Posts by nelson@tech.lgbt
(DIR) Post #ATn2FORg3syZgX8bL6 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-03-19T23:17:09Z
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@art is there a way for me to get a card other than pick it up in person? The registration page makes it look like I can't, may be a bit of gatekeeping. https://lapl.org/about-lapl/borrower-services#apply
(DIR) Post #ATnEDsfrtovOJDowa0 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-03-20T01:57:10Z
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@art that says county residents only. Does it work anyway?
(DIR) Post #AToPjgyIEs89vxlnn6 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-03-20T15:47:29Z
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@art nope, doesn't work. Not surprised; I imagine they mostly want this for folks in and around the county. Too bad I was hoping for another Libby account ;-)
(DIR) Post #ATualYG5rw4jw0wdoO by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-03-23T15:21:31Z
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@EdS as folks have said, Inkscape is the editor of choice for a lot of folks doing this kind of thing. Not sure precisely what they want from infilling but it's complicated.A friend of mine said good things about this alternate SVG editor's output: https://boxy-svg.com/The vpype tool may also be of interest, but that's a Python program for manipulating SVG files, not a GUI editor.
(DIR) Post #AU1Kznw30Rh6YyVzMm by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-03-26T20:43:41Z
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Dear American restaurants,This is not a salad. This is the ingredients to make a salad. If you serve me this, please also bring a knife, a cutting board, a large bowl, and some salad tongs.
(DIR) Post #AUFP2fXDMbYKdVPTY8 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-04-02T16:41:55Z
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@simon I think this is a very insightful analogy except for one problem: ChatGPT makes stuff up. You get at this at the end ("work to build an accurate mental model of how they work"). One nice thing about a numerical calculator is it's very easy to develop a mental model, it doesn't fabricate stuff.
(DIR) Post #AUFQzfZOyYrLmk89Uu by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-04-02T17:06:10Z
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@simon thanks! I have been enjoying watching how you engage with ChatGPT and have been doing similar things myself recently. It's a remarkable tool.
(DIR) Post #AUU0vUJc3PNXNIP7B2 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-04-09T17:55:34Z
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@simon I wrote a blog post in 2007 about a road trip with my new iPhone that captures some of what the change was like."The most amazing change was having a little Internet terminal in my pocket with me. Every driving break I took was a chance to check my email, update my Twitter account, read some RSS feeds, check where I was going on Google Maps. This is a mixed blessing... I think once the novelty wears off I'll be good about keeping the thing in my pocket unless called for. "https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/iphone/road-trip.html
(DIR) Post #AV7p5DkaCaXoibmHMO by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-04-28T22:51:28Z
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@simon neat! what's with all the tokens that start with Ġ? Ie tokens that start with the numbers 35 or 95?I used this to understand how GPT-3.5 invented new English words for me when I asked. Combining the tokens in plausible ways.
(DIR) Post #AVA3PDfU0MQlvgk5XU by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-04-30T00:20:34Z
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@igb all the XML parsing I ever want to use: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html
(DIR) Post #AVJirCWjgZp52fkfBI by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-05-04T16:35:01Z
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@simon thank you for highlighting this and summarizing some interesting points. I really appreciate the view you're giving in to current AI developments.
(DIR) Post #AVJzvJWhIowl85HSbI by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-05-04T19:48:55Z
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@simon @jimray Leela zero made it work. I don't remember the details, it may have been something about training many models in parallel and then picking the best one to iterate a new generation
(DIR) Post #AVmrUfQFFPwP3bI2QC by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-05-18T16:38:48Z
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No one in the tech world seems to understand passkeys. How the product as a whole works, how they fit into authentication and identity on the Internet.There's a real need for a clear overview article about passkeys in a big picture sense. I'm surprised one doesn't exist yet.
(DIR) Post #AVmrUgqrvupdUSkoYi by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-05-18T17:31:23Z
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Well this observation hit a nerve. I wrote a longer form blog post on what I mean, mostly as a series of product questions. https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/what-are-passkeys.html
(DIR) Post #AVmrUi7ZDJmbQXZfE0 by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-05-18T17:32:28Z
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I'll note replies to my Mastodon post so far are 50% tech folks saying "it's just public key crypto it's simple" and 50% folks with some product experience saying "you're right, I'm confused too".
(DIR) Post #AWxB4xaPUxiFn2MjoW by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-06-22T13:58:58Z
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Getting frustrated with Mastodon's tech limitations. Threading doesn't federate reliably; I'm constantly having to "open original page" to see replies. And the lack of any sort of search facility is willfully bad. (The latter does have a partial solution but for some reason few instances use it.)
(DIR) Post #AWxKa3ay6e54zVWuUC by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-06-22T16:25:23Z
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@twylo yes that's what I meant by "willfully bad". Also it doesn't explain why so few servers enable the feature that lets people search their own posts.
(DIR) Post #AX0zTDRnkzKp7AyiuW by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-06-23T23:14:37Z
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Found a somewhat usable workaround for searching my own Mastodon posts; download an archive and then use the Meow viewer to search them. There's a bunch of archive viewers, Meow is nice for running in your browser. https://purr.neocities.org/about/
(DIR) Post #AX0zTEmOntPBFLcgee by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-06-23T23:17:15Z
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@meowViewer thank you for Meow! I was reluctantly going to write my own thing like this (offline Javascript app) and yours is way better than I could have possibly done.I wonder if it's possible to passively update the browser's copy of the archive? Maybe with an addon watching every time you load your Mastodon timeline?
(DIR) Post #AXaUiv7qbPqHkPVcoq by nelson@tech.lgbt
2023-07-11T14:35:47Z
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@art I finally realized the reason I should be encrypting drives; so I have a way to securely erase them later. SSDs are nearly impossible to scrub data from. But if it's all encrypted and you destroy the key...