the iMentor

Hints & rants

This weB-LOG is about the musing of a technical consultant. It is the iMentor's thoughts on technology and the human condition.

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Author: Rick Thues

Empathy

April 28, 2023 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Episode #743 April 29, 2023 Maya was the tech in charge of LuLuMAC, a Large Language Model AI Chatbot for customer service. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbHermSJXY Maya stared at her computer, frustrated and bewildered by the angry messages that were popping up on her screen. The Artificial Intelligence, which was supposed to handle customer service requests, was sending out rude and offensive responses to customers. Maya queried LuLu: “What is going on here? This is terrible. You are sending out rude responses to our tech support customers. I need to fix this immediately." As she asked the question, Maya began a diagnostic which...
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Let Kindness Show

April 18, 2023 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Episode #742 April 22, 2023   Robert opened the door to see a teenage boy standing timidly outside his grand mansion.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0X03zR0rQk The boy said, “Excuse me, Mr. Davidson. Could you spare some change or some food? My grandmother and I haven't eaten in days." Robert, who had been in a bad mood all day, scowled at the boy and snapped, “First of all, call me sir! And furthermore, I don't have time for beggars.” He slammed the door in the boy's face. Two days later, Robert was out for a walk when he saw an old woman struggling...
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Wormholes

April 14, 2023 Uncategorized 2 Comments
  Episode #741 April 15, 2023 The Earth is not flat.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5z-jjWyAJQ Prior to ancient Greek calculations, observation dictated that the Earth was flat. The popular belief was that ships sailing far enough to sea would fall off the edge. Those Greek calculations showed that the Earth was a sphere, but no one could prove it. Prior to Columbus’s attempt to sail to Asia there was no direct evidence that the earth was round.  Some observation suggested the Earth’s roundness, such as the fact that a sailboat sailing out to sea disappeared from the boat’s hull to the tip...
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Internet of Everything

April 7, 2023 Uncategorized 5 Comments
Episode #740 April 8, 2023 Everything will soon have an Internet Protocol (IP) address. Otherwise nothing will be able to communicate with anything else.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlwfGh-SVXw   IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) was first widely used on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPANET’s main purpose was for communication between academic and research projects. In order to find all the computers on the network, unique addresses needed to be assigned. IPv4 provided 4.3 billion addresses. Each address was an octet (four numbers) between 0 and 255, separated by dots, such as 74.116.145.171.  Type “what is my ip address” in...
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Not As It Seems

March 30, 2023 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Episode #739 April 1, 2023 Chuck Yeager is sitting in the orange, bullet shaped X-1. It is tucked under the belly of a B-29 bomber at 20,000 feet above the dry lake bed of Muroc Army Air Force Base, California. This is the 50th flight of the Bell X-1 rocket plane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVEmvtJiIOo The bomber is pushed into a dive to achieve a drop speed of 260 MPH. Any slower and the X-1 will not glide smoothly prior to engine fire. The X-1 is prematurely released at the slower speed of 240 MPH and becomes unstable. Most pilots would pull back...
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Grammar

March 22, 2023 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Episode #738 March 25, 2023 When we communicate we use language. Whether it is through gesture, speech or writing we convey an idea, one to the other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc Sometimes all that is necessary to communicate is a nod. Sometimes it is a wave of the hand. Our faces communicate subtleties of emotion. It is why androids look like robots. It is why Zoom is better than the telephone. We depend on gesture in obvious and tenuous ways. A blind person must depend on intonation, volume and guttural sounds to understand a conversation because they cannot see. Speech requires vocalization and...
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