@intelligentdithering posted about an 8-port DIY KVM switch using the #PiKVM. Here's the link to a succinct writeup and parts list:

https://intelligentdithering.com/8-port-ip-kvm-on-a-budget/#parts

#Spotify started charging me for a premium plan that includes audiobooks. I didn't even know they had audiobooks!

Here's the link to check to make sure they didn't do the same to you: https://www.spotify.com/us/account/subscription/change/

Sitting at the Austin airport next to this art installation for the fictitious Gate ∞, while the gate agent announcement drops this truth bomb of a quote:

"The world is covered by the same truth. Only the name of the airport changes."

I am so proud.

#bisexualvisibilityday

Sunday mornings were made for programming MQTT automations with your light switches

#homeassistant #tasmota

<rant>

I saw some chatter today about the ability to set up a local Firefox Sync server, so your Firefox profile doesn't have to live in the cloud. I love the idea of taking my data back from the cloud, so I jumped in.

After three hours of failing, I've given up.

There's an old unmaintained version which runs but doesn't work and doesn't show why. "about:sync-log" just says the connection was "interrupted" but no clue why.

There's a newer version (written in Rust, because obviously) which requires a standalone MySQL server (!) and spews seemingly random errors about missing plugins like sha256.

My best guess is that this is flat-out not supported on an ARM chip (since I'm trying to do this on the Synology).

Anyway, I think my pup knows I'm frustrated and is trying to cajole me away from the desk. It's time to give in. :-/

@unknown8bit just made me realize there's a #24hoursoflemons hashtag! What is 24 Hours of Lemons, you ask?

Have you heard of the 24 Hours of LeMans? It's a solid 24-hour non-stop race around a track (not an oval, a real track!) and whoever gets the most laps wins. The record is 3,360 miles (5410 km)! The race is unique in that slow and careful drivers are legitimately competitive with super-fast drivers and cars that go through fuel, tires, and brakes.

Well, if you're trapped in America and don't have a few million dollars to burn in a weekend, then there's 24 hours of Lemons 🍋 Buy a $500 car, make it (vaguely) trackworthy, and go race with your friends for a weekend. Never driven on a track before? No problem, neither have other teams. Never welded in a roll cage? Spend a few hours on YouTube and give it a shot!

24 Hours of Lemons is surprisingly non-competitive. Sure, there's a first place (the award is $600 IN NICKELS), but the real trophies are things like the Heroic Fix, the Index of Efficacy, and the "I Got Screwed" award, which goes to the team that repeatedly had miserable luck and frustrating failures all weekend long.

Teams help each other out. We cook dinner for each other, borrow each other's tools, and lend a hand when someone else's car pulls into the paddock. If you wreck into someone (we try not to, but it happens), you go find their team, apologize, and share a beer.

If all that sounds overwhelming, then you should know that it's fun to watch as a spectator too! They've got dozens of annual events on the schedule: https://24hoursoflemons.com

The cars are themed to be ridiculous. I've seen a Volvo with a toilet bolted to the roof, a Waffle House car, a car with the body of a helicopter. My favorite was an old Chevy Astro van (the big boxy ones!) painted black and white to look like the Space Shuttle. There were three trash cans glued to the back, to look like booster engines, and when it braked, LEDs would make them glow red. It was painfully slow, but awesome!

Anyway, if there's anyone you know who participated in Lemons, invite them to the #24HoursOfLemons and #24Lemons hashtags to talk about it, so we can have more awesome teams! If you're interested, check out their website and YouTube channel, then head over to the forums where teams support each other and are eager to recruit new folks without a car of their own... yet.

A college student created an app that can tell whether AI wrote an essay. (Edward Tian, Princeton University)

> To determine whether an excerpt is written by a bot, GPTZero uses two indicators: "perplexity" and "burstiness." Perplexity measures the complexity of text; if GPTZero is perplexed by the text, then it has a high complexity and it's more likely to be human-written. However, if the text is more familiar to the bot — because it's been trained on such data — then it will have low complexity and therefore is more likely to be AI-generated.

> Separately, burstiness compares the variations of sentences. Humans tend to write with greater burstiness, for example, with some longer or complex sentences alongside shorter ones. AI sentences tend to be more uniform.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1147549845/gptzero-ai-chatgpt-edward-tian-plagiarism