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Tributes have been paid to a "courageous" Essex Police officer who died on the A12 near Ingatestone while responding to an emergency.

Tributes have been paid to a "courageous" Essex Police officer who died on the A12 near Ingatestone while responding to an emergency.

Police are concerned for the welfare of a missing man after he was last seen more than a week ago.

Police are concerned for the welfare of a missing man after he was last seen more than a week ago.

A bid to block delay after delay to council elections in Essex and beyond has failed.

In today's Tales from the Interview, our Anonymous submitter relates their experience with an anonymous company:

I had made it through the onsite, but along the way I had picked up some toxic work environment red flags. Since I had been laid off a couple months prior, I figured I wasn't in a position to be picky, so I decided I would still give it my best shot and take the job if I got it, but I'd continue looking for something better.

Then they brought me back onsite a second time for one final interview with 2 senior managers. I went in and they were each holding a printout of my resume. They proceeded to go through everything on it. First they asked why I chose the university I went to, then the same for grad school, which was fine.

Then they got to my first internship. I believe the conversation went something like this:

Manager: "How did you like it?"

Me: "Oh, I loved it!"

Manager: "Were there any negatives?"

Me: "No, not that I can think of."

Manager: "So it was 100% positive?"

Me: "Yep!"

And then they got to my first full-time job, where the same manager repeated the same line of questioning but pushed even harder for me to say something negative, at one point saying "Well, you left for (2nd company on my resume), so there must have been something negative."

I knew better than to bad-mouth a previous employer in an interview, it's like going into a first date and talking smack about your ex. But what do you do when your date relentlessly asks you to talk smack about all your exes and refuses to let the subject turn to anything else? This not only confirmed my suspicions of a toxic work environment, I also figured *they* probably knew it was toxic and were relentlessly testing every candidate to make sure they wouldn't blow the whistle on them.

That was the most excruciatingly awkward interview I've ever had. I didn't get the job, but at that point I didn't care anymore, because I was very, very sure I didn't want to work there in the long term.

I'm glad Subby dodged that bullet, and I hope they're in a better place now.

It seems like this might be some stupid new trend. I recently bombed an interview where I could tell I wasn't giving the person the answer on their checklist, no matter how many times I tried. It was a question about how I handled it when someone opposed what I was doing at work or gave me negative feedback. It felt like they wanted me to admit to more fur-flying drama and fireworks than had ever actually occurred.

I actively ask for and welcome critique on my writing, it makes my work so much better. And if my work is incorrect and needs to be redone, or someone has objections to a project I'm part of, I seek clarification and (A) implement the requested changes, (B) explain why things are as they are and offer alternate suggestions/solutions, (C) seek compromise, depending on the situation. I don't get personal about it.

So, why this trend? Subby believed it was a way to test whether the candidate would someday badmouth the employer. That's certainly feasible, though if that were the goal, you'd think Subby would've passed their ordeal with flying colors. I'm not sure myself, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the nefarious combination of AI and techbro startup culture have something to do with it.

So perhaps I also dodged a bullet: one of the many things I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Feel free to share your ideas, and any and all bullets you have dodged, in the comments.

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Nvidia may have cornered the market for the compute engines and networks that link them to train GenAI models, and the company has a very large share of the platforms that do inference, too. …

AI Propels Dell’s Datacenter Top Line – Bottom Line Is A Challenge was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Warns memory price explosion means PCs may have less RAM, or use low-cost parts

HP Inc will sack between 4,000 and 6,000 workers under a plan that calls for the PCs-and-printers prodigy to use AI to improve its operations.…

Chinese giant adds to ‘No AI bubble’ babble by citing oversubscribed infrastructure and surging demand

China’s Alibaba Cloud can’t deploy servers fast enough to keep up with demand for AI, so is rationing access to GPUs so that customers who use all of its services enjoy priority access.…

As we expected, the “Vista” supercomputer that the Texas Advanced Computing Center installed last year as a bridge between the current “Stampede-3” and “Frontera” production system and its future “Horizon” system coming next year was indeed a precursor of the architecture that TACC would choose for the Horizon machine. …

TACC’s “Horizon” Supercomputer Sets The Pace For Academic Science was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Stearn is of stocky build, is 6ft 4ins (193cm) tall, with short receding hair, and a short brown beard.

When my body says ‘hey I’m reaching my limit now’, my brain overrules and that is when it all comes crashing down

Marks & Spencer is looking to open 13 new stores across Essex, the firm has revealed on its corporate website.

The Albanian national, of no fixed address, will serve half of his sentence in the UK and will then be deported.

A driver at the Asda in Church Road, Tiptree, crashed through a brick wall last Wednesday morning shortly before 10am.

Dunmow St Mary’s Primary School has had to shut its doors today as part of an “emergency closure”.

CLACTON's MP Nigel Farage has said he never engaged in racist behaviour “with intent” while he attended a top private school.

Today, Reginald approaches us for a confession.

He writes:

I've no idea where I "copied" this code from five years ago. The purpose of this code was to filter out Maps and Collections Maybe the intention was to avoid a recursive implementation by an endless loop? I am shocked that I wrote such code.

Well, that doesn't bode well, Reginald. Let's take a look at this Java snippet:

/** * * @param input * @return */ protected Map rearrangeMap(Map input) { Map retMap = new HashMap(); if (input != null && !input.isEmpty()) { Iterator it = input.keySet().iterator(); while (true) { String key; Object obj; do { do { if (!it.hasNext()) { } key = (String) it.next(); } while (input.get(key) instanceof Map); obj = input.get(key); } while (obj instanceof Boolean && ((Boolean) obj).equals(Boolean.FALSE)); if (obj != null) { retMap.put(key, obj); return retMap; } } } else { return retMap; } }

The first thing that leaps out is that this is a non-generic Map, which is always a code smell, but I suspect that's the least of our problems.

We start by verifying that the input Map exists and contains data. If the input is null or empty, we return it. In our main branch, we create an iterator across the keys, before ethering a while(true) loop. So far so bad

Then we enter a pair of nested do loops. Which definitely hints that we've gone off the edge of the map here. In the inner most loop, we do a check- if there isn't a next element in the iterator, we… do absolutely nothing. Whether there is or isn't an element, we advance to the next element, risking a NoSuchElementException. We do this while the key points to an instance of Map. As always, an instanceof check is a nauseating code stench.

Okay, so the inner loop skips across any keys that point to maps, and throws an exception when it gets to the end of the list.

The surrounding loop skips over every key that is a boolean value that is also false.

If we find anything which isn't a Map and isn't a false Boolean and isn't null, we put it in our retMap and return it.

This function finds the first key that points to a non-map, non-false value and creates a new map that contains only that key/value. Which it's a hard thing to understand why I'd want that, especially since some Map implementations make no guarantee about order. And even if I did want that, I definitely wouldn't want to do that this way. A single for loop could have solved this problem.

Reginald, I don't think there's any absolution for this. Instead, my advice would be to install a carbon monoxide detector in your office, because I have some serious concerns about whether or not your brain is getting enough oxygen.

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ESSEX Air Ambulance trust will host an evening of glitter and dance with special celebrity guest appearances.

Further to the below, we have been made aware of a continued erroneous publication of the video. This has now been removed, and we have agreed to meet Dr Mulholland's legal costs...