Notices by James Thomson (jamesthomson@mastodon.social)

If I ever meet the person who introduced spammers to LLMs, we are going to have a problem.

Well, I guess I won’t be filing any more bugs then.

I can see some _maybe_ semi-legitimate uses for training an LLM on developer content - like _potentially_ on dev forums or something like that. But not on my sysdiagnose logs that in the same dialog it says might contain sensitive information, and with apparently no opt-out.
https://hachyderm.io/@cocoafrog/114355281286615868

“Updating all your devices” is the new “setting all your clocks”.

Dice by PCalc 2.8 is out now (finally)!

This release of my #ttrpg dice rolling app adds support for iOS 18 and macOS 15, including Control Center buttons for quick rolling, and dark and tinted icons.

As well as four new themes, there’s also a new picker which makes it easier to see all the visual options for dice in one place.

iOS:
https://pcalc.com/store/dice

Mac:
https://pcalc.com/store/dicemac

I regret to inform you that three babies were given the name Elon in Scotland in 2024, up from zero for the last fifty years.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/babies-first-names-2024/

I would bet a non-trivial amount of money that Apple will also switch off Advanced Data Protection in the US within the year, because they just handed a blueprint to every government around the world that wants to spy on their citizens.

Strangely, this BBC article doesn't use the phrase “human shield" once.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgerr2jvkgo

@NanoRaptor
You do dinosaur comics, apparently! So you are… Ryan North?

Tried out the new and popular “Deepseek” LLM with my standard “tell me facts about the author of PCalc” query. At least half were misleading or straight up hallucinations. LLMs are not a suitable technology for looking up facts, and anybody who tells you otherwise is… probably trying to sell you a LLM.

Now is a great time to enthusiastically confirm your support for LGBTQ+ rights - particularly those of trans and enby folks at the moment - and the rights of women, BIPOC communities, and anybody else that the new US administration is actively trying to oppress.

I wholeheartedly support the rights of all of these people.

It shouldn't need to be said, but right now it _does_ need to be said. If you are able, consider donating to organisations that are trying to protect them.

I am starting to suspect that the sites actually know that I'm not a robot, and just want to me to train their self-driving cars for free.

@sinbad I have to say, I am thankful I didn’t move every single day!

I wrote up the 25th anniversary of the unveiling of the Mac OS X Dock at Macworld Expo, from the perspective of a scared twenty-something engineer.

It's me. I'm the engineer.

https://tla.systems/blog/2025/01/04/i-live-my-life-a-quarter-century-at-a-time/

Time to update all those copyright strings.

Every AI story like this, my faith in the technology reporting of the BBC slips a bit further:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2evjxev4jo

Love this annoying window inside Photoshop which has all the design sensibilities of a malicious popup on a porn website.

PCalc is 50% off from now through Monday for our Black Friday sale! That's only $4.99 USD.

iOS / iPadOS / watchOS / visionOS:
https://pcalc.com/store/pcalc

macOS:
https://pcalc.com/store/pcalcmac

This has been a difficult year personally, and I know my updates have been slow as a result, so your patience with me is appreciated!

Anyway, yes, I'll do a Black Friday sale, but _next_ week.

So, guess who has two thumbs and was so tired he got the date for Black Friday wrong.

Babe, are you ok? You’ve barely touched your Blåhaj Mountain.