Reuse and recycle, technology being 500 years slower than promised and the terrible rise of politics of deliberate ignorance
#Undergraduates cheating using AI is now an epidemic at all #universities. It's so nuts that markers are wasting about a third of their valuable time trying to "prove" essays are fake rather than giving useful feedback to students.
The latest version of essay writing service jenni.ai a student can buy for as little as $8 a month.
On the surface it looks like an essay, but dip into the first "source" and it's nothing to do with Ancient History but an open access research paper on genetics.
I wanted a couple of YouTube classic audio recordings for my archive, which natively come out as #opus audio files. THEN I wanted to add cover art. Oh my, it's awkward.
#exiftool can add cover art but not for opus.
#VLC can edit cover art, but fails for opus.
#ffmpeg should be able to do it, but it failed.
Installing, #opusdec and #opusenc worked, but it decodes the opus to a huge wav file then recodes with the "--picture" tag pulling in the cover art.
Too hard!
Lovely reorganizing my audio 'archive' to my networked 1TB HDD on a PI4.
BUT my home drive uses #linux #ext4 format filenames and the networked drive is MS #FAT32! Hence the nice #BBCSounds titles have to lose the "?%:" characters, which for the series "More or Less" is the majority!
So, left with a residual set which luckily as #Thunar has #regex based renaming, I can fairly easily trim down. However handling MS DOS filenaming does remind me of my early software engineering days in the 1980s!
Sunday breakfast #Ubuntu tip.
I've been using #getiplayer to rip #BBC Sounds for my mobile, keeping a forever archive of programmes on a home network drive. If you have a TV license, it's legal! Especially useful for programmes that expire and you want to dip into a year later. 🤓
However, getiplayer couldn't extract "year" from audio tags for the filename. After a lot of app trials, and tempted to write a script in Python to do it, I worked out #Thunar has a plugin that does it beautifully!
Here's the cleaned up stick. The #beeswax had a few days to be absorbed, so the #wood feels dry and normal to touch, with a pleasing matt finish. Rainwater marbles on the surface and runs off, so it's well protected.
It's much classier than the shiny varnish I rubbed off that was peeling with age.
Key to breathing normally after my lung #cancer surgery has been daily walks. I don't need a stick, but got used to carrying it to feel safer from #joggers and cyclists who get too close!
This is my Grandfather's, so maybe 60 years old? I recently rubbed down some of the thick varnish that was peeling off. I've made it a #reuse project as it's the right length, my grandfather was 6'3"!
It's wet with woodstain, this is the 2nd time, and I'll be sealing with 100% #beeswax later :blobcatcoffee:
@Edent My math intuition is that this is suspiciously 'smooth' for chunky data based on human choices. Meaning that it would probably beautifully snap to an exponential decay curve.
I might be undervaluing the large size of the dataset though, making humans look like a natural phenomenon?
Lovely graph, even the palette choice is pleasing!
Lol
At Uni, I was taught for hours on PAPER terminals, no screen. You had to use terminal like edit commands, and every word was typed live as you programmed. We were using #Fortran to solve numerical analysis problems.
This was the 1980s, and it was done this old-fashioned way to be super super cheap on processor time. Cheapest option was #punchcards, still in use then! Every second was needed for big projects like weather forecast modelling.
Ah, the days before #Microsoft #bloatware
I've been clearing out some old papers lots of shredding.
A handwritten note from my Grandmother had me admiring her nicely cursive "s" and then thinking I'm probably the last person to know why the note was important.
I am, however proud to continue the tradition of making proper chicken soup, even recalling the discussions with both my Grandmother and Mother, now passed, about their methods and recipe. None of us agreed (especially on chillies) but at least we all shared the tradition!
Worth looking at other A6 high quality alternatives. I went for this Rhodia, pleasure to use and the 90gsm paper is fountain pen ink friendly. About 40% saving over Moleskin.
Had a 3 month #cancer monitoring meeting with my respiratory lead consultant this week. He was amazed to find out that the #NHS 2024 rules for #Covid19 #vaccines exclude me as a #lungcancer survivor, because I'm not on #chemo and nor am I over 65.
Anyway you can get around it, ask your GP or consultant to request it as they can *always* give an exception.
Pleased to say that 2 days later, a chemist on my local highstreet gave me #influenza and Covid vaccines.
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/02/whos-eligible-for-the-2024-covid-19-vaccine-or-autumn-booster/
Rabbit hole when buying a #Railcard.
Google top match is railcard.co.uk, so I looked at the site certificate. Nothing credible, just the site name repeated, nothing about the company.
So, went to #LNER, a site I have an account on. BUT the site certificate there repeats the site name, nothing "legal". Even worse the 'railcards' subdomain is owned by "ecmldec24". WTF?
"Secure" sites are a bit pointless if none of the legal owners ever sets up their certificates with meaningful data!
I'm sure there's fellow #stationary lovers out there, so here's a slight #Brexit gripe.
I've treated myself to a delightful #Leuchtturm1917 #notebook. Hard to buy in shops in the UK, even in London, but I thought ordering would be a week or so from Germany.
But (shakes fist at #Brexiteers), despite ordering last week, it's predicted to take 3 weeks to be delivered. For easy to transport stationary, is the UK verboten due to #RedTape? Grrr.
Oh my. A presentation on privacy can't accept connections from a ToR browser. So, why are IP addresses even being checked? Sorry to nitpick.
If #mossad can use mobiles as a weapon of terror, it's an easy bet that other state actors already have the cyber terrorism software to do the same thing.
This has been talked about for years, mostly to harm national utilities. The scary part here is it physically injured hundreds and already has a kill count.
Where are the safeguards? Will cyber terrorism cases speed up #AI limitations? Imagine a mobile trojan that kills or causes fires for thousands or millions.
Here's the #AI reality check.
If an AI query can pump out a high quality 40 minute presentation for undergraduates, with source checked recommended bibliography and verifiable footnotes to the top peer reviewed papers...
And the environmental costs are equivalent to 1 litre of drinking water or 20p of electricity,
#Universities will drop faculty staff by 50% or more.
What do we say, 10 more years?
Bye academic career, bye coding job, bye the analyst career.
I'll be retired.
A part of our life with better #reuse is picking up #toogoodtogo bags of expired fruit and veg.
This is the tail end of a £4 bag with a perfectly ripe pawpaw, mango, 8 apples, dragon fruit (6% sugar, less than the apples!) and a big bag of mixed mushrooms. I'm thinking of toasting these remaining #chanterelle mushrooms to make a vegan pie more glamorous :BlobhajHeart:
I know you don't wash them normally, but some in the bag were getting rotten ...
This.
It's the same market manipulation as drive storage sizes. They *could* jump the equivalent of 10 years gradual improvement in 1, but no financial or marketing manager is going to pass over squeezing a mountain of cash out of their customers.
It worked!
The battery was £9.48, from China. Considering a new equivalent hair clipper is probably under £40, it's clear that BY DESIGN #Panasonic are making it a lot easier for customers to throw away electronics rather than refurbish.
Old = 1100mAh
New = 2000mAh
It's a battery with the same weird fitting but sold for a Panasonic mobile phone. I'm hoping a higher storage capacity will give several uses between charges.
GREEN DESIGN
Use standard battery
Give easy local customer replacements
Carefully checking UKGov #Covid rules, there are no rules.
The advice is try to stay home while you are positive. I'm probably shedding the virus, with flu like temperature reduced but a sore throat.
In 16 hours I have to catch a train or lose a £150 ticket. Luckily I have FFP3 masks and we are likely to be on a table on our own.
The government policy of pretending covid doesn't exist is so stupid.