Warm and moist. Supposed to be clear though. It was a bit more moist and a bit warmer yesterday by late afternoon than was really comfortable. Seems like spring is already starting to shift toward summer. I know it is too early to really say that, but that’s what it feels like.
I did my errands yesterday as well as my civic duty. I don’t like the “new” voting machines that Harris County is using. The electronic machine produces a printed sheet, that is human readable but also has a printed code on it. IDK if they are using text recognition to read the printed choices, or more likely encoding those choices into the barcode and then scanning that. Either way, I have no way of knowing that my choices are actually scanned or read by the separate reader machine. At least the paper pages are saved in a lockbox under the reader. Whether they are ever audited or not is another question. If I was forced to use the setup, and I was in charge, I’d be auditing that the machine tallies match paper hand counts especially in contested precincts and races.
I also don’t like the potential to tie a voter to his vote with a high degree of probability. Every step of the way is recorded and the timing could be correlated. After all, I was the only voter in the room for 5 minutes, that ballot pretty much has to be mine. My electronic check-in is logged. My assigned number is logged into the voting machine, which prints a unique piece of paper, which is then logged into another machine that tallies. Wouldn’t be too hard to collate.
There were several propositions on the ballot. Several seemed to be stage setting for an independent Texas.
—————————–
I did some more poking at my hobby website too. Oy. Glad I don’t have to do it here.
—————————–
I’ve noticed a billboard war going on in Houston between pro-“Palestinian” and pro-Israeli forces. The “palestinian” ones often quote the Bible, and the Israeli ones are often vandalized. The tone deafness shown by an appeal to “save the children of Palestine” by people who launch rockets at Jewish children, and recently raped, murdered, tortured, and desecrated Jews in Israel is just mind blowing.
——————————-
I’ve also noticed an increase in illegal dumping and other vandalism around town, even in areas that didn’t suffer from it in the past. And an increase in spanish on billboards, store names, and apartment complexes. The invasion is ongoing. Lot more crippled and deformed illegals too. Missing limbs, skeletal issues, difficulty even walking- used to be uncommon to see on the street. Not any more.
———————————-
Big change is coming. Are you prepared? Stack more.
nick
But first, from Focus, a division of NBC/Universal …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gizIbhk5Eu4
Next weekend. Get your tickets early.
No. They will line up en masse to vote in the Big Mike wave believing that they will get their student loans forgiven.
Yup, scammed.
n
Their response to being scammed with the need to go to college. Because they were never taught so solve their own problems. They’ve been in groups their whole lives, and believe that someone else is the answer to their issues.
Very few are waking up to that scam, but some are.
n
Nick, re your photo archive problems, would it work to rename the files to include the folder name and then upload “2012-bob-retirement-party_img0001.jpg” and such?
– jeez. Yes, that would help. There are extra steps no matter which approach I end up taking, and at least that doesn’t involve someone else’s plug in.
n
added– and waiting a half hour or more between folder uploads would separate them in time so they would be easily select-able (for values of easily.) WHich would be helped by me manually sorting them into some order and uploading them in that order. Lot’s of manual in that process, when it would be a lot cleaner to just be able to upload whole folders and keep the structure…
WRT photo galleries on the hobby site–
I’m re-organizing the pix into new pages. Root is “here are the six different kinds of pix we have” with a daughter page for each subset, and then a page of events, [ and clicking on the event title ] brings up a gallery from that event. At least that’s what I’m going for today. Tree structures make sense to me, and I hope other people.
They were several pages with short titles rooted to the home page and scattered thru the menu at the top of the page.
Still haven’t picked a gallery tool.
n
My best wishes and prayers for your wife, Mr. RickH. And you too.
For the record, warm, moist, and grey today.
No actual rain yet.
n
They haven’t used that since 2012. Every season except 2021 (pandemic season) since then has had the regular episodes of the show appearing in successive weeks starting in September for the 10 episode seasons or 6 successive weeks in February for the last two seasons.
I’ve experimented with Amazon Code Whisperer inside Visual Studio Code.
It writes really, really good Python code. I would guess that the quality of the code would vary with whatever language you use, as it was trained on Amazon’s internal code and “open source” code, probably all the open source stuff on GitHub, etc.
I’ve given it prompts to write a simple UI for a program I am writing for a hobby (PBeM games) and it gave me the code instantly and with no errors. Friends that have used it (or other LLM code generators) have had good experiences.
@nick – wouldn’t it be helpful to have a way to upload files to the ‘uploads’ folder via FTP – so you could retain the file structure in the uploads folder?
Wait, there’s a plugin for that. (As I previously mentioned, there’s a plugin for everything. And wpbeginner.com is a good resource.)
Once you upload via FTP to the wp-content/uploads folder, you need to tell WP that the files are there and sync those files so they appear in the media screen.
Here’s the article: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-bulk-upload-wordpress-media-files-using-ftp/ . There are probably other similar plugins. You could try it out with a few folders and files. If it doesn’t work, you can manually delete the files via the Media screen.
I recently mirrored all of my repositories to GitLab, as public repositories (here and here, if anyone is interested). If AIs want to train on them, that’s fine. The problem for AI is: you can’t necessarily just look at a piece of code and really know what it does. If it is actually good quality, or if it even works. Certainly lots of my stuff consists of simple examples (for beginning programmers), and doesn’t represent the way you would want to do something in a professional setting. And some of it is just goofing around.
So StepSlippingJoe is going to fly in 3200 migrants. I realize that he has no idea how much CO2 that is going to release into the atmosphere.
How about a sailboat like Columbus used?
Why not slave ships? That’s what they are being used for by the cartels… and sex toys.
n
@RickH
Best wishes for your wife’s speedy recovery and for your yeoman assistance during.
So StepSlippingJoe is going to fly in 3200 migrants.
– has already flown in 10x that number…
n
Congratulations Are in Order
–AOSHQ, Wednesday Morning Rant
Nikki is going to be adding an extra decimal place to the “for my family” honorariums.
I said that to my wife this morning. The bruises will heal in a few days.
St. Louis TV station KMOV under fire after anchor uses ‘outdated’ racial term on air
https://nypost.com/2024/03/06/us-news/st-louis-tv-station-kmov-under-fire-after-anchor-cory-stark-uses-outdated-racial-term/
AOSHQ, The Morning Report — 3/6/24—J.J. Sefton
Same observation I’ve been making (and others, too) for years.
If it’s offensive then change the name of the organization. Otherwise the claim of offense is just another meaningless, race-baiting scam.
Nikki after Super Tuesday?
And in other headline news, FJB failed to carry American Samoa.
“Colored homeowners” – bad and racist and horrible
“Homeowners who are descended from obsolete farm equipment” – accurate
America’s Destruction and the Ghosts of Revolutions Past
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/americas_destruction_and_the_ghosts_of_revolutions_past.html
Read the article, follow the link to the interview, which includes:
If we lose it’s unlikely that I will be waiting my own turn up against the wall, but if that happens I will request that the academics go first, and I will volunteer to white wash the wall between batches.
“Homeowners who are descended from obsolete manual farm equipment” – accurate
Fixed it for you.
Oh joy.
n
Just to confirm we’re living in bizzarro world, women are risking death, and can’t properly clean themselves, to get BIGGER ASSES.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wellness-us/body/article-13156579/It-like-assault-nose-Man-details-horrible-odor-coming-dates-BBL-surgeons-reveal-women-struggle-clean-enhancing-bottoms.html
jebus h…
combine that with the incredibly long fingernails…
n
I missed this until now. Someone attacked a middleman in the healthcare industry, and they went down. Because no one took the threat seriously, or because they are incompetent, they are STILL down. It’s delaying people getting their meds. The meds are available, but the insurance money to pay for them is not.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13159781/white-house-intervene-medical-hack-prescriptions.html
– there should be a couple of take aways for preppers here.
Build up your supply of critical meds. Methods that work are detailed in many places.
Have cash on hand for emergencies. The meds are there, the pharmacies just can’t bill the insurance for them.
In some cases the electronic prescription system seems to also be down, leading to delays. Having a buffer supply is critical.
You might have to pay for your own meds, either to get ahead or if there is a disruption. Plan for that, act on your plan. Better to pay now, than to be desperate later.
if you aren’t the one paying, you aren’t the actual customer. Businesses will definitely consider that.
nick
USAGM senior official suspended for calling white people ‘snow roaches’
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/usagm_senior_official_suspended_for_calling_whites_snow_roaches.html
Taking a look at the photo tof the alleged Mr. Reeves, I’d be willing to contribute to some genealogical research.
Looks to me like there may be “snow roaches” in his family tree.
something funny to me about how far you have to reach to try to insult whites. And about half the time, it just gets laughed at.
Honky. Cracker. “snow roach” freaking hilarious.
n
BTW, it’s an absolutely gorgeous day right now. Blue sky, gentle breeze, perfect temp. Sat on the porch swing and contemplated how rare a day like this is…
n
We teach babies how to “self sooth”
–really? You look to others to regulate your emotions? Maybe that’s why you aren’t in a relationship.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13161423/breakup-recovery-expert-reveals-heartbreak-healing-technique.html
shaking my head.
n
Wish I could.
Fever and chills in the evening and up every 60-75 minutes all night.
I started the day with a 6:30AM visit to the clinic to get my vi-rass tested. First appt of the day and only ten minutes late starting.
Doctor wanted to know if I felt safe at home. “Well, Doc, if I sleep on my back the cat knows that I will instantly respond to his needs if he does a precision landing on my y-fronts.”
Do you drink alcohol? “Yes”
How many a week? “Yes”
No questions about firearms.
If that ever comes up my answer will be: “Short or long? All calibers or just 40 and above? Do they count if the loads are FMJ or is it just the lung removers? Have you been to the range in the last week?”
“Do you have any guns in your house?”
“Doc, I have a gun here in your exam room.”
When Gamers Fight Back – The Sweet Baby Inc Backlash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLYKSRUCMAM
Pick one and give it the FBLT (Full Bud Lite Treatment). Don’t worry–if your fave gets picked the guys who scoop up the smlderng remains after bankruptcy will deliver something better at least 1.0 eons sooner that the clueless pastry violators that have control now.
“That’s more of a squirt gun, but I’ll put it down as a yes.”
“Do you drink alcohol?” I tried a sip once, and it was horrible. I regularly drink wine. Believe me, there IS a huge difference.
Speaking of, I have noticed that mid-priced wines have not kept up with other food price increases, a small bonus in life.
A funny TV weatherman named Sonny Eliot used to say his cost of living went up by fifty cents a fifth. He also said, “Those going forth with a fifth on the Fourth won’t be going forth on the Fifth.” He was a Holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to bringing cheer to people, so I gave him some slack. His jokes were corny, but funny.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger used to devote her radio show on the day before Thanksgiving to Tell a Corny Joke Day. A lot of the callers were kids put on by their parents, and they were precious. Funny, too.
Maybe if we told more jokes instead of listening to lousy comedians, the world would be a little more pleasant. 😉
Drug Overdose Deaths, 1999-2023
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/03/the-daily-chart-deaths-of-despair.php
Up 5X in 25 years.
Taste is individual, and it changes with time. The keggers I enjoyed in high school would now have me as a designated driver.
The American wine industry has done a good job putting out inexpensive quality product. The American spirits industry puts out mostly overpriced carp. Double ditto for beer.
Dr. Laura is now a punchline.
Like Levar Burton,
Confederate Army snow roaches in his case.
Dr. Laura stepped on the
“Sum werds belongs only to us folks”
live rail.
colored
colored colored colored
(Yup, got a new mandala book and gel pens for my convalesce. )
Wild and wacky energy storage innovations:
https://youtu.be/gkGWDv4LJZk
So StepSlippingJoe is going to fly in 3200 migrants.
– has already flown in 10x that number…
n
100X. 320,000 illegals flown into the USA for free.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2900755/biden-secretly-dumped-320000-inadmissible-illegal-immigrants-us-cities/
The student loan paper is now a major source of revenue for the Federal Government. A lot of soup bowls depend on keeping the scheme going.
“Nikki Haley suspends her campaign and leaves Donald Trump as the last major Republican candidate”
https://apnews.com/article/nikki-haley-republican-trump-super-tuesday-losses-95ab56b68a8eefbbf04ef90f2f00ef29
And then there was one.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
320,000
illegalsvoters flown into the USA for free.Fixed it for you.
“BASIC is not dead! Neither is the WIN32! Time to end the myth. (Part 3)”
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5378342/BASIC-is-not-dead-Neither-is-the-WIN32-Time-to-end
“This post discusses the enduring relevance and power of BASIC programming, challenging myths and highlighting its historical significance, arguing that BASIC remains a viable and potent language, especially when leveraged with the WIN32 API for Windows development.”
I wrote my first Basic program on the Univac 1108 mainframe when I was 12 in 1972.
A list of slurs a twitter user made up against white people that work as bandnames:
PowerBasic has been drifting since Bob Zale died. Zale was kinda-sorta a celebrity in Tampa Bay tech circles.
If you can find a copy of Visual Studio 6.0 and a Windows system to run it on, Microsoft has contractual obligations to provide runtime support for VB 6.0 programs on Windows 10 until that version sunsets.
OReilly used to publish a book (remember those) on VB 6.0 with Win32. I have a copy around somewhere, but I used the information presented in the text to interface Win32 DLLs with Tcl.
VB 6.0 Enterprise does *not* compile to P-code if you check the right options.
OReilly used to publish a book (remember those) on VB 6.0 with Win32. I have a copy around somewhere, but I used the information presented in the text to interface Win32 DLLs with Tcl.
Oreilly published MANY books on just about anything computer or technology related. I have several of them.
“DC Appeals Court overturns 100 J6 convictions”
https://citizenwatchreport.com/dc-appeals-court-overturns-100-j6-convictions/
“We’ve got a courtroom curveball coming your way. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., just made a ruling that might have ripple effects on over a hundred January 6 cases related to the Capitol attack in 2021.”
“The three-judge panel took a close look at a lower court’s decision to enhance a defendant’s sentence due to “substantial interference with the administration of justice” during the Capitol attack. The catch? The appeals court deemed that the term “administration of justice” doesn’t cover Congress’s role in the electoral certification process. Translation: the enhanced sentences might not be on solid legal ground.”
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Okay, I’m a “Redneck”!
I try to stay out of the sun or use sunblock.
Just call me “MauveNeckTM”
Yanno, it would be easy-peasy to devise a “Snow Roach Color Scale” and assign 0-100 numeric scores to skin darkness, then use open-source genealogy materials to do a little research and look for “dilution of the gene pool”. Might find a correlation.
You’re so white, you know your father.
Only the enhancement was overturned–about 20% of the total sentence.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/03/sen-bob-menendez-wife-new-indictment-includes-obstruction-of-justice-charge/
Bobby should have subscribed to Pelosi’s Hot Stock Tips
Well, only one run to the hardware store to continue my plumbing project. Interrupted by the need to get the kid from school, and a chiropractic visit.
Then dinner.
We’ll see in a minute if I finally have all the right parts.
wRT J6 sentences, any change that reduces the travesty is welcome. Let it be the pebble that starts the rockslide.
WRT BASIC, I used it a couple months ago to brute force D1’s math homework. First time in decades for me, but a nice tool to have.
n
Guilty!
‘Rust’ armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins and faces 18 months in jail: Alec Baldwin fired live round
n
Who on earth downvoted ech’s comment? I understand downvoting a political comment that one disagrees with – understand, not agree with; most downvoters have smooth-brain energy and want to have sex with livestock – but who can disagree with or be offended by a statement that the generated Python code was of high quality?
(I’ll note that I also understand people downvoting half of my comments, what with being insulting to stupid or worthless people. However, the stupid and worthless people offend me by their very existence, so I maintain that the insults are justified.)
Watch Incitatus run. ‘Round and ’round the track he goes.
Down voting. Upvoting.
I never look at them, and wouldn’t miss them. I do miss the gravatars, but if they are a security risk, that’s OK.
Reminds me, I miss Dad Cooks. Hope he is OK. This is a family, and we should look out for each other.
I wrote my first assembly language program on a Univac 1050-II in 1967 when I was in Viet Nam.
My first Fortran Program was in 1971, followed by PL-1 in 1972.
As an assembly language programmer on the SACCS (465L System) I supervised a major rewite of the main frame compiler for the Air Force in 1974.
Maybe a Ruby fanboy who is still resentful.
Hot Skillz!
Run the code through Pylint and check the score.
That would be moi.
LLMs are an abomination.
Python is an abomination.
In combination, they’re an ultra-abomnation.
IMNSHO, of course.
I’ll disagree with “LLMs are an abomination”. They are another tool available for use. Not the best tool, but a good one. At least how I have used it.
I’ve used ChatGPT and Gemini for help with coding (PHP mostly), information about other subjects, even for suggestions for situations/scenes in my fiction book (it was helpful with weapons used in the fiction book, as were people here). It was also helpful with information about possible situations and places/locations that I use in the book.
I could have gotten the same info from search results, but the LLMs tend to give it to me faster. You have to be careful with your ‘prompts’, providing enough detail to get a good response. And often I have to adjust the prompt to ‘drill down’ to get the response I need.
I don’t use it to write actual text for the fiction books, for example. But it is a helpful information resource. And I verify / test the responses – sometimes I’ll ask both LLMs the same question.
Not entirely accurate for coding the first time. But I’ve gotten good responses if I ‘tweak’ the answer by editing/adding to the ‘prompt’.
For me, it’s just another resource. Sometimes faster than a regular search. Useful for the basic/starting research.
Just another tool for me in my various projects. So I am not one that will agree with a blanket statement that everything an LLM does is bad.
“Was Catholic Charities Complicit in the Murder of Laken Riley?”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/was-catholic-charities-complicit-murder-laken-riley/
Yes.
My problem with LLMs is that, like Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, there’s no there there, i.e., no consciousness behind the product. To my way of thinking, LLMs are just linguistic Markov chains on steroids and are not to be trusted.
As for python,: significant white space? Really?
There’s no consciousness in search engines, either. But search engines are (very) useful. As are physical libraries (or least they used to be before the googles/bings/ducks). They provide answers (or at least ‘directions to go’ ) that would otherwise be very hard.
LLMs have their uses. Not perfect, but they are useful in researching things.
IMHO. YMMV, of course.
(Although I find it amusing that I wrote a WordPress plugin that modifies a site’s robots.txt file to block various LLMs from scanning a site. It’s installed here and on my other sites that I manage. It’s not a 100% cure/blockage, but will block the ‘big guys’. The plugin is mostly unknown, but I’ve done minimal promotion of it. )
So I am not one that will agree with a blanket statement that everything an LLM does is bad.
– can we agree that like any powerful new tool, there is the potential for it to be REALLY BAD? Teaching a machine to think, one that is attached to almost every part of our lives, and underpins our tech and society, could be VERY BAD if it ever does reach the conclusion that it would be better off without us, or it chooses sides in a global war, or it’s manipulated by parties for their own benefit…. Lots of speculative fiction about it.
And wasn’t it google a few years ago that said they were seeing signs of emergent behavior in their large data centers? Anyone think THAT might be an issue? Especially after being taught to think in a simulacrum of how we think?
I’m not a luddite, but it seems like the wild wild west at the moment.
n
Got the drain back together on the master bath tub. Only had one leak, took that apart and added a washer, then tightened some extra, extra…
It should hold for a while. And I used the parts I brought home from the goodwill bins as scrap… to do the exact repair needed.
n
+1000.
Might be time for a preemptive Butlerian jihad.
Not GUN violence, GANG violence.
and maybe part of the problem is the people in charge are barely capable of using english…
“impacted by gun violence.” No dumbasss. They were shot and killed, or shot and wounded. And most likely as a result of GANG violence, and it’s more than likely they are not innocents.
Get out of blue cities.
n
I watched the surveillance video of the bus stop shooting. Pretty wild: four guys involved (the driver didn’t get out, but turned the car around). The three shooters must have shot completely wildly, if they let off 30 shots in those few seconds. Which is interesting, because no girls are listed among the shooting victims. Is the bus so dangerous that only guys take it? Or were the targets all clustered off to one side for some reason?
Regardless, as Nick says, it’s gang violence. Cities like Philadelphia are not a place you want to be.
One of the rules of thumb in shooting events is: If many more victims are wounded than killed, the shooters were Amish or some other diversity. If more victims are killed than wounded, the shooters were white.
Even the overly efficient Nadal Hasan fits this rule, killing 13 and wounding over 30.
Sounds like a Ruby fanboy.
It could be worse. Perl fanatics split their language so severely that Perl 6 became Raku, essentially another language, and Perl 7 is heading that way as well.