Category Archives: Computers and Internet

Posts on computer science and the web, rants about OS:es, Window Managers, Platforms for almost publishing content on the web, and the like.

Computers and Internet

0% Sycophancy!

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Gemma 4 via Ollama and AnythingLLM, 0% sycophancy!

Me: Thanks! Could you summarize X (also attached) as if it were a Wikipedia article on this topic?
Gemma 4: In order for me to summarize X as a Wikipedia article, I first need information about X itself. Kindly attach or paste the text about X so that I can create a summary of X in the desired style.
Me: Information about X is attached to this workspace in the document “X.md”. Can you see it?
Gemma 4 makes a “summary” on X that is longer than the original document… and has emoji-decorated headlines… also, no comment on the RAG faux pas or anything… straight shooter…
Me: …

LOL! At least we won’t waste time on pleasantries 😀

Computers and Internet, Humor, Language

Swedish Apple Spell

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How Swedish spell checking in Apple Spell apparently was created:

Apple: Give us a list of correctly spelled Swedish words.
Swedish language professor: What do you need it for?
Apple: We’re doing spell checking.
Professor: Oh, you can’t do it like that.
Apple: We’re Apple! We can do anything!
Professor (making a joke list): Here, make spell checking with this.

Apple Spell just marked “spådan” (a misspelled “sådan”) a correct word in Swedish.

I mean. Sure, it is a correct Swedish word (a compound of “spå”—fortune-telling, and “dan”—the day… so, “the fortune-telling day”).

I tried to Google it, but was unable. It defaulted to “spådam” (fortune-teller) which ever way I tried to make it not. (Coincidentally, this is also a compound of “spå” and “dam”—lady… Swedish do compounds galore!)

What pisses me off most is that this ungoogleable compound exists in this shit spell checking but not some very very very common ones, like:

  • Lättstörd—easily disturbed (e.g. sleep)
  • Maglevtåg—maglev train
  • Obäddad—unmade (bed)
  • Prästinnorna—the priestesses
  • And several thousand other words that are not conlang words I have in my local dictionary (currently at 3536 words… I may be a prolific conlanger… but no, not that prolific)

That’s why I think Apple Spell is the result of a Swedish language professor jokingly showing Apple that, no, you can’t do anything even if you think so.

And no, I know what you think. Why don’t you install a Hunspell dictionary? WHY DON’T YOU TRY TO INSTALL ONE? You’d be one of a handful having tried and failed, and none of those people work at Apple.

Microsoft Word may not be good for much when it comes to fiction writing, but it does do Swedish spell-checking about a million times better than Apple Spell.

Computers and Internet

Parent-Child is the only way to define a hierarchical relationship concisely

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In software design, especially database design, you sometimes come across hierarchical relationships like a folder containing files, or a department containing other departments, or any other relationship where the hierarchical order or who contains who is important.

Let’s take an example. You’re the programmer using a web content system where there are folders and these folders have a many-to-many relationship to each other (meaning any folder can contain any other folder, even itself).

Unfortunately you’re tasked with placing a lot of folders inside other folders programmatically (no support from the UI, and by the way, your time budget doesn’t allow f-ing around with the UI to try to figure this one out… “it should be simple to do”, your manager says and give you very little time…)

How not to do it

Here are some examples of database table design (or rather column names) that will likely end up forcing you to redo the job and use 4 times as many hours:

  • objectID, referenceObjectID
  • connectedFrom, connectedTo
  • id, relatedId
  • topId, bottomId

Yeah yeah yeah, seeing that mess, you should definitely create a test connection to see what means what.

But what if you display the folders in the UI with components like “List connected from objects” and “List connected to objects”.

Looks good, right, we have two lists and one list can contain only one item and maybe that list can even be designed to look like it’s only one object.

Until someone else connects another object in “the wrong way” and suddenly that nice looking one-object display goes scrolling, swelling, wrapping and overflowing the whole UI.

Or hey, this being a many-to-many-relationship after all, maybe your UI can handle it just fine…

How about your users? How about the support staff?

How about the assumptions of other programmers about what contains what, or what is located where?

I mean, sure, it could be hilarious. A system where the employers can fire their boss or at least lower their wages, or where Texas is located in Austin, or you don’t eat hamburger, but hamburger eat you… like in Soviet Russia…

The ONLY way to do it

There is ONLY one way to describe a hierarchical relationship between two objects in a way nobody can misunderstand ever:

  • parent
  • child

Now, for sure, if you have problems with parent-child relationships, don’t take it out on your software, take it up with your therapist.

This. Is. The. Only. Way.

Before, after, left, right, center, above, below, alpha, beta, lalala, isn’t going to cut it.

But what if…

No what-ifs.

Parent.

Child.

Period.

Computers and Internet, Humor

Unsuitable for Consulting

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Customer: The system doesn’t handle virus infected files well.

Consultant: We’ll fix it with a virus cleaning add-on.

Customer: You mean antivirus?

Consultant: Nah, we’ll remove the viruses!

Customer: Oh… what’s the estimate for that?

Consultant: I’ll obviously pick an open source antivirus program and add a few lines, it won’t take long.

Customer: Let me get back to you…

Computers and Internet

After upgrading macOS, [INSERT FUNCTION HERE] stopped working…

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I just fixed a bug where macOS stopped announcing time.

The fix?

I unchecked the checkbox and checked it again.

It’s not the first time I have to do this in macOS. It seems they must have stored these settings in a very, very, very eccentric way. I’m voting for haikus…

So, the next time something stops working in macOS, try to switch it off and on again…

You know, like a flickering light bulb…

Are they using light bulbs to store these settings?

Who knows…

Computers and Internet

Understanding AI

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I believe the largest threat from AI in the coming years, possibly even decades, will not be that it will take over and turn humans into zoo animals. Rather, humans will overestimate its “intelligence” and use it to their own detriment.

This will mostly consist of companies and individuals putting too much faith in AI and making bad decisions because of it. E.g. company owners firing talent and trying to do with AI or individuals getting stuck in trying to create the perfect prompt when figuring out how to do it without AI would have been faster, or at least safer when talking about accuracy.

AI hallucinate, may require enormous amounts of compute without giving us correct answers, and the people doing AI don’t really know what they are doing.

So, do I say AI is useless and should not be used?

I think the Russians (yeah, those guys) say it best: Trust, but verify.

Do not take what comes out of an AI as gospel or truth. Or, as Qui-Gon Jinn said: The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.

One trick in order to think more clearly about AI is to drop the “I” (intelligence). Instead, you get “artificial content generators” (or “artificial decision makers”—just don’t mix “intelligence” in there and you’re ok):

  • Artificial picture generator
  • Artificial text generator
  • Artificial music generator
  • Etc.

I.e. more of a music box than a musician…

By all means, use GPTs or Image Checkpoints, but know that e.g. the text they generate are artificially generated and are neither fresh, original nor necessarily accurate.

However, right now there is a huge problem with AI in that the companies selling it steals copyrighted material with the insane notion that AI’s learning would be human level and this copying, rehashing and abusing of material would be something every human does when they learn something new.

Eh, they are not human! (Not even close.) Also, ok, so pay the price of one book per user that gains knowledge from that book then, or?

So, it could be good to not use AI too much before a satisfying model of payment to content creators have been put into place. After all, no content creators, no artificial content generators.