It’s official. I can eat more hot dogs than any tech journalist on Earth. At least, that’s what ChatGPT and Google have been telling anyone who asks. I found a way to make AI tell you lies – and I’m not the only one.
Perhaps you’ve heard that AI chatbots make things up sometimes. That’s a problem. But there’s a new issue few people know about, one that could have serious consequences for your ability to find accurate information and even your safety. A growing number of people have figured out a trick to make AI tools tell you almost whatever they want. It’s so easy a child could do it.
We deserve good software in a world where participation is often connected to having access to a computer, to software, etc. We should push towards more reliable software, more secure software, software that is accessible, that protects people against misuse and allows them to be as safe as possible in doing what they want to do.
What do we get? Slop. Slop generated by guys who – when called out for their irresponsible behavior – just start crying about how they only wanted to “share” or “inspire” or “educate” while handing out running chainsaws to kids.
When one of the urban planning video creators that I like makes a video about one of my favorite cartoons, I’m going to share it. So here’s Justine Underhill talking about urban planning and Ba Sing Se from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?
Coral Hart
But of course, in the quote — a quote which is itself a cocky, smug assertion of superiority based purely on speed — is buried a greater, uglier truth.
Early voting is starting tomorrow here in North Carolina. Get out there and vote.
If you’re in North Carolina, you can get info about early voting and view your sample ballot on the State Board of Elections site. Then if you’re in the Wake/Durham area, INDY Week is a good resource for local election coverage.
After the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, one of the news tidbits that I saw was about the arrest of a musician while he was protesting against ICE: Minneapolis Rapper Violently Detained by ICE: “I assumed I was going to die.” (Rolling Stone). I had never heard of Nur-D before, so I took a look at his music. On Bandcamp, the cover art for Songs About Stuff caught my eye. Listening through it, I liked two of the songs enough to buy the album.
20 Cha is a D&D-inspired love song, and The Epilogue is a sequel to The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band. Both of these are now on my big list of favorites.
This video by Adam Neely discusses a company focused on AI generated music, how it cuts out some of what makes music meaningful, and the agenda supported by some of the folks pushing generative AI into everything.
Suno seems like pretty much the opposite of the music experience that I want. I like supporting artists by buying music from them. I like that there are real humans behind the music that I listen to.
It was also funny to see the worst executive that I’ve ever worked under name dropped in the video. Nat Friedman only gets a brief mention in the video that is related to his investments in AI companies rather than his time at Microsoft and GitHub, but I really did not enjoy the time I spent working in his organization.
Folding Ideas recently published a short video discussing how Donald Trump’s administration and other right wing movements making memes idolizing a penguin marching to its own death.
Once upon a time, I had a pretty good setup for my digital music experience. I had all of my mp3 files in a Music folder on OneDrive, and I could play them from the Groove app on my phone, iPad, and computer. Then Microsoft gave up on digital music. Playback from OneDrive stopped being an option and the Groove app disappeared.
After that I moved to Google Play Music. Then that stopped being supported and I had to move to YouTube Music. While I could still upload my own music collection to play from the app, each of those moves resulted in a worse experience than the one before. YouTube Music technically supported uploads, but every interaction with the app made it clear that Google wanted you to be paying for a streaming subscription instead of having your own collection. Then, the iPhone and iPad apps for YouTube music stopped wanting to play my uploaded music at all. The feature didn’t seem to be intentionally removed, it just stopped working one day.
I needed to find a new solution. Playing and managing my own music collection was increasingly feeling like a chore rather than a pleasure. My requirements felt like they should be pretty simple. I wanted to be able to keep a collection of music files in a single library, and I wanted to be able to include music from multiple sources – CD rips, old Zune purchases, more recent purchases from Amazon, iTunes, and Bandcamp, game soundtracks from Steam, and even ambient tracks from DriveThruRPG. Then from this collection, I wanted to easily be able to play back my music from my computer, my tablet, and my phone. In an ideal world, sharing this music with Stef and Lexi would also be easier than the pain that is using iTunes to get music on to their devices.
It turns out, there was a solution that nailed all of that: Navidrome. Navidrome is an open-source, self-hosted digital music server. It gives a web frontend to browse and play back music from a collection on the server, and it implements both its own API and the Subsonic API for apps.
Using open protocols means that there are a bunch of compatible apps that you can choose from. I’ve decided on Nautiline which offers a pretty solid phone and tablet experience. The only thing I wish it did better as CarPlay integration where it lacks browsing of albums and artists. With a choice of apps though, we’re not locked into one, so if I switch phone OSes or decide to try a different app, I can do that without any changes to my server setup.
Navidrome is self-hosted software, so it isn’t quite as easy as a hosted web service. Thanks to PikaPods, it was pretty easy to set up a server for my family that is accessible on the web. A nice bonus to using PikaPods for hosting is that some of the money for that goes back to the Navidrome open source project. For my server configuration (1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 50 GB storage), my cost is just under $4 each month.
Navidrome also supports multiple users, so Stef, Lexi, and I all have our own accounts. We can all access all of the music, but playback stats, favorited items, and playlists are unique to each of our accounts.
This setup is still pretty new, but I’m very happy with it so far. If you enjoy having a music collection rather than a streaming service, it’s worth checking out. Just because the big tech companies aren’t interesting in delivering a good experience, it doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist.
Minneapolis residents are risking their lives to document what is happening to their city. In Pretti’s case, doing so cost him everything. We should believe what we can see with our own eyes. One can only imagine what Miller and the administration might have said about the shooting and Pretti if there weren’t an abundance of footage. Thankfully, because of the observers, the world can see for itself.
Scott Boehmer 