Links for February 2023
Fuck You, You Fat-Headed Roald Dahl-Censoring Fuckers
#RoaldDahl
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Full Dianne Feinstein Resignation Speech
#DianneFeinstein resignation, worth watching in full.
Fuck You, You Fat-Headed Roald Dahl-Censoring Fuckers
#RoaldDahl
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Full Dianne Feinstein Resignation Speech
#DianneFeinstein resignation, worth watching in full.
ITHCWY just migrated to a new server with more capacity. From clouds to pollution to covid monitoring there is a lot going on under the hood here these days. I can already see that search is a lot more snappy.
Man, moving Windows servers just sucks. Internal GDI error - that's a permissions issue obviously (not my first time). Can't publish? You must need to install Web Deploy twice and then uninstall it and install it one more time for luck. Web.config error at startup? Of course Windows Server 2022 still doesn't come with URL Rewriting and you need to install it from some corner of the MS website like an animal. Yes, I should use something else but my custom CMS is probably reaching the same level of complexity as an F16 and I'm just one person. Enjoy the fast search!
(Published to the Fediverse as: Server Migration Complete #etc #ithcwy #microsoft ITCHWY has migrated to a beefer box and a new OS and still seems to be working. Oh, and search is faster! )
I have had my Echo Show for a little over five years. That's an eternity in AI, you'd expect some amazing advances over half a decade but it's still a timer with a screen.
A timer that you can talk to while your hands are busy or dirty is actually an amazing thing, and it can switch off my Christmas lights without me having to vault a sofa and risk losing an eye. But apparently Amazon isn't making any money from it and so they're laying off staff and paring back their smart home additions.
Possibly they've been working on the wrong thing? When asking about dogs Alexa managed to put them firmly in the camp of things that can poop. ChatGPT says:
"A dog is a mammal and a common household pet, known for its loyalty and ability to be trained. It is a member of the Canidae family, which also includes wolves, coyotes, and foxes, and it is believed to have been the first domesticated animal. Dogs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and they are used for a variety of purposes, such as hunting, herding, protection, and companionship."
That's just a funny bug somewhere. The real irritation is the device getting more aggressive every year. "By the way..." it says while everyone shouts at it to shut the fuck up. Worse, every couple of weeks now they push something new to the home screen. I just want to see my photos and there is now a list of 75,000 adverts to switch off first. And, they've started dropping promotions that can't be switched off in settings as well. So this thing that I bought is so aggravating now that I'll never buy another one.
It could have been different. No, I'm never going to say Alexa, buy me a printer (if you're using text to speech on this post my deepest apologies). But (just one idea) what if I could have a meal planning conversation that adds the ingredients to my shopping basket and the recipes to my home screen? I can then edit the cart before I order and have the instructions on a convenient screen while I cook and listen to a podcast.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Echo Show Me The Door #etc #amazon #alexa #ai Why I'll never buy an Echo Show again, and what Amazon could have done differently to make Alexa with a screen useful. )
This animation shows a random sample of 311 cases that have a photo and specific location. It covers July 4, 2013 to January 5, 2023. Created using the 311 dataset plotted over a street map of San Francisco.
(Published to the Fediverse as: San Francisco 311 Cases Animation #etc #video #animation #sanfrancisco #311 Animation of a sample of San Francisco 311 cases from 2013 to 2023 (photo and location) )
Testing out some shapefile code with a zoom into San Francisco. This uses five different shapefiles:
Country borders are from Eric Muller's fips-10 shapefile.
States and US Counties come from the United States Census Bureau.
San Francisco 5 foot elevation contours from DataSF.
Finally the street map for San Francisco is from data.gov.
These are almost all based on different projections and I did my best to actually line everything up but if you're heading over for coffee it's probably best to stick with Google Maps.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Assassination Coordinates #etc #video #sanfrancisco #shapefile #animation Animation that zooms from a global map to the streets of San Francisco using five different shapefiles. )
In November ITHCWY reached 1,000 posts. Here are 17 of the best.
What happens if you ask Stable Diffusion to generate a typical person from every country in the world?
WebCamSaver 3.30 is available to download. Also Android Fortune Cookies 1.30 and Catfood Earth 4.30.
Timelapse of a plane landing at SFO. Also some more Bangalore Sunsets. And one from SF.
Get rid of the unhelpful word robot.
Animation of 20 years of shifts in the US Presidential vote.
Does anyone know why San Francisco felt the need to redistrict the Pacific Ocean?
You can now follow both ITHCWY and me on Mastodon.
Previously:
What does Stable Diffusion think a typical person looks like from each country?
This image is composed of 248 faces generated with the following prompt:
"photo of a typical person from Vietnam, highly symmetrical face, portrait photography, highly detailed Vietnam background, 4k, 35mm, sharp focus, amazing photo, portrait of the year"
Using seed 960604, 50 iterations, 7.5 scale, and just varying the country name in the prompt text.
There is no gender implied in the prompt but it certainly seems more likely to generate a woman. It seems to find something distinctive about most countries. The region that surprises me the most is Eastern Europe which ends up being very similar. Click the image above for a larger version.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Stable Diffusion Global Stereotypes #etc #ml #stablediffusion A composite image of 248 faces generated by Stable Diffusion for each country in the world. )
Well I picked a bad year to dabble back in Twitter. I'm not ready to delete it all again, but I am experimenting with Mastodon. There is an official ITHCWY account here, this is fully automated via the Mastodon API and will publish posts, comments and news shares. It's currently posting its way through the back catalog. I also have a personal account here. So far Mastodon is a pretty good experience. There is some stress in picking a server but once you're on everything else is easy. Will just have to see if there is a regression to the mean as the number of users continues to increase.
'5G makes my phone pretty worthless'
It does suck. Can we switch it off until it's working?
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Serious Eats: The Best Garlic Presses of 2022
This headline is exhausting.
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SFGATE: San Franciscans 'appalled' at New York Times crossword error
Typical Big Pear behavior...
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The New York Times: Berlin Hotel's Huge Aquarium Bursts, With 1500 Fish Inside
Avoid the fish special for the next few months...
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Review Geek: Can’t Hear Dialogue on TV? Here’s How to Fix It
Tell the children to shut the fuck up?
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Saved stories keep reappearing in Google News
My new hobby: trying to remove saved articles from #GoogleNews
Robot is problematic. Not because it was originally derived from the Czech word for forced labor but because we commonly use it to describe two distinct classes of machine.
The first is a something that is either fully scripted (a Disney ride) or fully operated by a human (a bomb disposal robot). Most 'robots' are like this.
The second is a machine with some autonomy that makes potentially unpredictable decisions based on its programming. Like a Tesla.
If the first one kills you it's either an industrial accident or a person killing you through more levels of indirection than usual. When the second one kills you it's a little murkier. Was it the driver of the Tesla? The programmer? Elon?
I bring up killing because the San Francisco Police Department is claiming the power to kill people with robots on some state mandated paperwork. I'm being asked to tell my supervisor to stop this kind of thing, but on reflection I'm all for it because SFPDs robots are very much the first kind and not the second and we should be far more worried about self-driving cars running us down than a remote controlled wheelbarrow with a shotgun.
I'd prefer SFPD to use lethal force only when absolutely necessary but I really don't think we should constrain how they pull the trigger. Imagine a hostage situation with an active shooter in an inaccessible location. Would you rather resolve the situation with a SWAT team and potentially large scale loss of life or would you use the shotgun equipped wheelbarrow?
But I'm certainly not in favor of Robocop or pretty much anything out of Runaway and so SFPD shouldn't be able to use the word robot to describe their policy.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Time to get rid of the word ROBOT #etc #robot Why SFPD should be allowed to arm robots as long as they're the right type of robot. )
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates
Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?
3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera
3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
3D Printing a 72-58mm step down Camera Filter Adapter