Like everyone else, this holiday week gave me a chance to reflect on the past year and start making plans for the year ahead. The year started slow, and then proceeded to rush towards the end. Some things were accomplished, others I forgot about. …

There’s a thought experiment, and a warning, about leaving too much to AI. In the paperclip maximizer example, an AI is told to make paperclips as efficiently as possible. Without sufficient guardrails, it soon begins to convert everything, including people, into paperclips as it spirals out of control. In this…

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe — Carl Sagan ChatGPT has quickly garnered a lot of attention, and deservedly so. As a tech demo for large language models, it is really impressive. You can ask it pretty much anything and…

Hey, I’ve been writing fantasy novels. I’ve already published the first one and I recommend you read it! Sign up for my author site newsletter while you’re at it. As part of this marketing campaign I’ve authored a series of posts with illustrations of main characters. I’ve also done posts…

Harvard has girlbossed too close to the sun. Is there anything morally wrong? How does one define ‘bigoted’? These aren’t just abstract questions anymore, as the institution of affirmative action is likely to get dismissed by Harvard after the Supreme Court heard Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. …

A week ago I went to Join Mastodon and signed up for an account, @fleker@mastodon.world, and have been using it. While there has been a sudden uptick in growth, most of the people I’ve followed on Twitter have not migrated. My timeline is fairly empty. …

A few weeks into the football season, I’m happy to see the Philadelphia Eagles doing so well. As someone who grew up in that broadcast market, it’s hard to not see it as my team. However, actually getting to watch the games has been a mess for some reason. …

Millions of graduates will soon see parts of their student loans forgiven. The plan is split in three parts, covering the existing student loan pause, debt relief for lower-income students, and adjusting the income-based payback. For these people, these policies will bring them plenty of relief and allow them to…

I’ve got this spare project, a game, that I’ve been working on in the little spare time I have. I’ve mentioned it before. The backend is entirely Firebase: using Cloud Functions, Hosting, and user data stored in Cloud Firestore. Cloud Firestore is a fast and reliable NoSQL product to store…