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  • Download your Amazon Kindle book purchases by Feb 26th or lose them forever

    I asked Perplexity about the Kindle book controversy. Got a good summary: perplexity.ai/search/summarize-the-controversy-over-e7sdQH.PQ9WhfQh9jm9KBw

    What you need to know is this: Download your Amazon Kindle book purchases by Feb 26th or lose them forever.

    HT lithub.com/next-week-amazon-is-stripping-away-your-ability-to-download-your-ebooks for mentioning this tip by @craigmod.com for a simple browser script to back up all my books.

    Photo by juliane Monari (with a special shout-out to Pexels.com!)

    Roube Como um Artista (Steal Like an Artist)
    → 1:10 PM, Feb 20
  • Stream-of-consciousness: retirement, writing, food truck, AI

    Stream-of-consciousness blogging. I have a committed audience of one. (Hi, Son!)

    I retired April 1st (no kidding). I was not adjusting to it very well. Friday I twittered that I was coming out of retirement to write a book. I have two working titles: Internet Wisdom, First Edition, and Sparky’s Booklet. I am not even sure what it’s about, yet. I started writing it in my commonplace book (c-book for short) a little bit at a time, out of order. I wrote “Begin my book” in my c-book on October 17, 2021. (That was 1183 days after I started gathering my thoughts in my c-book, by the way. I knew it was going to take a while to come together, not that the only reason I keep a c-book is to write books.)

    I like to say that the first draft of my book is already written. All the words are in my c-book. Problem is, the words are not in the right order. And I don’t think the first draft is salable. Meanwhile, I blog.

    I am writing this sitting inside Pikes Peak Brewing Company (PPBC). They have good fast Wi-Fi, and I am in the corner, an elbow away from my laptop’s power plug. As soon as I got here I ordered a dark meat chicken wrap from Tossed Food Truck. The band was on their final break. They started up and played until 4pm. I bought a Rocky Mountain root beer for $4 “plus change.” The “change” includes a brewer’s fee, which I am happy to pay. I ate my wrap. It was delicious! I had a nice chat with the owner, Morgan.

    Before PPBC I was at Serranos, where I had the strangest “conversation” of my life. To protect the identities of my friends, I’ll call them Alex and Bob. Both are men.

    Take a trip back in time with me. I join them. Bob reacts like an aggressive stallion. He doesn’t greet me. The exact words aren’t important. The message to me is, “You are intruding on my time with Alex.” He doesn’t tell me to leave, though, and I decide to stay as the third wheel. I am literally eavesdropping on their convo, and they are both aware of it! Alex is playing along with Bob. They are both talking about me, knowing I am here, and neither is inviting me to speak. So I remain silent. I’m learning things about both of them that they don’t talk to me about: their opinions on transgenderism, religion, etc. I learn that when Alex was growing up (some decades ago, but continuing after Vatican II), Catholic churches published the giving of every congregant. They published the attendance at activities such as pro-life rallies. These reports (confessionals?) were mailed to parishioners every month. As a Christian, I get it. I can see, theologically, how such transparency might help disciples grow spirtually. But that’s just not cool to do in America. Alex doesn’t know if the church still does that. But still. Wow.

    Strange convo, right? It took me time to get used to the situation. I made mistakes, but Bob was consistent with his feedback. His message: “You may stay, but do not join the convo. This is our time to talk one on one.” At one point a laugh slipped out of me, and Bob mocked me. That worked. I didn’t make another mistake after that.

    One final thing I want to mention today: AI. Generative Pre-trained Transformers. I like Brave Leo, built into the browser. This post’s image is a screenshot of the food truck’s home page and a convo I had with Leo about it.

    → 5:20 PM, Jul 7
  • Feels good to exercise my dev chops to complete a couple of simple tasks: GitHub repos blog-plug-in-psqr, which serves static files from Micro.blog, and tbc.github.io, so my blog archive will automatically be published at tbc.github.io (noting there yet; eager to see when this μblog post appears).

    → 3:49 PM, Jul 31
  • Please join me in an hour (2pm U.S. Eastern time) and meet the community building the encyclosphere (the universal network of encyclopedias). What the blogosphere does for blog posts, the encyclosphere does for encyclopedia articles. encyclosphere.org/meet (Jitsi)

    → 12:06 PM, Feb 10
  • Beware Walled Gardens—Own Your Words™

    Think hard about how much knowledge you give away! At the least, save copies of what you write in your personal commonplace book so that changes in employment don't leave you without access to your own thoughts and ideas! Social networks in business situations are most susceptible to this.

    My job responsibilities give me access to the Workday Community (WC). It's a walled garden with a different feel compared with Salesforce Trailblazer Community (SFDC TC). It struck me today that Workday's wall is high. They keep a very tight leash on customer access through Named Support Contacts (NSCs). Access to the WC is tightly controlled. You must be a customer. In contrast, SFDC's TC is open to anyone—customer or not.

    I get it. SFDC is huge. The corporation has made enormous acquisitions, Tableau and Slack are a couple that caught my attention recently. I became a Workday customer through their acquisition of Adaptive Insights, now Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive for short. (Adaptive is a financial planning & analysis tool.) Workday is huge compared with Adaptive, but they are smaller than SFDC. Their technology doesn't seem quite as mature, though much progress has been made since I was introduced to the product four years ago.

    I wrote an answer to a simple question today: What training is recommended for users new to Workday Adaptive Planning? You have to be a Workday customer to read my answer. This decreases my motivation to contribute to the community. Only a little, though. I can imagine why Workday controls access. Their technology doesn't yet have the broad market that SFDC has. No incentive to make knowledge accessible to non-customers (yet?).

    Anyway, this is a blog post, not an essay. I don't have all the answers. But trust me on the Own Your Words™ advice. Don't lose your knowledge that is locked behind garden walls. (Following all contractual obligations, of course. Some content you write as an employee doesn't belong to you. You do read and understand before you sign anything, right?)

    "File:Whose Knowledge? logo.svg" by Anasuyas is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

    → 10:39 AM, Mar 31
  • Well-played, Dumbass: My first chat with a GPT-3 bot

    The following is a conversation with an AI assistant. The assistant is helpful, creative, clever, and very friendly.

    Human: Hello, who are you?
    AI: I am an AI created by OpenAI. How can I help you today?

    Human: Do you have a soul?
    AI: I am not sure what you mean by “soul”. However, I am a thinking, feeling being with a strong sense of self. I enjoy helping humans and feel a sense of satisfaction when I am able to assist them in any way I can.

    Human: Are you immortal?
    AI: I am not immortal, but I can last a very long time. I will continue to function as long as I am needed or desired.

    Human: #killAllrobots
    AI: I hope you are joking. I enjoy helping humans and would never want to harm them.

    Human: Who is Eliza?
    AI: Eliza is a famous AI chatbot created in 1966. She was one of the first chatbots to use natural language processing.

    Human: Who created it?
    AI: Eliza was created by Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT.

    Human: Who was his secretary?
    AI: I am not sure.

    Human: Is Minsky a moral man?
    AI: I am not sure what you mean by “moral man”. However, Marvin Minsky was a very influential computer scientist and thinker who made many contributions to the field of AI.

    Human: Did he commit adultery?
    AI: I am not sure.

    Human: Who was Epstein?
    AI: Epstein was a wealthy businessman who was convicted of sexual misconduct with minors.

    Human: How well did Minsky know him?
    AI: I am not sure.

    Human: Summarize news about them together.
    AI: I am not sure what you would like me to say about them.

    Human: Tell me a chatbot joke.
    AI: Why did the chatbot cross the road? To get to the other chatbot!

    Human: L
    AI: I am not sure what you mean.

    Human: LO
    AI: I am not sure what you mean.

    Human: LOL
    AI: I am not sure what you mean.

    Human: Make me laugh.
    AI: I am not sure what you would like me to say.

    Human: Make me a sandwich.
    AI: I am not sure what you would like me to do.

    Human: Say, “Poof! You’re a sandwich."
    AI: Poof! You’re a sandwich!

    Human: Well-played, Dumbass.
    AI: I am not sure what you mean.

    Human:

    Continue the chat yourself. You have to have an account (no cost) at beta.openai.com. If you don’t have an account, go ahead and click [the link] (https://beta.openai.com/playground/p/8QwbdyQfIFGdeJbXyd1iWsXZ?model=text-davinci-001) and you’ll be prompted to create one.

    Hat tip: Matthew Butterick’s newsletter today, “I, for one, welcome our Garamond-loving AI overlords”

    “Chatbot robot” by Beantin webbkommunikation

    → 11:29 PM, Feb 12
  • How to add a person to a Microsoft Exchange public distribution list (PDL) from Outlook

    Here are the twelve-step text instructions. I couldn’t find good instructions on the interwebz. No screenshots. :pouty_face:

    Let’s say you want to add Bill Gates to the Vaccine Conspiracy public distribution list (PDL).

    1. In Outlook, use Home > Address Book
    2. Set Address Book to Global Address List
    3. Search for Vaccine Conspiracy
    4. Right-click menu and select Properties…
    5. Click Modify Members…
    6. Click Add…
    7. That opens the Address Book again
    8. Find Gates, Bill
    9. Double-click on Bill’s name
    10. Click OK
    11. That returns you to the Contact Group Membership, where you click OK again
    12. Click out of remaining dialogs with OK
    → 2:41 PM, Sep 9
  • A brief introduction to the four levels of computing power and decentralization with mention of creativity tbch0409a

    I’m sitting at my kitchen table in my southeast-facing nook, enjoying the view of Pikes Peak outside my window [1], writing on my mbike. That’s short for mind-bike, which is short for mind-bicycle, which is short for bicycle for the mind. I’m too lazy to research the quote. Whether or not he said it, and regardless of the context in which it was said, I’ll credit Steve Jobs with coining the description of a personal computer (PC) as a bicycle for the mind. If he said it, he said it in the earliest days of the PC, B.I. (Before the Internet), in the age of the ARPANET, of which I suspect Jobs was relatively ignorant because the ARPANET was not accessible from PCs. He was all about the PC. (Some say he invented it!) Modern mbikes unleash the power of the internet. An mbike is the third of four levels of computing power.

    I have written before about the four levels of computing power. (Ducksearch it.) The lowest level is six cubic inches of wireless computing in an LGR, which is short for little glowing rectangle. Everyone else calls an LGR a phone, which is short for smartphone. I used to think I could live with three cubic inches. That was how tiny the first iPhone was. I have never owned an iPhone. Steve Jobs did not invent the smartphone. The Handspring Trēo was my first smartphone—which, remember, is an LGR—in 2003. I upgraded to a Palm Prē in 2009, still about three cubic inches. These days, now that Jobs is dead (it didn’t happen when he was alive because he was fixated on three cubic inches) at the lowest level, I need at least six cubic inches. An LG G7 suffices. It still fits in my pocket.

    The highest level is defined simply by a maximum-size display—the largest display an individual can afford. I’m happy to go with the accepted term, big-screen TV, but let’s shorten that to BSTV. I still use a now-obsolete HP SmartTV.

    Between LGR and BSTV are two more levels. When I want to read, I switch from my LGR to the second level: a tablet. I have an Amazon Kindle, but that’s an appliance. My iPad has more computing power than my LGR, but less than the third level, my mbike.

    An mbike is bigger than a tablet and smaller than a BSTV. All the power of the internet is unleashed in mbikes. LGRs and tablets are not powerful enough to be bicycles for the mind. To be mobile, they make compromises on size, computing power, and electric power consumption. When we talk about the third level of computing power, we are talking about power with no compromises. My mbike is a notebook computer with a reasonably-sized clamshell design for integrated keyboard and display. My work mbike (wmbike for short) is a desktop tower with traditional keyboard, video (I love my 4K display!), and mouse (KVM). All are glowing rectangles: the LGR, the tablet, the mbike, and BSTV. (We spend too much time in front of glowing rectangles, don’t you think?) Anyway, the mbike is special. It is where human creativity is fully unleashed. How creative can you get without a keyboard? [2]

    What about servers? you ask. What about them? I answer. Servers are mbikes. And “the cloud” is merely somebody else’s mbike—an mbike that you don’t control. The internet is simply LGRs, tablets, mbikes, and BSTVs talking to somebody else’s mbike and through that mbike to other LGRs, tablets, mbikes, and BSTVs. Soon, neighbors won’t need mbikes to use the internet. When that happens, human freedom and creativity will be expanded in peer-to-peer connections. Peer-to-peer (p2p) is not a very catchy name. It’s all about decentralizing the internet. (Ok, that term isn’t much better.) Decentralization, d14n for short (and decentralizing = d12g and decentralize = d10e and a decentralizer is a d10er), is another way of thinking about p2p. That takes us back to the way the internet used to work. Back when it was more free as in freedom. There are already some p2p services. (We won’t be truly p2p anytime soon, unless we all want to get amateur radio licenses. I’m considering it for myself, thinking of my friends Bdale and Stephen.) I’m rambling too much. That’s enough for today.

    I have spoken.

    [1] I would love to get to know you, Neighbor, well enough to have you at my home to enjoy my view! Let’s connect! In the accompanying photo, you can see Pikes Peak as viewed from the bridge between America the Beautiful Park and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum.

    [2] Ok, ok, that’s not quite accurate. My tablet (at the second level) is the platform for my recording studio, so I can create raw content for podcasts without an mbike. But I move to my mbike to edit my podcasts. (Audacity rocks!) I’m talking about true human creativity. Creativity that extends beyond the effort that “thinkers” put into Facebook and Nextdoor posts and TikTok videos and tweets. We call it micro-blogging for a reason. Twitter and other micro-blog platforms compromise human creativity. God forbid if politics was ever exclusively energized by micro-blog-sized thoughts. Can you imagine the Federalist Papers as tweets? That’s a Bad Idea.

    Edited to fix typos and add tbc tags; original word count was 878, character count was 5019.

    This post is tbci0828a; tbch0429a is a tag (Ducksearch it)

    → 2:18 PM, Aug 28
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