AI tools causing an improvement in software quality

I just saw the announcement of NetBSD 11. Software that has been around for many years. What struck me was this comment:

As you are probably aware, the number of security issues found or suspected everywhere has massively increased with the advent of AI tools. As a consequence, we can't publish a release without open issues. Instead of delaying the release further to fix them (new ones are being reported all the time), we've instead chosen to be transparent about this.

NetBSD is not alone, recently we've seen:

• Record AI Bug Fixes Push Google To Twice-Weekly Chrome Updates
• Microsoft ships largest Patch Tuesday on record and Microsoft Patches Record 622 Flaws, Including Two Zero-Days Under Active Attack
• Oracle Releases Record 1,449 Security Patches As Companies Face Patch Overload
• AI has become Apple’s latest bug detective

I've also seen big bug fix releases in popular software such as ffmpeg.

Last week I pointed Claude Code at my iOS app WSPR Watch which has so far had no AI involvement. I asked it to audit the code for bugs and it found about 20 issues, three of them critical. Some of the bugs are threading issues which can be hard to reproduce and even understand.

My own code has been under development for a decade and there's bits of it I can't really remember. AI tools are fantastic at reading a big codebase and noticing inconsistencies and errors.

People talk about "vibe" coding but bug finding is possibly the bigger win in the short term.

FreeDV Sunday net

Nice net this morning with VK2, VK3, VK4 stations participating. A few new stations which is always good to hear.

Again I ran the net using my macOS client FreeDVNeo. On the frequency were VK5FD, VK5RA, VK5AG, VK5ABE, VK3KEZ, VK3JCO, VK3GTP, VK2KNC, VK2BLQ, VK2AOO, VK3ZTR, VK2LUI (no activity though), VK3PT (first time caller), VK3FAR, VK2KNC, VK5JPL and me VK3TPM.

See you next Sunday from 09:30 eastern time normally on 7.197 but +- depending on band usage.

 

Tech Talk on ABC Radio - ALP conference resolution on AI

Artificial Intelligence was one of the focuses of the Labor Party conference, with disruption to employment, education, the arts and the impact of data centres, unchartered problems needing to be resolved. 

We also discus AI models that hack and "sleepers" - a problem facing robotaxi firms. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/106968258

Upgraded the SSD in an M4 Mac Mini

When I purchased my M4 Mac Mini I chose 512GB of SSD thinking that would be more than enough. (I'm old enough to remember running on a 200MB disk). Developer tools and video editing eats a lot of space and I ran out. I had already paid an extra A$300 to get 512GB, to go from the default of 256GB up to 1TB Apple charges A$750, so I decided to attempt a cheaper option, and puchased a new 1TB SSD from AliExpress for A$375.

There are plenty of videos showing how to pop the bottom off the computer and get to the SSD. 

The board came with a spludger and a screw driver with the required bits. I was careful with the cable to the power button and fan. Unlike some upgraders I did not remove the power button and all was well.

Once the new, blank, drive is installed you need to put the machine in to DFU mode by holding the power button while plugging in the mains power. The power light blinks orange.

Next step is to plug the middle USB-C socket to another mac which detects DFU and offers to repair or restore the "faulty" mac. As this is a new drive choose Restore.

This is where I had problems. For some reason my internet has occasional ping fails and the downloading of the software image would fail. 

The error message isn't terribly helpful as you can see here.

In the end I located the restore image and downloaded it manually. The trick is to Option-Click the Restore button which lets you choose the restore image. This worked.

The disk seems fast and I have enough space. For now, I would say, 1TB seems to be needed for developers. AI models are also huge and I expect will be eating many people's hard disks in the next few years.

Enphase solar monitor on ESP32 CYD

I had a simple display that monitored my solar generation, usage and net some years ago but the company updated the software to require HTTPS and an authentication token. This update gets it going again. 

A MicroPython project that turns a CYD (Cheap Yellow Display) — an ESP32 board with an integrated 320×240 ILI9341 TFT — into a live dashboard for a home solar system. It polls an Enphase Envoy gateway on the local network and displays current generation, consumption, and net power, along with a scrolling line graph of recent history.

Along the way I ran in to a problem with HTTPS from MicroPython on ESP32 that turned out to be a known bug. To get it to work I've had to use an older version of MicroPython for ESP32.

You'll need to log in to your Enphase account and generate a token which lasts a year.

The code is here on GitHub.

Toyota Yaris - won't start "Drive Start control malfunction" - easy fix

My wife hasn't driven her Toyota Yaris hybrid for some weeks and today when she tried to start it was shown a series of alarming errors.

Happily as well as indicating a serious problem with the car, these can also be a side effect of a low accessory battery. I opened the bonnet but there's no battery I could see. Turns out the fuse box has a special place for jump starting.

I charged at 8A for only a few minutes and the car started just fine. We took it for a drive.

FreeDV Sunday net - good turnout VK3, VK2, VK5

Another good FreeDV RADEV1 net on Sunday. My macOS client was acting up so I used the official client this week.

As is often the case there were comments about audio quality. Charlie, VK3ZD, had particularly crisp audio and it turned out that he had cut the bass and boosted treble in the app. I tried the same here but reports came in of clipping so care is needed.

Stations on the net were VK2BLQ, VK2DWG, VK2KNC, VK3FAR, VK3FC, VK3GTP, VK3JCO, VK3KEZ, VK3UBK, VK3ZD, VK3ZTR, VK5ABE, VK5AG, VK5RA and me VK3TPM.

Z80 Turns 50

In this morning's news a great piece about the Zilog Z80 CPU chip turning 50. This triggers many happy memories. I had a Tandy/Radioshack TRS80 clone called a Dick Smith System 80 that I programmed to key the cassette deck motor relay to send Baudot to a teletype. Later I had other boards and even a Sinclair ZX80. 

CP/M with Wordstar was my writing environment for too many years - although I kept using it and some indexing tools I wrote using BDS-C - a fast compiler that I recall arrived on 8 inch floppy disks I had to get a friend to copy over to 5 inch.

My first paid programming work was in DBase II on CP/M. It was such a rich time in home computing with many fine alternatives and new machines on the covers of magazines every other month.

Tech talk on ABC Radio - Telstra outage, smartphone replacement battle & smart TV shenanigans

This week on ABC Nightlife Tech we discussed how the recent Telstra network outage which affected all sorts of things including country trains in Victoria seems somewhat similar to the Y2K bug. The battle to invent the tech product that will displace the smartphone is getting nasty with Apple suing OpenAI over stolen hardware secrets. Your smart TV apps may be using your home internet connection to scan the internet - perhaps it's time to use a set top box for streaming? Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/106915290

101 Things Pi PICO sideband transmitter

The uSDX transceivers are not great but it's amazing that they work at all. An under-powered Atmel processor being able to demodulate and modulate single sideband is incredible. Hans at QRP-Labs has turned polar modulation in to an incredibly well performing radio in the form of the QMX.

What's missing is the technology of the uSDX ported to a more capable CPU and Jon has done that. It's one of a group of amazing bits of code documented here and shared here.

I've taken just on bit of it, the transmitter example and forked it here.

Not sounding great at this point but it does work. What's incredible to me is that there's no Si5351 being rapidly phase shifted, it's all done in the PICO. The circuit is very simple, even more simple than an NE602 based qrp transmitter.

I can well understand why QRP-Labs keeps their software closed source - they'd be put out of business by clone makers in minutes. Having said that, I hope we can one day have an open source equivalent to hack on. Thanks to Jon for his great work.

My analog switch chips, the FST3253, arrived smaller than I expected. My fault! I have some carrier boards but struggle to solder the tiny chips to them. Second attempt worked today.

FreeDV Sunday net - 17 stations, good discussion

Once again I had to move frequency to avoid analog traffic. Not a problem with the Reporter though and we had 17 stations on the frequency today. There was some selective fading but conditions improved as we went along. This morning we were back on 7.177Mhz.

VK2BLQ, VK2KNC, VK2ZB, VK3AOK, VK3EY, VK3FAR, VK3FC, VK3GTP, VK3JCO, VK3KEZ,  VK3PCC, VK3TPM, VK3UBK, VK5AG, VK5FD, VK5RA, ZL2IT. Unfortunately Error in NZ couldn't hear us.

I was using my FreeDV client for macOS. I've been adding some more fancy graphs. (Click to enlarge).

Thanks everyone who joined in.