Tech, music, and other transmissions from a GenX systems guy in Denver.
// recent posts //
- [ jd303 ]
Somebody in AIWF scheduling has a sense of humor, intentional or not. Thariq Shihipar opened Day 3 at 9:05, followed twenty minutes later by Tariq Shaukat, who actually acknowledged the coincidence on stage himself. Two Tariqs, back to back, and I couldn't tell you if that was deliberate booking or just how this industry works now. Fun way to kick off the day, but it's not what actually stuck with me.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]Denver is a city that goes to sleep at 10pm on weeknights. Some weekend evenings, it might be up till 1 or 2am with the bars and clubs letting people out, concerts ending, the Nuggets or Avs fans grabbing a pint after extra time in the game, maybe a bacon wrapped sausage scarfed down as you're heading back to your home. But on a Sunday night? Maybe a few service industry folks, and that's it. San Francisco? It's much more awake. Bike couriers with boomboxes playing techno with shiny bright LEDs flashing, drunk girls spilling drinks over the floor of my hotel, tech bros bouncing around outside, it was still pretty lively when I got to my hotel.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]Monarch (his actual handle) is a good friend of mine, and he has good technical instincts. He's the kind of guy who spots a problem before it becomes a fire. We had dinner at Rougarou before heading to the Mr. Bill show at Cervantes - him, his partner, me, and my wife. Rougarou is a cocktail and wine bar with southern American food. Good room.
Somewhere in the evening, Monarch mentioned my website had accessibility issues for visually impaired users.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]Static sites don't have comments. That's the deal you make. There's no database, no runtime, no attack surface, and thus, no comment box. That seemed fine until the site was actually running and I started thinking about whether anyone who read something wanted somewhere to put a thought.
The obvious answer is Disqus. Hugo even has it built in - one template call and you're done. But Disqus is ad-supported, has a history of injecting trackers, and makes your readers create an account on a platform that exists to monetize their behavior. No thank you.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]Now that you've read how to set up Claude Code, let's look at some useful things you can do with it.
Somewhere around the fifth time I missed a school "you need to send your kid to school with this esoteric 2 week backorder costume today" because the email was buried under a fundraising blast and a Bloomz notification about something I definitely did not care about, I decided I needed to fix my "add this thing to my calendar" workflow. I didn't want a "build an integration" solution. I also didn't want a "set up a Zapier workflow and pray it still works in six months" solution. Instead, I just decided to tell Claude to go read my email and tell me what I missed.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]There's a lot you can do with Claude or any other Large Language Model (LLM) through their web interface, but if you want to go deeper, Claude Code is the way to get there. With Claude, you don't need to know how to program (but it definitely helps). You do, however, need a Windows machine (or macOS with terminal), some patience, the willingness to type commands into a box rather than click buttons (using Linux or macOS terminal), and at least the Pro account, but at $20/month, it's a steal. The payoff: you build real things iteratively - describe what you want, review what you get, refine. It's worth the setup.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]If you made it to part 3, congratulations, you're an ethics or philosophy nerd! This part gets technical about ethical frameworks and might not be for everyone. Still, it's important to understand what you're signing up for ethically if you get into a self-driving car.[ the paper ]Frameworks for Ethical Testing
While validating that an autonomous vehicle performs ethically is a complex topic, researchers have proposed new and existing frameworks as guidance. Fleetwood believes that the Code of Ethics for Public Health, a widely cited framework for public health ethics, can provide a starting point for health advocates to advocate for the rights of individuals while also protecting public health with public input (2017). Public health officials can also ensure that communities can make informed decisions on if and how autonomous vehicles work on their roads, making sure manufacturers obtain community consent on their operation (Fleetwood, 2017).
[ read more ][ 5th grade email ]5th Grade Families,
To help us maintain a fully engaged and distraction-free learning environment, we are writing to clarify our policy regarding smartwatches. Recently, we have seen an increase in students using the communication and messaging features on their watches during instructional time.
Starting immediately, all smartwatches and phones must be powered off and kept securely inside students' backpacks for the entire school day. If a student is seen using their device, or has it out of their backpack during school hours, the device will be taken to the front office. If this happens, parents will be contacted and required to come to the school to pick it up.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]Aaaaand now, the moment you have all been waiting for... the segment pseudo-philosophers squawk about, the cliché corner of the Autonomous Vehicle debate, yet probably the most complex and important... THE TROLLEY PROBLEM!!![ the paper ]The Trolley Problem and Accident Algorithms
Many ethical, legal, and liability concerns with autonomous vehicles stem from how accident algorithms solve the trolley problem. Philosopher Philippa Foot, who originally conceived of the trolley problem, describes it as a situation where five men are working on a train track and one man is working on another section of track, with a runaway tram heading toward the five men (1967). The train operator or another observer must make a choice to either throw a switch to move the tram to the other track, killing only one person, or take no action and allow the train to kill the five men (Foot, 1967). Similar situations can arise with various ethical consequences, with Foot providing examples of a judge framing an innocent man when the guilty party is unknown, preventing rioters from violently attacking a community if they do not see justice for a crime, or a pilot making the choice to crash land a failing aircraft to a less populated area (1967). With self-driving cars, there are many potential trolley problems, and accident algorithms will need some type of ethical examination for determining who might live or die.
[ read more ][ jd303 ]A few weeks ago I was sitting at a stoplight in my Escape, about eight blocks from my house, and a Waymo rolled up next to me. It took me a second to register what I was looking at. The spinning sensor array on top is the tell. I told the kids to look. They looked. I mentioned there was nobody inside. They said "cool," asked a couple questions, and by the time we got home it was already yesterday's news.
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