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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Seems the two German supermarket chains really like to have the same infrastructure everywhere. Everywhere I go the Aldis look exactly the same. They have slightly different products depending on the country. But the price tags, interior, … is basically the same. Okay and we don’t have “Flaschenpfand” everywhere… (deposit on the plastic bottles and the machines where you can return bottles.) I bet all of this makes it a lot easier for their techs and management. And it could also explain why they sometimes redo a store that still looks fine and fit it with the latest shenanigans.

    And as an aside: I’ve shopped in the first Aldi store ever. It’s not far from where I live.





  • Hmm, I think summarization is a bad example. I’ve read quite some AI summaries that miss the point, sum up to a point where the simplification makes sth wrong or the AI added things or paraphrased and made things at least ambiguous. Even with the state of the art tech. Especially if the original texts were condensed or written by professionals. Like scientific papers or good news articles…

    What I think works better are tasks like translating text. That works really well. Sometimes things like rewording text. Or the style-transfer the image generators can do. That’s impressive. Restoring old photos, coloring them or editing something in/out. I also like the creativity they provide me with. They can come up with ideas, flesh out my ideas.

    I think AI is an useful tool for tasks like that. But not so much for summarization or handling factual information. I don’t see a reason why further research coudn’t improve on that… But at the current state it’s just the wrong choice of tools.

    And sure, it doesn’t help that people hype AI and throw it at everything.


  • Sure. In urban environments the cell tower should be able to determine your location down to a few meters or at least tens of meters. They know the angle from which antenna is in use. And I think I read an article or paper that newer technologies also compensate for the signal delay introduced by the speed of light and your distance… So the phone can hit the slot in the multiplexing correctly. So distance from the cell tower should be known to both parties somewhat precisely. No “active” positioning requests needed. I think requesting the location during an 112 / 911 call has also saved some lives already. I’m not sure if it pops up automatically for the dispatchers, though.




  • It’s been an underdeveloped topic for some time. espeak-ng is available on most distros and has some integrations available that somewhat tie it into the desktop. There are more modern solutions that sound way better. For example Coqui’s xtts2, maybe Piper which is part of Home Assistand nowadays. If your language is English, you got quite some more solutions available to choose from. But it’s a mixed bag if they sound nice, are easy to install (that also depends on which Linux distro you use and if it’s available as a package) and if they tie into the rest of the system. I’m not an expert on this, but I’d also like to have TTS and STT available on my Linux desktop witout putting to much effort into it.


  • I think you’ll have to learn a bit about security. There is no one article, but entire books written about that… And it really depends on the type of service, the used frameworks and the intended deployment.

    I’d have a look at similar software. There are tons of open source projects that handle sensitive information. From files like Nextcloud to contact sync to ticketing and payment information.

    Edit: I’d leave Docker as an afterthought, since some people recommend that. It’s deployment, not development. And not a means of stopping user data getting leaked or stopping login brute forcing.)


  • That is the correct answer. You don’t read a book while doing the chores. I also don’t whip out a Terry Pratchett novel while commuting when I know I have to change trains in 10 minutes. A podcast will do and you can keep listening while waiting on the platform. In the car I often listen to music instead, but sometimes I get bored and I’m more in the mood for an interesting podcast. Especially if I’m stuck in the car for a bit longer.

    When deliberately doing one thing only, I like to read. I can read the paragraphs as fast or as slow as I like or just skim them.

    The “secret” is: You have to find the podcasts you like. Some are just chat and drivel, some are more condensed. You might also like Audiobooks with stories instead of factual information. I don’t think you can make an absolute statement. Well, unless your brain isn’t wired for audio content. I’d get that nothing appeases you if that were the case.

    Nowadays everyone and their grandma has a podcast. Quality varies greatly and most of them are more talk and not anything of substance. it’s not easy to find the good ones in all of the noise. But they exist.