Notices by Dr. Drang (drdrang@fosstodon.org)

If there had been a DOGE 50-60 years ago, it would’ve killed ARPANET. Waste of money.

Like ChatGPT and Claude, Gemini 2.5 (which is supposed to be very good) failed my currency counting test, even after several prompts with hints. The weirdest part is that it came back with same answer after being told it was wrong. The extreme obsequiousness of its answers makes me think its training was limited to the Uriah Heep dialog in David Copperfield.

I’m so glad the tariff announcement came the day after Tim Cook’s stocks vested. It would’ve been just terrible if he had to sell them at what today’s price is likely to be.

☃️ The quickest way I have to look up synonyms.
https://leancrew.com/all-this/2025/03/using-the-built-in-thesaurus-on-the-mac/

Not sure what my favorite part of this is, but I’m leaning toward WebEx.

Exclusive: Apple Unveils Shamrock M4 MacBook Air https://joe-steel.com/2025-03-17-Exclusive-Apple-Unveils-Shamrock-M4-MacBook-Air.html

☃️ A couple of Shortcuts and home screen icons to help you skip past the political news.
https://leancrew.com/all-this/2025/03/direct-links-to-apple-news-sections/

Think of what Siri is like now, then imagine how bad the “personaized” version must be for Apple to hold back its release.

I went to the Census Bureau’s website to look at the data table design manual mentioned in a recent Talk Python episode. The page is unavailable for “maintenance” because a publication from the 40s is too PC/woke/CRT/DEI for us now.

I want to make a Shortcut with a while loop, but I can’t find an action that repeats until a condition is met. What am I missing?

Apparently, I’m not missing anything. There really isn’t a while loop in Shortcuts. My options are:

1. Use a Repeat loop with an artificially high count and stop the shortcut when a condition is met. Ugly.

2. Use recursion, which is fine but pretty computer sciencey for a language that’s meant to be for the masses.

My distain for Shortcuts grows deeper.

Mars is about two Moon diameters away from the Moon right now. Will go behind the Moon in a couple of hours. It’s a very clear night in the Chicago area; seeing this makes the cold that comes with cloudless skies worth it.

Geese huddled together to defend themselves against a huge iceberg floating down the DuPage River.

@cstross I wasn’t looking for deference, just thought.

@cstross These comments (however true they may be) might have been appropriate next to Kissinger’s obituary, but not Carter’s.

My favorite Bill Atkinson story. I wish him all the best.

https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html?sort=date

However things turn out tonight, being reminded (by news of a provision in his will) that Henry Kissinger is dead is a real pick-me-up.

This morning, the package that was absolutely going to be delivered yesterday is “now expected by October 3.” Quite a difference, and not the sort of update that’s going to make me look favorably on the Rejoin Prime button you’ve thoughtfully placed just below it.

I’m going to suggest, Amazon, that if my package is still not “out for delivery,” that there’s very little chance of it “arriving today by 10 pm.” This sort of thing is what got me to drop my Prime membership earlier this year. Late deliveries were less amusing when I was paying for them.

@shelly That’s what they want you to think. But delivery became increasingly unreliable for me with Prime, which is why I bailed.

I fear this fix will be wiped out by every minor update to Sequoia, but it’s worth a try.

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/8/10.html