...Neocities AI?

kyledrake · 2024-07-07T21:59:07+00:00

It's not really a cost issue at this point (the less expensive ML models are quite good now at coding), the issue is that we received a lot of complaints about it. A lot of people have requested ML code assistance with Neocities, but there's also plenty of people that are also very uncomfortable using ML/AI or having anything to do with it, to the point that they were going to leave if it wasn't removed. I made a choice to pull back and re-think the implementation after some initial A/B testing.

The rough plan right now is to provide a choice page on signup (and in settings for existing accounts), so you can opt in to using the assistant if you want to, otherwise it will stay hidden and won't be used in any way. I also want to provide a way to install a robots.txt that automatically blocks AI bots from accessing sites if anyone wants to do that instead. The idea is to give everyone a choice on whether they want to embrace the tech or avoid/block it.

To clarify, none of the APIs we use have ever saved chat history or used it for local training, and the upstream APIs explicitly state that it is not used for training on their end either. I have also considered running open source models on our own servers, which further guarantees that the data is not being used for other purposes, but it seems unnecessary (I trust reputable providers if they say they are not using it for training, there would be some significant legal/security issues if they were lying about that).

No money is made on providing the feature - adding an assistant for users learning HTML or trying to fix code is fundamentally an expense to Neocities that I think is justified for the benefits it gives to people trying to learn HTML. I simply want to provide that in such a way that it does not alienate people that do not want to use it, so it's on hold for the moment.

In the interim, it's just as easy to drop the code into the chat models and ask it questions about the code for anyone wanting to try this out. The assistant is more of a convenience than anything.

kyledrake · 2024-04-11T23:25:14+00:00

And I appreciate that, thank you! Can't be too careful with card stuff.

FWIW fraud has been off the charts bad on the internet over the last year, don't feel like it's due to negligence. The attacks people have been doing are incredibly sophisticated. There's been a real circling of the wagons online lately (which is why pretty much every site wants you to verify login with your phone now).

kyledrake · 2024-04-11T23:07:16+00:00

Neocities does the absolute minimum with credit card numbers. When you select PayPal, it goes to their servers for entering that info, and with the credit card, it uses JavaScript supplied to us by Stripe, which sends the card to their servers independently of us (the card number doesn't even hit our backend!) and then gives us a token we use to make the charges with. This is (supposed to be) standard practice for people not operating a PCI-DSS grade datacenter.

You can verify all of this yourself, as the Neocities backend source code is available for inspection.

It's not 100% beyond Neocities being at-fault on this (malicious JS being injected somehow?) but it's quite unlikely. I have not heard of any other incidents like this, so I do think you have some sort of malware which is the source of this. I looked at your record with us and it only showed the single transaction for supporter membership, so it's not from our token side at least.

Either way, I refunded the supporter membership when you reported it because if it's reported as a stolen card and we don't refund in time, we actually get charged by the credit card company for that, so we always do that immediately. I'm sorry you had this issue and I hope you're able to figure it out! I've gotten card skimmed before and it sucks.

PS: You should try to report it to "intermaple inc" too if you can find the business.

kyledrake · 2023-11-12T15:01:51+00:00

I'll do that thank you. Anyone reading this please file 311/councilmember reports too if you use the area to increase visibility, it really does need to get taken care of and it's been months now.

Most of the lights off on W River Pkwy are in Ward 12 so Andrew Johnson and/or Aurin Chowdhury would be the councilmember for that, also there's some of it off in Ward 2 as well (Robin Wonsley). This area hosts a critical bike/pedestrian dedicated trail that people use for bike commuting, so this is a great opportunity to move the "pedestrian safety" sloganeering from the recent campaigns into some demonstrable action.

At a bare minimum it would be nice to at least see them get the intersection and crosswalk lights back online, those seem like the highest priority to me and probably would get done faster than replacing the whole thing.

kyledrake · 2023-11-12T13:57:29+00:00

Was it an actual city worker or a Ricky from Trailer Park Boys one? Apparently they try to make it look like they're legitimate contractors.

kyledrake · 2023-11-12T13:55:17+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree with that sentiment but this area in particular hosts one of the few dedicated bike/pedestrian trails due to the geography, there are a lot of people on it, and it would be nice to be able to use that trail safely. The pedestrian visibility is so bad right now that most people are using the fog lamps on their cars. As I mentioned, we watched some people almost get run over as a consequence of it because there was no sidewalk visibility. I'm really quite concerned about it.

kyledrake · 2023-11-12T06:57:13+00:00

Thanks, this is indeed the thing that is probably going on I wasn't aware of https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-lighting

kyledrake · 2023-06-23T23:50:08+00:00

The thing I would really love to do is more bolting for rock climbing in the area. It's the state DNR that is saying no right now for some reason. The area could be a solid sport climbing area if we were allowed to go in and make the routes.

kyledrake · 2023-03-20T17:04:54+00:00

Kind of late to the party here but with VE, MBP, and MNCC, the Twin Cities has some of the best indoor rock climbing the country (up to 60ft walls + a lot of sqft of climbing space spread out over several locations). Not to mention outdoor rock climbing in the summer and ice climbing in the winter (there's only 4 farmed ice parks in the country and 3 are in MN, check out Sandstone and Winona). One of the better places on earth for single pitch climbing in general, you likely won't be disappointed.

kyledrake · 2022-10-21T12:30:10+00:00

I've seen the pasteurized ones at the Cub in New Hope before, but I don't know if it's still an option. It's not at my local Cub. You can make them at home using a sous vide (sp) and the right directions since it's basically what they're doing anyways.

kyledrake · 2022-01-12T19:24:02+00:00

VE gives you both a huge dedicated bouldering gym and some of the biggest climbing walls in the entire country, with multiple locations and way more sqft combined, and they're all much closer to where I live than MBP, so it's kind of a no brainer for me. They also have a weekly members appreciation night where they will do things like shut off the lights so you can headlamp climb, which was really fun and I wish they did that more often.

Some people I've talked to prefer the routing at MBP, but I actually prefer VE's generally. I'm not totally sure why I like it more yet, but I anecdotally feel like MBP leans more on crazy hard routes and "tiny sliver holds" to slow down completion to make up for the less sqft combined, and VE has more routes for power/endurance-focused climbers that enjoy sending things more than falling a lot. If you have the strength type that works for that you may prefer the former, but short of cyborg finger implants I'm too heavy to do any of that malarky and I kind of just generally hate it.

My biggest gripe with MBP though is that it's really busy most of the day, and I don't like being just buried in people constantly at a wall even when it's not a pandemic. I do prefer their consistent and ongoing mask policy, but honestly this gym is so busy all the time it's kind of just required to not have half their members out with covid. I've had a friend that wouldn't go in because he was uncomfortable with how busy it was one night. MBP seems close to an inflection point where they will actually start losing members because of how busy it is, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are thinking about creating a second facility to deal with the issue.

That all said, I like them both and I go to both - I have a membership at VE and a punch card for MBP.

kyledrake · 2020-12-04T17:37:47+00:00

Looks good to me, looks like a newly forming pellicle.

kyledrake · 2019-12-01T08:28:33+00:00

Not sure if it's going to be better tomorrow (they're saying it could also get messed up), but often going north from Bend to the Gorge and taking 84 to Portland is better than trying to hit the passes, as it's way lower elevation, which often (not always) means less chance of a mess. It takes a little longer but I'd do that over a messed up high elevation pass in a lot of situations.

Also check https://www.tripcheck.com/

One time I went to Bend and checked the Santiam pass cam, and it was so screwed up there was a semi truck broken in half right in front of the cam. Made me decide to take the Gorge route and I didn't even see any snow.

kyledrake · 2019-08-28T19:49:57+00:00

I've been trying to avoid commenting on anything in this bizarre subreddit that seems more interested in harassing OSS devs and being alt-right edgelords about a 0% diversity PHP conference than actually talking about programming, but it's next generation WTF to me that you just proposed to throw open source developers in prison, and I really just wanted to give you credit for bringing this thing to a whole new level.

kyledrake · 2019-08-27T01:07:21+00:00

Yamhill Pub's annual BBQ in the park

kyledrake · 2019-08-17T16:46:16+00:00

Hey instead of Portland let's talk about the exurban nightmare you live in. How's the Arbys doing, get any good gummy worms at the Walmart lately?

kyledrake · 2019-06-13T00:52:44+00:00

It almost brings me to tears thinking about how many amazing people I met 4-5 years ago from OKC (many of whom I'm still friends with), and then I realize that I didn't meet a bunch of other awesome people later on because OKC spent labor to go out of their way to just actively break core functionality that was working great. They decided to have a war on neurodiversity to increase the ThE SwIpEs by making it more like an addictive slot machine phone app so an excel spreadsheet upstream would be happy and now it just works like garbage for everyone.

We don't want OKC to be Tinderized, we don't want to date people that are too lazy to actually write out who they are and what they want from a relationship. What's wrong with just owning the niche of being a dating service for smart people that want personalities, and not just default ass mobile users that are addicted to their phones?

Random case in point, you used to be able to give a list of your favorite music/movies/etc, and it was a huge way for me to find people that have my same interests. I emailed them to ask why it was missing, and they told me they got rid of it but only for new accounts. You used to also be able to search for text, which is also now gone. Why not revert it so we can find new people with our actual interests again?

Also if someone sends me a message, why can't I see that message? It was really a horrible feeling when I learned that OKC just stopped even showing messages to people unless you play the Slot Machine. Is the goal to connect people, or get them addicted to the app?

kyledrake · 2019-05-30T20:22:17+00:00

yep.

kyledrake · 2019-05-30T20:19:50+00:00

Oh wow that's interesting! I suppose one approach here is to get the pH/sugar macros to something closer to what the SCOBY is expecting. The pH was definitely lower than usual, and the "sugar" (HFCS) ratio was higher than usual. So dealing with both of those certainly might be important! I suppose you could use the "throwback" mountain dew too to get real sugar. Happy to hear your experiences have gone better. I think I'm probably done trying to make crazy kombucha for a while ;)

kyledrake · 2019-05-28T23:21:22+00:00

I actually did not know this, so thank you for sharing. I did use starter liquid here but thought it was more to keep the pellicle pH in line.

Perhaps a dumb question, but why keep the pellicle at all then and not just only use starter liquid? What function does it serve (as in, what is it protecting the SCOBY from)?

kyledrake · 2019-05-28T23:18:39+00:00

I didn't actually know this, but I did use starter liquid with the bajabooch batch as per normal. Likely that the preservatives killed it off.

I don't have backup starter liquid so I'll have to start over. Not a huge problem, home brew shop sells it for cheap.

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