Could Langchain be the end of SQL?

Structured Query Language, or SQL as it's known to its millions of friends, is 40 years old and appeared to be still going strong. If you wanted to query a database, using SQL was the easiest way to learn about it.

Until Artificial Intelligence (AI to its new friends) and Large Language Models appeared on the scene and started upending life as we knew it. A very large number of people (me included) now regularly use ChatGPT (Chat "Generative Predictive Text" is its actual name that it doesn't like to talk about) to do most anything including a google that you can talk to in a language that you prefer, help learning a new language, vacation planning, or just uploading an image of what your dog just threw up to ask what might be wrong.

One of its biggest effects is that it is excellent at writing software code, and software developers had to pivot fast to incorporate its use or be left behind.

Now we have new tools emerging.

Langchain is a software "framework" that facilitates connecting a Large Language Model to a private datasource like a database. What this means is that you can connect your favorite AI tool to your own database and ask it questions in your own language.

So instead of:

  Select * from MyDatabaseTableWidgets where length<10.0

You can say: 

   Please tell me about the widgets that are under 10" long.

which doesn't look that different until you start saying:

   Please tell me about the widgets that are under 10" long and could fit into a shipping box that FedEx will accept for next day delivery, and print a nice bullet formatted list for my shipping department.

Right now Langchain is a messy python script interface, but it's likely only a matter of time before someone writes a fancy GUI for it and then we will be looking at a revolution.

I have created a proof of concept by using Synthea data which is a set of completely fake patient data.

In my python script, I link to the langchain library and then use pandas to import a conditions database table (just so happens to be in CSV format, but it could easily be in the popular parquet format, and store it into a dataframe.

Then I asked it: Please list an dental issues one line at a time and then write the number of patient at the end.

No SQL.

What's important is that I didn't say which dental issue. I did not say gingivitis or tooth cavity or tooth fracture. They all will get counted. This is the revolution. The pretty formatting is a bonus.

Tariffs are Bad for US Consumers - Here's Why

Donald Trump wants to "punish" China by putting a tariff on things imported from China.

The problem is that the tariff is not paid by China, but actually paid by the person importing the goods who then passes the cost on to the consumer.

Here are the details.

Tariffs were designed to protect US manufacturers from cheaper imports of similar items. They are intended to discourage trade by raising the cost of importing the items.

Here's an example stolen from You Tube, you have a tee-shirt printing business, and you want to buy blank tee-shirts to print on. China is a good source of inexpensive tee-shirts, so you order them from there. Let's say the price is $10 each. The Chinese manufacturer processes your order of 100 shirts and puts it on a cargo ship bound for the United States. So your initial cost is $1000.

One your boat comes in, to actually get your tee-shirts you have to cover the cost of any import tariff. Let's call it 10%. So your cost is now $1100 or $11 a shirt. What do you do? Raise your price. That shirt your were going to sell for $15 is now $17.

So what happens when some politician decides to "stick-it" to China by having a 100% tariff?

The theory is that it should hurt China because there's less trading with China (this could happen), but without a US manufacturer of blank tee-shirts you're forced to import them from somewhere. Your original $1000 order just turned into $2000 or $20 a shirt which you then sell said shirt for $25 to $30.

Who ultimately pays the price for the tariff? The US consumer. Tariffs raise consumer prices. This is how they were designed. They are both bad and good, but not good if you don't have a US manufacturer to protect.

We're also learning that this is also negatively affecting employees of import companies. The import companies are now buying up as much inventory as they can (before Trump takes power) which leaves no cash left over for any holiday bonuses.

Information source: ChatGPT

A New Trump Presidency - What Now America?

 

So 51% of Americans have chosen Trump over Kamala Harris, which is a stunning choice.

What happens next is known only to him and I don't even think he knows what he'll do.

He has gotten his wish. To stay out of jail. His work is done and he may as well delegate the job of being president to others and go golfing. I think he liked to play at being president, but as anyone who has done the job or been near one, the job is very difficult and Mr T was never that interested in the details.

One factor is that he is 78, exhausted and showing signs of illness.

Also his disinhibition has grown dramatically, but he's always been one to blow smoke and he's encouraged to do so by the people around him.

 So is he serious about his campaign promises? Historically, not really, but he's in a vengeful space so we'll see what plays out.

He promised to 

• jail his enemies
• deport all the undocumented workers
• put tariffs on any thing from China and other places
• give a tax break to the wealthy
• "take care of" women

Jail his enemies

One hopes he just talking out his ass as we do have laws here and it would be very difficult for him to up and arrest someone for no reason. We do need to watch out for this as that would be a doorway to fascism.

I, for one, am giving lots of money to the ACLU.

Deport all the undocumented workers

This is provably impossible. There are 11 to 12 million undocumented workers and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employs approximately 22,000 personnel with only a portion dedicated to deportation with also 24,000 Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border. An actual deportation of a person is a multi-step process that involves many people. If he even mandates that this happen it will be bad news for a few thousand but the reality of the current process is highly limiting. Now this doesn't stop Steven Miller from chasing people across the border with an AR-15, but even that can only go so far.

There's another reality that never gets mentioned and we need to talk about it right now.

If all the undocumented farm workers go away, we will starve. This is hugely serious, and the repercussions are terrifying.

Put tariffs on any thing from China and other places

I'm hoping that Elon Musk explains to Trump what a horribly bad idea this is.

A tariff on imported goods just raises the price of that item. It is a sales tax on the buyer, not the seller. If people are unhappy about prices they really will be unhappy about paying even more for stuff.

Give a tax break to the wealthy

This will depend on who ends up with control of the house (still up in the air at the time of this writing.) The house controls the purse strings.

"Take care of" women

As has been pointed out by commentators. This is seriously poking at the sleeping giant. Last time Thump was elected there were massive protests and more will be on the way. I have also been giving to Planned Parenthood.

How to get an InyoKern Sierra Wilderness Permit Reservation

How to get an InyoKern Sierra Wilderness Permit Reservation

Post COVID, getting permit reservations began to get much harder as hiking and

backpacking became more popular.

In 2024, the difficulty of getting a Kearsarge Pass reservation was impacted by the popular

West side Cedar Grove / Road's End entrance on Highway 140 being closed for repairs.

Highway 140 will be open by then, but you can't get a permit reservation for it and that

doesn't stop people from deciding to use Kearsarge Pass to get to the Rae Lakes via

Glen Pass.

Permit reservations are now done on recreation.gov.

The very first thing you should do on recreation.gov is to create an account.

You'll need it to make any permit or camping reservations.

Now go to Permit, and scroll down to Inyo National Forest - Wilderness Permits.

It's a good idea to "Favorite" this as it makes getting to this spot much faster.

There's a lot of good information on this page, but once you're dong reading it, choose

"Explore Available Permits"

Tell it where you are a commercial outfitter or not.

Then you have to say you want an Overnight trip, when you want to go, and how many people

are going.

Permits are reservable up to 6 months in advance and for the popular trails you should be

planning that far in advance. Example in Feb 11, you should be trying to reserve for a trip that

starts Aug 11.

Permits are available at 7am, and you should be on your computer ready and waiting at

6:55am. Popular trailheads will fill in 10 min.

Now you will see a long list of entry points (trailheads). It's a good idea to spend a lot of time

here. If you click on a trailhead name you can get a lot of basic information, like a one line

opinion of how difficult the trail and access is.

For the long and hard-to-follow Baxter Pass trail you will see:

"Baxter Pass trail is steep and rugged. Starting near Oak Creek, the trail climbs more

than 6,000 feet to the Sierra Crest at Baxter Pass. It pays to start early in the day for

this high elevation pass.

It’s approximately eight miles to the top of the pass where the trail goes into Kings

Canyon National Park, a total of 13 miles to the John Muir Trail junction. "

The "W" that all of the 60% of the reservable spots have been taken - see after the popular

Cottonwood Lakes trailhead in the image.

"W" is an older term that means "Walkup" and you used to need to walk up to the office to see

if there are spaces. These days, it means that the remaining 40% of the permits are released

2 weeks before the date. You might still be able to "walkup" to the window, but it's not

recommended.

"Non-quota" means the trail has no quota and you should call to make a reservation 2 weeks

before your trip.

So right at 7am you want it to refresh the display. Do NOT click reload or you'll have to reenter

the top information. Instead you can just click "Prev X days" and then optionally click

"Next X days." OR you can just change the date a little. (I find clicking easier).

If things are working (and they sometimes don't), the number of available permits will display.

For example, Kearsarge Trail allows 36 people. Click on the number and then click "Book Now"

at the bottom. For very popular trailheads, expect this to fail often and you have to keep trying.

It will feel like a virtual brawl.

If you succeed it will give you 15 min to complete your reservation. If you clicked on a number

that you didn't mean to, then just click the check mark and it will go away.

For popular trailheads, the number available can go to "W" very quickly.

The 15 min limit thing is why it's a good idea to keep refreshing the display as some will change

their minds in the middle of a reservation for various reasons.

If you succeed at making a permit reservation, it will then go into your Reservations list on

recreation.gov. You will also get a conformation email and you will, of course, see a bill on your

credit card. Now is a good time to go out to a celebratory breakfast.

A note on iPad use. The iPad or iPhones display behave just like the computer displays, you

have to make the display refresh. In my experience, they don't auto-update like most iPad

displays do.

Note. Before you go out to breakfast and while you're still on recreation.gov, you should make

a camping reservation. Places like Yosemite will let you stay at one of their backpacker's

camps. InyoKern and others don't have that so you'll have to find a campground for the night

before your permit starts. You can also find campgrounds on recreation.gov.

Kelly Moore Paints Shutdown - Nooooo

The painting giant Kelly-Moore Paints has just suddenly shut down all of it's stores nationwide.

My first clue was I went to their Alameda store trying to buy paint for our new bathroom and found a fully stocked store completely shut with no sign of life. I went by the Oakland store on International and that was also closed up tight.

Suspecting something bad and not wanting to squint at a phone or travel further, I went home and googled it on my computer desktop. Holy primer batman. They closed everything.

Massive loses from continuing asbestos litigation from the 1980s. Apparently they used asbestos in some of their products then.

This is really distressing as my entire house is Kelly Moore through two painters. I even got to use my painter's discount there. I know the names of all of the colors and fortunately still have a bunch left in the garage.

I had even picked out colors yesterday for our new powder room on their still functioning web site which is weird.

Refs:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/kelly-moore-paints-to-close-all-its-stores-nationwide/ar-AA1mTmTh

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2024/01/12/kelly-moore-paint-store-retail-bankrupt-economy-job-layoff-real-estate/

RIP for Colonial Grey, Mythology (a maroon), Mallard Green

Opt Out of AT&T Marketing Messages

 AT&T is particular is remarkably persistent with its marketing.

General instructions for AT&T customers for opting out can be found here:

https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1011260/

but I am not an AT&T customer.

This marketing series of phone calls was from their DirectTV department.

Go to: https://www.att.com/directv/

Click Chat on the right.

Make the subject: Opt out of marketing phone calls. (Or similar.)

The agent (which may or not be a person) will come on the line and will ask for your name (first name is ok.) It will ask if you use any AT&T services. (We don't).

Then it will ask for the phone number to remove.

With any luck you should see:

During the chat session you can request that a transcript of the call be either emailed or texted to you. This can be quite handy.

Your chat transcript:

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE - All replies are automatically deleted.

AT&T : Thank you for choosing AT&T Chat. How can we assist you today?

Me : opt out of AT&T marketing phone calls

Emma : Hi! My name is Emma. I can help you by checking our internet options today.

Emma : I will be more than happy to check your internet options in your area.

Emma : Can I get your name?

Me : Ellen

Emma : Hi Ellen, Nice to chat with you.

Emma : While I'm checking this for you, can I know if you currently have any existing services with AT&T? (DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, internet, wireless)

Me : we are not AT&T customers

Emma : Thank you so much for that info

Emma : Can I get your phone number ?

Me : XXX-XXX-XXXX

Emma : Thank you , please allow me a few moment

Emma : Done, this is your confirmation number ##############

Emma : Your DO NOT CALL Suppression Request has been successfully submitted!

Emma : Your number will be added to our AT&T DO NOT CALL LIST.

Me : thank you.

Emma : My entire pleasure

Emma : I want to be sure I gave you the best service possible. Is there anything else you need help with today?

Me : no thank you, have a good day.

Emma : It was my entire pleasure to assist you today

Emma : Have a good day, thank you for contacting us today. We appreciate your business! 

Briones Regional Park Loop with a Missed Turn

 I went again to Briones Regional Park which was so much nicer that it was two weeks ago.

I was cold enough there that at that time I didn't complete the hike.

This time I did the full loop and then some because I missed the turn for home and overshot by a mile (literally).

How I managed to miss the turn is a series of errors that I'll fill in further down.

The park is a lovely green already.

I also have a new toy, a GoPro Hero 10. It eats disk space like there's a famine, so I'm tuning it to more acceptable settings that will still work.

Here's how I managed to add a mile to my itinerary.

While I wasn't paying attention my All Trails map turned 90 degrees. I noticed this but didn't fix it as the moment as I didn't think it mattered right then. This was mistake #1.

The reason it was a mistake was from this view it implied that all I had to do was keep going straight when in reality I needed to turn right.

As a result I walked right by my turn thinking that I still needed to stay on Briones Crest Trail, instead of turning right on Seaborg Trail. This was mistake #2 - not memorizing the name of the last trail.

It took a little while but I finally realized I was off course.

What I should have done was turn around, but in honor of classic mistakes I thought I could fix it by just continuing and taking the next trail.

As a result, things continued to get worse, and dusk is only about 30 min away and sub-mistake #3 was I had not brought my Jackery backup battery and was down to 10% phone charge. In my defense I did have a paper map with me.

Indications that things weren't going smoothly is that a hiker I encountered were coming up from the Happy Valley trailhead and not Bear Valley. She and I decided that it was probably best to turn around, go back over Russell Peak (you can't tell it's a peak), and then down Boogie Trail.

The fates weren't quite done with me as right at the beginning of the trail there was a "trailed closed" sign. Heck with that. I was on foot at the trail was fine (well just ok) for a hiker, but not real good for a bike, It was also steep in places and had some  potential wrong turns. Within a few minutes I was down and just had to cross the creek at the bottom which had no real water in it. This is a photo of climbing up the bank of the stream.

And finally familiar ground. Hooray.

And then it was a race the clock walk back to the car.

Briones is a beautiful park in winter time. Here is a larger photo of it.

Mt Diablo Summit Trail ByPass

The Mt. Diablo Summit Trail is a lovely attainable trail that works its way up the mountain. The beauty of it is that you can do it in sections because it crosses the road to the summit in multiple places, and there are multiple parking opportunities.

However, there is a section further up the trail that is very brushy. The park has spent a lot of time cutting the bushes back, but it's narrow enough to still not feel very safe during COVID. Conveniently, there is maintenance-vehicles-only road that by passes the section. It's called Green Ranch Road and it is sign-posted. Make sure you only do this section of Green Ranch Road as the rest of it heads in the wrong direction. One you hit the restroom, switch back to the Summit Trail again.

Geo-Tagged Smartphone Photos and Google Earth

I got a new job at UCSF March 2020 right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Between that and trying to make some progress on my second book, I've unfortunately been a little occupied and not blogging.

I've also really been trying to resist not getting too caught up in political blogging and concentrating my political observations to Facebook and Twitter - however much I want to shout from the rooftops: Q is just trolling you.

But enough already.

One of the more under-used aspects of smartphone photography is geo-tagging.

When a smartphone takes a photo, it writes the GPS latitude and longitude into the metadata of the photo. All you need is the means to view it. Then, if you wish, you can write the lat-long into Google Earth.

Why is this useful? Here's an example, my wife and I were on a hike on the Mt. Diablo Summit Trail and we had to turn around because of time constraints. We wanted to know how far we'd gotten. So I had her take a photo of me standing at the point where we turned around.

I work on Macs by preference, and I can look at the metadata of a photo by using the lowly, but very useful Preview. Open Tools-Show Inspector and click on the GPS tab and you will see the lat and long of where the photo was taken. There is even a handy map too (not shown).

Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to copy/paste from the inspector but hand typing these values is not impossible. I can tell you that the degree symbol on a Mac is typed using

Shift-Option 8   °

The minutes and seconds are just apostrophes.

Armed with this knowledge, fire up Google Earth.

In the Google Earth Search window, enter your coordinates. Don't forget the directionals which in my case are N and W. Separate lat and long with a comma. You can also use the decimal versions of lat and long if you're rather.

Click Search and if the stars have aligned and you've typed in the correct coordinates, Google Earth will go right to where you were standing.

So we had a little ways to go, but we were within probably 30 minutes of the summit.

Now we have a future goal.

Now I hear all the Garmin people shouting: Just set a waypoint.

True. I was carrying a very old, but highly useful Garmin eTrex and I could have easily set a waypoint using. I also had it tracking me and when I downloaded the track to my desktop computer, I had the turn around point right there in Garmin BaseCamp, but I was interested in what happens if you don't have your Garmin with you. It's more likely you will have your phone with you, than your Garmin GPS and instead of kicking yourself for not bringing the GPS with you, you can always use the phone. This method works for anywhere there is cell service, you don't have to specifically be out hiking. Post COVID, I intend on trying this on the ferry.

Chase Fake False Alarm Scam

This is a variation on click on this link email.
This is disguised as an "Is this you?" Monitoring alarm.
It's essentially designed to be a Faked False Alarm with a poison link.

It's the same methodology as the other scams. The window dressing is just different.

It's dressed up as "We're just checking if this login is you. If it is then carry on, no problem." Of course, the login isn't you and you're tempted to click the link to tell them about the "problem." I haven't bothered to click the link, but it's often a nasty php script or other malware. 

Here is what this email looked like:
If you at all care, everything in this email has been falsified. The IP address and the time.

First thing you should notice about the email (besides the odd diction) is the weird Subject line:

"NOTICE AS AT 1/5/2020 6:42:29 PM"

I work with machine monitoring and it Never says: Notice as at ...

Then there's the From line:
The second entry is clearly not Chase Bank. The first one is likely falsified.

And then there's the link:

That "tr" at the end of the URL means Turkey. Again, not at all a Chase Link.

To try to answer the obvious question. No, I don't know who falls for this. What's important is to know that your bank will never do this and beware of links in email. Some of them are legit, but it you're not sure, just visit your bank in the way that you usually do, and don't click on link candy in email.

Happy New Year - Another Amazon Scam

January 2 and I already have an Amazon Scam in my Inbox.

It's not fair calling it an Amazon Scam, since Amazon is the innocent party, but it's how we've been calling them, since Amazon is what they're pretending to be.

This one is essentially the same as the previous ones. A link to a compromised site that wants you to give them your essential credit card information. It's not a high-end scam but it appears to be working or at least something thinks it's still worth trying.

The language of this one is a little off, but at least the grammar is correct. Scams are getting better though this one shows a weird lack of information. Amazon does not need just the last four digits of your credit card. They would need the whole thing.  Another is "Your card may decline." Credit cards are not living things. The language would be "Your card might be declined." BUT, if your card is declined, they tell you in the browser immediately. There is NO email. Credit card authorizations are nearly instantaneous. There is no delay that would ever necessitate an email. Tell this to everyone.

Here is what they sent:

Another dead giveaway is the From line is completely wrong and has nothing to do with Amazon.

And then there is the link which is pointing to a website that has been broken into and is hosting malware.

Scams: Tis the Season

It's the holiday season, and the scams are all hard at work.

This morning I had two scams and one legit email all side-by-side in my inbox so I figured the cyber-gods are telling me I should stop jumping up and down on Facebook and write something useful. I later received a third scam.


So I am looking at:

 - an amateur scam
 - a better scam
 - a scary credit card scam
 - a completely legit update email

It used to be you could not rely on the From line of an email. These days you can more often, but now they insert clever typo domains.


In all cases, what you want to do is:

 - Check the From line
 - Hover over the link that's in the email to check where it want to send you.

Amateur Scam

The From line is completely unrecognizable, and could very well be from France, but we really don't care.

The email looked like:

"We hereby announce" is pretty hilarious in an of itself, but what you need to do is HOVER (don't click) your mouse over the Click to Verify link and see where it wants to take you.


That link says: 

What's important here is that it's a site you don't recognize and have no interest in. It usually is someone else's site that has been broken into and a cyber-intruder has place malware on it.



At this point, you should just delete the email.

A Slightly Better Scam

This one is better because it has names you might recognize but the technique for dealing with it are the same.


The From line says: 

Note the spelling: amazons.com
That's not legit


The actual email I received is:

Again, hover over the "Login with Amazon" link.

It says: 

Poor southernimaging.com has been broken into and has nothing to do with Amazon.

Again, just delete the email.

A Scary Credit Card Scam

This scam is just like all the others, but when it comes to your credit card, as soon as you spot it, it's best to just delete it and then go to your bank's website directly.

The thing that makes this so obvious is the scary "we regret to inform you tone" that your bank never uses. The other thing is the implied threat of it. You won't be able to do your usual banking unless you do X. Which mostly means click here and enter in your login and password. Thank you very much.

You bank will never do this. If they want your attention, they call or send paper letters. Even if you've gone paperless, this is not what they do. If you're not sure of something call them or log into their website yourself.

A Legit Email

Here is a legit email from Chewy.com. It has a link that is ok.

If you hover over Track My Order you see:

http://email-sendgrid-deep-linking.chewy.com/...
May look funny, but it really does end with chewy.com and belongs to them.


The important thing is to read the domain name all the way up to the "/"

Sometimes they will try to fool you with something like:

familiar-site.malware-site.com/


If you're not sure about an email, then don't click on anything, but go to the vendor's website directly. This is always the safest approach.


Surf safely.