I wrote a thumbnail generator server. You give it a file, and it gives you back a thumbnail. Supports images, videos, music, 3D models, PDFs, ebooks, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, text, fonts, HTML, and more.

This is really only going to be useful to people writing their own apps. You wouldn’t use this as an end user.

If it’s missing any file types that could conceivably have a thumbnail generated for them, let me know. Maybe I can add that type too. I want it to basically be able to thumbnail everything. I know that’s a lofty goal, but the closer I can get the better. :)

AI Disclosure:

One of the scripts in this project is AI generated. It is disclosed here. It is the script that configures Blender and renders thumbnails for 3D models with it.

The cron job in Port87 is finally working! Once I push it up to the prod servers, those emails in your trash and spam folders from two years ago that “will be deleted after 60 days” will finally actually be deleted. Two years is technically after 60 days.

Don't download this thing. Don't run this thing. You have no idea what it does. No one does. Because no one wrote it. This is pure, unadulterated slop.

Look in its commit log. It's all Claude. Almost every single commit. I doubt any human has ever touched this thing. Just slop that will never amount to anything and will be abandoned when Anthropic runs out of VC money.

I've been working on several things to speed up both the database and the UI, and all of them combined now offer a substantially faster experience than before, especially on slow internet connections.

The details:

For the database, I improved the indexes throughout the entire database to better cover the kinds of queries Port87 uses. The previous indexes the database used didn't fully cover certain queries, entering a bare search term in the search bar usually resulted in a "full index scan", which is slow. Now, the indexes can fully cover most queries, so searching and browsing in Port87 is way faster.

For the UI, Port87 now only makes one data request to the backend for most navigation events, and that usually happens over the websocket connection, which is much faster than HTTP. Before, Port87 would make an HTTP request to get the data to render the new page, then make a request to subscribe to changes for that data. The request to subscribe returned the full set of data anyway, so now Port87 will leverage that response to skip the first (slower) HTTP request.

I hope you enjoy these improvements to Port87!

I was nervous, but it was great. Got a bit cold at 50ft, so we turned back. It was off the Marine Room in La Jolla. The water was real choppy, so it was not an easy swim out to the canyon.

But I did it, and I’m proud. :)

We saw a shark (about two feet long), and a bunch of lobsters.

Convert your notes from Google Keep's note format to Nextcloud Notes' format, ready to upload to your Nextcloud account.

With this, I now no longer use any Google product.

• Gmail -> Port87
• Search -> DuckDuckGo
• Photos -> Immich
• Drive/Docs/Notes/Calendar/Contacts -> Nextcloud
• Gemini -> Lol, never used it. xD

Here’s the full video:

https://youtu.be/cQFJYUuw_jo

No one was hurt! :)

So a hot air balloon landed in my back yard this morning. Everyone was safe, no injuries, no damage. :)

(I didn’t know where to post this on Lemmy. If it’s not appropriate here, please let me know, or just take it down.)

There is a secret hidden trans theme in Port87 Mail. I’ve never disclosed it publicly, but for Trans Day of Visibiliy, I’m going to. You can activate it by going into your settings on desktop, opening the theme dropdown, then typing “traaaaaaaaaaaaaa” (I don’t remember how many As there are). There are other secret themes, that maybe I’ll disclose later. For now, enjoy pink, white, and blue email. The best color theme! 🙂

One has the body of a snake, but the head and legs of a lizard. I call it a snizard. The other has the body of a lizard, but the head and lack of legs of a snake. I call it a lake.

Like, every AI generated thing I’ve seen, when viewed from the eyes of someone who actually knows what they’re doing, is at best below average. Maybe some things aren’t quite as bad as the general “AI slop”, but of the things I’m actually experienced in (code and art), I just see so many amateur mistakes in everything AI.

Regarding art, AI can make really visually appealing things, but it gets the details wrong. That’s something that a below average artist does. And regarding code, it’s the same thing. Overall, it has the appearance of decent code, but it gets the details wrong, just like a below average dev. (Probably about the level of a high school senior or college freshman.)

I’m not super experienced at writing, but I can also tell that it’s not very good at that. The stories it writes just aren’t compelling, but I’m not experienced enough to tell you why. And the same with music. It’s just below average, but I couldn’t tell you why.

I’m not trying to sound elitist by saying this, but I’ve noticed people who aren’t very good at these things tend to praise how good the AI is.

So, is it just me, or are the big fans of AI just below average at whatever the AI is doing?

A new free, general policy to ensure a project only accepts human authored contributions. Released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, so anyone is free to use and modify it.

I’ve started to add it to my projects. Eventually, it will be on all of my projects. I made it so that any project could adopt it, or modify it to their needs. It’s got a thorough and clear definition of what is banned, too, so it should help any argument over pull requests.

Hopefully more projects will outright ban AI generated code (and other AI generated material). Feel free to share it with any projects you think might be interested, but please do not be pushy if they don't want to adopt something like this.

If this is not something you're a fan of, you absolutely do not need to adopt it in your project. This is for projects that want to ban AI contributions, which is their right.

A new free, general policy to ensure a project only accepts human authored contributions. Released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, so anyone is free to use and modify it.

I’ve started to add it to my projects. Eventually, it will be on all of my projects. I made it so that any project could adopt it, or modify it to their needs. It’s got a thorough and clear definition of what is banned, too, so it should help any argument over pull requests.

Hopefully more projects will outright ban AI generated code (and other AI generated material). Feel free to share it with any projects you think might be interested, but please do not be pushy if they don't want to adopt something like this.

If this is not something you're a fan of, you absolutely do not need to adopt it in your project. This is for projects that want to ban AI contributions, which is their right.