Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Anthropic has a pretty solid language model, but other aspects of their user experience leave something to be desired.

Been trying to test out their API for several days now and I’m stuck in some situation where it seems to think that my “organization already has a verified phone number” (which is great and all, but it’s also asking me for a phone number in order to claim the trial credits?)

To their credit, they seem to have a support line! To their discredit, queries to it have gone unanswered for 2 days now.

@itamarst I had the same impression when I read those. They seemed very influential, had decent world-building, but they were a bit boring.

Major takeaways from today’s Spanish conversation lesson:

1. There are a lot of words to describe cheese and various types of cheese.
2. I know very few of them in Spanish.

I just bought some e-readers for my niece and nephew, and I’d like to get them started by loading them with some high quality books. Anyone have recommendations for engaging books for teens/preteens?

Nephew is 14 and he’s really into tech. I think he mostly wants the e-reader because it’s an e-ink screen that he can hack on, so that archetype should be easy for the kind of crowd that follows me. He was also asking a lot of questions about physics when I was there, so high quality explainers for stuff like relativity and quantum mechanics aimed at a young teen level would probably be good.

Niece is 12 and insists that she will not use the e-reader. My wife thinks that she will like anything that says boys are stupid (this makes her sound vapid, but she is quite sharp). Tougher nut to crack, obviously.

Fiction and non-fiction recommendations are fine.

#books #recommendations #ya

@adamchainz Immediately after it happened, it felt tight and swollen, like when you have a twisted ankle (without the pain from the soft tissue damage, obviously). I couldn’t really bend it or straighten it all the way out for a few hours, and it is still pretty stiff.

Now it is a lot better but not all the way. The needle site is still sore and it looks horrible, but it looks worse than it is.

@Nekokawaigari Thanks, they said it is pretty common and the water will eventually get absorbed into the rest of my body.

Did double red cell donation today; normally this is a very nice experience because you get some saline infusions to rehydrate you, but apparently today I accidentally got a little hole in my vein and all the saline just went into the space around my veins and muscles and such.

So now one of my arms is all inflated like a water balloon 😅 I will spare you the picture, but it looks like a lumpy potato 🥔😛

@poleguy Doesn’t look like there is any Braille on the sign.

To be fair I do think these signs are primarily there to communicate that the button doesn’t affect the timing of the signal.

I don’t know how long I’ve seen these signs before realizing the fundamental mismatch between the medium and the intended audience here…

#hashtag