hkellick | Reading

Stray - Andrea K. Höst*, 5/5, 278 pages
Lab Rat One - Andrea K. Höst*, 4/5, 272 pages
Caszandra - Andrea K. Höst*, 4.5/5, 306 pages
Gratuitous Epilogue - Andrea K. Höst*, 4.5/5, 126 pages
Would seem like I get the urge to reread this every second year or so :-P It keeps surprising me how little known this series is. I really wish the right people would discover this and turn it into a movie already. It would work perfectly on screen.

We are Legion - Dennis E. Taylor, 4/5, Audiobook ~10hrs
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (who also narrated "Project Hail Mary"). As always, he did an exceptional job.

I mostly really loved this. It's the kind of sci-fi that's right up my aisle, and I listened to it at every chance I got.

But for probably the last 40% of the book I found myself thinking, "How is this going to end?" Though there were plotlines galore (or at least 4 major ones), they didn't seem to be leading towards any specific climax, so I started to suspect that the author would just chose a natural stopping point, end the book there, and then continue to plotlines in the next book.

And - without having read the next book - it seems like that's exactly what he did. There was no real resolution to any of the plot lines. No major cliff-hangers either, so it didn't bother me as much as it could have, but it made me a tad confused, what Dennis E. Taylor was actually trying to achieve with this book.

From the sound of it (having read reviews), the rest of the series follows pretty much the same structure, so as much as I enjoyed this first book in the series, I think I'll leave it at just the one.

My favourite plotlines were definitely the ones with the Deltans and the ones back at Sol.

Whiteout - Ken Follett, 4/5, 473 pages
Not high literature, but good entertainment all the same. I was hooked from the start, and found myself greatly invested in the story. Ken Follett uses very vivid imagery - to the point that I found myself thinking "What was that movie I watched last night ... oh wait! It's my book!"

My main beef with the story is that pretty much all the characters were very two-dimensional. Toni's ex was a bastard for no real reason, her sister entitled, her mother an enabler, the journalists stereotypically obnoxious etc. Especially the ex annoyed me, as he just seemed needlessly antagonistic. Also, the main romance seemed ... unnecessary, for want of better word. Not unrealistic as such, but gratuitous.

Anyways, despite what it might sound like, these really were minor nitpicks, and I really enjoyed the book as a whole. This is the first non-historical-fiction book I've read by Ken Follett, but it's every bit as captivating as I've come to expect from him. Also, bioterror is fascinating - and horrifying!

The Pumpkin Spice Café - Laurie Gilmore, 2.5/5, 354 pages
I'm glad this wasn't the first Laurie Gilmore book I read, or I'm not sure I would have continued on with the series. It's definitely been the weakest so far - both in terms of plot and romance. I liked Jeanie and Logan well enough separately, but oh my goodness, they need to learn how to communicate! It made for a deeply frustrating couple of chapters.

I'd seen the solution to the "mystery" a mile off, and found the motivation extremely weak. I'm glad Laurie Gilmore gave up on the cozy mystery aspect in the other novels (at least the ones I've read so far) and focused on fleshing the characters out more instead.

Treasure Witch - Tess Lake, 3/5, Audiobook ~7hrs
Hidden Witch - Tess Lake, 3/5, Audiobook ~7hrs
Cozy fantasy/mystery. Very formulaeric, but enjoyable enough.

The Long Game - Rachel Reid, 4/5, Audiobook ~13hrs
Not quite as good as "Heated Rivalry", but still very enjoyable, and I liked reading about "what came next" for both Shane and Ilya. I liked the focus on mental health, and appreciated that though Shane and Ilya occasionally had difficulties communicating, they never questioned their love for each other. It was never their relationship on the line - just the issue at hand. SUCH a refreshing change!

Books Read: 20
Pages Read: 3,738
Hours Listened To: 75
Book of the Month: We Are Legion - despite my issues with the ending, I still loved it. And Ray Porter is an amazing narrator.
Biggest Disappointment: The Pumpkin Spice Café - fortunately I know she gets better!

mark posting in

dw_dev

We've seen some questions lately about AI and how it relates to Dreamwidth, especially around scraping and training. Rather than answer piecemeal, I wanted to talk through how denise and I are thinking about this and try to be explicit about some things.

Dreamwidth is a user-supported service. We don't build the service around monetizing user data, and that informs how we approach AI just like it informs everything else we do.

Your content and AI training

Dreamwidth does not and will not sell, license, or otherwise provide user content for AI training. We have not and will not enter into data-access agreements for AI training purposes.

We will continue taking reasonable technical steps to discourage large-scale automated scraping, including known AI crawlers, where it is practical to do so. No public website can prevent scraping with absolute certainty, but we will keep doing what we reasonably can on our side.

AI features on Dreamwidth

Dreamwidth will not introduce AI features (and we have no current intention of doing so) that use or process user content without a public discussion with the community first.

We're only phrasing it like this because we can't predict the future and who knows what will be possible and available in five or ten years, but right now there's nothing we can see wanting to add.

If that ever changed, the conversation would happen openly before any decisions were made.

Site admin uses of AI

Keeping Dreamwidth usable means dealing with things like spam and abuse, and that sometimes requires automated admin tools to be more efficient or effective.

We are not currently using AI-driven systems for moderation or similar decisions.

If we ever decide that an AI-based tool would help address a site admin problem like spam, we will explain what we are doing and how it works (and ask for feedback!) before putting it into use. Any such tools would exist only to make it easier and more efficient for us to do the work of running the site.

AI and code contributions

Dreamwidth is an open-source project, and contributors use a variety of tools and workflows.

Contributors may choose whether or not to use AI-assisted tools when writing or reviewing code. Dreamwidth will not require contributors to use AI tools, and we will not reject contributions solely because AI-assisted tools were used.

For developers: if you use any AI-assisted development tools for generating a pull request or code contribution, we expect you to thoroughly and carefully review the output of those tools before including them in a pull request. We would ask the community not to submit pull requests from automated agents with no human intervention in the submission process.

I think it's important and I want to be able to review, understand, and maintain any contributions effectively, and that means humans are involved and making sure we're writing code for humans to work with, even if AI was involved.

Important note: this applies to code only. We expect any submitted images or artwork (such as for styles, mood themes, or anything else) to be the work of a human artist.

And to be very explicit, any AI-assisted development does not involve access to Dreamwidth posts or personal content.

In short summary

Dreamwidth does not and will not provide user content for AI training
Dreamwidth have not and will not enter data-sharing agreements for AI training and we will do what we can to prevent/discourage automated scraping by AI companies
Dreamwidth will not introduce AI features without a public discussion first
Any site admin use of AI tools will be explained openly and part of a public conversation
Contributors can choose their own development tools for code, but we do not accept images or artwork generated by AI

Oh, and we'll probably mention this (or a subset of this that isn't code related) in an upcoming dw_news post, but will defer to denise on that!

silveradept posting in

dw_dev

Oh, hi, everybody! It's been a little bit since we did a code tour, hasn't it? But never fear, we're here to walk you through the changes that have happened since the last time we took a tour through the code changes in Dreamwidth.

Let's dive in, shall we?

( Your code tour, with some attempts at arrangement by topic. )

There we go! Another year's worth of code commits, issues resolved, and attempts to make Dreamwidth a greater and cooler place to be. And to have it continue working into the future.

(We should do these more often, but volunteers and, well…*gestures broadly around*. So it may be a while before someone has the spoons to do this again, but we're always trying to be more consistent about it.)

Here are the totals for this code tour:

104 total issues resolved.
Contributors in this code tour: