ttj - Tom Jones

In [1], Google Word Saladiser ("AI") did a good job of explaining why a time offset is not a time zone.  They are different things. But then it goes and does this:  [1] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2026/07/difference-between-timezone-and-offset.html > If only the word salads were capable of learning from themselves, they might go somewhere.

I bring good news and bad news. The good news is that in the Air New Zealand departure lounge in Auckland, the wifi is open, and there’s no captive portal to kill time on.  It just works.  As well, you can buy things in the airport shops and they don’t ask to scan your boarding pass.  You can skip these little annoyances, and things are not just okay, but better.  So stop copying everyone else, and dare to be less annoying. The bad news is that the wifi onboard a Singapore Airlines A380 uses a captive portal, even if you’re upstairs at the front.  And I’m back to trying to force the OS to launch the browser on the captive portal’s URL, as per [1].  Except now I’m armed with new knowledge: you can use the real domain “ neverssl.com ” to contrive a plain-text http request, so that this can be intercepted by the layer-busting hotspot / router, and redirected to their.. schmactive schmortal.  Ta-da!  Geeks rule the world, if by ruling, we mean: bei...

I have many examples of trello indexing for search failing, but here's one. Search for "flight singapore london" returns no results. Actual card contains "fly singapore -> london", so fly and flight aren't treated as co-stemmed (whatever the term) by indexer. But in comment of card is "flights", so word and its regular plural by adding "s" aren't treated as co-stemmed? I've added "keyword: flight" as a comment, and will see if that gets indexed and affects the search "flight singapore london" at some point in the future. But in other cases, all the search terms do appear literally, but the search still fails. More interestingly, playing with this raises some thoughts about application architecture. Many applications are "eventually consistent".  New data is added, and at some point in the future, indexes are updated, linked records are updated, aggregates, and so on.  In almost no cases is there an...

 some people have been wittering on about “AI”, as though it’s this or that. according to derpawerp, they are even going to take over the world. i asked one what’s the third-most populous city in new zealand, and it said something implausible. it then claimed auckland was the second-most populous. immediately after, it said auckland was the most populous, but didn’t notice its mistake. i had to “prompt” it, by asking whether the same city was really the first and second most populous. at which point, of course, “you’re absolutely right”. but it continued, with a straight face, making not just incorrect, but blatantly incoherent, claims about city population rankings. these word salads don’t just fail on basic facts, they lack the self-awareness to pick up on themselves when, according to themselves, they are being ridiculous. one was bugging me for pictures ideas, so i said draw a projection of new zealand onto northern hemisphere, flipping latitudes and lining up the other axis wi...