Weeknotes for week 15, 2023

The week of April 10th.

At work, I enjoyed some ill-advised human name auto-formatting. It's fun but clearly doomed to be imperfect. I have some ideas for the coming week about how to balance user input with KYC needs.

Among other sources, I tried ChatGPT to explore the world of often-lower-cased name particles (such as "von" or "al-"). Being able to ask follow-up questions was useful, and revealed more than once that it had made a particle up from whole cloth.

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After listening to a discussion about "phone positivity" on Hard Fork, I turned off one sec.

It feels odd but very convenient for apps like Facebook to just launch immediately.

The "AI vibe check" part of that episode was fascinating as well. I listened to it in the car after dropping my partner off at a concert.

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I read Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words in Safari on my phone (not on my Kindle) and there was something quite nice about having a default thing to read on the phone for a few days.

The web book felt unusually robust, remembering its position across reading sessions. It's a shame this stands out, but it did.

Reading it was a good reminder that computers inside books picking up signals from the ether, now taken for granted, were once science fiction.

I finished the book while having lunch outdoors in lovely weather (after some rainy days) at a pub in the hills above town. Then walked the scenic route home.

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I saw Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) which was pretty good, if a bit skämskudde in places. I finished it on my own since my partner gave up in disgust after the CGI bird and "people forget about creatures that live in shells" one-two punch.

We rewatched Rope (1948). Very good, of course. We may expand this into another few Hitchcock movie nights.

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I read "There Is No Antimemetics Division" by qntm. Fascinating sci-fi based around not-remembering, though it got a bit much towards the end.

I realised afterwards that I've read Ra by the same author (about the scientific discovery of magic, and what follows) and felt much the same about that one.

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I enjoyed: