@kentbrew@xoxo.zone
@kentbrew@xoxo.zone avatar

kentbrew

@kentbrew@xoxo.zone

Web Guy, retired; he/him; made my fortune writing sketchy third-party JavaScript and browser extensions for places like #Pinterest; perpetrator emeritus of #Speculations, the magazine for writers who want to be read.

Currently messing around with #Tootski, a browser extension to help you boost, follow, favorite, or share from outside your home Mastodon server.

Also:

#Kauai #Goats #Dogs #Farming #Hacking #Writing

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kentbrew, to random
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My picks are 1: Moldova, 2: Belgium, 3: Finland.

kentbrew, to ai
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So I've landed in Nextdoor's "Assistant" experiment, which will offer to completely rewrite your post. It is just amazingly creepy having this thing come up without warning.

https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/Introducing-Assistant

kentbrew,
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Naturally I can't resist messing around with this. Here's what Nextdoor Assistant does with a chunk of the first paragraph of Moby Dick.

Screenshot from Nextdoor Assistant, rewriting the first bit of Moby Dick in Nextdoor-ish.

kentbrew,
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@dragfyre the best kind of glorious!

kentbrew,
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@laimis @vincent now I’m wondering how much it’s costing Nextdoor per call, how many times I can call it, and if I can convince it to pretend it’s a Nazi. 👿

kentbrew,
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@jemal hush, you! That first chapter is perfect!

kentbrew,
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@jemal oh god shut up shut up shut uuuuupppp! 😀

kentbrew,
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Here's another great opening paragraph rewritten in Nextdoor-ish. Any guesses?

"Who else doesn't feel like talking about their childhood? I mean, I could tell you where I was born and all that, but honestly, it's pretty boring. Plus, my parents would freak out if I shared anything too personal about them. They're nice people, but they're also pretty touchy. Long story short, I'm not about to spill my whole life story here. Anyone else feel the same way?"

kentbrew,
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(Tagging in @pluralistic, just for the heck of it. This whole thing smells like a plot point in a Cory Doctorow novel.)

kentbrew,
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@cohomologyisFUN first time I saw it the revised version came up first, yes. Subsequent times, I needed to click the get-a-better-response button below.

kentbrew,
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@laimis now I'm wondering if "assisted" posts skip the moderation queue and/or are more heavily distributed.

kentbrew, to random
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Oh, no. https://waxy.org/2023/05/goodbye-dooce/

kentbrew, to random
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Moldova, Finland, Portugal, Chechia. If I get one more, it’s Croatia.

kentbrew,
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Finland song has just a taste of Britney here and there. “Womanizer,” maybe?

drakakis, to random

the right-wing hate machine created a monster
and handed him a weapon of mass death

they taught him well and then they set him loose

https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/the-right-wing-hate-machine-created

kentbrew,
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@drakakis I wish everyone would quit saying “shooter” or “gunman” and start saying “asshole.”

kentbrew, to random
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Every time I see one of those maps showing a huge difference in Factor X in the USA, with it being much worse in the southeast, I am reminded of the 1860 census map of enslaved persons. IT'S THE SAME DAMN MAP EVERY TIME, people!

kentbrew, to random
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New baby girl here today!

GeePawHill, to random
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You're allowed to make toy versions of your problem, well outside the bounds of your production code, just to help you work out an idea.

Make a new app. Code up stupid fake partial versions of the three classes you're working on, try your new idea there.

Much faster.

And when you go back to the hell-code, think of what your newfound confidence in your idea will make possible.

kentbrew,
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@swelljoe @GeePawHill mine are always in ~/Desktop/stuff

JamesGleick, to random
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Once again Ted Chiang has it exactly right. The immediate danger from #AI is not that it will become sentient and do whatever it wants. The danger is that it will do what it’s being designed to do: help rich corporations destroy the working class in pursuit of ever-greater profits and thus concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey

kentbrew,
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@JamesGleick “Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off, and the most successful weapon in its arsenal has been its campaign to prevent us from considering any alternatives.” In just a little while this definition will also be true for AI.

kentbrew, to random
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Yes, that AI-generated beer commercial is terrifying. Source here: https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/1340oky/ai_generated_beer_commercial/

kentbrew, to art
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Results from the 2023 Congressional Institute's nationwide high school art competition are pretty excellent. Here's "Do You Have A Charger?" by Katherine Yoon of Holton-Arms School for Girls

https://repraskin.medium.com/rep-raskins-2023-congressional-art-competition-virtual-gallery-81c6239dbac5

kentbrew, to random
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Here's a cool page that generates a random castle with each load: https://end.city/

No idea if the author is on Mastodon or not; their games may be found at https://officialelectric.itch.io/

briankrebs, to random

Wow. It's been only six months since Elmo took over Twitter? Seems like forever.

Then again, it's been about five months since I gave a $#!+ about posting there. I can honestly say I'm a happier person without it. Thanks to everyone here who's made it easy.

kentbrew,
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Are you using a tool to block the bluechecks or doing it by hand?

dotproto, to random
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I'm seriously thinking about creating a newsletter for stuff happening in the browser extension dev world. ATM the thing I'm trying to decide is whether this should be offered on my personal site or on my consultancy's site

kentbrew,
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@dotproto coming in late on this, sorry: I would personally find a well-curated Slack team that doesn't require you to sign up from your at-work e-mail address to be super useful.

davey, to random

@kennwhite @bplein @0xabad1dea Rodents chew on cables; I've not heard of this issue with large mammals.
In the U.S., Article 690 of NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code requires that conductors not in raceways (electrically rated pipe or equivalent) be protected from . Emotional damage, no; so if a sheep cared to cock a leg and spray the conductors, perhaps if it ain't too corrosive protection is not required.

kentbrew,
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@bplein @davey @kennwhite @0xabad1dea also goats would climb up the panels and tap-dance them into oblivion.

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