Make your own AI chatbot, does Twitter Blue work, why fish are fish shaped, magical creatures, and more
It's Advanced Geekery for the week ending July 14, 2023
Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter.
We had Prime Day (days) this week. Sometimes I think this mid-summer retail baccanale signifies the end of civilization. On the other hand, since sales during the summer months historically used to plummet precipitously, the Prime Day event (and similarly timed events by everyone who isn’t Amazon) may also be keeping half the world afloat during what otherwise would be some pretty lean months.
That said, if you can tear yourself away from incredible discounts on inflatable hot tubs, I have some brain food for you to enjoy. Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET:
Want to build your own AI chatbot? Say hello to open-source HuggingChat: ChatGPT may be dominating AI coverage but If you're super-geeky, you can build your own chatbot using HuggingChat and a few other tools.
How to start your own Substack newsletter: Substack is a rapidly growing method of publishing email newsletters. If you want to set one up for yourself, I take you through the process, step-by-step.
Is Twitter pay-to-play now? Early results of my Blue checkmark experiment are in: I only have one month worth of results, but the numbers are pretty clear. Twitter is juking the stats.
The rest of the story…
For those of you who read about my challenges managing terabytes of storage in the Google cloud last week, there has been a resolution.
Roughly 12 hours after I posted the article, a senior technician from Google Workspace Support reached out to tell me my storage had been increased by another 25TB and the freeze warning was shut off. I’d like to think this was just their process and not the result of my article, but we’ll never know. Nonetheless, needing 10TB+ more storage every year clearly isn’t sustainable, so I’m going to audit my backup use and see if there’s any way I can reduce my overall storage footprint.
In answer to some of your questions, I have a total of 136TB storage on my local servers, most for data science and video backups. Right now, 57TB of that is backed up to the Google cloud.
This week’s YouTube recommendations
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
CNBC has a clear and understandable explainer about why Hollywood writers are striking. And yes, generative AI is a big part of their concern (as it is for all of us who write for a living). As an example, I asked ChatGPT to write a short Star Trek story. It wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t terrible.
Have you ever wondered why fish are fish shaped? Lauren Sallan, a professor who specializes in paleobiology, macroevolution, and the origins of vertebrate and marine life, explains in a way that even a kid could understand.
We all know how powerful John Williams’ original theme for Indiana Jones is and how it’s still good 40+ years later. The folks at YouTube channel Film Score and More explain why it’s just that good.
Apple TV’s engaging series based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories is back with Season 2. Here’s a three minute recap that will catch you up.
Interesting reads
Here’s some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
Let’s start with some more troubling AI news. According to a bunch of researchers at Stanford, GPT detectors (software used to tell if writing is by a human or a machine) are biased against non-native English writers.
ZDNET’s Artie Beaty wrote another troubling piece about our new AI overlords: What happens if a superintelligent AI goes rogue? OpenAI doesn't want to find out. Nothing to see here. These are not the droids you’re looking for.
Statista, the company who makes all those wonderful charts, has a new one out. They’re showcasing how the “app economy” — stuff driven by apps — has exceeded $1 trillion. Apparently, grocery delivery alone accounts for $52B (I’ve certainly contributed to this — Costco’s stuffed peppers are the bomb!)
Reader Projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course
Finally, let’s wrap up with something truly wonderful. This week, my wife had the opportunity to visit the community carousel in the neighboring town of Albany, OR.
Operated by volunteers, the animals take more than 1,500 hours to carve. While there is a master carver who guides community members, even novice carvers can help craft these rideable works of art.
If you want to know the whole story of the Albany community carousel, Atlas Obscura did a full profile that’s a very inspiring read.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!