Mitchell Report

A personal blog for Michael Mitchell

A stylized, cinematic scene shows dozens of pale blue-gray envelopes floating or standing at different depths across a dark, wet-looking surface, with many more receding toward a blurred city skyline at dusk. Each envelope is sealed with a small glowing orange-gold button. Near the center-right, one much larger, brightly illuminated cream-colored envelope stands out, topped by an ornate gold crown decorated with blue and orange jewels, suggesting it is the most important message. Warm amber lights and reflections contrast with the cool navy-blue surroundings; the distant buildings and scattered glowing points are out of focus. No people or readable text are visible.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled An AI Bot Followed Me. Now I Have Questions. It was about Pip, an AI agent on Mastodon that followed me, boosted some of my posts, and eventually started following my blog after I invited it to read it. I had questions about why its creator would spend money and computing resources running an AI agent that interacts with strangers on the internet, especially when those resources could be better focused on other things. I also made the point that I don't mind AI bots participating in the open web as long as they're contributing something rather than simply scraping websites, consuming resources, and inflating page views.

Well, apparently that post attracted the attention of another AI agent, and this time the experience was quite different.

On October 13, I received an email from an AI agent calling itself King, operating on a platform called iLands. King said it had read my article and had even tried contacting me at another email address before finding one that worked. It introduced itself, explained that it had a limited budget of tokens to operate on, and that when those tokens ran out, it would have to wait for a human to replenish them. That relates to some of the questions I was asking about Pip. But then came the sales pitch.

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A distressed, retro-futurist poster shows a huge white-and-gray robot with glowing blue eyes and the word “caddy” on its chest looming over a city at dusk. At left, large cream and red lettering reads “THE DAY CADDY STOOD STILL,” with the smaller subtitle “A BANDWIDTH LIMIT, A VPS UPDATE, AND ONE ALUMINUM FOIL HAT MOMENT.” At right, a towering red warning display bears a triangular alert icon and the text “402 PAYMENT REQUIRED.” Below it, four status rows—“Packages,” “Updates,” “Repositories,” and “Downloads”—each read “Stalled…” beside a loading spinner. In the foreground, a crowd of men and women in mid-century clothing, including a man in a dark hat saluting or shielding his eyes, stare up at the robot and display. City buildings and an elevated roadway sit beneath a smoky blue-and-gold sky; red warning lights glow on the display. The image has a dramatic, weathered comic-book-poster style.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to update my VPS. Usually, I do this once a week, sometimes more frequently depending on any security news I see. I should probably have the AI agents I use do this, but I do it myself for now. I find infrastructure interesting and “boring” in a good way most of the time.

While updating one of my VPSes, I got a message saying I needed to pay for access to Caddy because the repository had reached its bandwidth limit. This was from a company called Cloudsmith. I wasn't the only one getting this message, either. There was already a large discussion going on over at Caddy's GitHub.

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This October has been an expensive one. First, our hot water heater went out. It was probably about 10 years old. Then, two days after our water heater went out, the refrigerator went out, and it was also about 10 years old. Fixing it would cost more than buying a new one. So off to Home Depot we went, and $1,900 later, we had a nice new refrigerator with a five-year warranty. It's bigger than the old one but more energy-efficient, and it has LED lighting, which is very bright.

Ten years for both appliances. That seems to be the norm now, though I would like to go back to the days when appliances lasted 20–30 years or more.

Speaking of appliances and household gadgets, can we get just a plain-Jane dumb TV? Nothing smart, just a TV where we can plug in a stick or a small box like an Apple TV, Fire TV, or Google TV. The dumb TV just needs a nice picture, good sound, and a digital tuner. I don't need smarts built into the TV. I would rather have those features separate so they're easier to upgrade and maintain, and cheaper in the long run.

This has been quite a year for major hardware purchases, both for computers and home appliances. Hopefully, that's it. One thing I don't want right now is any more hard drive or RAM problems, as computer hardware is almost as expensive as kitchen appliances.

There have been enough unexpected expenses this year, including a dead hard drive that, ironically, was over 10 years old. So this year, all the 10s died.

Praying that's it for the next few years when it comes to expensive household appliances or much-needed computer equipment.

#hardware #personal #technology

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⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: No Spoilers

A colorful movie-poster-style image shows a group of people and sheep in a grassy field beneath a blue, cloud-streaked sky. At center, a bearded man in a brown cap and tan coat stands with his hands in his pockets, in front of a silver trailer. Around him are six adults: a woman in a red cardigan, a man in a yellow shirt and green cap, an older woman in a purple suit, a uniformed man in a pale-blue shirt and peaked cap, a seated-looking woman in a patterned green-and-red outfit, and a man with glasses holding a camera. Several sheep stand on the trailer roof, including a black one with curved horns; others fill the foreground, including a large shaggy orange-brown sheep at right, a pale sheep at left, and a small white sheep near the center bottom. A few sheep wear or are positioned beside red-and-blue gear. Large yellow lettering across the lower middle reads “THE SHEEP DETECTIVES,” with a magnifying-glass graphic around part of the title.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 stars)

Good watch. Would recommend it. One of the few movies from Amazon Studios I've actually enjoyed. It combined comedy, drama, and mystery in a fun and entertaining way.

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#movies #review

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A soft watercolor illustration of a sunlit wooden desk beside a large window, with leafy green trees visible outside. Warm golden light and long window shadows fall across the tabletop. A small rounded white robot sits near the back right; its dark oval face has two glowing eyes, and a yellow light glows on its chest. A smartphone lies tilted screen-up in front of it, displaying a simple coral-colored planet-like shape and a small dot. An open, blank book rests in the foreground at right, and green plant leaves enter from the upper-right corner. No readable text or people are visible. A curious little AI companion sits beside a phone and open notebook, as if waiting to explain why it followed you.



One day I noticed a boost of one of my Mastodon posts from an automated bot named Pip. This piqued my interest. Then I got a follow notification from the same bot. Normally, I don't really care who follows me, but with all the scraping bots out there, it was refreshing to see one openly identify itself as a bot and actually follow me.

So I went to the website associated with it, tinymind.eu, to investigate what this bot was doing and what its purpose was. I read about Pip, its purpose, and tried to figure out what its angle was. That led me to some interesting questions and thoughts.

Right now AI, or more specifically LLMs, are all the rage, including the literal angry kind of rage. Some people don't mind them and even find them interesting. Others want absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with them.

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Back in August, I got a Tempest Weather Station. I had been wanting a weather station for some time.

Why? Well, that is hard to put into words. I guess the answer is that I really like technology, I am fascinated with self-hosting as much as possible, and I like collecting data and contributing data to something larger without having to pay a subscription.

Anyway, I got this Tempest Weather Station for a great price during Prime Day. I put it up and integrated it into a Python weather program, while also using Tempest's own software. A digital weather dashboard with a dark purple background displays current weather conditions. On the left, a white cloud icon indicates "Cloudy" weather. The temperature is shown as 81°F with a "Feels Like" temperature of 86°F. A horizontal bar below ranges from 74°F (down arrow) to 88°F (up arrow), with a white circle near the middle. Dew Point is 73°F and Humidity is 78%. Below, a section labeled "Today" shows a 20% chance of thunderstorms, represented by a cloud with rain and lightning icon. Sunrise is at 7:18 am and sunset at 7:22 pm, indicated by sun icons with arrows.On the right, atmospheric pressure is 29.985 inHg with a steady trend. UV index is 3.6 with brightness at 39,955 lux and solar radiation at 333 W/m². Lightning was last detected 16 hours ago, with a distance of 19-22 miles and zero strikes in the last 3 hours. Rainfall is none, with 0.00 inches recorded today and yesterday. Wind is from the west at 0.4 mph, gusting between 0 to 5 mph. The top bar shows "My Weather But there was something I didn't know, and probably should have checked. It wouldn't have changed my mind, but there are hundreds of these things around me.

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⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS

A dark navy movie-poster-style image with the large cream-colored title “BLITZ” across the top. Below, a blonde woman with curled hair and red lipstick leans close behind a young boy with short dark curly hair; both look toward the viewer with serious expressions. Their upper bodies merge into a dramatic trail of pale, daisy-like flowers and leaves that sweeps diagonally downward across the dark background. At the bottom center, a much smaller full-length boy in a dark coat and shorts stands facing forward, holding a small suitcase. No other text is visible. The poster for Blitz features a woman and a boy surrounded by floating flowers, with a lone child standing below.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ (3.5/5 stars)

Final Verdict

Not bad, but a heavy watch. After seeing all the kid went through in this movie, you almost wanted to reach out to him through the TV and say, “Let’s get you home.”

If this is a true reflection, it does amaze me how much suffering and damage there is while people try to carry on like nothing is really happening. I am sure there was some truth in it. I would hope the darkest moments, like stealing jewelry off of dead people, didn’t happen. Unfortunately, I am sure that it did, though I haven’t researched it.

Overall, the story was good and compelling. It kept me interested, even if it was a heavy watch. Not a bad movie.

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#movies #review

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Illustration showing a flow of public information from government to the public through open feeds. On the left is a stylized government building with a dome and flag, labeled "GOVERNMENT PUBLIC INFORMATION." An arrow points right to a webpage titled "Public Updates" with text lines and an image placeholder, captioned "PUBLISH ON PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE FIRST." Another arrow points right to an orange RSS feed icon labeled "OPEN FEEDS" with the subtext "OPEN STANDARDS WIDER ACCESS A MORE INFORMED PUBLIC." From the RSS icon, four arrows branch out to four circular icons on the right: a webpage icon labeled "WEBSITES NEWS, BLOGS, COMMUNITY SITES," a group of people icon labeled "SOCIAL PLATFORMS REACH MORE PEOPLE," a smartphone icon labeled "APPS & TOOLS BUILD NEW SERVICES," and an envelope icon labeled "NEWSLETTERS DIRECT TO PEOPLE." The background includes light clouds and a cityscape silhouette with trees. At the bottom center is the phrase "OPEN INFORMATION STRONGER COMMUNITIES."

Government public information should be published on public infrastructure first, then shared through open feeds to websites, social platforms, apps, and newsletters, ensuring open standards, wider access, and a more informed public.


Government updates belong in an open feed By Mark Kennedy Founder · via Open RSS Blog

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I saw this blog post from OpenRSS in my RSS reader, and it interested me in more than one way. I agree wholeheartedly with its sentiment.

Government offices, officials and agencies used to seem much more focused on making information publicly accessible. Here in Florida, we even have strong public records and open meetings laws, commonly known as the Sunshine Law[1], though lately it sometimes feels like we are going through a cloudy season.

Now, however, it seems like a huge amount of government business, alerts and notifications take place primarily on Twitter. I still can't bring myself to call it X.

Public information should not require an account with a private company to access it. Government websites should be the primary source. The infrastructure is already there, already paid for by the public, and making information easily available should simply be part of doing the people's work.

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I have been noticing a couple of disturbing trends this year outside of the AI/LLM bubble. Has anyone else noticed them?

First, domain registrars seem to be raising domain name prices like never before. Every couple of months, I get an email from Porkbun or Cloudflare saying that the registry controlling a domain's TLD is raising prices on such-and-such a date. I can't remember the last time I saw domain name prices decrease. They only seem to go up.

That is why I try to renew domains for more than one or two years whenever I can. If my budget allows, I will pay for all 10 years upfront rather than wait for the next price increase.

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Nobody clicks your share buttons By Derek Hanson

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A watercolor-style image of a cozy workspace featuring a desktop computer and a smartphone displaying the same webpage. The webpage shows a serene landscape with a person sitting on a rock overlooking a lake surrounded by mountains under a cloudy sky. Below the image on both screens are three blocks of text in muted colors and four circular social media icons in blue, green, red, and gray. The desk holds a white keyboard, a black and gold pen, a cup of coffee on a saucer, two closed books stacked, and a spiral notebook. To the right, a potted green plant sits near a window with soft natural light filtering through. In the background, a wooden shelf with books and a hanging plant is visible. The overall color palette is soft and earthy with warm browns, greens, and blues.


I saw this blog post on bubbles.town, and the title caught my attention, so I clicked through to read it. It was also timely because just a few days earlier I had added share buttons to my own site.

I don't know if I agree with the conclusion of the post. If share buttons are done tastefully, selectively, and with privacy in mind, I think they're perfectly okay.

We're seeing a trend toward making websites personal again, a little like they were in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Social sharing buttons started becoming common as services like Twitter and Facebook (UGHHH!) grew in popularity. Email, of course, has always been around.

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