2025 – Page 9

Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

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Our scanning system wasn’t intended to support this style of notation. Why, then, were we being bombarded with so many ASCII tab ChatGPT screenshots? I was mystified for weeks — until I messed around with ChatGPT myself and got this:

Turns out ChatGPT is telling people to go to Soundslice, create an account and import ASCII tab in order to hear the audio playback. So that explains it!

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Adrian Holovaty

With ChatGPT’s inclination to lie about the features of a piece of technology, it was only a matter of time before a frustrated developer actually added a feature that ChatGPT had imagined, just to stop users from becoming dissatisfied when they tried to use nonexistent tools that ChatGPT told them existed.

And this might be it! This could be the very first time that somebody’s added functionality based on an LLM telling people the feature existed already.

Adrian Holovaty runs a tool that can “read” scanned sheet music and provide a digital representation to help you learn how to play it. But after ChatGPT started telling people that his tool could also read ASCII-formatted guitar tablature, he went and implemented it!

His blog post’s got more details, and it’s worth a read. This could be a historic moment that we’ll look back on!

Please Fix This Site? Okay!

This week, digital agency Humidity Studios launched PleaseFixThisSite.com, a website with a deliberately awful design aesthetic.

Screenshot of PleaseFixThisSite.com, featuring all of the design sins described below. — Honestly, I’ve seen worse.

Inspired by XKCD 3113 “Fix This Sign”, the site features marquee animations, poor font choices, wonky rotation and alignment, and more.

Like the comic, it aims to “extort” people offended by the design choices by allowing them to pay to fix them. Once fixed, a change is fixed for everybody… at least, until somebody pays to “reset” the site back to its catastrophic mode.

XKCD comic. Transcript: [A single panel containing a large, elevated sign with Ponytail standing in front of it.] [Title, slightly off horizontal, more to the right than central and the character spacing is not entirely consistent/aesthetic:] Doanate[sic] to fix this sign! [To the left of the lower part of the sign there is an 'QR code', tilted slightly with a plaintext link beneath it:] https://[illegible].com [To the right are several dollar values, in one column, and 'fixes', in a second, some of which have their own self-demonstrating quirks.] [The letters "R" and "N" may be too close together:] $10 fix kerning [Both dollar value and fix text are shifted left of their respective columns:] $20 align columns [This line is in a smaller font:] $20 fix text size $50 fix typo $50 fix centering $100 fix rotation [Ponytail stands looking at the sign, apparently in the process of using a smartphone:] Grrr... [Caption below panel:] My new company's business model is based on extorting graphic designers. — I can’t criticise Humidity Studios for taking a stupid idea from XKCD and taking it way too far, because, well, there’s *this* site that I run…

That’s cute and all, but the difference between a billboard and a web page is, of course, that a web page is under the viewer’s control. Once it’s left the server and reached your computer, there’s nothing the designer can to do stop you editing a page in any way you like. That’s just how the Web works!

A great way to do this is with userscripts: Javascript content that is injected into pages by your browser when you visit particular pages. Mostly by way of demonstration, I gave it a go. And now you can, too! All you need is a userscript manager plugin in your browser (my favourite is Violentmonkey!) and to install my (open source) script.

I enjoyed the art of the joke that is PleaseFixThisSite.com. But probably more than that, I enjoyed the excuse to remind you that by the time you’re viewing a Web page, it’s running on your computer, and you can change it any way you damn well please.

Don’t like the latest design of your favourite social network? Want to reinstate a feature of a popular video playing site? Need a dark mode to spare your eyes on a particular news publication? Annoyed by artificial wait times before you’re “allowed” to click a download button? There’s probably a userscript for all of those. And if there isn’t, you can have a go at writing one. Userscripts are great, and you should be using them.

Zip It – Finding File Similarity Using Compression Utilities

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Computerphile

This was an enjoyable video. Nothing cutting-edge, but a description of an imaginative use of an everyday algorithm – DEFLATE, which is what powers most of the things you consider “ZIP files” – to do pattern-matching and comparison between two files. The tl;dr is pretty simple:

Lossless compression works by looking for repetition, and replacing the longest/most-repeated content with references to a lookup table.
Therefore, the reduction-in-size from compressing a file is an indicator of the amount of repetition within it.
Therefore, the difference in reduction-in-size of compressing a single file to the reduction-in-size of compressing a pair of files is indicative of their similarity, because the greatest compression gains come from repetition of data that is shared across both files.
This can be used, for example, to compare the same document written in two languages as an indication of the similarity of the languages to one another, or to compare the genomes of two organisms as an indication of their genetic similarity (and therefore how closely-related they are).

I love it when somebody finds a clever and novel use for an everyday tool.

Dan Has Too Many Monitors

My new employer sent me a laptop and a monitor, which I immediately added to my already pretty-heavily-loaded desk. Wanna see?

It’s a video. Click it to play it, of course.

Firstup Day 1

Off to my first day at Firstup. Gotta have an induction: get my ID badge, learn where the toilets are, how to refill the coffee machine, and all that jazz.

Except, of course, none of those steps will be part of my induction. Because, yet again, I’ve taken a remote-first position. I’m 100% sold that, for me, remote/distributed work helps me bring my most-productive self. It might not be for everybody, but it’s great for me.

And now: I’m going to find out where the water cooler is. No, wait… some other thing!

Hotdog Among the Trees

As the UK’s heatwave continues, the dog and I were delighted that this morning was sufficiently overcast that we could manage a proper walk without completely melting.

Her breed copes badly with the heat and we’ve lately had to keep her indoors or in the shade more than she’d like, so a chance to run around among the trees was very welcome!

Waves Hand Car Wash

I know how I’m SUPPOSED to read it, but when I see this I can’t help but imagine a conversation like…

“What shall we call our car wash?”

/waves hand/ “I dunno.”

Person Rowing Boat

On our family Slack, Ruth and I have a tradition of reacting to one another’s messages, where no other emoji seems appropriate, with a “person rowing boat” emoji.

🚣

I can’t remember exactly how it started. Possibly one of us was using the text search to find the “robot” emoji (probably in reference to our robot vacuum cleaner, which used to be more-frequently found hiding under the sofa than anywhere else in the world).

🤖

But whatever the reason, the game stuck. And because you can leave multiple emoji responses to a Slack message – and because Unicode permits a diversity of gender and skin tone options for this particular emoji – sometimes this results in a whole flotilla of rowboats parading beneath our messages.

🚣‍♂️🚣🏻‍♀️🚣🏻🚣🏼🚣🏻‍♂️🚣🏾🚣🏿🚣🏼‍♂️🚣🏽‍♂️🚣🏾‍♂️🚣🏽🚣🏽‍♀️🚣🏾‍♀️🚣🏼‍♀️🚣‍♀️🚣🏿‍♂️🚣🚣🏿‍♀️

And if an emoji armada isn’t an excuse to demonstrate the fact that the <marquee> tag still works in most browsers, for some reason, I don’t know what is.

The Local Historian

Back in 2021, as part of a course I was doing at work, I made a video talking about The Devil’s Quoits, a henge and stone circle near where I live.

Video screengrab of Dan standing in front of some standing stones. — It started with a fascination after discovering a little-known stone circle near my new house. It grew into an obsession with the history of the place.

Two years later, our eldest was at school and her class was studying the stone age. Each of three groups were tasked with researching a particular neolithic monument, and our eldest was surprised when she heard my voice coming from a laptop elsewhere in the class. One of her classmates had, in their research into the Quoits, come across my video.

And so when their teacher arranged for a school trip to the Devil’s Quoits, she asked if I could go along as a “local expert”. And so I did.

On a sunny day, Dan sits with his back to a stone, more of the circle visible in the background. — It turns out “local expert” just means “I read the only book ever written about the archaeology of the stones, and a handful of ancillary things.”

And so this year, when another class – this time featuring our youngest – went on a similar school trip, the school asked me to go along again.

I’d tweaked my intro a bit – to pivot from talking about the archaeology to talking about the human stories in the history of the place – and it went down well: the children raised excellent observations and intelligent questions¹, and clearly took a lot away from their visit. As a bonus, our visit falling shortly after the summer solstice meant that local neopagans had left a variety of curious offerings – mostly pebbles painted with runes – that the kids enjoyed finding (though of course I asked them to put each back where they were found afterwards).

But the most heartwarming moment came when I later received an amazing handmade card, to which several members of the class had contributed:

A hand-coloured card, saying 'Thank you so much', with a child's drawing of somebody talking about Bell Beaker people and a photo of Dan showing pictures of pots to a class of schoolchildren. — I particularly enjoy the pencil drawing of me talking about the breadth of Bell Beaker culture, with a child interrupting to say “cool!”.

I don’t know if I’ll be free to help out again in another two years, if they do it again²: perhaps I should record a longer video, with a classroom focus, that shares everything I know about The Devil’s Quoits.

But I’ll certainly keep a fond memory of this (and the previous) time I got to go on such a fun school trip, and to be an (alleged) expert about a place whose history I find so interesting!

Footnotes

¹ Not every question the children asked was the smartest, but every one was gold. One asked “is it possible aliens did it?” Another asked, “how old are you?”, which I can only assume was an effort to check if I remembered when this 5,000-year-old hengiform monument was being constructed…

² By lucky coincidence, this year’s trip fell during a period that I was between jobs, and so I was very available, but that might not be the case in future!

Doxxing an Imaginary Person?

This morning, Google pulled a video from YouTube belonging to my nonprofit Three Rings. This was a bit of a surprise.

Apparently the video – which is a demo of some Three Rings features – apparently fell foul of Google’s anti-doxxing rules. I’m glad that they have anti-doxxing rules, of course.

Let’s see who I doxxed:

Yup… apparently doxxed an imaginary person with two structurally-invalid phone numbers and who’s recently moved house from Some Street to Other Street in the town of Somewhereville. 😂

(Maybe I’m wrong. Do you live on Some Street, Somewhereville?)

Let’s see what YouTube’s appeals process is like, shall we? 🤦

Dan Q found GCA6CCW Purple door

This checkin to GCA6CCW Purple door reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

It’s possible that cycling this path wasn’t the wisest idea, I realised, as I dodged brambles on both sides. So focused was I on riding safely that I forgot which GPSr I’d brought with me and listening for the beep it gives when I get close to my target… only realised 120m after the fact that I was using the GPSr that doesn’t give an audible beep and I’d overshot!

Doubled back and gave an extended hunt for the cache before finding it in pieces. Looks like it’s been wilfully vandalised (see photo). Returned the pieces to approximately where I figure they’re meant to live.

Love the idea, hope it can be fully repaired soon!

Dan Q found GCADCWF Treasure island

This checkin to GCADCWF Treasure island reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

After an appointment in Witney I opted to divert my cycle home to find this and the other cache on the same path. After cycling down to the GZ (past the noisiest sheep I’ve ever heard!) I was pleased to discover that the recent weather has left the island very dry, and I’d be in no risk of damp feet.

Brambles were a minor threat, but soon the cache was in hand. SL. Outer container has a damaged hinge; just needs a few screws to repair, and it’s not urgent. TFTC!

Historical Tech Tree

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Étienne Fortier-Dubois

This wonderful project, released six weeks ago, attempts the impossible challenge of building a Civilization-style tech tree but chronicling the development and interplay of all of the actual technological innovations humanity has ever made. Even in its inevitably-incomplete state, it’s inspiring and informative. Or, as Open Culture put it:

Our civilization has made its way from stone tools to robotaxis, mRNA vaccines, and LLM chatbots; we’d all be better able to inhabit it with even a slightly clearer idea of how it did so.

Colin Marshall (for Open Culture)

Unrepentant Blep

The unrepentant bleppy face of a dog who, without fail, steals the warm spot I’ve left behind on the sofa within like three seconds of me standing up.

All The Pondweed, So Many Pondweed

Have I posted this joke before? It’s all a Blur.

Accessible description: Dan, a white man with a goatee beard and a faded blue ponytail, stands in a darkened kitchen. Turning to the camera, he says “I get up when I want, except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the tadpoles.” Then he holds up a book entitled “Pond Life”.