Ansel Halliburton
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anseljh.com
Ansel Halliburton
@anseljh.com
1.2K followers 2.5K following 1.6K posts
Law technology & technology law. In-house trademark lawyer. Free Law Project (@free.law) board. Building in #LegalTech since 2006. Making derpy from-scratch robots for fun. DM for Signal.
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anseljh.com
I ran across this W3C Editor's Draft yesterday, and it has some really surprising *bangers* about user agents *owing duties* to their *human* principals. All is not lost! w3ctag.github.io/user-agents/
Excerpt from the linked Editor's Draft: 3.3. Loyalty A user agent must serve its user’s interests over its implementer’s interests and over the interests of any other party.
November 21, 2025 at 2:23 AM
anseljh.com
I decided last week to name my robot Clanker, but there are some other good robo-slurs on this list.
Updated photo:
An in-progress robot chassis. The frame is square aluminum tubing. There are two beefy DC motors. Only the front left wheel is attached so far.
October 6, 2025 at 10:09 PM
anseljh.com
The New York Times is ON IT.
This headline is from today, in the year 2025.
New York Times headline: “In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump's Mission” Damn, really? Deep insight there!
September 15, 2025 at 12:29 AM
anseljh.com
Bad news, everyone, Polish is hard
Duo the green owl doing a superhero pose as I unlock a score of 9 in Polish
September 10, 2025 at 6:07 AM
anseljh.com
History is great, isn't it? You can learn so much.
A painting of an executing by guillotine during the French Revolution Pierre-Antoine Demachy (1723 – 1807); Une exécution capitale, place de la Révolution (Place de la Concorde)
September 9, 2025 at 3:54 AM
anseljh.com
I’m a sucker for exotic input devices.
My right hand holding a cool handheld pistol-grip trackball input device. It’s black, and the ball of the trackball is light green. You click with the trigger button! There’s also a scroll wheel and a few other buttons on the top of the device.
August 29, 2025 at 5:26 PM
anseljh.com
So what are folks doing about the generative AI slop ouroboros? 3 engineers confirmed this post, and likely the entire site, is bullshit. It won’t be long until it’s scraped and ingested into training new models. From there, to code generators. Not great!
Ouroboros drawing from a late medieval Byzantine Greek alchemical manuscript. A red snake is in a circle eating its own tail.
August 25, 2025 at 5:00 PM
anseljh.com
There are no other mentions of “Calvinball” in Supreme Court opinions known to CourtListener.
Screenshot of a CourtListener search for “Calvinball” in Supreme Court opinions, showing only today’s dissent.
August 21, 2025 at 10:40 PM
anseljh.com
Have some respect! You are talking to Doctor Manhattan!
Doctor Manhattan, a huge blue god guy, standing on the moon, looking out wistfully at the stars. A thought bubble above him reads: “I AM TIRED OF EARTH. THESE PEOPLE. I AM TIRED OF BEING CAUGHT IN THE TANGLE OF THEIR LIVES.”
August 19, 2025 at 10:36 PM
anseljh.com
The World of Coca-Cola is weirdly nifty.
Photo taken inside The World of Coca-Cola. On the right, a white wall with this quotation from the 1915 design brief for the world-famous Coca-Cola bottle: “A bottle so distinct it could be recognized by touch in the dark or when lying broken on the ground." On the left, a red wall, with the white silhouette of the bottle, with shards of glass sitting around its base.
August 16, 2025 at 7:04 PM
anseljh.com
Do they not understand that all the chunks come down after the rocket blows up?
Excerpt from the decree, I mean, executive order: “what regulatory requirements should be inapplicable for a launch or reentry vehicle that possesses a flight termination system or automated flight safety system”
August 14, 2025 at 2:00 AM
anseljh.com
A diagram of parts of a guillotine
June 26, 2025 at 7:46 AM
anseljh.com
Here’s a peek at the inside. Still a work in progress. The “brain” of the thing is flopped over on the left. It’s an @adafruit.com QT PY RP2040. Bonus points if you can figure out what’s going on at the top left corner inside the enclosure.
Inside the enclosure! We can see a battery holder for a pair of AAA batteries laying atop a square of mostly unpopulated perfboard. There’s a QT PY RP2040 microcontroller. It’s so small and cute! Above that, we see the aforementioned RFM69 radio module. And one more mystery board…
June 22, 2025 at 4:08 AM
anseljh.com
I’ve been working on the remote control for the robot. Robo-Magellan rules require a remote dead-man’s switch: if you take your finger off a button, the robot must stop. That’s the red button here. The switch above that toggles between manual driving and autonomous modes. Power switch to the right.
Photo of a DIY remote-control unit. The enclosure is a semi-translucent plastic box that cost $1 at Target. On the top face, there’s a red button, a small metallic toggle switch, and an on–off switch. On the right, a small antenna is sticking out and pointing upward.
June 22, 2025 at 4:04 AM
anseljh.com
A couple of protoboards. One has a Raspberry Pi Pico in a drab green zero-insertion-force socket. The other has a cheerful red radio breakout board and a little antenna. It’s attached perpendicularly to the first board.
June 12, 2025 at 7:45 PM
anseljh.com
Boom! It’s at the top of the RECAP category! 😎
free.law/store
Screenshot of the Free Law Project merch store, showing the awesome brat green RECAP hat
May 15, 2025 at 9:26 PM
anseljh.com
Aw yeah. I got the final parts for the drive assembly and put one of them together! A motor will drive the sprocket in the center there. It's nice to see things coming together. #robotics #DIY
April 30, 2025 at 12:52 AM
anseljh.com
Yeah good point. I’m not great with the taxonomy of power saws. What I have most readily available is this guy, which I think (?) is more like a chop saw. What do you think?
Screenshot of the Ryobi website’s product page for their line green 7-1/4 inch compound sliding miter saw, with a cool photo of its circular blade coming down to cut the heck out of a piece of wood.
April 29, 2025 at 5:01 PM
anseljh.com
Eugenicists building disease registries? Fuck off with that. Now’s a great time for software engineers to have a look at the ACM Code of Ethics. Let it be a tool if you ever need to tell your boss to also fuck off with building something like this. #software #ethics
www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
Screenshot of section 1.1 of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: 1.1 Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing. This principle, which concerns the quality of life of all people, affirms an obligation of computing professionals, both individually and collectively, to use their skills for the benefit of society, its members, and the environment surrounding them. This obligation includes promoting fundamental human rights and protecting each individual's right to autonomy. An essential aim of computing professionals is to minimize negative consequences of computing, including threats to health, safety, personal security, and privacy. When the interests of multiple groups conflict, the needs of those less advantaged should be given increased attention and priority. Screenshot of section 3.7 of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: 3.7 Recognize and take special care of systems that become integrated into the infrastructure of society. Even the simplest computer systems have the potential to impact all aspects of society when integrated with everyday activities such as commerce, travel, government, healthcare, and education. When organizations and groups develop systems that become an important part of the infrastructure of society, their leaders have an added responsibility to be good stewards of these systems. Part of that stewardship requires establishing policies for fair system access, including for those who may have been excluded. That stewardship also requires that computing professionals monitor the level of integration of their systems into the infrastructure of society. As the level of adoption changes, the ethical responsibilities of the organization or group are likely to change as well. Continual monitoring of how society is using a system will allow the organization or group to remain consistent with their ethical obligations outlined in the Code. When appropriate standards of care do not exist, computing professionals have a duty to ensure they are developed.
April 22, 2025 at 8:00 AM
anseljh.com
Over the weekend, I also attached a few of the tubes together to see what one of the corners would be like. The brackets are kinda questionable, so I’m going to reinforce them with flat ones on the top/bottom sides. Hope that’s enough; we’ll see!
Close up photo of square aluminum tubes joined on 3 axes with angle bracket things Photo from a few feet away, showing the length of each of the tubes that are joined. They are 24 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 6 inches tall.
April 22, 2025 at 7:33 AM
anseljh.com
I cut the aluminum tubing down to the right sizes! Well, approximately. I got the hang of it right around the last cut. 🙃
Photo of some freshly cut square aluminum tubing. Ahh, so fresh! A few of the pieces are laid out in a 1-foot by 2-foot rectangle, with 6-inch pieces sticking up from the four corners. The remaining pieces for the top are laying to the right.
April 19, 2025 at 5:25 AM
anseljh.com
I landed on switching to #25 chain because there is also a British equivalent standard (04C) that is denominated in metric. This means I could find sprockets in both metric *and* Imperial units, for which it’s easier to get all the other parts. 📏 See www.usarollerchain.com/04C-Roller-C...
A screenshot from the linked page at USA Roller Chain, describing how metric ISO standard 04C chain is equivalent to Imperial ANSI #25 chain.
April 18, 2025 at 9:06 AM
anseljh.com
It’s the shell game, but the shells are judicial districts and the ball is your liberty, but actually the ball rolled away down the storm drain and it’s gone, did we mention the sewer is the fourth shell? Oh well, game over. Next!
“The Conjurer,” a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. One medieval guy stands behind a table doing the cups and balls routine. Another medieval guy bends over, looking intently at what’s going on while a medieval rugrat pulls on their pants. A few more medieval guys stand around behind them.
April 8, 2025 at 4:35 AM
anseljh.com
A few months back, I gave an honest try at reading Atlas Shrugged. All the weak, weasely bureaucrats talked like this, particularly incredible overuse of the phrase “it seems to me.” Musk has become Ayn Rand fan fiction, and he’s not even the hero.
Excerpt from the Mother Jones article, starting with this quote of Musk: “What's happening it seems to me is they're being fed propaganda by the far left, and they believe it," he said. "It's really unfortunate. The real problem is not-are…”
April 2, 2025 at 4:18 PM
anseljh.com
Article 8 bis of the Rome Statute. They should all die of old age in cells in The Hague.
Article 8 bis Crime of aggression 1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
April 2, 2025 at 2:40 AM