Rycaut

Rycaut, 7 days ago to random

New simple question to illustrate hidden biases and complexity in Google’s “answers” (and likely in other “AI” products) oh and just crazy wrong answers

“When is winter?”

Google’s suggested answer that seems definitive says

Winter > Date

Sat. Dec 21, 2024 - Thu, Mar 20, 2025

(Eh see a problem there??? Look at those years)

The first actual result however gets more precise and notes that this is only in the Northern Hemisphere and gets more general about equinoxes vs specific dates

Rycaut, 8 days ago to random

A semi silly but also kinda serious thought this evening.

LLMs and AI chatbots and similar “AI answers” aren’t even the 101 college answer to most questions. They are closer to the 2nd grade overly simple no nuance or complexity or context “answer” (and just about as reliable)

Most real questions don’t have a single answer. They have nuance and complexity and vary by context and your assumptions

Take, for example, the really simple “how many hours in a day?”

(24 is not, always, right)

Rycaut, 8 days ago to random

My current top tbrn stack
#bookstodon

Magazine by @jeffjarvis
The monsters and creatures compendium by Jim Zub/WotC
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs
Improv for Gamers by Karen Twelves
Stories Are Weapons by @annaleen
A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and @ZachWeinersmith
Tacolicious by Sara Deseran
The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee by James and Caitlin Freeman & Tara Duggan
Infinite City A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit

Rycaut, 8 days ago to random

A birthday treat for myself - bought @annaleen latest book “Stories are Weapons” as well as a Dungeons and Dragons young adventurers book while shopping at Books Inc this afternoon with my son on his first day of summer break. Used my birthday reward from Books Inc and then had a nice summer afternoon break with my son at a local coffee shop (where the barista saw the dnd book and in a lament familiar with players everywhere bemoaned that his group broke up so he doesn’t have a game at present)

Rycaut, 9 days ago to random

Idea - someone should maintain a list by domain of the actually well known and respected brands in that space. With their ownership details, when incorporated, actual official website(s) especially where in different countries, authorized resellers or their direct shops. For tech firms link to their official code repositories and project discussions etc.

I’m not just talking about tech companies and open source projects I want this for cases like “my son is taking viola and needs a music stand

ernie, 9 days ago to random

I am going to make stupid small websites that people use.

Rycaut, 10 days ago to random

There are infinite examples of big companies acting badly so many that it can be easy to assume that anything big must also be doing bad things (some might just not yet be well known or may have better pr departments)

But equally the good companies and organizations and institutions often aren’t well known or are well known and often overlooked - their good actions perhaps not celebrated or only known in a few circles.

For example Panda Express is a family owned business and very well run

atomicpoet, 10 days ago (edited 6 days ago) to random

Got quite the haul at the thrift shop today:

• 3 CDs
• 2 cassettes
• 3 comic books
• 1 sci fi novel
• 1 children’s novel
• 1 thesaurus

Total cost: $14.

J12t, 10 days ago to random

I'm working on something really interesting. The "social web" -- a concept that has been around for decades but has fallen out of use and is atrophied because all we have are quasi-"social apps" Which Are Not That! -- it needs and wants a new breath of air.

If we re-imagined a truly social web with what we know today, what would it look like?

It's fascinating and so exciting!! Not sure when or whether I have something to share any time soon, but ... writing about it gets me all fired up!!

Rycaut, 10 days ago to random

Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge today to celebrate the end of the school year with my son who is a bit obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge and wanted to walk across it for years.

This photo was as we rested back in SF. The biker seemed appropriate and the shadow magnificent.

coffeegeek, 11 days ago to wordpress

Attention all #Wordpress experts.

(posted last night, but posting again mid day US/Canada time).

We're looking for a new Wordpress developer at CoffeeGeek. Global location isn't important, but your skills, reliability, discretion and availability are.

We are looking for someone who

• has a deep and full understanding of the entire Wordpress infrastructure, back end, multi-site usage, and all the associated coding, css, custom theme work etc.

• Has a good knowledge and understanding of Elementor Pro. We use Elementor Pro and several plug in packages on CoffeeGeek, and have need of some custom work within Elementor.

• working, day to day knowledge and experience with Cpanel, PHP and all the normal server-side stuff that comes along with Wordpress and managing a busy website.

• The usual "back end" knowledge an experience in website management, including CDNs, site security, back up, etc.

• Some SEO experience, the more the better (especially staying on top of current trends

• Some design experience. This isn't crucial, as we have a WP / Elementor designer separate from our WP Developer position. But you knowing some ins and outs of basic design is beneficial

• VERY IMPORTANT: Good availability. I don't expect turnaround in an hour after I send a job request, but responses within 24hr, and normal availability for several hours per week for maintenance / bug chasing (and also larger blocks of time for bigger projects) is expected and required.

• VERY IMPORTANT: you have the ability and desire to make sure all the work you do for us is fully tested and bug checked before signing off on the work. We do have a dev server to test things on, but we will rely on you to deliver finished, generally bug free work.

• Ideally, you are creative on the technical side, are good at hunting down bugs, innovative with fixes, and know how to get the most out of a Wordpress environment.

• you don't have to love coffee, but it would not hurt your application process! :)

I am willing to pay a monthly retainer plus a preferred hourly rate (billed once a month / when tasks are completed and signed off) or a slightly higher straight hourly rate (no retainer) for your work, payment competitive in the US and Canada marketplace.

If interested, please DM me here with your email address, and I will send you more details and ask for your CV, examples of your work, and your company website information.

I am based in Canada, PDT time, and most of the work contact times would be between 1pm and 10pm PDT time.

#wordpressdeveloper #webdeveloper #joblisting #webdevelopment #webdev

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

I told a few folks my writing group about Microsoft Recall (we meet a few times a week virtually to all write - spend a few mins socializing then an hour writing with cameras and mics off).

Every one of them had the reaction of either “time to move to Linux” or at a minimum how do I make sure I don’t have that enabled and agreed it seemed like a boneheaded move by Microsoft. And these are sf/fantasy writers so geeky but not all have tech day jobs.

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

not random thought - the massive major obvious AI fails make for easy clickbait stories - but I suspect the even more common yet much harder to write about category of AI errors aren't where it makes massive or even silly mistakes but where it makes more subtle mistakes of omission or where it suggests something that's almost right but misses key steps or details - showing an answer that for example was true years ago but isn't fully accurate now

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my father's death (9 years ago) which makes the barrage of marketing emails pitching last minute gifts for Father's Day a bit complicated for me as I scan my messages each morning around this time of year. I'm also a father myself so can't entirely ignore the holiday but especially today and tomorrow the messages hit differently.

A practice I've seen a few (but only a few) companies do is to let people opt out of marketing messages for specific holidays

Rycaut, 13 days ago to random

I think there was just a small earthquake here in San Jose. Did it wake anyone else?

aram, 15 days ago to random

Need some GREAT #audiobooks for a loooooong voyage. Hit me.

Rycaut, 15 days ago to random

I think nearly all search tools (search engines but also search on most sites) would be infinitely improved if allowed to actually return no results or only a few high quality results. Instead of the current trend of returning lots of low quality results.

Sites could then suggest additions or changes to a search that have more results But suggest these vs showing them by default

This would make search much more useful for finding obscure content or for example mispellings (like misspellings)

NorcalGma2, 16 days ago to random

Today, I sorted through the many photos my husband took while he served in the Army in Vietnam. There are hundreds of prints, but I can only find two of him. I have tooted this one before.
Most are scenes with tanks and other soldiers or the countryside. Many are faded.
I was looking for an image of him wearing his watch. His parents had given him this omega for high school graduation.
He wore it the whole time he was overseas. It came back with him but the face was damaged and it isn't in working condition.
I would love to have the watch restored as a surprise. I have tried to find a watch repair professional that is skilled doing this kind of work it, but no luck. I know it will cost me more than the watch is worth. I also know he would like to wear it again. I need an omega band, too.
Any ideas?
#Veteran

Young soldier in Vietnam.

GossiTheDog, 25 days ago to random

For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft have decided to bake essentially an infostealer into base Windows OS and enable by default.

From the Microsoft FAQ: “Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers."

Info is stored locally - but rather than something like Redline stealing your local browser password vault, now they can just steal the last 3 months of everything you’ve typed and viewed in one database.

video/mp4