artiss.blog

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  • Social Shuffling

    Social Shuffling

    Although I do like to “reserve” my user name on pretty much any social media site going, that doesn’t mean I have a presence.

    I closed my Twitter/X account some time ago – I could see which way that was going, and I wasn’t wrong.

    I’ve been active on both Mastodon and Threads since, but have been disappointed with both. The former is still too complex and yet basic for most people, so has been limited to “tech” people. Threads, well it’s by Meta, so I should have guessed. The algorithms are terrible and my feed is full of people doing performative engagement baiting (“what does this do?”).

    Although both of those accounts remain open my heart and time is now going into Bluesky, which is also the only network where my blog will auto-post too. Find me here.

  • Now how many R’s are in ‘Strawberry’, ChatGPT?

    Now how many R’s are in ‘Strawberry’, ChatGPT?

    Last month, the latest ChatGPT oopsie went viral – the fact that, if you asked it how many r’s were in the word “strawberry”, it would say there’s 2. However, get it to spell it out and it changed its mind and got it correct. For some people it would not only double down but would, when pushed, even change it’s mind and say it’s just 1.

    However, it’s been a known issue since June.

    But, now, it’s fixed. Or is it?

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  • Seek… locate… refrigerate

    Seek… locate… refrigerate

    If you enjoy long, boring posts about refrigerators then you’re in for a pleasant surprise!

    The story starts at the weekend where, I was checking my recent power consumption, according to the smart meter stats held by my energy company. No, this isn’t get any more exciting than this! Since April there’s been a sharp rise in electricity usage (kWh, not cost) during the day. I expected the night one to go up due to my car charging, but not day time.

    My power company does a usage breakdown, which is a rough estimate of where the electricity appears to be going – it only gives you the breakdown for the current and previous week and shows usage her device, not any kind of trend. But, the biggest user of power in my house is… refrigeration.

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  • Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Bazalgette: Diary of a WordPress Plugin – Part 1

    Back in the 1980s, I loved reading game development diaries in Zzap!64 (these days I subscribe to Freeze64, which also includes developer diaries) and, so, I’ve decided to try one out myself, albeit for a WordPress plugin rather than an 8-bit video game.

    Bazalgette is a plugin that I’ve been trying to complete for a number of years, each time being partially coded and then abandoned, for varying reasons. However, after promising at WordCamp EU in 2023 that it was going to happen, one year later, I thought I really should do something about it.

    Now, I’m going to split this diary over a number of posts and each “day” won’t be sequential, but there may be many days (or weeks) between each entry. However, when a post looks pretty long, I’ll publish it before drafting a next part for later publication.

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  • Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

    There’s lot of news about Reddit selling their content to various companies, particularly for AI, but not, that I’m aware, to Cult of Mac, an Apple news site.

    But Cult of Mac are using it anyway.

    Oh, and then adding their own affiliate links on top of other people’s content, and all without telling them about it.

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