Large Language Modeling

I do not consider AI to be Artificial Intelligence. It is a very clever algorithm, one that calculates advanced pattern matching results on massive data sets without much prompting. At quick glance, it feels like it is thinking. It is not, it is a Large Language Model (LLM). This does not mean it is not useful.

LLMs have done reviews of this web site and other sites I am working on. They are able to pull apart the pieces and determine, with relatively high accuracy, my intent. They have fixed dozens of bugs, many that would have gone unnoticed for months. I always appreciate performance tweaks. They found quite a few.

Most important are the security fixes. They found vulnerabilities in my code. Malicious LLMs used by hackers could have found the same holes and exploited them (they do not have my source code, but still...). If we are not using the same caliber of tools to protect ourselves as are available to malicious actors, we are essentially allowing them to come in.

My opinion: LLMs can do a lot of heavy lifting, saving us a lot of time and helping to fill the gaps we missed. They should not be given free reign on our tools or systems. Only someone who truly understands the work they are doing can safely and effectively keep the LLMs in line and on track.

Use LLMs (AI). Learn from them. Check everything they do. This is a new class of tool, we must learn how to safely and effectively use it.

Dark Mode / Theming Consistency

Dark mode support has been added. It follows your browser's setting. The support has been added across the site. With the implementation, more of the site aligns with a consistent theme. Most of the changes are in Links on mobile and the menus and buttons for the Forum and Gallery.

Weather location code has been rewritten.  I am using lookup-only APIs and wrote a very compact UI. Overall, the code size for the previous Google Maps API is over 300 KB. My code is less than 15 KB. Smaller, faster, and easier to change. Session-based local caching and rate limiting on the queries are built-in for efficiency and performance. If you had previously set your location, no need to update it.

Air Quality Index has been added to the weather display, providing more information to help you plan your day.

Iconification, Design, and Weather

I've added the Font Awesome library to the site. This enables better icons throughout. New icons for logon, lock, news categories, settings, location, and icons on the menu buttons. This change also solves the issue where browsers may convert some symbols into emoticons. The menu received a redesign with the icon addition.

The weather system has received updates...

New graphing options: toggle between rain percentage and amount, wind speed and gusts, and humidity and dew point. The wind speed graph always shows speed and gusts, with one represented by a dotted line.

Enhanced radar: added image time using OCR on the browser to parse the radar time (10 images take about 1.5 seconds to parse), better cache-busting and sequence order assurance (using animated GIF loop and extracting the frames), speed control for animation, pause with hover over dots to switch images, pinch to zoom on touch screen devices, double-click and mouse drag to zoom with a mouse, cropped image for a cleaner look.

New loading code: optimized load efficiency for faster load, removed duplicate radar image load (originally to improve performance, but no longer needed).