Today I discovered a pretty cool utility for listing USB devices! 🔌

🌸 **cyme**: A modern and cross-platform lsusb!

🔥 Displays manufacturer, serial number, speed, current information (mA) and more!

🦀 Written in Rust!

⭐ GitHub: <https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme>

[#rustlang](https://fosstodon.org/tags/rustlang) [#lsusb](https://fosstodon.org/tags/lsusb) [#usb](https://fosstodon.org/tags/usb) [#devices](https://fosstodon.org/tags/devices) [#utility](https://fosstodon.org/tags/utility) [#commandline](https://fosstodon.org/tags/commandline) [#tool](https://fosstodon.org/tags/tool) [#libusb](https://fosstodon.org/tags/libusb)

“When the AI provided an incorrect result, researchers found inexperienced and moderately experienced radiologists dropped their cancer-detecting accuracy from around 80% to about 22%. Very experienced radiologists’ accuracy dropped from nearly 80% to 45%.”

<https:www.brainfacts.org/neuroscience-in-society/tech-and-the-brain/2024/why-ai-can-push-you-to-make-the-wrong-decision-at-work-090324>

If you're using AI for coding or prose in Neovim, don't forget to try out <<https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim>> and <<https://github.com/milanglacier/minuet-ai.nvim>>!

Both work seamlessly with local models using OpenAI compatible API, e.g., llama-server from llama.cpp <3

[#llm](https://mastodon.social/tags/llm) [#ai](https://mastodon.social/tags/ai) [#neovim](https://mastodon.social/tags/neovim) [#vim](https://mastodon.social/tags/vim) [#copilot](https://mastodon.social/tags/copilot)

New blog post! Beyond Ctrl-C: The dark corners of Unix signal handling.

The post is an introduction to signals and how to manage them effectively with async Rust. It's a written version of my talk at RustConf 2023, heavily edited for presentation as a blog post.

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

<https:sunshowers.io/posts/beyond-ctrl-c-signals/>

My notes on trying out whisperfile, the new cross-platform executable packaging for the Whisper speech-to-text model, released as part of the latest update to llamafile
<https:simonwillison.net/2024/Aug/19/whisperfile/>

The video in that last boost might be one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Relinked here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hdJQkn8rtA>

One gem I really liked: "We shouldn't worry too much, too early, about language details. Otherwise we don't program, but just code lots of details."

Some notes on mlx-whisper - it's now really easy to run transcriptions through an Apple Silicon (and GPU) optimized Whisper model using Python on macOS <https://simonwillison.net/2024/Aug/13/mlx-whisper/>

New TIL: Using sqlite-vec with embeddings in sqlite-utils and Datasette <https://til.simonwillison.net/sqlite/sqlite-vec>

OK gang! This is ready for you to test.

python tweet2html.py --css 1234

That will take a Twitter ID and return HTML and CSS for you to embed in your website with no calling back to Twitter.

Features:
🗣 Avatars inlined as Base64 WebP
📸 All attached photos inlined
🎥 Video poster inline, <video> to original source
🔗 Hyperlinks don't use t.co
#️⃣ Hashtags and @ mentions linked
🕰 Semantic time
♥ and 🗨 counts

Try it out at <https://github.com/edent/Tweet2Embed>

Feedback and pull requests very welcome!

And now for something completely different: Check out this nifty how-to for highlighting text on a page when you link to it.

<https:weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2024/08/08/how-to-highlight-text-fragments-when-linking/>

"Almost everything has been done by someone else before. Almost nothing you want to do is truly novel. And language models are exceptionally good at giving you solutions to things they've seen before."

I collect examples of this kind of thing, and this is by far the most exhaustive list of practical LLM uses I've seen.

<https:nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/how-i-use-ai.html>

/ht [@emollick](https://bird.makeup/users/emollick)

[#llm](https://social.coop/tags/llm) [#examples](https://social.coop/tags/examples)

I wrote about using the Plotly Graphing Library in Hugo. I'm still finding my away around [@gohugoio](https://fosstodon.org/@gohugoio) and would love to hear any feedback or suggestions :)

<https:read.ryancowl.es/posts/plotly-graphing-in-hugo/>

[#hugo](https://union.place/tags/hugo) [#plotly](https://union.place/tags/plotly) [#foss](https://union.place/tags/foss) [#data](https://union.place/tags/data)

Here's a small script "find-postings-without-comment-id.py" which checks all my [#Hugo](https://mastodon.social/tags/Hugo) [#goHugo](https://mastodon.social/tags/goHugo) blog postings if I forgot to add the comments id.

<https:github.com/andreasscherbaum/hugo-tools>

Plus some other tools.

[#Blogging](https://mastodon.social/tags/Blogging) [#Blog](https://mastodon.social/tags/Blog)

I read the first two chapters of

<https:lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/>

Very well written, concise course / e-book by Dusty Phillips. Gives context when needed and even explains a bit of Vim basics which I did not know. I am currently experimenting it using the NVIM_APPNAME environment variable but the results are impressive so far. I might swap my handwritten configuration for what comes out of this course.

[#LazyVim](https://mastodon.acc.sunet.se/tags/LazyVim) [#neovim](https://mastodon.acc.sunet.se/tags/neovim)

Thinking of adding search to my static site... This seems to be a good option! <https://pagefind.app/>
Might give this a try when I have the time. Looks easy enough.

[#Hugo](https://fosstodon.org/tags/Hugo) [#staticsitegenerator](https://fosstodon.org/tags/staticsitegenerator) [#Pagefind](https://fosstodon.org/tags/Pagefind) [#staticsite](https://fosstodon.org/tags/staticsite)

✨ Friends, I've recently been laid off, and I'm looking for my next role.

With 7+ years of leadership experience in non-profits and startups, here is a summary of my skills:

📊 20+ years [#rstats](https://hachyderm.io/tags/rstats) programming expertise
🔧 Data pipeline development
☁️ AWS infrastructure management
📚 Creator of widely-used data science curricula
🛡️ GDPR compliance implementation

For the full version, including my resume and testimonials from colleagues: <https://francoismichonneau.net/hire-me/>

[#GetFediHired](https://hachyderm.io/tags/GetFediHired) [#DataScience](https://hachyderm.io/tags/DataScience) [#Jobs](https://hachyderm.io/tags/Jobs)

Few things piss me off more than a huge, multi-billion IT corporation that suddenly sends me an email regarding an open-source project I’ve been running since 1990’s that I’ve recently shut down due to absolute lack of interest from its users… which happened to be telcos and large IT companies. Here’s what I replied:

Thank you for your email. As it’s often the case with open-source projects, their value to organisations is only noticed and appreciated when they go offline. I have maintained pam_tacplus for the last years and it had the call for sponsorship prominently displayed for most of the time specifically because it’s a legacy project that is difficult to maintain. None of the commercial companies that clearly do rely on it ever demonstrated any interest in even nominal donations, so it was archived. While it’s notable someone finally noticed it, I’m not the person to discuss any future development any more.

I did work in large companies and I do understand the sick logic that drives them, when it’s easier to get approval for annual spending of $50k for some office decorations than $100 for a mission-critical project which happens to be open-source and can be used for free for some time.

But it’s possible. If you’re working in such roles, please make every effort to get this $100 because otherwise it will become your responsibility to develop and maintain code that you always got for free.

Man steals moon
Man loads moon in wheelbarrow, then into hatchback vehicle.

Really inventive, clever photography.

Update - noted in comments: [@persagen](https://mastodon.social/@persagen) Source: "Photographer Daniel Antoniol, from Brazil, produces mind bending snaps where it looks like he’s playing football with the moon, and even loading it into the boot of his car." 🙏

<https:www.instagram.com/daniel_antoniol/?hl=en>

<https:www.photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-1657122048-22>

[#DanielAntoniol](https://mastodon.social/tags/DanielAntoniol) [#photography](https://mastodon.social/tags/photography) [#art](https://mastodon.social/tags/art)

Learning about marimo, an open-source reactive notebook.
Looks really nice for visualizations.

<https:marimo.app/?slug=55kclj>

Plus, notebook changes results in small diffs and the notebooks themselves are executable as Python scripts!

[#nbpy](https://fosstodon.org/tags/nbpy)

Batman's aff his nut
Have you seen the way he cuts aboot
Dressed up as a mad fuckin bat
Batterin guys
I was lit at:
"Mate, I'm worried aboot ye I know your ma and da died But everybody's ma and da dies And we're no aw runnin aboot
Hookin muggers and
Kickin psychopaths in the baws." And that was when Batman went
"Aye, but do ye ever feel like it?
Do you ever look at the world and feel like it?
Like having a big mad base under your hoose?
Do you ever feel like drivin a big mad motor that turns intae a tank?
And leatherin fuck oot of guys aw night?
Scarin the fuckin shite oot of them?"
And that was when I was lit at:
"Aye. Fuck it. Ah dae."
And that's the Secret Origin of Robin and everybody else.

I have always loved [#neovim](https://dotnet.social/tags/neovim)'s github commit style, but assumed it was just a project-style-guide thing. Now a realise that is has been standardized:

<https:www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/>
"Conventional Commits: A specification for adding human and machine readable meaning to commit messages "

[#git](https://dotnet.social/tags/git) [#development](https://dotnet.social/tags/development)

This is a sample in the wild:

An AI thing I'm watching play out at another org:

1: Expert A, with a deep understanding of a nuanced and difficult problem answers a question they've been given, offering several options.

2: Director B, recipient, uses an AI to summarize it and then runs it up to leadership saying, "A says this." That generated summary is subtly and very wrong.

3: A is now being held responsible for plans made based on B's AI-generated and very wrong rewriting of his recommendations.

Fun times.

Mein Blog hat erstmals seit Januar 2017 wieder eine eigene Suchfunktion!

<https:thomas-leister.de/search/>

Damals habe ich von Wordpress zu Hugo umgestellt - also zu einem Static Site Generator. Die Suchfunktion war damals auch weg. Zwischenzeitlich habe ich mir mit einer integrierten DuckDuckGo Suche beholfen. Besonders schön war das allerdings nie.

Vor zwei Wochen bin ich aber auf "Pagefind" gestoßen - eine Javascript-basierte Suchmachine. Das funktioniert wunderbar und sehr schnell. :)

[#hugo](https://metalhead.club/tags/hugo)

Hey fyi

You can go to radiooooo.com (that's 5 o's), look at the world map, select a country, select a decade, and then listen to music from that time and place. For free. No ads. No idea how or why but it exists. Check it out!

Edit: you should also know that radio.garden does the same thing. I am not familiar, but several people have endorsed it. Nice to have options!

[#music](https://eldritch.cafe/tags/music) [#radio](https://eldritch.cafe/tags/radio)

So BBC released an online version of the Hitch Hickers guide to the Galaxy text adventure game. enhanced 30th anniversary edition. And guess what folks, it's fully screen reader friendly, Enjoy! <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-game-30th-anniversary-edition>

New blog post by Gábor Szárnyas

Command Line Data Processing: Using DuckDB as a Unix Tool

This blog post shows how DuckDB stacks up against classic Unix tools (such as cut, grep, sort and sed) when performing simple data processing steps.

Read more at <https://duckdb.org/2024/06/20/cli-data-processing-using-duckdb-as-a-unix-tool>

[@phire](https://phire.place/@phire) [@mhoye](https://mastodon.social/@mhoye) a friend said once that enterprise architects exist so programmers don't have to talk to business analysts, and BAs exist so that EAs don't have to talk to customers/users

It has forever changed my perception of the development process

If you'd prefer a more wizard-like interface for search-and-replacing in [#Neovim](https://hachyderm.io/tags/Neovim), grug-far might be your cup of tea: <https://github.com/MagicDuck/grug-far.nvim>

<https:tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations>

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Inspired by [@niclake](https://mastodon.social/@niclake) and [@robb](https://social.lol/@robb) who respectively use Jekyll and Nginx, I wrote a similar blog post for forbidding AI bot scraping, but using Hugo and Caddy

<https:darthvi.com/post/forbidden-for-robots/>

[#blogging](https://fosstodon.org/tags/blogging) [#tutorial](https://fosstodon.org/tags/tutorial) [#hugo](https://fosstodon.org/tags/hugo) [#caddy](https://fosstodon.org/tags/caddy) [#bots](https://fosstodon.org/tags/bots)

[@irvingreid](https://hachyderm.io/@irvingreid) [@gvwilson](https://mastodon.social/@gvwilson) [@mhoye](https://mastodon.social/@mhoye) [@scruss](https://xoxo.zone/@scruss) [@timbray](https://cosocial.ca/@timbray) Gonna crash this thread to plug [@reviewboard](https://mastodon.online/@reviewboard) 's PDF diffing / review support (in the Power Pack extension). If I recall correctly, that capability _is_ being used to review revisions to legal documents, at least in some shops.

<https:www.reviewboard.org/docs/powerpack/latest/features/doc-review/>

Study (N=806 orgs; 1971-2015) finds some DEI practices increase managerial diversity while others decrease it:
Increase: hiring chief diversity officer, mentoring, childcare, flextime, parental leave, empowering training, targeted recruitment, diversity goals increase diversity
Decrease: Perf evals, harassment training, grievance procedures, job tests
Mixed results: Cross-training, employee resource groups, self-managed teams, skills training
<https:hbr.org/2024/06/research-the-most-common-dei-practices-actually-undermine-diversity>

Those were, of course, tree swallows in a barn.

Here's a barn swallow in a tree.

I’m not ignoring my email, I’m actively improving security by not responding to potential phishing communication.

[@marcoarment](https://mastodon.social/@marcoarment) [@jsnell](https://zeppelin.flights/@jsnell) [@gruber](https://mastodon.social/@gruber) [@caseyliss](https://mastodon.social/@caseyliss) [@siracusa](https://mastodon.social/@siracusa) Phil Schiller approved!

I may have made a thing

i'm getting too old for this stuff
(WWDC24 recap song)

[#SilentSunday](https://mstdn.social/tags/SilentSunday) [#birdsOfMastodon](https://mstdn.social/tags/birdsOfMastodon)
Red winged Blackbird harassing a Great Blue Heron June 2024

Built a new (tiny) SwiftBar plugin to replace a broken one for monitoring Wi-Fi signal on the Mac. No binary so you’ll have to build it yourself; may package it better at some point. <https://github.com/nriley/wireless_status>

The article I was looking for a while ago about the feel of cutting - "kireaji", sometimes translated as the "flavor of cutting" - was this, from TW Lim, called "Forming An Edge"

<https:www.scopeofwork.net/forming-an-edge/>

This is, I think, a wonderful paragraph:

Small fix to watchgha: don't truncate lists at 30 items (oops!)
WatchGHA reports on GitHub Action progress in a terminal UI.

<https:pypi.org/project/watchgha/>

Title: Moon at Magome (1930)

Artist: Hasui Kawase

<https:www.japan-guide.com/e/e6076.html> [#ShinHanga](https://mstdn.ca/tags/ShinHanga) [#Art](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Art) [#HasuiKawase](https://mstdn.ca/tags/HasuiKawase) [#Showa](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Showa) [#Spring](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Spring) [#FullMoon](https://mstdn.ca/tags/FullMoon) [#Moon](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Moon) [#Magome](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Magome) [#KisoValley](https://mstdn.ca/tags/KisoValley) [#Nagano](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Nagano) [#Japan](https://mstdn.ca/tags/Japan)

Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.

It requires:

- "Daily" dumps of customer data
- The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

<https:www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/>

What an absolute unit.

[#birding](https://fediscience.org/tags/birding) [#birdphotography](https://fediscience.org/tags/birdphotography) [#owls](https://fediscience.org/tags/owls)

Slopple.
<https:hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/112485627917497636>

Cool new fan site for NetNewsWire themes!

<https:paiji.github.io/NetNewsWire-themes-collection/>

Here's the code for the AI counter app I used in my [#PyConUS](https://fedi.simonwillison.net/tags/PyConUS) keynote today - it uses vosk and pyaudio to listen through the microphone and increment a visible Tkinter counter any time it detects "AI" or "Artificial Intelligence" <https://github.com/simonw/count-ai>

Prompts I used to write it are here: <https://chatgpt.com/share/58f2352d-1f17-495b-94f1-4eb44cd574b9>

"What radicalized you?"

An ongoing pattern in the AI march:

- the hardware efficiency improves
- the software efficiency improves

So I continue to argue that energy consumption as a PRIMARY criticism of AI is going to be unpersuasive, as incentives drive down the energy costs with time, and all critique of the energy costs is just as applicable to conventional cloud computing, which we have already accepted into our social bargain

(and which underpins every single tech salary)

so instead:

<https:redeem-tomorrow.com/the-average-ai-criticism-has-gotten-lazy-and-thats-dangerous>

See <https://pandoc.org/typst-property-output> for more info about the new [#typst](https://fosstodon.org/tags/typst) property support introduced in [#pandoc](https://fosstodon.org/tags/pandoc) 3.2.

[@mhoye](https://mastodon.social/@mhoye) I'm all in on “lightweight alternatives to Elasticsearch / Solr”. Let's see if I starred something useful…
<https:github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic> (Rust)
<https:github.com/zincsearch/zincsearch> (Go)
<https:github.com/askorama/orama> (JS)
<https:github.com/CloudCannon/pagefind> (specifically for static sites)
<https:github.com/kbrsh/wade> (Rust, library like Lucene)

The Dutch names for some of the elements/molecules are charming:
- hydrogen: water-stuff
- carbon-dioxide: carbon-stuff
- oxygen: acid/sour-stuff
- nitrogen: suffocating/choking-stuff

[@blabberlicious](https://toot.community/@blabberlicious) [@baldur](https://toot.cafe/@baldur) Corollary:
Experienced Writers: "Why would you use AI for writing? It's good at code generation tho."

Experienced Devs: "AI for code is garbage. I use it to summarize text, tho."

Eine Google suche kostet im extremen bis zu 0.0003 kWh oder auch 1.08kJ. Eine ChatGPT-4 Anfrage in dem Bereich von 0.001-0.01 kWh(3.6-36 kJ)

Also ist das 3-36 mal mehr um eine Antwort zu bekommen, die mit Glück richtig ist und mit Sicherheit nicht vollständig.

und alle so "This is awesome!"

ich komme da nicht mehr mit. Echt nicht.

shit shit shit shit shit. Dealt with my first set of AI-generated-code plagiarism cases this semester.

Dear students: LLMs are terrible plagiarists and they do not give a damn (or have any capacity to care or avoid doing so) if they get you in deep doodoo by reproducing verbatim code from existing repositories on github or from web pages. And on assignments, it's quite likely to happen.

We didn't identify these cases by using an AI detector: They were identical to a source on the web!

🖥️ New post! Yesterday I imported all my YouTube subscriptions into Feedbin so that I can watch videos via RSS. To do this I needed to turn my 500+ subscriptions into an OPML file. In this post I detail how I did it using a combination of awk, curl, jaq, JavaScript, shell, scraper, and Python.

<https:www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2024/youtube-subscriptions-opml/>

[#YouTube](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/YouTube) [#Invidious](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/Invidious) [#NewPipe](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/NewPipe) [#RSS](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/RSS) [#Python](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/Python)

✍️ New post! I realised after mentioning the title case web page earlier today that I had not written about the other projects on my projects domain, 7bit.org. This post remedies that covering the following:

- Dew Point Forecast ­— 7 day weather forecasts that include the dew point
- RSS Please — Generate RSS feeds from web pages
- Titlecase — Convert text to title case
- MacBinary — a MacBinary decoder

<https:www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2024/7bit-projects/>

[#weather](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/weather) [#VintageMac](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/VintageMac) [#rss](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/rss) [#dewpoint](https://mastodon.decentralised.social/tags/dewpoint)

I just watched Perfect Days (2023). I haven't yet fully understood the
effect it's had on me. But I think it's one of the best films I've ever seen. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days>

only way to regain sanity

Spectacular timelapse capturing an entire night from sunset to sunrise over the ALMA Observatory on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

Video Credit: ESO/C. Malin (christophmalin.com)

Timeline cleanse.

[#birdphotography](https://fediscience.org/tags/birdphotography)