Ross Wintle

Does anyone I know use a cheap (<£100) graphics tablet? Any recommendations?

Wacom is the brand I know. But the generic Chinese things seem to be good value too.

@chris@mastodon.chriswiegman.com It’s gonna be so cheesy. But so very beautiful.

I think that this was this Computerphile video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-0HRzXk8vlk

@ross@crikey.social

I’m so stuck. I read an article this last… week? Fortnight? About LLM coding agents and how they created so much context. It had lots of numbers about how a 50-token short question adds up all the files and inputs as tokens of input.

Do you know where this is? It’s not in ANY of my digital brain!

It's kinda sad when folks involved in open source projects say “I don't think we should do X because agents have got really good at doing Y”.

It's mad that we decide that we should leaning into doing things the way that agents are good at.

They're supposed to be intelligent. They're supposed to be good at the things humans do. We should do the humans thing. Because humans will always be here.

This seems especially true for a project that wants to “democratise" things.

RE: @jillbinder@mastodon.social

Jill did some speaker coaching for me. She's brilliant! And this sounds like such an amazing programme.

@tommertron@masto.yttrx.com Hey Tom! Great to see the updates to macAppLibrary. I noticed a 1.4 today.

Can I point out that the download link on https://coefficiencies.com/apps/macapplibrary/ is still for v1.0?

You can hack the URL to update the version and that works, but people can't easily get the updates.

Perhaps you know? Am I missing something?

Thanks so much - gonna try out the API today! :-)

I just came across Neeto software products. If true, this is an amazing model: https://neetorecord.com/pricing-philosophy

Anyone using these products?

I’m imagining a rented, non-deterministic dishwasher that only gets some things clean some of the time, and occasionally makes things dirtier.

- You can rent three of them and once the first one is done you can move the dishes to the second one, and so on.
- You can then also buy two more sets of crockery/cutlery and use whichever comes out cleanest.

But as long as you keep renting them, washing up is dead!!

RE: @tinker@infosec.exchange

Oh wow - I need to read this about 8 times, and then think hard about who seems to like using AI and who doesn’t.

This could be a thing.

I’m in a mood. Just as well my main co-worker is in the US and gets me in a few hours time!!

Yo! Frickin, B-Corps and “healthy” food companies. Please please please make recycling instructions for you weird might-be-paper-might-be-compostable-might-not-be-recyclable-at-all packaging REALLY CLEAR. Because the people eating this stuff also want to do the right thing. And you’re not helping them.

B-CORPS!!!

😩

I try not to use Amazon. But for things that are much easier to get there than anywhere else, I have found the free delivery code!!!! (For where I live, at least)

- Say no to Prime Delivery
- Choose to pickup instead of have delivered
- There’s a free, standard delivery option!

Perhaps this helps someone?

A prediction: After plugins that use skills that use MCP servers backed by APIs finally let people take actions by chat, people will decide they don’t actually like typing potentially-ambiguous commands in human language, and will ask if some visual interface can be built on top of the chat bot to allow them to issue it more precise commands.

I’m one idiot who’s often wrong. But I believe people only want chatboxes because UIs suck.

We should just build better UIs!

From BlueSky: "The Child, aged 17, witheringly asks "where did you hear that? ChatGPT?" when I've said something she thinks is stupid."

I don't understand why it isn't more telling that we can detect AI by looking for low quality. I do it at work. Kids are doing it everywhere.

Low quality images. Rambling, incorrect text. Poorly structured code and software that breaks.

🤷‍♂️

After completing a popular, daily, online, letter-based puzzle with two moves to spare, I have suggested to my son that “Wördlinfor” would be a good D&D character name.

He is totally running with this idea.

I was talking to someone about money today.

I'd love for us to talk more about money. Like... in detail. But it's such a taboo.

I’d love a way for people to be able to anonymously share their financial situations so I can compare because I have no idea if our future is good or bad or what.

Does this exist?

I wanted to get a re-worked Turbo Admin command palette using native HTML dialog in the next release, but it's really fiddly (not because of dialog, but because I need two different implementation of it now).

I really want some of the new features I've built. So I might have to do an interim release without .

Hmm...

Ugh. Customer support for my merchant-of-record eCommerce system seems really broken. Haven't heard from them in a week. Only social channel seems to be Twitter.

Not acceptable for such a critical SaaS.

I'm on a pay-as-you-go plan, but even so.

Does anyone know if Lemon Squeezy is alive?

RE: @ross@crikey.social

Do I know any camping/caravan/RV folks who can take questions on a portable solar panel + battery set up. Wondering if I can use something like this for my some power for my south-facing garden office (which is very much like a static caravan!)

Aldi are going to sell a 40-watt, 3-USB output portable solar panel next week. My office at the end of my garden is almost south facing and gets so much light.

I wondered what I could power from this, perhaps with some power banks in the loop too?

Is it even with it?

If I get just over 30W from it for 8 hours a day, that's 250 Watt-hours. 1kWh every 3 days. 10kWh/month. I'm on 22.17p/kWh. So I'd save £2/month.

Hmm…

TIL the UK + Ireland is home to half of the world’s bluebells!!

Such a beautiful day.

@tarmot When I hear it I think of:

• Intricate edging on fabric
• What I do when tying my shoes

Product tip: If you’re going to give me a 7-day trial of your app you need customer service to respond to questions within 7 days! 😬