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A short, legally-bound note on Josh O’Kane’s recent book ‘Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy’ (2022), about Sidewalk LabsContinue reading on But what was the question? »

In the first half of this year, I’ve presented several versions of a brief talk on participatory AI. I figured I would post an amalgam of these to the blog for future reference. (Previously, on the blog, I posted a brief lit review on the same topic; this talk builds on that.) So, to start, the main point of this talk is that many participatory approaches to AI don’t engage …

Meet Murphy! a 13 month old Working Cocker Spaniel who we have rehomed after owners realised how much time outdoors a Spaniel needs. He has been well trained so far and has a couple of small possesion issues we are ironing out (Socks, Mail, Books) and recall is good but not perfect yet but he is a cracker!Pedigree so docked tail and we see improvements daily as he settles in …

Your browser does not support the video tag. Rare AT post with audio, thanks Siri! Personally I thought that Despicable Me 4 inches was almost a return to form after the rather disappointing Despicable Me 3 centimeters. Movie reviews aside I’d love know why it ignores the opening quotation marks in "Despicable Me 4". What does this algorithm look like? Is it even using the same title that’s displayed, or …

After seeing Howard Hawks’s 1962 film Hatari!, I want a baby elephant as a pet. Baby elephants are about the most adorable little things out there—although I use the word “little” in a relative sense, being a baby elephant is about the size of a Shetland pony and probably weighs a bit more (although, come to think of it, I’d also like a Shetland pony…). I realize complications might arise …

Cheers, Pete

Frodingham Deltic no. 20214 on shed at Haverthwaite. Genuine Frodingham Deltic at Haverthwaite yesterday! We’re in Cumbria for a well earned break, there’s not been much modelling of late, hopefully things will pick up soon!

Introduction Minetest 5.9.0 has been released with performance improvements for rendering and map generation, new graphical effects, and much more. You can download Minetest from our website. As always, the full changelog can be found here. Table of Contents God Rays Rendering Performance Multithreaded Custom Mapgen Selected Further Highlights Outlook God Rays As part of x2048’s efforts to improve graphics, Minetest now supports “god rays” (also known as “volumetric lighting”), …

The saw till was completed recently, but I forgot to add a holder for my small flush cut saw. So let’s fix that. The saw till was a fun project, and it has already proven to be a success in the shop. But I forgot to add a holder for my small flush cut saw, and thought that this might interest you. Even though it is a very small project, …

Six inches wide and eight feet long. Its sidings are actually contained on removable staging and there’s only two turnouts on deck. The Margin is, because I love it so much, a tribute to the mundane. Not only will not... Read More ›

My excellent Nick Roche commission. First up, a quick piece of housekeeping for people that don’t follow me on social media: Because writing Revisitation is so time consuming and difficult (and whilst my break for TFN was planned, you’ll have noticed it doesn’t take much to knock me off-course and create an unplanned gap), I’ve decided that, once I’ve reached the end of 2012 in six weeks, I’m going to …

The examples used here are from the weekly challenge problem statement and demonstrate the working solution. File Index "ch-1.pl" Defined by 1. "ch-2.pl" Defined by 5. Part 1: Good Integer You are given a positive integer, $int, having 3 or more digits. Write a script to return the Good Integer in the given integer or -1 if none found. The complete solution is contained in one file that has a …

I really like this guide to 3D pixel-projections for games - true isometric is almost always never used, but there are a quite a few useful variants to mix and match.

Notification UXAnnoying interruption vs. useful piece of informationHow to design better notifications — UX Knowledge Piece Sketch #62In this article, I focus on push notifications & in-app notifications, but there are also email notifications — if you want to provide a good user experience, these all should work together, like a good orchestra.Push notificationsIt is a message sent to a user’s device (e.g. mobile, computer) that lives outside the app. …

The other day, my good friend Professor Narelle Lemon sent me a link to an academic paper called “AI and its implications for research in higher education: a critical dialogue” because it cited … one of my old blog posts. It’s a good paper, and open access, so I recommend having a read. It’s written as a debate between the two authors: Russell, an AI enthusiast, and Rachel, who is …