sweasel.com

Black-footed ferrets & plague: https://youtu.be/vySjeGnPlMk?si=Y4rE9TqKny0Fcn1H

You are so right about plugins…a colleague did a website for a client and he installed all these crappy security plugins, he’s moved on to other things now…so now I’m managing a site that keeps sending me ‘site lockout notifications’…the site still works and I don’t have to edit it but every time I get one of those, I think of my pain in the butt former colleague.

I prefer Joomla to WordPress for anything more complicated than a blog.

What AI thingie should I use to win the next Dead Pool?

I guess I’ll find out whether I get to edit this right after I mash the Submit button. Here goes!

Totally unsurprising answer: No. No edit. It’s a plug-in, AL, and we ain’t got none a dat.

A fair trade-off, though. We lose a nicety and stoaty wins stable less aggravating admin duty. No gripes!

I still miss that “Sneak and Ye Shall Find” running weasel page header, though! That was SWEET!

About 10 years ago I moved off blogspot to host my own website. I used WordPress, rather than some weird techie thing figuring for ONCE in my life, I’d follow the mob. WP was all right. It was clunky and got clunkier as it tried to push me toward “content”. I turned off free comments so people had to be registered because of the spam, then I turned off the registration because spam, then I discovered I was being spammed through the API. Then I got the “You have to upgrade PHP” thing and…

I went to ChatGPT and said, “You know what? Let’s just make it a static site. I’ll keep the editor local and push things.” It literally can’t be hacked any more. The local editor does exactly what I need and is blazingly fast (because it’s local). The site itself is blazingly fast because it’s not hitting a database, just serving up files.

Whenever I need a new feature, I just make it. I added a comment system. I created a traffic analysis page, also local. Hell, I made a button that literally prepares an entry for Ace’s, which has always been a PITA.

This was done just talking to ChatGPT and cutting & pasting. I’ve also used Codex, Claude CLI and Grok Build—the last of which is pretty amazing, in that I’m basically having it rebuild a complex desktop app for the Web, and I’ve yet to open my IDE.

I’m all about caution and there are a lot of ways these things are dangerous but, man, they’ve gotten super useful the past year.

“He told me AI is starting to frighten him.”

People like that frighten me.

I my confused head AI is either demons (don’t laugh) or just a really fast search engine with great predictive text ability.

My fear comes from people who believe it’s ‘alive’ and want to give it the power to do… anything. I recently read – lost the link – that the Department of War is looking at integrating it into defence systems. And now we’ve arrived at the Great Filter, and boy howdy I hope it doesn’t go pear shaped.

The animations were all Flash, Uncle Al, and they discontinued it. It was some kind of safety risk, I think. I did find a site that lets you upload Flash modules and then play them, but it’s not really shareable to you all.

Quetz, he didn’t really elaborate, but in the context of the conversation, I think he meant we aren’t prepared for all the things AI is going to be doing. He runs an autonomous agent that does a lot of things he used to do by hand. I’m finding that, too – although AI still has to be watched for hallucinations.

It feels like we’re stepping into a new chapter in technology and society, just as big as the machine age, jet age, or computer age. We’re still in the early days of this new era, and we’re just starting to figure out what the technology can and can’t do, Progress will be incredibly fast, especially when it comes to technology.

I’m a bit concerned about how society will adjust. In just a few generations, we’ve moved people from the countryside to bustling cities filled with factories. Now, we’re about to hand over those factories to machines, and the very reason cities exist might be disappearing. People used to gather in cities to make the most of their work and transport, so cities grew up near ports or train stations. Now, cities are more like barns or chicken coops, making it easier to get food and other things to everyone.

So far, it looks like cities are starting to fall apart and become less livable.

Editor’s Note: I allowed ChatGPT to edit the above for clarity “in a friendly tone.”
It actually didn’t change a lot, but it did add “Don’t Worry” a couple times. I have removed those particular edits: I DO worry.