Farcebook

Category: Technology

  • If you use ChatGPT to help you learn things, you’re an idiot.

    If you use ChatGPT to help you learn things, you’re an idiot.

    So I thought I’d do some research… But I was wise, I know ChatGPT has a bit of a habit of making up stuff. So I thought “I’ll get you… tell me where you get your information from”.

    I know, “interesting” and “COBOL” is a big ask…

    None of the URLs actually work. They’re all 100% fake. The second response is quite good though – “I made up URLs that look like the kind of URLs you should be looking for when researching this stuff”. So it knows what a URL is, and treats it exactly the same as written text – “you want to know about Cobol? Here’s some words that people string together when talking about this”.

    It does this with code too – “when people write database apps, this is the pattern they all seem to follow. You should go look for code that looks like this…”

    It’s not giving answers, it’s giving us the shape of what an answer looks like, so when we go and search the web ourselves we know what to look for. It’s drawing the perfect looking but false McDonald’s burger you see on the advert, so that when you get the crushed slop in a box they really serve, you can recognise it.

    This folks is why we’re trying to stop kids from using ChatGPT and friends in their work. It generates plausible looking nonsense.

    Life must suck as an English teacher, since they’re trying to teach kids how to write their own plausible looking nonsense. “Write me a story that contains a badger, a horse and a trip to the moon”. ChatGPT could do that well, it’d be hard to tell that from a human made up story.

  • Got a refund from the TV Licensing people!

    Got a refund from the TV Licensing people!

    No really, I did. This is like the “Bank error in your favour” card in Monopoly.

    For those of you from far-off lands, the concept of needing a licence might seem a bit weird. A TV isn’t some dangerous weapon that needs careful monitoring, nor is it some large lump of dangerous metal. But we here in the UK have the concept of a TV licence. You might know it by another name – the BBC Tax since the payment of a TV licence is used to fund the BBC. That wholesome and benevolent arm of the government we trust with honest and impartial news, quality programming and an utter lack of adverts.

    For those of you in the UK who are so deeply embedded in the culture that tea flows through your veins and you have a red, white and blue mottled look like a stick of rock, the concept of being able to cancel your TV licence might seem a bit odd. Just know you can do it, and it’s only a slightly difficult bureaucratic process where the unmarked part of the TV licence website is in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory – regular British efficiency you’re used to.

    I might get pestered with mildly threatening letters in the future when they think I might need to pay them again. The whole thing is kind of comical and so very very British.

    But yeah anyway my house doesn’t have a TV aerial and ever since Dr Who turned shit I’ve stopped watching iPlayer and I can’t see the point of paying for a service I don’t use. Also it’s perfectly OK for you to continue paying yours, even if your only reason is to do it out of principle. 🫖

    Also notice how I spelled it “licence” consistently even though it say “license” on the letter. That’s because I know how to use my own language…

  • Almost UV light from RGBW LEDs

    Almost UV light from RGBW LEDs

    So it turns out the RGBW LED light strip in my living room has some almost-UV component to its blue light. It is almost UV enough to make some things fluoresce quite vivid colours.

  • According to Fitbit, gardening is cycling

    According to Fitbit, gardening is cycling

    One of FitBit’s more useful features is its ability to automatically detect exercise. I think it uses a combination of your heart rate and how the device is moving.

    The pattern of motion and heart rates must be categorised by FitBit so the app can tell the difference between “swimming” and “running”, etc.

    It’s not a precise system though. Yesterday I went skating for a few hours, and then spent the afternoon working on my allotment.

    I can see how walking and skating are similar. They both take relatively low amounts of effort and have a rhythmic stepping pattern.

    Gardening and cycling though don’t seem that similar. Then I remembered I spent a while using my awesome battery powered rotavator to turn over some of the ground, and I guess the shaking of my arms and the effort of trying to stop the thing escaping looks a bit similar to a bike rolling along a dirt track.

    This is a bike now. Probably not comfortable to sit on!
  • I bought an Android tablet, it’s alright…

    I bought an Android tablet, it’s alright…

    It’s not amazing, it’s not crap. Android tablets have always been a bit weird, either oddly sized with strange screen resolutions or manky and broken addon software. Or they’re fine but never receive an Android update ever and do strange things like crash if you rotate them.

    My iPad is on its way out. The battery gets to about 50% and then the device just switches off. No low battery warning, it just dies. Yes I’ve rebooted it, yes I’ve farted about in the settings, no nothing works. Also no I’m not going to open it and replace the battery it’ll break the screen.

    Also there’s bits of iOS that are really starting to annoy me every time I try to use the device. The predictive text is nonsense – I remember when this used to just fix spelling, now it looks at grammar and will swap words based on what it thinks you’re typing. And copying and pasting is still garbage. Why can’t I highlight text inside a Facebook Messenger message?

    So I got an Android tablet. It’s a Lenovo P11 or something. It has a real keyboard and a little kickstand. It’s like Lenovo looked at the Surface Pro and thought “we’ll have some of that!”.

    It’s alright. It’s not that fantastic, and the out of box experience was terrible. Like, half the time the Android setup wizard called it a “phone”, and then kept tripping over itself with updates appearing over the wizard, and the wizard trying to redo parts it had already done.

    You know, typical third party Android device behaviour. And I had to uninstall some free games. And try the update to Android 12 three times before it would install it.

    The keyboard is a strange thing. Clipping it on activates “productivity mode” where it all becomes a bit like a Chromebook. There’s a little taskbar and apps go into windows that can be moved around the screen. It’s not bad.

    It has some bizarre quirks though. Android 12 seems to have some wanky “Entertainment Space” that hovers at the side of the screen. And no matter how many times I tell Android to turn this off, it just gets turned right back on every time I rotate the display or detach the keyboard.

    Being used to a Surface Pro, and an iPad with a “smart cover” I’m used to shutting the lid and the device going to sleep.

    Despite this being the official keyboard from Lenovo, with little magnets to hold it shut, closing the keyboard to the screen doesn’t put the device to sleep.

    Do people not use the devices, think about stuff and go “hey, we need to shut the screen off when they close it…” or “my, when we rotate the device with the keyboard attached the wallpaper goes a funny size and the icons get mixed up”?

    But, you know, it was cheaper than an iPad and has a metal case. It’s alright. I managed to fix my website using SSH through it and the lack of an escape key didn’t cause too much of a hassle.