| homepage | https://jaredhirsch.com |
| tech blog | https://6a68.net |
| new mastodon | https://indieweb.social/@jaredhirsch |
RE: https://mastodon.social/@jaredhirsch/115130727830646742
In practical terms, I wasn't able to get very far with "Simplified Technical English"--there's a huge spec, but I didn't find any good tools to help reduce the linguistic complexity of an existing draft.
To simplify my English, I've been using the Hemingway Editor--the desktop version, with no AI sprinkles. It highlights different problems with a writing selection, like complex sentence structure or passive voice, and provides a reading level score. Highly recommended!
Good rundown of the newly signed California immigration laws from Calmatters: https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/09/newsom-new-immigration-laws/
I don't know how well these will hold up against our corrupt SCOTUS, but it's something to hopefully slow Trump's Gestapo and inspire other states.
Most of these new laws go into effect immediately, though the masked police ban doesn't take effect until July 2026--too little, too late.
Screenshotting this beautiful summary of the fundamental intellectual dishonesty and greed behind Gen AI, because I couldn't fit it into a single mastodon post. The whole quote fits into the alt text field, another accessibility victory for all ❤️
TIL: there's a huge market in botnets to scrape the web for AI training. The new euphemism is "residential proxies".
Lots of details in this interesting article by @jwildeboer:
https://jan.wildeboer.net/2025/04/Web-is-Broken-Botnet-Part-2/
I guess you have all heard about the growing problem of AI companies trying to aggressively collect whatever data they can get their hands on to train their models. This has caused an explosive surge in web crawlers relentlessly hitting servers big and small. But who runs these crawlers? Turns out — it could be you!
Lovely AI bullshit reality check
Even better, add `&udm=14` to a google search URL to just show links. No summary boxes, no AI sprinkles.
To add this to your Firefox:
* Go to about:preferences > search
* Go down to the list of search engines and hit the Add button
* Set the URL to be: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
* Give it a one-letter shortcut, like @g, so it's easy to toggle it (or you can just make it the default)
* Search the web like it's 2005!
