Author: Dan Q
Dan Q is a software engineer, a director of a voluntary organisation, a trainee counsellor, a keen geocacher, and an amateur magician. He lives with his partner and her husband in a polyamorous triad, and occasionally finds time to blog.
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The Beeb continue to keep adding more and more non-news content to the BBC News RSS feed (like this ad for the iPlayer app!), so I've once again had to update my script to "fix" the feed so that it only contains, y'know, news.
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Screenshot from a web-based RSS reader, showing an item "Download the BBC iPlayer app"
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Nex in CapsulePress
I've extended CapsulePress to support Nex, an ultra-lightweight smolweb protocol from the Nightfall City community.
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Wrote note for GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing
This checkin to GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Checked-in in this cache to ensure it was still healthy, after a recent spate of muggling. Happy to report the cache is well.
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✅ Inbox Zero
✅ Slack Notification Zero
✅ Assigned PR Reviews Zero
✅ Owned PRs... one, but it's approved and just waiting for the right moment to mergeThat's got the be the first time in... literally years... that I've ended a workday so "clean". Feels amazing.
There'll be a mess again tomorrow, but hopefully only of a manageable size because I'm particularly clean to finish this week at "Work Zero".
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Happy International Pronouns Day! 🥳
I use he/him pronouns.
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And while we're talking about AI.
It took a disproportionate about of time to find the right (tiny) link, but eventually I managed to opt-out of my content being used to train Facebook's AI. They don't make it easy, do they?
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Screenshot of a Facebook message, including the text "we will honour your objection... we won't use your public information from Facebook... for future development and improvement of generative AI models"
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Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres
As Google invest in next-generation nuclear generation to provide electricity to their energy-hungry AI datacentres, so they can keep providing shit answers to everyday questions, I'm optimistic that maybe after the LLM fad fizzles out we'll be left with new power technologies that can benefit all of humankind.
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You know that you REALLY needed that coffee when you:
1. get out a mug,
2. turn on the coffee machine,
3. load the dishwasher while you wait for the coffee machine to warm up,
4. can't find your mug any more, oh shit it's in the dishwasher 🤦
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A red mug being filled by a coffee machine.
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eBay UK have changed their terms to (a) remove seller fees for most private sellers, but (b) instead of paying-out immediately, payouts are four times a year (or on-demand).
That sounds like they're trying to keep money in their ecosystem. The hope is, I guess, that by paying sellers in virtual "eBay Pounds" rather than actual money in the first instance they'll encourage those sellers to become buyers again (either of other listings, or of eBay's postage and other services). You can cash out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
You see the same technique used e.g. by the National Lottery, who pay out "small" winnings into your online account, knowing that the vast majority of winnings are on the order of only a few times more than the value of a ticket, and so players will be more-likely to "re-invest" if they're not paid-out directly.
Or maybe I'm just being cynical.
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This evening I pushed against my illness-addled brain to try to sit in on the fortnightly Zoom call with the Three Rings dev team. Unfortunately it seems like the primary symptom of my cold is an inability to string words together.
At one point, I apologised to by colleague "Beff" (I meant "Bev", but I had just been talking about "Geoff") that I couldn't work out how to stop "scaring my screen" (well, I suppose Halloween is coming up...). Then, realising my mistake, explained that it was a bit of a "ting-twister".
I should just go to bed, right?
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Firsts and Lasts
I was listening to the bats flying silently above me while I watched the Perseids, the other month. When was the last time I was actually capable of hearing their echolocation? I simply can't remember, because it didn't feel significant at the time.
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London Transport 25
Girl on the Net diverts from her usual sex blogging to write about taking a date on a 25-forms-of-transport tour of London, and it's delightful.
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Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn't both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂
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Two frustrated-looking children each sit in front of a separate chessboard (the photographer is presumably playing both of them).
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Calm after the storm
Rosie, who like me never even considered taking Automattic's alignment offer, writes about her experience of this week's meetup.
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I'm back home from Mexico (and feeling a little worse for wear), where this young lady wanted to let me know that I was sorely missed.
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Dan, lying on a sofa under a brown blanket, on top of which is a contented-looking French Bulldog.