AStonesThrow

Are there any other glyphs you'd like to prohibit?

[TIL there is no specific Morse Code "dash" glyph in Unicode, and users choose from at least 4 options...]

Plagiarism has a long history, and the options are numerous, including using some other student's prior work, or paying a human "homework mill" overseas to research write your report for you. It's usually the differential in styles that will get you noticed, because a teacher gets to know their students and what they're capable of in the classroom.

Also, using a hyphen instead of an em dash isn't "incorrect"; it's a traditional way of writing, because most of us grew up with ASCII, and only the one key on our keyboards. Only a journalism or literature class would be concerned with teaching the distinction and marking points for using those.

I could list about 5-6 signals of LLM generation that I've noticed. Proceeding to investigations and accusations is discretionary, and shouldn't be taken lightly.

Chromium is typically the bundled browser, but around 2019 Google restricted certain aspects of Chromium under Linux, and in order to continue using things like browser login under Ubuntu, I needed to install Chrome instead.

Hardware acceleration perks seem like another feature that may have a Chrome/Chromium divide.

If you're using Search or an LLM for a business recommendation, you're already using the wrong tool for the job. Even before Google Maps ramped up, there was Yelp, craigslist, Tripadvisor...

[The keyword "PLEASE"] provides two reasons for the program's rejection by the compiler: if "PLEASE" does not appear often enough, the program is considered insufficiently polite, and the error message says this; if it appears too often, the program could be rejected as excessively polite. Although this feature existed in the original INTERCAL compiler, it was undocumented.

Anyone under 60 who hears heavy mechanical breathing expects someone to get choked in the next 5 minutes.

Talk about losing jobs: in the past, a document could go from a verbal dictation to a scribe taking notes, to an editor for redactions, to be set in movable type, and printed on a press.

Now it’s up to one person with a computer to do it all, and our scope and definition of literacy has expanded.

Someone writing a manuscript doesn’t have 3 different dashes: they just draw a line, short or long. Typewriters had a hyphen key only.

Maybe we can go back to "two spaces after each period".

Local Guides are ordinary unpaid Google accounts who submit reviews, photos, and other edits as I’ve detailed here. We are sometimes prompted to answer questions, but only with a blank to fill in.

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895?hl=en

Google says "We review all the edits you make."

Chances are, if you’re reading low-effort blog posts that are consistently in certain knowledge domains, they’re intending to apply for CEUs at renewal time.

Google Maps actually processes historical data about how busy the location is throughout the hours and each day of the week.

You can find this rendered as a little bar graph with a blurb describing the current estimate.

This is believed to be aggregated from everyone’s Android devices reporting their locations in a very small radius.

Also, Maps asks its users to answer extended questions about amenities. Such as: parking types, accessibility features, kid-friendly, vegan/vegetarian.

When I am on board a bus or light rail train, there is information about how full it is, what temperature, accessibility, etc. They are tracked in real time because the transit authority shares their live telemetry with Google. Once, Google had demonstrably wrong schedule information and I discovered that it reflected the official website’s version. (It was reporting every train canceled, but they were actually running.)

When I worked in an office in 2012, we were trying to get our arms around various listings in 3rd party "Yellow Pages" publications, on paper and online. It seems that compiling business listings has been around a long time. And every business needs a Social Media manager to be aware of their footprint and manage multiple sites like this. Yelp, TripAdvisor, you name it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Founding_(2013%E2%80%...

Buterin chose the name Ethereum after browsing a list of elements from science fiction on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_elements,_ma...

Also, “Ethereum” looks like a misspelling to me; even though we’ve got “petroleum” and “linoleum” my instinct is to replace it with the more common “-ium” ending from the Periodic Table.

However, I have never been inclined to pronounce or spell “Dubai” with a diaresis, because it’s an Arabic word with a diphthong.

I am a native speaker of American English, second language Spanish; polyglot including proficiency in Latin, Italian, Greek, Sanskrit, and Semitic family.

This is probably linked to the process for Search. It's called "crowdsourcing".

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038311

The article mentions having control of the Google Business Profile. It was sometimes called "Google My Business". You can register and verify that you're the owner, and then you'll have tools to reply to reviews and manage your own Maps entry, etc.

https://business.google.com/us/business-profile/

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#is-creative-commons-against...

Closed source is protected in other ways besides copyright. Trade secrets, confidentiality, NDA, proprietary ownership, obfuscation, and in the case of hardware, big globs of epoxy and other countermeasures to ensure nobody can get in and reverse-engineer it.

Part-time workers are often capped at 29 hours per week, due to tax considerations, such as the Affordable Care Act and other benefits. 30 hours is where the "full-time" label is applied there.

A wage-earning (non-exempt) worker must be paid overtime when they exceed full-time, which is typically a 40-hour maximum. Overtime pay may be "time and a half" or "double time" in certain circumstances.

Dolly Parton's feminist anthem "9 to 5" always mystified me: that's already 40 hours! Don't you stop to eat lunch? But that is the standard idiom for a "normal [office] job" in the States. Sometimes we refer to "banker's hours" which has the negative connotation that the worker never ever works outside that schedule.

There is a minor fandom controversy over the Ministry of Magic in the Wizarding World and whether the "Ministry for Magic" and "Minister for Magic" are valid alternate terms, but I have only identified one instance where JK Rowling wrote it this way, and it was outside the novels. Canonically, Harry turned 17 in 1997, so I suppose Tony Blair's reforms wouldn't apply post-Voldemort. However, Platform 9¾ is now "properly labelled" in the Muggles' King's Cross Station.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cmglee_London_Kings_...

Travellers should also mind the gap between "TfL" and "TLF Travel Alerts", a defunct account which was part of Weird Twitter, and somewhere I hope I can dig up an archive, because the daily alerts were comic genius in 140 characters or less.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paddington_Bear_Stat...

The arrival of Paddington Bear from Darkest Peru may be partly explained by the heating of the Tube stations. He surely would be right at home in a dark, humid and warm environment. My mother encouraged me to read about Paddington Bear, and in 2008 I was privileged to have a layover in Westminster, where I passed through Paddington Station and totally missed out on visiting the Paddington Bear statue therein. But I was able to purchase a refrigerator magnet bearing the "MIND THE GAP" official logo, which I presented to her in gratitude.

Perhaps some kids can circulate a list of those commercial products incorporating a Pi, and campaign to liberate and repurpose them. Win-win?

Oh, I think I get it: the “top” refers to the rising side of the bread and not the narrow end. Because the end is the “top” when I’m putting it in my mouth.

Signed,

A guy who doesn’t bake bread

We’re thinking of hypotheses and proposals and extrapolations here. A few scientists analyzed and compared existing data, and they estimate things and interpolate and ... guess ... And the narrative develops as they give facility tours and answer questions for journalists, 8-year-olds, and 8-year-old journalists.

Theories are hypotheses which were tested and survived falsification attempted against them. You cannot adequately falsify “800 million years ago, and 12 parsecs away...” but you can enjoy your colleagues’ version of the story over drinks with a jazz band.

It is called “amending the Constitution”.

The SCOTUS strikes down unconstitutional laws and is appointed to interpret constitutionality, by the Constitution that was ratified by the American People.

But the American People are the ones who originally ratified the version of that thing that annoys you so much and the American People were the very people who said that’s what SCOTUS needs to look like. (There is a dead giveaway in the first three words! Damn!)

Maybe we can just call in RuPaul to redesign their robes or something. Queer Eye For the Judge Guys. That could do the trick.

If the American People decide that we need laws that conflict with the Constitution, or that we need to abolish/reform the Supreme Court, then we simply ratify Amendments to do what the American People need done. Easy peasy, bro!

Yes, the IETF and Mozilla really put NSA in their place with SSL, but the publicized, primary reason for adoption was eCommerce.

As the NSF handed control of the backbone to Sprint and commerce was finally permitted, the vendors campaigned to secure http lest the consumer’s personal data and credit card details were snooped and scooped while in-flight.

The Internet was incubated in a high-trust environment and every collegiate sysadmin was secretly employed by the NSA (except for Chris Siebenmann who is a North Korean sleeper agent). Once they were able to receive paychecks from Jeff Bezos instead, they began installing malware on routers to replace porn with videos of dancing babies and kittens being totes adorbs.

SSL kept our credit cards safe from the NSA and our porn is no longer sponsored by the ASPCA. Whew.

Machine Learning CAPTCHA https://m.xkcd.com/2228/

- I'm not sure whether the headline was manipulative, but I expected some sort of miracle healing story where the "boy came back" by recovering 100% after the brush with death. As the narrative ended, I became irate that "changed life" meant living with the subsequent impairments.

- Nodding at the comment about "lest we try to finish the job" because of the various scandals accusing parents of the hoax "shaken baby syndrome" or turning them the wrong way while they slept

- Reminded again that Dr. House and Doc Martin are pure fiction, and NHS docs can't diagnose their way out of a paper sack -- another imaginary "SIDS" and even this time we have "SIDS without the D but call it SIDS anyway because we don't really care how it happened if it weren't criminal malevolent parents".

- Empathized with the perspective of the utterly bewildered naïvete of an obviously devoted and sensitive husband-father. He's thrust into a medical emergency unprepared and trying to deal with screaming, uncertain futures, a conga line of health care professionals, and the machines they wield, and the promises they can't make.

Libraries are high-tech and high-maintenance. If the community prioritizes their mission and invests in them, it works out. Sometimes, not so good.

There is a growing and aging population simply fending for themselves. Is that what A.I. is supposed to “solve”?