTube-dl.exe. Now, with that out of the way.

So, I right click the channel off the iPlayer page with my trusty VPN on and select copy clean link. I paste it into the GUI, it begins parsing and off we go. Depending on the season, it's through in about 30mins. BTW, it pulls the files down and reassembles them into an MP4 container with a MPEG-TS video and AAC audio stream.

All good, right? Wrong! Although the videos play fine in VLC, I receive an error at the end of the batch process stating "Possible MPEG-TS in MP4 container or malformed AAC timestamps. Install ffmpeg to fix this automatically". Greek to me so I proceed to my converter of choice, FastFlix and drop the file in for cropping/conversion to HEVC/AC3 and when I start the conversion I get the error message "Invalid Timestamps..." over and over while the file attempts to render.

Any mateys out there with more brains than me, HELP! I'm lucky I could even remember all this. LOL

All positive support appreciated!!!

Hey y'all, I know getting a setup that feels "right" can be a process. We all have different goals, tech preferences, etc.

I wanted to a share my blog post walking through how I finally built a setup that I can just be happy with and use. It goes over my goals, requirements, tech choices, layout, and some specific problems I've resolved.

Where I've landed of course isn't where everyone else will, but I hope it can serve as a good reference. I’ve really benefited from the content and software folks have freely shared, and hope I can continue that and help others.

Happy to answer questions!

On the 16th of July, at around 8pm UTC+2, a malicious AUR package was uploaded to the AUR. Two other malicious packages were uploaded by the same user a few hours later. These packages were installing a script coming from the same GitHub repository that was identified as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).

The affected malicious packages are:

• librewolf-fix-bin
• firefox-patch-bin
• zen-browser-patched-bin

The Arch Linux team addressed the issue as soon as they became aware of the situation. As of today, 18th of July, at around 6pm UTC+2, the offending packages have been deleted from the AUR.

We strongly encourage users that may have installed one of these packages to remove them from their system and to take the necessary measures in order to ensure they were not compromised.

Follow up

There are more packages with this malware found.

• minecraft-cracked
• ttf-ms-fonts-all
• vesktop-bin-patched
• ttf-all-ms-fonts

What to do

If you installed any of these packages, check your running processes for one named systemd-initd (this is the RAT).

The suspicious packages have a patch from this now-inaccessible Codeberg repo: https://codeberg.org/arch_lover3/browser-patch

The Arch maintainers have been informed of all this already and are investigating.