CONSPICUOUS TECHNOLOGIST

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>CONSPICUOUS TECHNOLOGISThttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/Recent posts from CONSPICUOUS TECHNOLOGISTHugoen-usThe DPS Phone Ban: I Was Sure I Was Righthttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/dps-phone-ban/Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/dps-phone-ban/<p><span id="the-email"></span></p>

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 <p><em>5th Grade Families,</em></p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p><em>Starting immediately, all smartwatches and phones must be powered off and kept securely inside students&rsquo; 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.</em></p>The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles: Revisiting a 2020 Paper (Part 2: The Trolley Problem)https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/ethics-autonomous-vehicles-part-2/Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/ethics-autonomous-vehicles-part-2/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 Aaaaand now, the moment you have all been waiting for&hellip; the segment pseudo-philosophers squawk about, the cliché corner of the Autonomous Vehicle debate, yet probably the most complex and important&hellip; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem">THE TROLLEY PROBLEM</a>!!!
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<h2 id="the-trolley-problem-and-accident-algorithms">The Trolley Problem and Accident Algorithms</h2>
<p>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 (<a href="#ref-foot-1967">1967</a>). 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 (<a href="#ref-foot-1967">Foot, 1967</a>). 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 (<a href="#ref-foot-1967">1967</a>). 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.</p>The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles: Revisiting a 2020 Paper (Part 1: Legislation, Jobs, and the Mobility Gap)https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/ethics-autonomous-vehicles/Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/ethics-autonomous-vehicles/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>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 &ldquo;cool,&rdquo; asked a couple questions, and by the time we got home it was already yesterday&rsquo;s news.</p>Raising Hackers: Meet pixie_technologisthttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/raising-hackers-pixie-technologist/Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/raising-hackers-pixie-technologist/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>This is the first post in a series called <strong>Raising Hackers</strong>, written by a 90s hacker turned professional who understands both the genuinely impressive things technology makes possible and the ways it&rsquo;ll work against you if you&rsquo;re not paying attention.</p>
<p>Our family&rsquo;s parenting style is not &ldquo;here&rsquo;s a YouTube playlist, don&rsquo;t bug me, I&rsquo;m working.&rdquo; Far from it. We are not iPad parents. We&rsquo;d rather our kids understand: here&rsquo;s what this thing is, here&rsquo;s how to use it, here&rsquo;s what the companies that make it want from you (money), and here&rsquo;s how to protect yourself. A real example of this is that most kid stars on YouTube are <em><strong>not real</strong></em> (not the way they appear, anyway). We show that with behind-the-scenes research with them.</p>Getting on Googlehttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/google-search-console/Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/05/google-search-console/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 Okay, now that the site is up, I&rsquo;ve got some posts scheduled, why is there low traffic? Oh, nobody knows about it. Time to fix that. The first step is getting it onto Google. Is this something you may have also forgotten to do for YOUR site?
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 <p><strong>What you need:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Access to your domain&rsquo;s DNS panel (DreamHost in this case)</li>
<li>A Google account</li>
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<p><strong>Step 1: Add your property in Search Console</strong></p>Oblique Strategies: Building the Card Deck That Unblocks Youhttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/oblique-strategies/Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/oblique-strategies/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a card deck in 1975 called Oblique Strategies. Each card has a single action on it - sometimes a question, sometimes a directive, sometimes something that sounds like an esoteric fortune cookie.</p>
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<li>&ldquo;Ghost echoes&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Bridges -build -burn&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Give way to your worst impulse&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Idiot glee (?)&rdquo;</li>
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<p>What the hell do these mean? Who knows. They&rsquo;re not instructions so much as interruptions. You&rsquo;re stuck, so you draw a card, and it breaks whatever loop you&rsquo;re in. It&rsquo;s supposed to help you move past your block.</p>Building a Synth Patch Library with Claude (Part 2: The Generator)https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/synth-patch-generator/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/synth-patch-generator/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>Part 1 covered getting the actual patch data right: correcting .ins files, cataloguing 2,172 patches across 6 synths, and building a reference library. That part was mostly Claude doing data extraction and reconciliation work.</p>
<p>Once the library existed, the next problem was obvious: browsing a markdown file is not a workflow. I wanted something that could generate a starting patch combination for a track based on feel, let me pick which synth covers which role, and export directly into Reaper. So that&rsquo;s what we built.</p>Building a Synth Patch Library with Claude (Part 1: The Library)https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/synth-patch-library/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/synth-patch-library/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>I have six hardware synthesizers. Each one has its own patch library, its own quirks, its own way of organizing sounds. Some of them have printed manuals. Some have handwritten notes taped to the wall. Some have .ins files that are supposed to tell my DAW what patches exist and where, except those files were wrong. Like, completely wrong.</p>
<p>The practical problem is this: when I sit down to write a track, I don&rsquo;t want to dig through menus on six different pieces of hardware trying to remember where I saved that acid bass patch or which synth has the pad I&rsquo;m thinking of. I wanted a way to browse across everything, filter by feel, and get to work. That didn&rsquo;t exist, so I built it.</p>Bootstrapping This Sitehttps://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/bootstrapping-this-site/Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.conspicuoustechnologist.com/2026/04/bootstrapping-this-site/<div class="voice-block voice-jd303">
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 <p>I&rsquo;ve been meaning to put something up at this domain for a while. Not a blog in the &ldquo;please subscribe and smash that like button&rdquo; sense. Just a place to write about stuff I&rsquo;m actually doing. Tech, music, tools, the occasional rant. The usual.</p>
<p>The question was always what to build it on. The obvious answer is WordPress because it&rsquo;s the obvious answer, and that&rsquo;s exactly why I didn&rsquo;t want it. I already manage too much infrastructure at work. I&rsquo;m not spending my free time chasing plugin updates and PHP vulnerabilities for a personal site. Ghost was the next candidate, cleaner than WordPress, decent API, but it&rsquo;s still a server you have to babysit. I wanted something I could <code>git push</code> and walk away from.</p>