kevin

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023

Why Google and others are ‘freaking out’ about ChatGPT right now

The recent articles about Google’s concern around ChatGPT (‘Google is freaking out about ChatGPT’) and the reason why other’s like Microsoft have just announced Bing integrated with ChatGPT is not what you might think at first. There’s a deeper concern about how this tech is going to change everything from this point onwards.

Yes, the tech is impressive, even if it doesn’t always generate factually correct responses. The weird thing about this in software development communities online, especially groups focused on supporting new developers, is the examples of it being used are where new developers are using the tech to help them find examples to answer ‘how do I…?’ or ‘show me an example of …?’ type questions. The generated responses can be mostly correct, with text generated from source material that the model has been trained on, but the shocking realization of these examples shared online is that you could have found exactly the same content if you Googled for it.

This is why Google is worried. Not that they don’t have a comparable product readily available right now. They’re worried that traditional search traffic and therefore ad revenue suddenly has an alternative, one that is gaining a lot of interest and hype, and maybe for the first time in years, suddenly there is a threat that search traffic that would have previously gone to Google is now going to go somewhere else.

Microsoft’s announcement yesterday that they are adding ChatGPT integration into their Bing search engine hits the nail on the head. They didn’t announce a page where you can go and ask weird questions, they’re building it in to their search engine.

There’s something fundamentally game changing to the search (and ad venue) )industry about this. Instead of searching for key words and phrases like we’ve all got used to now for years, being able to ask a vague question on a topic and get what you’re looking for is a game changer. Instead of searching for links to content on other websites that have been indexed, you can now search knowledge and ask questions in a conversational style to find the information you’re looking for. That is a game changer.

February 5, 2023February 5, 2023

Using VS Code extensions to help with AWS CloudFormation templates

Writing CloudFormation templates by hand is time consuming and error prone. Usually I know what is is that I’m trying to create and and know roughly what the options are, but remembering the exact syntax in json or YAML is near impossible.

VS Code has a number of extensions that can make this a lot easier. Tab code complete with plugins like “CloudFormation Snippets’ makes writing new templates incredibly quick and easy:

By default with this extension, type cfn then Tab to auto complete the skeleton of a CloudFormation template. If you have autocomplete on tab turned off you can turn it on in your VS Code settings, or manually use Ctrl-Space to trigger:

After pressing Tab you get an empty template:

As I’m writing a template for a new DynamoDB table, I enter dynamodb-table under Resources and Tab and it adds the skeleton ready to complete:

This saves time in having to look at what the required and optional attributes are, but unless I’m missing a feature it doesn’t have any auto completion to help select values for some attributes where valid values are from a list of options. For example, for DynamoDB BillingMode, the available options are PROVISIONED or PAY_PER_REQUEST. I can go look that up in the docs here, but it would be nice if it would offer tab complete for those too.

February 4, 2023August 13, 2024

Wind Turbine manufacturing location at Calshot, near Southampton, UK – Microsoft Flight Simulator

If you fly over Calshot near Southampton, you’ll see this manufacturing site for wind turbines:

Flight Simulator’s scenery generator clearly doesn’t know what to make of these large objects, and so probably thinking they are streets, it places auto gen houses along them:

Taking a quick look in Google Maps, you can clearly see this location in more detail:

February 4, 2023August 14, 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator: Why are (most of) the bridges still solid?

You’d think a couple of years after release with regular world updates and patches that most bridges would now be modelled as bridges, and not photogrammetry draped over elevation data. At least significant landmark bridges such as the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge are now (very beautifully too) modelled accurately and yes you can fly under them without hitting a brick wall:

You don’t have to fly too far however before you start to see these again, here’s the Carquinez Bridge in Crockett, about 6 miles to the NE:

Don’t try flying under this one, it doesn’t end well.