Blog/February 2026/Feb 20th

Feb 20th

As the US continues to build up its largest military deployment in years, and the Israel “Home Front Command” prepares for hostilities, Esther and I are just doing our usual boring stuff. We bought some plants to spruce up our entrance, and I need to arrange for proper irrigation for them. Perhaps next week.

I bit the bullet (so to speak) and started paying for ChatGPT. It turns out that if you pay, you get much better results. That said, they’re not yet “great” results. Two examples from this week’s efforts:

First, I started working — long, long ago — on an English translation of the Mishne Torah for the Mechon-Mamre site. I stopped because it was a very big job and also because I didn’t see enough demand. Turns out the demand is there, but the job’s still a huge one. Anyway, I decided to avail myself of an AI translation via ChatGPT. My initial tests showed some promise, so I started paying for the service. Then I found that after many (!) different attempts, I finally was able to convince it to get me somewhere between 80 and 90% of the way. The translation is mostly reasonable, though its knowledge of medieval Hebrew &c is not great. Lots of editing still required.

The second AI push was when I asked it for advice on C or C++ code for a cross-platform “web-display” widget. It gave me some options, and I chose one of them and asked it to write a wrapper for me to use, utilizing that option. It did that in a few minutes! But the code didn’t compile, and it was wrong in other respects. So yeah, the AI revolution which is unfolding around us isn’t going to get rid of properly skilled programmers any time soon.

Various and sundry:

My friend’s seen the future (and it’s mixed). He links within to an article about AI. More in a similar vein.
The jihadist plot to murder Manchester’s Jews.
Israel is finally getting rid of the remnants of Jordan’s apartheid laws (applied mainly to Jews).
Tucker Qatarlson “visited Israel” without leaving the airport. Stunning! Brave! Blivick!
Uri: the “Don’t!” that worked, and all about him.
History nerds: why did the Dutch try to capture Greenland?
Math nerds: on “unreal” numbers.
Language nerds: how far back in time can you understand English?

This week I did receive the components I mentioned last week from AliExpress; however, I didn’t yet get to experiment with them. Instead, I’ve been working on fixing bugs in 8th, and adding features. Hopefully I’ll get to the power-supply project next week.

This shabbat we’re hoping to avoid incoming missiles! Our menu will include:
homemade ḥalla, vegetable soup, chicken with vegetables, baked potatoes, various salatim, and chocolate chip cookies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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