Anyone doing this? The Best Local Coding LLMs You Can Run Yourself https://www.kdnuggets.com/the-best-local-coding-llms-you-can-run-yourself

"Protecting people is too important a task." -- Congresswoman AOC

How Netflix Accidentally Proved Monoliths Scale Better Than Microservices https://medium.com/@yashbatra11111/how-netflix-accidentally-proved-monoliths-scale-better-than-microservices-f2d66f0a0bb5

My community faces more challenges. AGC Biologics to lay off hundreds in Boulder County https://www.dailycamera.com/2025/09/16/agc-biologics-layoffs-boulder-county/

Cooper's Hawk lurking in the garden. #longmont #colorado

So many of the woes of this country derive a basis in the pursuit of proving that some are better than others. We want a status hierarchy, artificial scarcity, inequality, and a winner takes all system, so long as we (or someone like us) are on top […]

Inventor's Notebook 2025-09-03 I wrote and tested a python program to automate migration of my GitHub projects to my lab-hosted forgejo instance. Setting up and using forgejo has been a delightful experience. https://forgejo.org/

Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong here....

I'm a huge fan of @molly0xfff. The work she does is inspiring - and this is a great interview. https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/independent-journalist-molly-white-knows-how-to-follow-the-memecoin/

Inventor's Notebook 2025-08-14 I'm working today on refining my domain language model for an inventor. The applications for some of my inventions are coming into focus. #freelance #inventor #laboratory #ddd

Just had my first ride home from the airport with Colorado Drivers Cooperative. Cheaper than Uber/Lyft and pays the drivers more. If you're around here, get on it!

What can you do when the government shuts down a scientific advisory group to prevent researchers and the public from working together on important issues? Start your own of course! A guide from the @ucsusa on how to establish establish independent advisory committees to fill recent gaps in the […]

2025-08-09 Inventor's Notebook Some of my favorite creators have demonstrated some fantastic desktop homelab builds with the DeskPi 10 inch portable racks. We're building Holistic Mathematics' lab 2.0 on the same form factor, letting me modernize for lower cost, use less electricity, take up […]

Rest well, and thank you, Jim Lovell. #apollo

Have you noticed that everyone in certain subcultures keeps using the term "first principles"? I explore its origins for Compact magazine: https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-engineering-replaced-politics/

2025-08-07 Inventor's Notebook I have been installing, updating, and testing Shelly smart switches in the lab. Home Assistant detects each switch on the local net automatically, and setup is a breeze. I wrote a script to detect loss of internet and reboot the WIFI bridge using the switch's web […]

Activists often argue for community involvement in the creation of predictive models & their implementation, but it's often dismissed as impractical. Excitedly waiting for Eos Trinidad's "Subtle Webs" on community involvement in school predictive modeling […]

2025-07-30 Inventor's Notebook I'm continuing to build out my IoT test rig, and looking forward to testing some upgraded components soon. I found Ben Mazur's excellent article [https://www.ignitec.com/insights/the-importance-of-test-rigs-in-research-and-development/ that defines "test rig" and […]

2025-07-21 Inventor's Notebook I'm making lightweight data loggers out of Raspberry Pi Pico W, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as MQTT broker, and almost every sensor I find in my lab sensor bin. TIL that Last Will and Testament (LWT) is part of the MQTT protocol. It's so useful I think it must […]

2025-07-17 Inventor's Notebook I'm getting my feet under me with MQTT on micropython with Raspberry Pi Pico and ESP32 boards. I'm having fun with all the capabilities of the mosquitto MQTT broker. Coming up, authentication and TLS, then load testing. How many smart devices can a Raspberry Pi 3 […]

Did you know that Denver libraries all have bike repair kits in case you get a flat or have other issues so you can get yourself going again? https://www.denverlibrary.org/blog/library-news/chrish/fix-it-fix-it-real-good

2025-07-13 Inventor's Notebook Yesterday, I set up a Raspberry Pi as a wifi access point in the lab, creating a local subnet just for IoT experiments. It's nice how easy it is to make that work. I'll configure some Raspberry Pi Pico W boards and ESP32 to connect to the access point […]

2025-07-10 Inventor's notebook I had to troubleshoot some configuration mistakes to get all devices happy with the wireguard configuration. Unexpected time, but good for learning. More mqtt testing with microcrontrollers tomorrow, which is also #refactoringfriday #lab #debugging #networking […]

Litigators & legal scholars routinely expect to lose important religious & civil liberties lawsuits due to uncertainty about causal links between technology-enabled intimidation & its effect on people’s behavior. New post: Scientists have a chance to change that. CAT Lab has a decade of […]

2025-07-09 Inventor's notebook The Lab's virtual private network is a self-hosted Wireguard server. I deployed it yesterday and have been testing from inside and outside the lab. I found https://market.us/report/homelab-market/ . The Key Takeaways, especially, give me confidence there will be […]

2025-07-06 Inventor's Notebook. I'm dedicating next week to improving the security posture of the lab. #freelance #inventor Wishing independence for all.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of […]

2025-07-04 Inventor's Notebook. I'm experimenting with different devices as MQTT gateways for mobile or home labs. Today it's a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Wishing everyone independence.

2025-06-30 Inventor's Notebook I settled upon Home Assistant for the lab's automation framework. Over the weekend, I deployed it on a Raspberry Pi 5, and it immediately found several running services it could monitor and control. Today is Maintenance Monday, so lots of backups to check and […]

2025-06-27 Inventor's Notebook. Today, I launched helpdesk software, freescout. I want to see if I like using software and databases with standard structure better than my current troubleshooting practice that uses Kanban templates in Obsidian. I suspect I will learn some good practices, but […]

2025-06-24 Inventor's Notebook Over the weekend, I installed solar powered attic fans to help the lab keep cool without adding carbon to the air. Today, I configured primary and backup time servers. Almost all the devices now agree within milliseconds. In the coming weeks, I will see how close […]

2025-06-13 Inventor's Notebook Half of today will be more lab setup and cleaning, the other half turning my many notes from this week into evergreen notes in #obsidian . I have all the old raspberry pi 3s running device monitoring tasks and running node exporter to my Prometheus server. Now […]

I've written up a few words about the #inaturalist backlash in light of them wanting to do "generative 'AI'", and how it ties into better shared decision making: https://tzovar.as/inaturalist-backlash/ #citizenscience

2025-06-12 Freelance Inventor's Notebook Structured a new decision-making flow (Do / Study / Defer) for investigating lab anomalies, and used it to investigate Prometheus load spikes on Pi nodes. Created a new experiment Kanban template in Obsidian. Progress feels real. Logs (Loki?) maybe next […]

2025-06-10 Inventor's Notebook I'm using my growing palette of markdown Kanban templates for different types of lab projects, together with mermaid flowchart, support a lightweight but systematic approach to process improvement. I currently have templates for nurturing invention ideas […]

I'm looking for a Fediverse instance to move this account. Any suggestions for a safe, inclusive community interested in science or inventing? Any scholarly endeavors?

2025-06-06 Inventor's Notebook I'm troubleshooting problems in the lab. I created a troubleshooting Kanban template, since this appears to be a recurring pattern. #inventor #freelance #laboratory

2025-06-03 Inventor's Notebook Staging microcontroller boards for mesh network experiments. Using 3D printer to create cases for the boards. Replacement server arrives tomorrow, so I'm creating a Kanban plan for installation and migration. I changed the name of the microblog to "Inventor's […]

2025-06-02 Inventor's Log After recent days' setup and repairs, it's time for an extra thorough lab cleanup. Time to reorder cleaning supplies. I'm enjoying setting up lab monitoring and thinking of anomaly detection tools to create, but I'm really looking forward to more prototyping. #inventor […]

2025-05-30 Inventor's Log Multiple problems arise at once, tempting one to panic: 1. NUT (open source electronic device software) finds the cyberpower UPS fine, but not the OPTI-UPS. I haven't found the answer, but one clue might be that a custom cable is needed for the optiups driver to work […]

Inventor's Log: The weekend power outage exposed weakness in the UPS setup in the lab. Yesterday, I replaced the batteries in the rack mount UPS and added UPS to the workbench. Today I'll try the open source NUT software; hopefully it will help me monitor lab power use under different scenarios.

Five years. Grateful for all who have worked for change that is still so very incomplete, especially when it seems so out of reach. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd

New post: How can people who might not see themselves as scientists have fun while contributing to science and making a difference in our world? This week, I’m live-blogging the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences conference, as well as co-hosting a session on participatory science […]

I won't have time to write one story per day like I did in the Central Valley, but I *have* queued up two stories: - one about the Colorado River - one about air quality in West Salt Lake City Do send reading suggestions & tips of people I should meet! I'll have many hours to listen to […]

What's going on when some universities jump more than 950% in one year on metrics used in #university #rankings? Are they gaming the metrics? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.09.653229v1 "Key findings include publication growth of up to 965%, concentrated in STEM fields; surges […]

"Wikipedia has no consistent editorial voice or political platform — it is reality as captured by others and summarized by volunteers. As such, efforts to censor it reveal a specific form of insecurity about education and information." via @ethanz […]

If your buddy becomes an editor at a Nature journal, your chances of publishing a Nature paper more than double: "For each additional original article published in the two years before the editor’s appointment, these authors had 161% more chances to publish another original article in this […]

«"AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation," the authors state in their paper. The report should concern the tech industry, which has hyped AI's economic potential while plowing billions into infrastructure meant to support it. » Not so […]

7 Essential Ready-To-Use Data Engineering Docker Containers - KDnuggets https://www.kdnuggets.com/7-essential-ready-to-use-data-engineering-docker-containers

@khinsen and in case it's of use, here's the small Python version I made. In my case, I didn't check if there was any people who I follow but who don't follow me, as that was virtually an empty set. https://codeberg.org/gedankenstuecke/gists/src/branch/main/mastodon-notify-fosstodon.py