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Fixrleak: Fixing Java Resource Leaks with GenAI

https://www.uber.com/blog/fixrleak-fixing-java-resource-leaks-with-genai/
17•carimura•1y ago

Comments

stevoski•1y ago
> “Resource leaks, where resources like files, database connections, or streams aren’t properly released after use, are a persistent issue in Java applications”

This was true maybe back in 2005. Java has had try-with-resources for a loooong time. As I see it this has been the dominant idiom for ages, for handling resources that might leak.

okr•1y ago
People tend to forget. Stream-API is a good candidate, that people like to not consider for leakage. If you don't own your stream, if you do not definitly know, that your stream comes from a collection, then ya better close it with a try-block.
bob778•1y ago
How much effort was spent automating this to fix 112 instances across Uber’s code base? I assume code reviews would catch any new issues so this seems like overkill for a small one-off task?
hawk_•1y ago
Spotbugs or checkstyle etc... would catch these. What does AI add here?
xyst•1y ago
It gives marketing team at Uber to say "wE uSe AI hErE!!1". C-levels approve since anything AI gets a nice pump.

Engineering wise. This adds nothing. It’s an absolute waste of compute and energy to run this through LLMs

sigotirandolas•1y ago
> This analysis ensures that FixrLeak skips functions where resources are passed as parameters, returned, or stored in fields, as these resources often outlive the function’s scope.

> FixrLeak delivers precise, reliable fixes while leaving more complex cases for advanced analysis at the caller level.

In other words, this will only fix trivial leaks, which are best seen as a language design issue and can be fixed by RAII, reference counting, etc.

It won't fix the more insidious leaks like `UNBOUNDED_QUEUE.add(item)` that are more likely to pass through code review in the first place.

xyst•1y ago
Using AI when a static scanner like SonarQube easily picks up these types of resource leaks, especially in Java.

Peak waste.

What’s next?

"Get rid of your GitHub dependabot alerts and replace it with my shitty ChatGPT wrapper”

rvz•1y ago
> Using AI when a static scanner like SonarQube easily picks up these types of resource leaks, especially in Java.

Exactly.

It's very disappointing to see that Uber engineers would rather trust an LLM to that claims to spot these issues when a battle-tested scanner such as SonarQube would have caught this in the first place.

The LLM hype-train is almost just as bad as the JavaScript hype train in the 2010s where some of the worst technologies are used on everything.

rvz•1y ago
Why exactly do you need LLMs for this when efficient alternatives like SonarQube or checkstyle already do this without the expensive waste LLMs create?

This adds little to no technical advantage over existing solutions what so ever for this particular use case.

yahoozoo•1y ago
stupid af
Traubenfuchs•1y ago
So you tell me those 200-600k software engineers that can easily solve leetcode hard are so incompetent they missed using try-with-resources at such scale, they needed to introduce new AI tooling to fix it?

Hey Uber, I am from the EU, I usually can‘t even solve leetcode medium but I will write you scalable, spotless Java for a third of the salary.

Our industry and its economics are a joke.

hello_moto•1y ago
So you write bug-free scalable code 100% in any jobs you ever worked for?

I guess we don’t need QA and Dev/Staging environment

rad_gruchalski•1y ago
Can the QA team? How does the dev/staging environment help writing less buggy code?
rad_gruchalski•1y ago
But can you leetcode heh.
TYMorningCoffee•1y ago
A lot of commenters point out that there already are many established static checkers that do this. That is not what Uber attempts here.

Uber is not proposing a static checker. They even use sonar qube in their architecture. They propose using an LLM to resolve the leak detected by sonar qube.

The Life and Death of Direct File [pdf]

https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/vinton_report_5.pdf
45•ronbenton•1h ago•16 comments

Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to overthinking things

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/16/qwen-38-27b/
40•bilsbie•2h ago•15 comments

A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"

https://rvembedded.com/blog_post/12/
376•Narishma•8h ago•198 comments

Rhombus 1.1 is now available

https://blog.racket-lang.org/2026/08/rhombus-v1.1.html
11•spdegabrielle•1h ago•5 comments

Claude: System Prompts

https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/system-prompts
542•tosh•13h ago•227 comments

SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX

https://pikuma.com/blog/programming-intel-pentium-mmx-simd
73•ibobev•3d ago•32 comments

Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter

https://wiki.lowtechlab.org/wiki/Filtre_%C3%A0_eau_c%C3%A9ramique/en
92•Bluestein•5d ago•25 comments

Interview with Amit Patel, Creator of "Solar Realms Elite"

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/02/18/amit-patel-creator-of-solar-realms-elite/
9•bananaboy•1w ago•1 comments

Reticulum – Decentralized Mesh Network

https://reticulum.network/
11•sudo_cowsay•1h ago•1 comments

Models Are Getting Dumber on Purpose

https://w4g1.dev/blog/models-are-getting-dumber-on-purpose
270•hruvhwe•6h ago•152 comments

The AI Credit Resale Economy

https://vectoral.com/blog/who-are-the-token-brokers
225•mlenhard•11h ago•89 comments

A quick look at zero-knowledge proofs

https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/zkp/
46•evakhoury•2d ago•18 comments

The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding

https://www.highereddive.com/news/inside-the-federal-keyword-lists-that-canceled-billions-in-rese...
44•walrus01•1h ago•2 comments

Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome

https://buf.build/blog/protobuf-lsp
109•theanonymousone•7h ago•80 comments

MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent

https://math-ai-org.github.io/mathcode/
61•homarp•7h ago•19 comments

Dancing with friends and enemies: boids' swarm intelligence

https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/122095
10•surprisetalk•5d ago•1 comments

Clamiga: Common Lisp for the Amiga

https://nnamgreb.de/blog/Clamiga+-+Common+Lisp+for+the+Amiga
86•emptybits•3d ago•10 comments

Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee

https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-scales-back-250-billion-openai-data-center-guarantee-wsj-...
102•root-parent•4h ago•29 comments

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/winning-and-losing-at-the-great-game-of-intimacy/
63•lermontov•2d ago•13 comments

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y8bGBE71yw
48•tobr•1d ago•14 comments

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios
538•pentagrama•12h ago•221 comments

Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-16/stripe-nears-deal-to-buy-ai-firm-openrouter-fo...
199•zacharyozer•5h ago•145 comments

Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers

285•stagas•8h ago•69 comments

Red queen hypothesis – a new way forward for self-improving AI

https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/red-queen-hypothesis-new-way-forward-self-improving-ai
11•hardlianotion•5h ago•1 comments

Tasklet (YC P26) Is Hiring a Head of Design Engineering

https://tasklet.ai/careers/head-of-design-engineering
1•mayop100•12h ago

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/2026/08/16/a-true-telnet-bbs-on-a-casio-calculator/
86•austinallegro•13h ago•9 comments

St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core

https://www.wptv.com/news/treasure-coast/region-st-lucie-county/saint-lucie-nuclear-power-plant-u...
158•toomuchtodo•10h ago•124 comments

A SAT Attack on Tarski's High School Algebra Problem

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08421
84•matt_d•4d ago•34 comments

Before Rightmove, there was the Cosmorama

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/before-rightmove-there-was-the-cosmorama-londons-forgotten-p...
25•brod_ie•5d ago•3 comments

Chestnut – eGPU dock with open-source firmware

https://hwbusters.com/news/comma-ai-egpu-dock-runs-open-source-firmware-249-bare-799-with-an-rx-9...
134•txrx0000•3d ago•39 comments