2026-10-31T18:36:08Z https://nostr.now Chris Hodges https://nostr.now/npub1nx05h46j2w0kz087y803hpdd4la8gsscxpw4ynehr463qkylmj2q9zs4lh https://media.mas.to/accounts/avatars/109/313/950/160/326/572/original/39813dd01c58f43a.png https://media.mas.to/accounts/avatars/109/313/950/160/326/572/original/39813dd01c58f43a.png https://nostr.now/nevent1qqszulzmuysska3w9h9lsg84g78vpr4a887ul49clcgcqjugaxv4fhczyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfg06lcfy In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs07tvv3dcv82uy60x0zzjms7k9pwf4qax3eap83l6myrwz59wuazg739tzn'>nevent1q…9tzn</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>But that has been the case for a long time - I remember looking for a basic home/office &#34;colour laser printer&#34; about 15 years ago; around 1% of the search results met both criteria. 2026-09-04T15:17:36Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqs07tvv3dcv82uy60x0zzjms7k9pwf4qax3eap83l6myrwz59wuazgzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgzh2ced In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs0fn7f8dffndgsuytwz0ucwjfs8wprrla97ypfucrew7ss33dfh6chcz494'>nevent1q…z494</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>Yes, I don&#39;t buy from Amazon for the same reason*. That&#39;s not because I don&#39;t like them as a company, though I don&#39;t, but because they&#39;re too frustrating to deal with. Bike and the occasional van parts are far better found on eBay, or proper online shops.<br/><br/>*With very few exceptions - they&#39;re the only way to get cheap rugged Chinese mobile phones, and a brand of bike gear I get on with. Also they are quick even though I refuse to get Prime, so I place maybe 2-3 orders/year. 2026-09-04T15:14:44Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsfq2wmjanyuypg6y9ravr45scg8ystueuedj6zqr0h5j60hsd27aqzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfg84yxzr In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs9hmw7309ga8g026gpd7gc8y6anpgvugpxx3vnu3uhvfrfh5mhulqmd0vj9'>nevent1q…0vj9</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>Even when those platform sellers aren&#39;t selling through Amazon, all too often they&#39;re so trapped that the order still comes in an Amazon van and even from an Amazon warehouse. I&#39;m no longer confused when my eBay order turns up in new Amazon packaging, but I certainly was at first - and I&#39;ve just ordered from a shop&#39;s own website and it says it will come from Amazon.<br/><br/>But that did bring an example of how they&#39;re simultaneously stupid - todays order was shoes. Strangely enough I want them in my size. Amazon insists on trying to sell me &#34;popular&#34; options, i.e. the tiny sizes their captive sellers have overstocked 2026-09-04T13:44:03Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqs2qz3ldnda0ea5ac44knszh39xqpusshkurxs83zvmd6n7xf83nhczyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgdqju5c In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs0m2r6663cwgcg65scmsckey8drrux09cg9auzra0chn408jezdrqm8add6'>nevent1q…add6</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>We&#39;re also seeing the other side of the coin: reviews produced using AI. Not just in the form of &#34;turn my notes into a neatly-formatted review&#34;, but &#34;chatGPT review this paper&#34;. <br/><br/>Interestingly, like any spellchecker, LLMs can find things the author should attend to and humans may have missed, but they can&#39;t judge whether there&#39;s merit in the work as a whole, let alone novelty 2026-07-17T07:51:21Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsgzps9qmvdxl0w8jjdv5lvvm8enclkkzz3xtamdcmwee5rhtrc93szyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgur5hfu In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqsgmxpdrm9dxa5xqkl27c8whem4cqxj4m6jr6qegqwa6tpdfgdh9yquha5m2'>nevent1q…a5m2</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>The silly thing is that there are AI-assisted medical advances being made. It&#39;s just that they use modest machine-learning setups any university can host, not hype-machines. 2026-06-06T18:32:28Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsrw6vzduk83ytsfjhh8gufmkhaveacl8ctyvr9qswhrfv5xqv9emszyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfg9dnvkw In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqsfjr63uz9zkrmfknltumfkfsw6wnzyfgrf55var4t3smcv93x65yqxup6q4'>nevent1q…p6q4</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>The corollary to shopping at places you like - don&#39;t shop at places you don&#39;t. There might be a bit of satisfaction in avoiding it, but also by treating Amazon as a last resort, you don&#39;t have to put up with the frustration of trying to find what you want to buy, when all they&#39;ll show you is what they want to sell you. The cost of getting tricked once into buying something unsuitable could outweigh any (probably fake anyway) savings. 2026-05-22T08:27:28Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsgg0jm4vnee6n99thlsyra5xphn3s2m5mjmlkg0nxsqe2guet6chqzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgfyvp2q In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs2jkdakh467c6vsduhvln4p4p8z70ry2lphc22leqmze2hawp0r4srdnjvp'>nevent1q…njvp</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>Despite being very keen on your descriptions and coinages, there&#39;s something about this wording, old-fashioned even for its time, that&#39;s rather satisfying 2026-05-18T09:23:38Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsyakl8a066g5e5ng2rtaqr09zluxseueruamtd6kghumhzy5hgkqczyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfg28vnap In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs80mnq3jfu5lr87vv29wqz6xjm87yyppsueexcqk40dehvn0ezsgs95503h'>nevent1q…503h</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>The term, and the concept, date back 80 years (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex</a> - a link that&#39;s its own example if ever there was one), but this modern and more open - in the sense of being public as well as its tools - approach makes for a very interesting successor 2026-02-19T15:12:44Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsgu9nxa3qjtqs22y2drqxenec6vycxasvushkkjyleljjqq25fa9gzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgzqypyd In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqsgt00xfgj0n7ytpyyavncl7vpqkfzqwsvchsajrfmdldm9urjkrwc347haw'>nevent1q…7haw</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>You might be interested in <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org">https://uk.bookshop.org</a> - online ordering but with a good chunk of the profits going to independent bookshops (including the volunteer-run one where my parents are involved: <a href="https://kettsbooks.co.uk/">https://kettsbooks.co.uk/</a>). You can pick which shop to support, and the map to do so is also a nice listing of independents 2026-01-14T14:50:56Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqswcawahfesm3r7f8ukfn273xunm88e8wkr0u76acltrk065zat53qzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgdwgcwv In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs8626z2lk4dezcevt0hx7hn2vv3uhl6vylh4866a49aepewt63uygl06ln9'>nevent1q…6ln9</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>A Google maps search for the full name of a local school returns , in random order, both that school (2 sites), and another school a few miles away, also with a name ending &#34;community school&#34;. They haven&#39;t fixed it since I reported the error. They&#39;re in a very similar direction from my place, and I only really use Google maps for driving directions with live traffic info (OSM is far better for actual maps). All very confusing, and new in the last few months. 2026-01-12T14:57:42Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqs9yyee6xhfp8wdem06lqjsda3n78qsqnhwl4fanm32nat8cv3v37szyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgjdudmg In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqsflq4ekutlca3u00a6j3lsdhhjjak93x8vyl5nynalhzgdh8c92sqparj77'>nevent1q…rj77</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>The UK&#39;s national rail enquiries system has a similar thing with station codes that are also substrings of other stations&#39; names, but not this bad. It&#39;s also fairly new, along with their new &#34;responsive&#34; website that means more, longer, waits for things to load (and no longer encodes the station code in the URL, which was a nice workaround to avoid having to reload the search page for familiar stations) 2026-01-12T14:39:48Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqs89exeqct5qlrscq9cae3r4yucyag7xx3smfdy5z26pu0ustnt3rqzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfg2jfdnq In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqsvm0a0ej9hdy5q6e56nqfmusk9yudnmd8ht3wfq5a52szcdhcdh8q5jye7a'>nevent1q…ye7a</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>What surprises me is that they&#39;re not using the (real) issue of e-bike battery fires as their lead excuse. Of course a dodgy rebuild of an existing battery becomes more attractive when a decent 3rd party replacement isn&#39;t an option 2026-01-12T13:45:23Z https://nostr.now/nevent1qqsdnh0tp6ayu7u0cp2u50hekz2rmfcppfqt7jee4rzu7m7whu6zctqzyzve7j7h2ffe7cfulcsa7xu94khl5azzrqc965j0xuwh2yzcnlwfgu0h37e In reply to <a href='/nevent1qqs0uvm2xn8ulf8s88xx9wqxcxp8m6c33zd2xrf4zheeg5rl05276rg84p4qx'>nevent1q…p4qx</a><br/>_________________________<br/><br/>Even for those of us that don&#39;t post threads here, character limits make for a good writing exercise. It&#39;s beneficial for those of us writing instructions and similar technical work in other places; I&#39;ve been both been criticised and complimented for using many short paragraphs in a similar way to Cory&#39;s stanzas 2025-09-17T08:51:57Z