Robert J. Bitterman, CEO and President, discusses goals of Cutanea Life Sciences

The Knifedads talk about the meaning of Knifedaddery, and how to survive a Florida Drugfight

This slander to my appley name will NOT stand.

We speak with The Nation's John Nichols in Wisconsin, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are spending a lot of their time in the closing days of the election in a tight battle for the state's 10 Electoral College votes. Nichols also discusses the battle for the Senate, with key races in Wisconsin and Nebraska; how New York races could tip control of the House to Democrats; and why Kamala Harris needs to expand her message beyond the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism. “At the doors, people want to talk about economics,” says Nichols.

When Donald Trump reenters the White House, he will be met with a newly Republican-controlled Senate, consolidating power in the hands of a party now dominated by supporters of Trump. We take a look at the results of down-ballot races for the Senate and House, and the possibilities for congressional opposition to Trump’s agenda with John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. Nichols notes that losing Democratic Senate candidates missed opportunities to highlight working-class voters and economic issues, likely to their detriment.

The Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of The Additional Commissioner of Commercial Taxes v. M/s Shankara Infrastructure Materials Ltd. [arising out of SLP (Civil) No. 5504 of 2022 dated October 14, 2024] granted leave and allowed appeal, wherein M/s. Shankara Infrastructure Materials Ltd. ("the Resp

The Income Tax Department has intensified scrutiny on dubious tax refund claims for the assessment years 2021-22 and 2022-23, issuing notices to multiple taxpayers across the country. ...

A new technique to make electronic fibers could help solve wearable technology’s flexibility problem

I’ve almost forgotten how to post! But really, who can miss Valentine’s Day? Christi Friesen has been tucking these languorous beauties in orders all month. Her hearts are encrusted with flowers and pearls and bits of love from Hawaii. They have a perfect beachy buzz. Check out all her fun events and online mischief.

Kelly Lee Owens “Dreamstate” There’s not a lot of lyrics to “Dreamstate” beyond variations on the phrases “feel the dreamstate” and “dream to live,” but Kelly Lee Owens gets a lot out of those words. It’s in the repetition, the re-arranging of the words, and how she seems to surf the waves of her synth […]

Jon recently started a new project. When setting up his dev environment, one of his peers told him, "You can disable verbose logging by setting DEBUG_LOG=false in your config file."

Well, when Jon did that, the verbose logging remained on. When he asked his peers, they were all surprised to see that the flag wasn't turning off debug logging. "Hunh, that used to work. Someone must have changed something…" Everyone had enough new development to do that tracking down a low priority bug fell to Jon. It didn't take long.

const DEBUG_LOG = process.env.DEBUG_LOG || true

According to the blame, the code had been like this for a year, the commit crammed with half a dozen features, was made by a developer who was no longer with the company, and the message was simply "Debugging". Presumably, this was intended to be a temporary change that accidentally got committed and no one noticed or cared.

Jon fixed it, and moved on. There was likely going to be plenty more to find.

Matt needed to add a new field to a form. This simple task was made complicated by the method used to save changes back to the database. Let's see if you can spot what the challenge was:

public int saveQualif(String docClass, String transcomId, String cptyCod, String tradeId, String originalDealId, String codeEvent, String multiDeal,
            String foNumber, String codeInstrfamily, String terminationDate, String premiumAmount, String premiumCurrency, String notionalAmount,
            String codeCurrency, String notionalAmount2, String codeCurrency2, String fixedRate, String payout, String maType, String maDate,
            String isdaZoneCode, String tradeDate, String externalReference, String entityCode, String investigationFileReference,
            String investigationFileStartDate, String productType, String effectiveDate, String expiryDate, String paymentDate, String settInstrucTyp,
            String opDirection, String pdfPassword, String extlSysCod, String extlDeaId, String agrDt) throws TechnicalException, DfException

That's 36 parameters right there. This function, internally, creates a data access object which takes just as many parameters in its constructor, and then does a check: if a field is non-null, it updates that field in the database, otherwise it doesn't.

Of course, every single one of those parameters is stringly typed, which makes it super fun. Tracking premiumAmount and terminationDate as strings is certainly never going to lead to problems. I especially like the pdfPassword being stored, which is clearly just the low-security password meant to be used for encrypting a transaction statement or similar: "the last 4 digits of your SSN" or whatever. So I guess it's okay that it's being stored in the clear in the database, but also I still hate it. Do better!

In any case, this function was called twice. Once from the form that Matt was editing, where every parameter was filled in. The second time, it was called like this:

int nbUpdates = incoming.saveQualif(docClass, null, null, null, null, null, multiDeal, null,
                null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null,
                null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null);

As tempted as Matt was to fix this method and break it up into multiple calls or change the parameters to a set of classes or anything better, he was too concerned about breaking something and spending a lot of time on something which was meant to be a small, fast task. So like everyone who'd come before him, he just slapped in another parameter, tested it, and called it a day.

Refactoring is a problem for tomorrow's developer.

Some time ago, poor Keith found himself working on an antique Classic ASP codebase. Classic ASP uses VBScript, which is like VisualBasic 6.0, but worse in most ways. That's not to say that VBScript code is automatically bad, but the language certainly doesn't help you write clean code.

In any case, the previous developer needed to make an 8 element array to store some data. Traditionally, in VBScript, you might declare it like so:

Dim params(8)

That's the easy, obvious way a normal developer might do it.

Keith's co-worker did this instead:

Dim params : params = Split(",,,,,,,", ",")

Yes, this creates an array using the Split function on a string of only commas. 7, to be exact. Which, when split, creates 8 empty substrings.

We make fun of stringly typed data a lot here, but this is an entirely new level of stringly typed initialization.

We can only hope that this code has finally been retired, but given that it was still in use well past the end-of-life for Classic ASP, it may continue to lurk out there, waiting for another hapless developer to stumble into its grasp.

The US Department of Homeland Security is trialling chemical sensors that detect the first whiff of smoke in the air and alert fire crews while a potential blaze is still smouldering

An off-the-shelf millimetre wave sensor can pick out the tiny vibrations made by a smartphone's speaker, enabling an AI model to transcribe the conversation, even at a distance in a noisy room

Gender bender comedy launched in March 2023

4th generation Hinatazaka46 members to star in March 2025 play

Series debuted in October 2023

(I’ll be adding this to my socialism FAQ, but for now I think it deserves it’s own post.) The logic here is what fascinates—the mechanical formality, starting with rigid definitions and proceeding step by careful step to absurdity. The old scholastics of the middle ages would certainly have approved, but if we don’t want to … Continue reading “We live in a democracy, therefore the government represents us.”

Katy P.'s father-in-law recently retired after 27 years with the fire department.

Naturally, his fellow fire fighters ordered an appropriately decorated cake to celebrate: 

(You know what my favorite part of this Fire Department Theme cake is? The balloons.)

Thanks to Katy for showing us how a cake order goes down in flames.

Also, I should probably point out the original firefighter themed cake from way back in 2008.  Still one of my favorites. -john (thoJ)

Nigel Farage says Reform will be Labour's "main challenger" in 2026 at the party's Welsh conference.

Customers of Atlas Biomed are angry and worried about what's happened to the highly sensitive data they shared.

Employees must stick to official channels to make sure their messages are fully retrievable.

The Dutch Senate has approved the 2021 Tax Plan package, which introduces a lower rate of corporate tax for small- and medium-sized businesses.

The Swiss Government has confirmed it will extend a tax exemption for surface disinfectants in light of COVID-19.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is optimistic that an international agreement on taxing the digital economy will be reached this year.

Discover how Americans can meet their essential amino acid needs through balanced diets, promoting muscle health, energy, and overall well-being.

bHighlights:/bul class="group-list punch-points"liThe Transplantation of Organs Act, 1994 and its subsequent Rules and Amendments is the supreme

Union Minister of State for Health Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar, a robust nursing sector is essential for a strong healthcare sector. Pawar added that

A youth agenda for sustainable agricultural transformation in an era of climate change and out-migration.

The post Call for youth representatives first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

The Food Systems Summit Global Dialogue; Water – the Game-changer for Food Systems has concluded with consensus that water has unmatched utility to support the necessary transformation of food systems.

The post Ahead of UN Summit consensus that action on water critical to transforming food systems first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

A recent study suggests that by 2050, climate change is expected to exacerbate ground-level ozone spikes, potentially causing numerous regions in the

Unusual medlinkarsenic/medlink release from wildfires poses a huge threat to human and environmental health, reveals a new study. The findings of

Autistic children exhibited significantly decreased sympathetic activity and increased relaxation in a sensory-adapted dental environment (SADE) during

Walking is a basic human activity that affects physical mobility, as well as cognitive and sensory perceptions. The use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented

Individuals suffering from both medlinkposttraumatic stress disorder/medlink (PTSD) and medlinktype 2 diabetes/medlink experience significantly

Youssef Brouziyne, the IWMI Regional Representative in the Middle East and North Africa, featured on Al Etihad News Centre on Abu Dhabi TV.

The post IWMI’s MENA representative on Abu Dhabi TV first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

Learn about how microneedle sensors are transforming healthcare by enabling real-time, continuous monitoring of biomarkers through wearable, minimally invasive device.

Former President Pranab Mukherjee's health took a dip on Tuesday evening, following emergency brain surgery, and he remains on ventilator support. "The

New 'copy-paste' mechanism in genetics have been identified by researchers at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in a malaria parasite

Eamonn Murphy's keynote address at the End TB Dialogues Summit highlights the ongoing relevance of integrating medlinkTB/medlink and HIV services, echoing a call to action initiated by Dr.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) has agreed to largely exempt the goods and services tax (GST) on term life insurance premiums and health insurance premiums paid by senior citizens.

Long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water may raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly heart disease, even at levels below the federal

Ardea Biosciences to Present at Two Upcoming Investor Conferences

Sandata Chosen to Implement Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Telephonic Home Health Project

Hospice Foundation of America Presents Webinar on 'Grieving Children and Adolescents: The Role of Internet Support'