reading text isn’t the easiest with all the colors and blurs everywhere

Agreed - I like the look of these things in an abstract sense, but it makes the text really hard to read. I assume hope there’s a way to disable it in accessibility settings.

Do you still possess this talent?

I guess that’s why you pay your soldiers.

In the early summer of 2024, months before the opposition launched Operation Deterrence of Aggression, a mobile application began circulating among a group of Syrian army officers. It carried an innocuous name: STFD-686, a string of letters standing for Syria Trust for Development.

…

The STFD-686 app operated with disarming simplicity. It offered the promise of financial aid, requiring only that the victim fill out a few personal details. It asked innocent questions: “What kind of assistance are you expecting?” and “Tell us more about your financial situation.”

…

Determining officers’ ranks made it possible for the app’s operators to identify those in sensitive positions, such as battalion commanders and communications officers, while knowing their exact place of service allowed for the construction of live maps of force deployments. It gave the operators behind the app and the website the ability to chart both strongholds and gaps in the Syrian army’s defensive lines. The most crucial point was the combination of the two pieces of information: Disclosing that “officer X” was stationed at “location Y” was tantamount to handing the enemy the army’s entire operating manual, especially on fluid fronts like those in Idlib and Sweida.

Trolling aside, yeah, being able to explain a concept in everyday terms takes careful thought and discipline. I’m consistently impressed by the people who write Simple articles on Wikipedia. I wish there were more of those articles.

Is the point of Wikipedia to provide everyone with information, or to allow editors to spew jargon into opaque articles that are only accessible to experts?

I think it’s the former. There are very few topics that can’t be explained simply, if the author is willing to consider their audience. Best of all, absolutely nothing is lost when an expert reads a well written article.

There’s a core problem that many Wikipedia articles are hard for a layperson to read and understand. The statement about reading level is one way to express this.

The Simple version of articles shows humans can produce readable text. But there aren’t enough Simple articles, and the Simple articles are often incomplete.

I don’t think AI should be solely trusted with summarization/translation, but it might have a place in the editing cycle.

“I decided I launched [sic] these tools in the first place as a project to build the tool that could be use by LEAs [law enforcement agencies] and PIs [private investigators.]”

According to the developer, they’ve provided the tool to cops in Portugal, Belgium, and “other countries in Europe.” They told 404 Media that the website is meant for private investigators, journalists, and cops.

It sounds like they’re actively peddling it to cops.

My kids aren’t really interested in the movies I like. They actively avoid the music I listen to. I’ve gotten them copies of the books I love and they give up after a few pages. They get bored with the games I played as a kid.

My dad loves Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Whole Earth Catalog, and Bruce Springsteen. I do not. If he wills me his copies, I will keep some out of guilt and then my kids will have to throw them away.

Yeah - I’m totally for full, real, actual ownership of digital stuff, and we should be able to give it away.

But I’d be surprised if my kids would be interested in more than a tiny fraction of it. Or anyone else, for that matter.

I’m fine paying what I pay, but I reserve the right to question the quality of services they pay for.

I’m trying to curate a few hundred photos for my kids. I’ve written a couple of bios of relatives. I’d like to record something like a story for them. If they want to trash it, that’s fine, but at least there will be something meaningful for them if they want it.

Assuming it survives the climate wars. 🫠

Doesn’t archive.org provide that?

Nobody wanted my grandparents collected crap. Or their photos. Or their books. I tried giving them away. I tried consignment. I tried posting them on Facebook. Most ended up in a landfill.

Keep in mind that your descendents probably won’t care about a huge majority of what you leave them. Photos annotated with a date, time, people in them, and an explanation, maybe, but generally my generation hasn’t given a shit about the tonnes of books, music, photos, furniture, knick knacks, and antiquities bequeathed to us. It would be bizarre if our kids didn’t maintain that tradition.

Have you considered more trains?

I’ve disabled notifications for everything except certain contacts. I was all about news notifications for a while, but that was obnoxious.

Every device should sing its own song. Maybe if you start them together they can form a chorus? Like some sort of appliance band.

Being able to plug in a notification device would be awesome.

I’m not sure where whimsy fits into that list, but my dishwasher plays a little victory tune when it finishes washing. It sounds like something from an early 90s jrpg. It makes me smile every time I hear it.