Notices by Stephen Foskett (sfoskett@techfieldday.net)

Oh god no. Do not use GenAI art in your slide deck ESPECIALLY when it’s littered with errors. It’s embarrassing to see this on stage at a big event.

It's surprising to see Elon Musk of all people ranting about "illegals" given that he and his brother did not have legal immigration status when they started Zip2 (the foundation of his wealth) in 1996. He now claims it was "a grey area" but they definitely violated immigration law.

Washington Post gift article:
https://wapo.st/4e0PdyI

Does anyone want a pair of Cisco AIR-AP1832I wireless access points?

Pay shipping or they go in the trash.

@fifilamoura @alanferrier @aral Privatizing public goods and then being surprised when they prioritize profit over quality is a very American trait that England apparently imported.

@jimcarroll but have you heard the term “formal name” before? Maybe I’m in an alternate dimension

I just called E*Trade with an account question. Is this weird?

Them: “I just need your formal name to get started”
Me: “Was that a question?”
Them: “Yes, please give your formal name”
Me: "My what?”
Them: “Your formal name"
Me: “... my what name? What does that mean?”
Them: “Your formal name"
Me: “Ok I don't know what a formal name is but here's my name…”

Is “formal name" a thing people are aware of?

@bplein @jimcarroll Are there instructions on how to move from a native (naked) to a dockerized version of Mastodon? I would so prefer to be running in containers but it was iffy when I started this instance last year.

I hate that every useful application (Dropbox, Zoom, Zencastr, etc) wants to be an all-encompassing platform. Just stop. Make your core product great, charge for it, and get out of the way.

Here’s an excellent and readable FAQ about #Ohio Issue 1. Washington Post Gift Article link: https://wapo.st/45dg5az

@glennf @edbott @briankrebs I literally stopped The Bear and asked my wife if she was ok. She was so stressed I thought something had happened to a family member or something! But no she was just really into The Bear!

@edbott @glennf @briankrebs That's the next episode for us to watch! :-)

@atomicpoet I’m old enough to remember when people were panicking about companies joining THE INTERNET and ruining it. Now some might argue that they did, but lots of good stuff happened here over the last three decades too. And here we are building our own social network.

Like you I think it’s not the end of times for Meta to connect. Just an opportunity to legitimize ActivityPub and for more people to see the green grass on our side.

@jimcarroll This is my next challenge (after getting out of the SES sandbox): Integrating the signup process and getting off the (actually quite good) Mailchimp Wordpress plugins

@jimcarroll I installed Sendy and am migrating over from Mailchimp. Thanks for the suggestion!

@jimcarroll yeah that was my worry. Anti spam has made it difficult to self host email

@jimcarroll thanks for the tip! Since it uses SES the messages will get through, right?

So #Mailchimp has drastically raised prices on anyone with more than 500 subscribers, regardless of how few emails you send. This is challenging for light mailers like me with more than that many subscribers...

What's a good alternative to Mailchimp for #newsletters? I'm not opposed to paying, but Mailchimp's cheapest plan is $26.50 per month, and that's quite a lot for a hobby site!

Wow! Just noticed that my plane to San Francisco this morning was just delivered to United on February 27, 2023. A brand new plane! #TFD27

@horse O-H-…

Let’s be clear: #ChatGPT and now #Bing are not #AI: They are a #LLM that simulates a working AI. There is no intelligence to their outputs, but it’s so convincing that we think there is. This is a Potemkin village not a productive solution.