*THIS LIST IS FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY because I have not scrubbed false positives out of it yet. I removed one, and that’s as far as I got.
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Category: Uncategorized
A.I.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is not the AI for me. Machine Learning, for example the type that uses Bayesian algorithms, are totally different.
Business use of GenAI
I spoke with a developer recently who has been tasked with using AI more and more in his day-to-day. (why is a good question that I’ll get to)
He told the AI agent to write a piece of code that would have taken him ten seconds to write. When he reviewed the output, he determined that yes, this code works. He also discovered that it cost the company $0.28 worth of usage tokens
28 cents for ten seconds of work.
What if this thing was coding full-time? a ten second block happens six times per minute.
0.28*6=1.68 so that’s $1.68 per minute
There’s 60 minutes in an hour, so the company would be paying this chatbot $100.80/hour
40 hours in a work week means $4032 hours a week
52 work weeks in a year, so that’s $209,664 a year
That is more than that particular developer’s salary.
One can look at all of the information available about GenAI currently deployed in production environments in websites, data centers, manufacturing centers, warehouses, logistics, transportation, etc., and what many of them have in common is that
- Real human developers need to write the prompts (time=money)
- Real human developers need to verify what the AI produces (time=money)
- Real human developers need fix what it produced and/or re-submit with new prompts (time=money)
- Real humans need to perform quality assureance before pushing to production(time=money)
- Real human developers need fix everything that it broke once it gets pushed to production(time=money)
That’s a lot of time and money; a lot more than if businesses just paid human developers.
So not only is AI plagiarizing my writing, plagiarizing my artwork, destroying the environment (documented and demonstrably cases of people becoming sick or dying from AI data centers), and facilitating mass illegal and unconstitutional mass surveillance of citizens around the globe (I can confirm the Five Eyes nations (ustralia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the People’s Republic of China, and The Russian Federation), and giving regular users and business users wrong information (“Pregnant women can eat up to five cigarettes a day”) and performing harmful actions (Amazon Prompt “Engineer”: reduce the current order queue load in the most efficient way possible. Amazon’s internal use AI: <deletes entire Amazon order queue>) – but it’s actually costing you more, as a business, to use it, than to not use it!
So why is it being pushed at any given company? Well it’s making the companies that own these things lots of money, and, it is training the AI models to get even better to make those techbros even more money. You can do the math and connect the dots yourself.
Personal use of AI
I’m an artist. I’m a photographer. I’m a writer. I make traditional art and digital art. I’ve done some voice acting. I’ve done some on screen acting. I’m a voice actor. I’m an actor. No one can take that away from me, because that’s what I am. I always have been, and I always will be, even after my death.
In fact, all of the above are types of artistic expression, so anyone with any one of those things, if I don’t wish to be overly verbose, are art, made by me, an artist.
Some of the people that I’ve spoke to about their own personal use of GenAI to produce what they call “art”. All of them have told me “I can’t draw.” or “I can’t write.” or “I can’t take photos.” or “I can’t use the software for making digital art.”, and whenever any of them have acquired to my request to let me see something they wrote or drew or photographed or worked on in Blender or Illustrator or Photoshop – despite them telling me that it is garbage or that it sucks – I have always had the same reaction.
“Wow. That person made this. They’re a real artist, just like me.”
All real artists are going to have that reaction as well. People that see what they created and ridicule aren’t artists, they’re haters. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes haters can draw a really really good picture, or paint an amazing painting, etc., but they’re still haters. Don’t listen to them. And that ridicule isn’t a reason to use GenAI instead of making your own stuff because guess what? Other GenAI users are going to ridicule whatever you instructed GenAI to produce, not matter what it looks like. Haters are gonna hate.
“Wow. That person made this. They’re a real artist, just like me.” I reiterate. That’s what real artists say when they see art. It does not matter how “good” or “bad” anyone subjectively thinks that it is. What’s objectively true is that it was made by a person producing art, ergo it was made by an artist, thus it is art.
GenAI does not produce art.
When I see someone show something off that they prompted GenAI to produce, and call that art… that is the time I laugh. But I also feel pity for them because the sphere of influence that they live in – society as experienced by them – have conditioned them to believe that they are less-than, and that their art is unworthy. I also feel anger on their behalf against that society, as well as anger towards them because of all of the above.
To quote an animated genius narcissistic alcoholic, “Shitting the bed is not better than not shitting the bed.” By this I mean “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to use GenAI. You did not have to contribute to the plagiarism, pollution, poverty, death, surveillance/control, illness, (and mostly outside of this nation) indentured servitude and child slavery, war, and (globally) the transformation of the planet into one in which you – the average person reading this – will not survive.
Is all AI bad?
Machine learning is technically AI.
It’s the kind of thing that is not producing media like text, images, audio, video. It’s analyzing data. It’s using mathematics and algorithms to make conclusions. It is (mostly) not using massive data centers, or any data centers.
It’s filtering your email for spam. It’s detecting cancer cells and finding cures to cancer. It’s doing that kind of stuff.
It’s even making your video games more fun!
In 1996, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was released for the Nintendo 64. An almost always overlooked fact about the game is that it did incorporate machine learning at runtime. It’s very telling that it is even more difficult to find information on this now than it was in the 90s and early 2000s.
Here’s what I mean: The game had an algorithm in it that would record where the player walked during the walking levels of the game. The player-character is walking around the Rebel Alliance base on Hoth as it’s being invaded by the Galactic Empire. You, the player, encounter some storm troopers. They overwhelm you and kill your character. You start over from your last check point, but now you have an advantage because you know where the game has placed those storm troopers. There’s still too many of them, and you have to start over again. Then you get past that part, but get taken out in the next hallway by a lone storm trooper that took advantage of that fact that you were already half dead from the last firefight. You try again, this time making it through the first group really easily, take out the guy in the next hall, but then are mowed down by two more enemies in the next room. You try it again, but this time it’s different. This time, the game’s algorithm has determined where you are going to go because you’ve been going that way over and over, and so it moves the storm troopers out of your path – out of harms way – and into a position where they easily flank you and eliminate you. The devs thought that would keep people engaged and entertained because knowing where the bad guys are is boring. I agree with them. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but the point is this:
That “A.I.” did not require an Internet connection to connect to a data center to steal your moves or surveillance center to build a secret profile about you. That “A.I.” did not utilize a harmful data center. That “A.I.” did not rely on plagiarism. That “A.I.” did not facilitate plagiarism. That was all contained within a little game cartridge, and lived inside the compute of your game console that was connected to nothing but your electrical outlet and your television.
There’s also a lot of AI use in modern CCTV. Many of those do connect to a cloud to do all the bad A.I. things. Many brands do not. My favorite cameras are the ones that perform the computing themselves. These embedded-and-deployed devices are called “edge devices”, and so what they are doing is called “edge compute”. The tiny little camera that fits in the palm of my hand looks at contrast in the image to detect an object and decide if it’s shaped like a box, or a dog, or a person, or a car. And then sends me a notification. “Oh, animal detected? I’m not going to interrupt what I’m doing to look at a squirrel right now. Maybe later.” versus “Oh package detected? I had better go grab it before a porch pirate.” or “Person detected? I’ll take out my phone and talk to them through the intercom to see what they want.”
Unicode Accessibility Testing
Unicode can emulate bold, italics, etc. I tested several copy/paste Unicode items from instafonts.io with Android’s built in TalkBack #accessibility program. I don’t have access to iOS; someone else can test that. I’m looking for suggestions for other Android/browser tools https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lw54z6x5qc2y
𝗨𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱
SUCCESS
U𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤
SUCCESS
𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙤𝙙𝙚 𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝙗𝙤𝙡𝙙
SUCCESS
🅄🄽🄸🄲🄾🄳🄴 🅂🅀🅄🄰🅁🄴 🄷🄾🄻🄻🄾🅆
SUCCESS
ⓤⓝⓘⓒⓞⓓⓔ ⓒⓘⓡⓒⓛⓔ ⓗⓞⓛⓛⓞⓦ ⓛⓞⓦⓔⓡⓒⓐⓢⓔ
SUCCESS
ⓊⓃⒾⒸⓄⒹⒺ ⒸⒾⓇⒸⓁⒺ ⒽⓄⓁⓁⓄⓌ ⓊⓅⓅⒺⓇⒸⒶⓈⒺ
SUCCESS
🆄🅽🅸🅲🅾🅳🅴 🆂🆀🆄🅰🆁🅴 🅵🅸🅻🅻
FAIL – Does not read it at all
DO NOT USE
unicode blue 🇹🇪🇽🇹
In one post, it skipped the word preceeding the blue text, and in another, it skipped the blue text
DO NOT USE
u͟n͟i͟c͟o͟d͟e͟ ͟u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟ ͟
FAIL – reads each letter instead of the words
DO NOT USE
🅤🅝🅘🅒🅞🅓🅔 🅒🅘🅡🅒🅛🅔 🅕🅘🅛🅛🅔🅓 🅛🅞🅦🅔🅡🅒🅐🅢🅔
FAIL does not read at all, renders lowercase text as uppercase text
DO NOT USE
🅤🅝🅘🅒🅞🅓🅔 🅒🅘🅡🅒🅛🅔 🅕🅘🅛🅛🅔🅓 🅤🅟🅟🅔🅡🅒🅐🅢🅔
FAIL – Does not read it at all
DO NOT USE
One thing about me…
one thing about me is that when i see “toxic” behavior – especially coming from my friends – I’m gonna call it out, and I would hope that they would do the same for me. And by toxic, I’m talking about things like racism, homophobia, body shaming, transphobia; stuff like that. ⬇️
⬆️and imma keep it real with you: THERE ARE NO MITIGATING FACTORS! Were you drunk? High? Having a mental breakdown? Those are things that turn your “filter” off. But if you are constantly having to filter out those hateful statements, then the problem isn’t that you weren’t filtering at the time,⬇️
⬆️the problem is that you have that hate deep down in your heart. That’s the problem. No one is perfect and nothing changes over night so take some time and fix yourself. Now why am I bringing all of this up right now? Well a few weeks ago, I called someone out for something hateful that they ⬇️
⬆️said. They sent a wall of text downplaying it, justifying it, and then attacking me for GENTLY calling them out for it. DARVO Deny Attack Reverse victim/offender It was textbook DARVO. I told them my feelings, apologized for making them feel attacked, and told them to take as much time as⬇️
⬆️they needed to think things over and hopefully they would feel like being my friend again and if not then I would respect that. Three weeks go by with zero response from them and then I start getting block notifications that they’re blocking my accounts on here. That hurts, because this person⬇️
⬆️was one of my best friends of all time. I have block notifications turned on here for reasons that make sense given my occupation and other situations, but it also works out well in this scenario, because this person has demonstrated a habit of posting publicly about people that they feel have ⬇️
⬆️slighted them, and I’m no dummy y’all, I was often times skeptical of what they were saying about people after they had blocked them. They’re blocking me little by little on different platforms and have already done some vague-posting about me, twisting facts. No, just because I pointed out a ⬇️
⬆️behavior that you don’t like about yourself doesn’t mean I was “being mean”. Just because you have a condition that MIGHT explain your behavior, does not excuse your behavior. Just because I know you have said condition and didn’t let that give you carte blanche does not mean that I’m against⬇️
⬆️ people with that condition and does not mean that I don’t make accommodations for people with that condition. Posting about it, even in vague was ways, and then talking about “no revenge” and how it doesn’t even bother you… bestie I fear that is contradictory. So I feel that it’s only a ⬇️
⬆️matter of time (if they haven’t already begun) before this person really begins twisting the truth around and slandering my good name. I guess I should unblock all those people in the fandom they convinced me to block just in case they have more info. And I’ll have to wait for my other friends to⬇️
⬆️start telling me when this person is talking shit about me. And when that time comes, as I’ve said, I have the entirety of all of our conversations on every platform archived, so I will have no choice but to correct their misinformation with full context objective truth. And of course sue. ⬇️
⬆️ because my reputation is very important to me. It has a big impact on my professional life and personal life, so yeah I’ll spend thousands on lawsuits to stop this if I need to. If my professional and personal life gets messed up from someone else’s lies – especially professional – that messes⬇️
⬆️with my ability to provide for my family. Dang. That sounds like the last thing someone with any brains would want to do to me. How silly of them. At this point, I’d be content to never hear from this person again, but, unfortunately, they don’t seem content to move on. ⬇️
⬆️oh and also one time they stole one of my memes. That’s kinda fucked up. 🔚
i forgot to mention, the DARVO + isolating is classic narcissistic behavior. Narcissistic behavior indicates the presence of the “wounded inner child”. I’m bringing this up in case the person is still creeping on me and reads this: I really want you to heal. It’s a long arduous journey but it’s ⬇️
⬆️worth it. I would know. And despite the fact that I don’t really like you right now, I still believe in you and know that you can do it. So, in spite of everything, I’m still hoping for all the best for you. (and before anyone jumps down my throat, pointing out narcissistic behavior is not⬇️
⬆️the same thing as calling someone a narcissist or trying to “arm-chair psychiatrist” diagnose someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I would never do that. Anyone can exhibit these types of behavior regardless of whether or not they have NPD. For what it’s worth, I, a lay person, do ⬇️
⬆️ not think that the person I’m talking about has NPD, nor an I qualified to say that they do or do not. 🔚
Verification
Fill out the boxes towards the bottom of the page. The website will never display this information. I just use it for verification.
Comment (Put what kind of phone or computer or browser you’re using)
Name (doesn’t need to be real but it should match how I know you. A username from the website you contacted me on or your first name or nickname if I know you in real life)
Email (Does not need to be real email. fake@test.com is fine if you don’t want to use your real email. I’m not going to keep it anyway)
13 Thermostats!
Is white the right color for these covers? Would black be better? That way it would match the thermostat.
Asthma #HomeAutomation #SCADA #HVAC #3Dprint #SmartHone #Zigbee #Tuya #HomeAssistant #Thermostat
| MH1823D To access the secret menu, turn off the unit with the power button and then hold down the up and down buttons at the same time. The unit will turn back on. • Change settings with the up and down buttons. • Scroll through the menu with the M button To exit the menu, press the power button. |  |
| 1 child lock type (00 lock power, 01 lock all) 2 Anti-freezing mode (setting 01) 3 AL,IN,OU (sensors) 4 Imp/Met (01 = imperial) 5 Internal Sensor Calibration (00°) 6 External Sensor Calibration (00°) 7 Temperature Return (01°) 8 High Temp Protection (maybe) (00°) |  |
Phone tracks satellites?
In 2103 or so I wanted my cellphone to track satellites in real time.
It was a budget phone in 2013 and I had no money to pay for an app.
I downloaded a free windows executable to my Linux server (a dumpster laptop) and got it to run in W.I.N.E.
Then I ran a Linux distro on my budget phone in a chroot jail
Then tunneled the X window manager via an SSH connection from my cellphone to the server
Then I tracked satellites with my phone… in real… time in class… in 2013.
“But Tony, what if you got in trouble for playing on your phone?”
In 2013 I was going to a for-profit (yuck) university for computer networking. The class was about client/server networking. When I got “caught playing on my phone”, I showed the teacher with a big dumb grin on my face. Then he gave me extra credit.
A while later, one of the students got called out by the teacher because one by one he was distracting all the other students with whatever was on his laptop screen.
The teacher said “alright, turn your laptop around. Let’s see what’s on the screen.”
It was the Doritos Locos taco on Taco Bell’s “coming soon” wesbite.
“Holy shit!” yelled the teacher and he immediately pulled the website up on his laptop, projecting it on the wall where the slide deck had been, and the whole class analyzed the future taco
Bad Dream Last Night
in my dream I was too far from home and had to pull over. I figured out which way the targets were and got behind a wall. two girls were coloring on the ground. i heard gunshots in one of the nearby houses. lightning on a clear day. The sun came up casting shadows. more lighting. another sunrise.⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2d6jxf22y
⬆️ They kept coloring. fully exposed to the light from the “sunrise”. I wasn’t shielded like i thought i was and a couple of them blasted me in the back. It felt hot at first, as you would imagine. then numb and then like something wet and heavy was stuck to my back. it was my back, dead now and⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2izroqc2y
⬆️ already beginning to slough off. No point in telling them. Let them have this happy moment. If a shockwave didn’t take us out in the next few minutes, we had about 12 hours tops at this point. I thought about my own kids. Curiosity got the better of me and i turned around with my eyes basically ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2kywkpc2y
⬆️closed. i saw two mushroom clouds. wasn’t sure what one was over top of, but the other was some steel mill shipping ports. We’re close to an army base; when that gets bombed we’ll be vaporized. my kids are near an industrial center so they’ll meet the same fate. I tried not to think about them ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2oofazk2y
⬆️ I wondered if the nightmares i had as a little kid about UFOs in the sky seeing me and taking me away were some kind of omen – lights in the sky taking people. I wonder if this is what the Palestinians experience. The kids stopped coloring. “hey mister” one of them said. my alarm clock went off⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2sdf3r22y
⬆️ and I’m in bed. There’s no nuclear war. I’m safe. my family is safe. roof over our head. lights on. heat. food. television. Internet. I’m gonna get stressed about stupid stuff like Excel spreadsheets and bills instead of being vaporized with no one but frightened strangers around me. 🔚
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3ljs2wo5fm22y
Frustrating, Frightening, even Dangerous!
A thread from my Bluesky. The first post in the thread is linked below.
It’s frustrating when I call my ISP’s tech support and 𝗜 have to walk 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 through the process of getting me to the right person (usually by proving them wrong). I can live with 𝐟𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐅𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 is probably not going to kill me. But this thread isn’t about my ISP, it’s about my doctors⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhvwvdrn7c2d
⬆️When I call in to my doctor’s office because part of MyChart isn’t working, it’s not my health care provider (et al)’s job to fix it. No one in that office is their because of their IT training – they’re there to provide healthcare, not technical support. HOWEVER, since they are compelling their ⬇️
⬆️ patients to use MyChart, it 𝒊𝒔 their job to g͟e͟t͟ ͟i͟t͟ ͟f͟i͟x͟e͟d͟. Not to fix it, but to get it fixed. Why? Because they are the healthcare provider, and this is how they are providing healthcare. So when I call in to a doc’s office, and 𝑰 have to walk 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 through the process of how 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 open a ⬇️
⬆️ support ticket with MyChart, it’s more than just frustrating. See, I don’t know the “qualifications” of the person that answered the phone, and it doesn’t matter. They did not know their office’s procedure for when a 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒕 cannot access this 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 part of 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆 that they are 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈.⬇️
⬆️ Who’s fault is that? Leadership. It’s the managers’ jobs to make sure that the people are trained, and middle management’s job to make sure the managers have the training material and time to train, and upper management’s job to make sure that the resources (money) are available for training. But⬇️
⬆️What am I getting at? If the entire office staff (this is the case) does not know that they are supposed to open a support ticket, what else don’t they know? What if a patient has symptoms so bad that the doctor said “we need to watch this like a hawk. wear this monitor for x amount of time ⬇️
⬆️ starting today because we need results as soon as possible.” and the nurse gives the patient the wrong monitor AND wrong instructions, delaying subsequent tests and procedures when TIME IS A FACTOR? This is what happened to me in January. What if it wasn’t a heart monitor but the wrong med or ⬇️
⬆️ medication instructions? What if certain meds were supposed to be stopped before a test, but the instructions were incomplete and ambiguous so the meds weren’t stopped and the test results were skewed? That also happened to me. It’s the provider’s OBLIGATION to make these instructions clear ⬇️
⬆️and educate patients on their medication usage. So now back to the office that doesn’t know their proper procedures. One can make assumptions, but, how do I 𝑲𝑵𝑶𝑾 that my cardiologist isn’t also unaware of procedures? He could be performing heart surgery on me one day! So it’s beyond 𝒇𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 ⬇️
⬆️ it’s dangerous. Dangerous to the patients health/well-being/life. It’s literally a matter of life or death for patients with life-threatening illnesses. American Government: This is not how you build a country that wins. If your citizens are all sick and dying, sure it helps them stay indebted ⬇️
⬆️ to your “interests”, but what about when TheBoogieman™ finally comes and invades with millions of people? Who’s gonna protect your little bunkers once the military is overrun? Not the general population! they will all be too sick, or already dead, or just exhausted. 🔚
LINUX: I wanna set the record straight (This is about Linux)
Bluesky (https://bsky.app) is supressing this message for some silly reasson. I was able to copy/paste it from Clearsky at https://clearsky.app/anthonyscardina.com/history
I wanna set the record straight (maybe I make it a blog post as well) IDGAF personally what desktop operating system someone chooses. Period. If I see someone complaining about something stressing them the hell out, I would be remiss if I DIDN’T recommend an operating system that would solve that⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjkxxbpec26
⬆️problem they’re having AND I’m happy to walk them through the switch. As someone with years of training, education, experience, and expertise, it is my DUTY to reach out. It’s EVERYONE’S CIVIC DUTY to help their fellow human, and this is just one of the ways I do that. If this makes me a ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjl4rglvk26
⬆️ “reply guy” , then the professional in me says “so be it” but honestly the correct answer to me being labeled a “reply guy” is actually”eat shit and die” because A RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL SHIPS! Do not fucking keep that tide low and think that there are not repercussions to harming the overall ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjla3q3kk26
⬆️mental health of those individuals by suppressing the solutions to their problems, and thus harming the over all health of society! But what DOES piss me off? What fills me with righteous indignation? Is asshole mother fuckers that spread misinformation and misinformation about those solutions. ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjld77knk26
⬆️ Sometimes it’s not intentional, sometimes it is, but it is always someone implying that they are an expert when all they know is that it did not work for them flawlessly on the first try. This does not paint a complete picture, and dissuades people from using the solution that’s going to in the ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjlgqabys27
⬆️ long run better their mental health. and why do they do this? to boost their own ego? either consciously or subconsciously. they think that’s a good enough reason to further someone else’s suffering, no matter how minor? For those people, IT’S ON SIGHT! (where’s the Minecraft legal disclaimer?)🔚
https://bsky.app/profile/anthonyscardina.com/post/3lhjlje5kpk27