Most people say LLM are just language prediction systems… but how do human minds work comparatively? Can ChatGPT think, understand, or comprehend? Can you?
It’s been a while since Ben, Brian, and Lyle geeked out… join us.

• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 - Microsoft Research

NFT insider trading, tech experts urge to resist Crypto industry influences, larges plant is a Sea Grass in Australia, Safari is popular, Microsoft Excel reduces remote data types – and Lyle’s hot take on meditation.

• U.S. charges OpenSea ex-employee in first NFT insider trading case | Reuters
• Tech Experts Urge Washington To Resist Crypto Industry's Influence - Slashdot
• The World's Largest Plant Is a Self-Cloning Sea Grass in Australia - Slashdot
• New data shows only two browsers with more than 1 billion users | Ars Technica
• Microsoft is killing Money in Excel along with Wolfram Alpha data types
• Samsung To Close LCD Business - Slashdot
• Question your Perception episode with Ben Jaffe on Lunch with Lyle
• Muller-Lyer Illusion: Optical Illusions in Psychology
• The True Purpose of Mindfulness

Quincy Larson is founder and CEO of the non-profit software school freeCodeCamp, where anyone can go and lear to program for free. Quincy is making real change in the world.

This episode was recorded for my podcast Lunch with Lyle

• Quincy mentioned two corses on freeCodeCamp
  • Learn Responsive Web Design by Building 20 Projects
  • Relational Database Course

Professor Warren Sack joins me to speak about the history of Algorithm, including Donald Knuth – Art of Computer Programing, Five Axioms of Algorithms, and When Computers Were Human.

This is Part 1 of 2 on Algorithm.

In this non-edited episode of GeekSpeak Lyle calls Ben impromptu to chat about using lasers for listening to rooms remotely, lasers being used to view into rooms, Ben’s recent focus on Music Production, and finally a story about California being better about communicating recycling possibilities on packaging.

• NLOS Keyhole Imaging Can See Inside a Closed Room
• Ben Here (Ben Jaffe's music)
• Recycling symbol can’t appear on non-recyclable items, California bill says | Ars Technica
• Gary Anderson - the creation of the "chasing arrows" Recycling symbol (pdf)
• This Episode as Video on YouTube

Due to the popularity of the WeAreNetflix podcast I am contacted a bit about my thoughts on company podcasts. The WeAreNetflix podcast started off based on an internal only podcast that Michael Paulson and I started as a hack-day project.
This episode is 20min of me talking about company internal podcasts. Feel free to ask me questions about this episode on twitter. -@lyle

• Lower Street - an example podcast provider

  One example of a company providing Private Podcast support – I have no affiliation.

  • Blog Building an Internal Company Podcast
  • Create, Publish, Host & Secure Your Private Podcast | Lower Street
• How To Launch A Private Podcast With Exclusive Access
• Episode with Michael Paulson - Engineering FlatBuffers Programing sans JSON
• WeAreNetflix Podcast

The San Lorenzo Valley in Santa Cruz County has a partial Do Not Drink / Do Not Boil order in affect: is that order appropriate, what causes Wildfire water contamination, and what are good actions we as a community can take?

Our guest is Andrew J Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University.

Professor Whelton has studied two other Wildfires in California with water contamination and has some thoughts on our situation for the #CZULightningComplex

• Topics by Time

  13:49 Water Utility vs State Responsibility
  22:28 Can you smell VOCs
  24:07 Danger Long Term vs Acute
  25:11 Stuck in the Pipes?
  26:28 SVOCs
  27:18 Can we just flush the system?
  29:47 If you lived here…
  31:00 Activate Mutual Aid
  31:47 Testing Issues – UCSC help?
  34:13 When would you be less concerned
  36:49 What changes should we make?
  39:15 California level issue?
  43:20 Take Aways
  44:24 Home Water Treatment

• Wildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination - Proctor - 2020 - AWWA Water Science - Wiley Online Library
• San Lorenzo Valley Water District
• Fire Response, How You Can Help – Community Foundation Santa Cruz County
• Listener Miles Z made some notes while listening - here they are:

  In case of doubt, consult the interview, as I am not an expert. The notes are about in the same order as the interview. =miles=

  Contamination and Testing/Monitoring

  The state (CA) only requires the water district to test at the source of the water, i.e. where they start pumping it into the distribution system. The rest (downstream testing) is up to the water district.

  Contamination can come from multiple sources, including backflow when the system becomes depressurized and air contaminated with smoke leaks into the pipes. It can also result from homes that were equipped with plastic pipes that burned. As well as the pipes we know about that burned, i.e. the 5 miles of HDPE pipe through the forest.

  The monitoring tests that the water district routinely runs downstream are limited to only particular VOC

Dedi finds a wifi solution they like, Greg is on the road for the first time since the pandemic, Miles is playing with Rust, and Lyle is happy to have the Geeks virtually together to celebrate 20 years of hosting the show.

• Amplifi vs Unifi
• MTV Cribs: Quarantine edition
• Sketchup
• Blender
• Actix, the Rust Web Framework
• Web Framework Benchmarks
• Go, The Programming Language
• Waze Reports: Cloudy with a Chance of Pananoia
• e3 and Star Wars
• Home Networking - Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

Ben Jaffe deciding to end his fantastic podcast Linear Digressions, Lyle celebrating 20 years hosting GeekSpeak, and geeking out on playing instruments that do not have “frets” like the Cello and Trombone.

My vacation included fixing motors, accepting glasses, and milling redwood with chainsaws.

• My Replacement Fan Motor
• Thermal Fuse Cutoff
• New Thermostat Switch with "Firestat"
• Milling Redwood

  Here are some pix from our milling.
  The Logs:

  Me with my orange cap and our family friend Jack.
  
  My wife Maggi finishing a log:
  
  Samples of what we are making:
  

• I have Glasses

  Here I am with new readers…. and a great scotch, I mean it was still vacation!
  

Warren Sack is back for a conversation of the Natural and Institutional Language from the French Encyclop