Worth it.

For those wondering who he is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Marcus#Artificial_intelligence

NTP is one of those fundamental working parts of the internet that nobody has to think much about, because it works so smoothly.

It’s taken for granted, like the lights will come on when you flip a switch. But there’s SO much more to make that happen.

We gave our oldest a basic feature flip-phone when he started Middle School, mainly so he could text and coordinate pickups. In 7th grade, we gave him a smartphone because he was going on a class trip to DC and the kids were encouraged to take pictures and share. At home, we made it a rule that the phone had to be plugged into charger in our bedroom to avoid bedtime disruption.

That same year I created social media accounts for him on every service, mainly to reserve his username. But they were all blocked using parental controls, based on advice from school. We also had software/hardware from Circle (now Aura: https://meetcircle.com/) that blocked access on wifi and cell and capped usage.

In high school, when he turned 16, as part of his birthday gift, we gave him an envelope with his own non-school email account, and all the links and passwords for social media accounts. We also took away all the filter blocks. Figured he was mature enough without feeling left out.

It really worked out well. Later, he asked to put usage limits back on so he would be forced to put it down and go to sleep.

Came across this a few weeks ago. ATProto plugin for Wordpress: https://wordpress.com/plugins/neznam-atproto-share

Combined with the existing https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ ActivityPub and RSS/Atom support, it should be possible to post once / share everywhere.

I was one of those. Happily discovered Voyager. I go back, usually when a search link takes me there.

The mobile app is designed by people who I only imagine get paid by the bulk number of raw clicks/taps on UI elements.

Signal could improve its user interface around groups and people with duplicate display names.

Nah, they really shouldn’t. Way more fun this way.

Worldwide, making all coffee decaf, and not telling anyone.

So this showed up last week: https://github.com/raminf/RoboNope-nginx

Similar vibe, minus the AI.

Durian.

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If you’re looking for prefab, just get a bottle of Kewpie Deep Roasted Sesame dressing and marinade: https://www.kewpieshop.com/products/deep-roasted-sesame

Doesn’t matter how you cook the chicken. Bake, BBQ, sous-vide. Just slather some of this afterward on top. It’s like goddamn crack.

Have found it in many places, from local supermarket, to Trader Joe’s, Costco, 99 Ranch, even Dollar General. Costco’s is cheaper in bulk, but they don’t always carry it. Also good on pasta or rice with veggies and ANY protein, including tofu. Baked salmon. Check.

Only caveats: don’t cook with it in oven (smokes). Add it afterward. Also, don’t overuse it.

Years ago. Client on-site meeting had run long past lunch. Was in a hurry to drive back home and beat the traffic. It was 1-hour normally, but 2-3x during rush hour.

Saw a sign for a ‘natural’ market. Pulled in. They had an open-face cooler with prepackaged foods and drinks. Sandwiches looked a bit stale. Grabbed a ‘Fresh Vietnamese Shrimp Spring Roll’ and a drink. Hopped on the freeway. Ate in the car.

Never Again.

PS: Still got stuck in traffic.

Software guy. Most productive/distraction free time of the day is mid-afternoon. Drinking at lunch would just take that zone away and push everything to the next day.

Happy to wait till 5pm, or whenever feels like a good time to do a git push.

Say it isn’t so…

RFC 2549: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549

This problem was solved years ago: https://spectrum.ieee.org/pigeonbased-feathernet-still-wingsdown-fastest-way-of-transferring-lots-of-data

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin

There’s a very simple solution to autonomous driving vehicles plowing into walls, cars, or people:

Congress will pass a law that makes NOBODY liable – as long as a human wasn’t involved in the decision making process during the incident.

This will be backed by car makers, software providers, and insurance companies, who will lobby hard for it. After all, no SINGLE person or company made the decision to swerve into oncoming traffic. Surely they can’t be held liable. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Once that happens, Level 4 driving will come standard and likely be the default mode on most cars. Best of luck everyone else!

So… if you own an inexpensive Alexa device, it just doesn’t have the horsepower to process your requests on-device. Your basic $35 device is just a microphone and a wifi streamer (ok, it also handles buttons and fun LED light effects). The Alexa device SDK can run on a $5 ESP-32. That’s how little it needs to work on-site.

Everything you say is getting sent to the cloud where it is NLP processed, parsed, then turned into command intents and matched against the devices and services you’ve installed. It does a match against the phrase ‘slots’ and returns results which are then turned into voice and played back on the speaker.

With the new LLM-based Alexa+ services, it’s all on the cloud. Very little of the processing can happen on-device. If you want to use the service, don’t be surprised the voice commands end up on the cloud. In most cases, it already was.

If you don’t like it, look into Home Assistant. But last I checked, to keep everything local and not too laggy, you’ll need a super beefy (expensive) local home server. Otherwise, it’s shipping your audio bits out to the cloud as well. There’s no free lunch.

This shows how one company (li-cycle) that claims they recycle 95% of the lithium does it: https://youtu.be/s2xrarUWVRQ

99.99% doesn’t seem too far-fetched.