 |
|
|
|||||
I’m a writer, not a programmer, so until recently a lot of the hype around ChatGPT’s abitilies as a coding tool went over my head. But then I realized generative AI’s programming powers can be helpful for more than just coders. It can also help anyone else dabble in code to get things done. In my case, that means creating new browser bookmarklets. These are special kinds of bookmarks that use JavaScript to modify or act on web content, and they’ve always been an underrated web browsing superpower. For years, I’ve used bookmarklets to speed up web videos, remove page clutter, and quickly search my favorite sites, but I’ve always been limited to whatever example code I can find online. With AI tools like ChatGPT, I can finally make new bookmarklets myself, and the only limit is what I can think to do with them. ChatGPT’s bookmarklet breakdown Ironically, my aha moment with AI-generated bookmarklets arose while getting frustrated with another AI tool, Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant. Last year, Amazon removed a feature that let you search through customer reviews and Q&As directly from its product pages, replacing it with the much slower Rufus chatbot. That got me thinking about a faster way to search Amazon reviews directly. After noticing that Amazon has separate pages for products and customer reviews, each with the same product code in the address, I realized that a bookmarklet cloud allow for faster searching. Here’s how I asked ChatGPT to make a bookmarklet that searches the customer reviews from an Amazon product page: Here is a link to an Amazon product page, where the ASIN is B0DHV7LR12: https://www.amazon.com/Baseus-Charging-Certified-Magnetic-Retractable/dp/B0DHV7LR12 Here is a link to a page that searches through customer reviews for that product, where B0DHV7LR12 is still the ASIN, and “test” is the search term: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0DHV7LR12/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_kywd?pageNumber=1&filterByKeyword=test I want you to make a bookmarklet that, when clicked on an Amazon product page, opens a “Search Amazon reviews:” dialog box. The bookmarklet will then open the corresponding review page with the search term entered in the dialog box. If the bookmarklet is clicked outside of an Amazon product page, display an error message that says “You must be on an Amazon product page to use this bookmarklet.” This link to my ChatGPT conversation includes both the bookmarklet in question and instructions for installing it. By adding it to your browser’s bookmarks bar, you can click a button from any Amazon page to quickly search its corresponding reviews. More AI-generated bookmarklets Feeling satisfied with my Amazon review search bookmarket, I decided to try making some others. If you want to use any of these yourself, click on the links to each ChatGPT conversation, copy the JavaScript at the bottom of the chat, then create a new bookmark in your browser and paste the JavaScript into the address field: Video Speed: YouTube’s speed controls take too many clicks to access, and I don’t like the default speed increments. I had ChatGPT make a speed-control bookmarklet to my exact specifications, and it works on pretty much any video site, not just YouTube. Hide Stickies: Removes annoying web page elements that follow you around when you scroll, such as menu bars and floating video players. Link Card: I use Obsidian for notetaking, and this bookmarklet converts web links into neatly formatted cards that I can paste into my notes. Link and Excerpt: This helps speed up link sharing on social media. If text is highlighted on a page, clicking the bookmarklet wraps the text in quotes and copies it to the clipboard with the URL underneath. If no text is selected, it just copies the address instead. More Links: Sends the current page to Perplexity with a request for more links to stories that cover the same topic. Clean Link: Copies a link to the current address without common tracking parameters and other junk. Google Maps Search: When clicked, this asks for your destination and starting address, then looks up directions. If you leave the starting address field blank, it just looks up the location instead. Archive Link: Loads an archived snapshot of the current page, as hosted at Archive.Today. I don’t expect you to use all of these yourself, but hopefully they’ll get you thinking about the kinds of things bookmarklets can accomplish, and how you might use AI to build your own. One important note: ChatGPT sometimes inserts comment lines (denoted with a // double slash) to explain, but these can prevent the bookmarklets from working properly. Either remove them yourself or instruct the model not to include them. Why this works Generative AI is handy for making bookmarklets for a few reasons: The stakes are low: While AI-generated code is causing all sorts of problems for businesses, here you’re just generating JavaScript to automate and improve your own web browsing. You’re not at risk of breaking anything critical. The results are immediate: No extensive testing is necessary to see how your AI-generated bookmarklets perform. Either they work or they don’t. They’re easy to modify: If you want to change some element of your newly created bookmarklets, you can just ask using natural language. You might learn something: If you aspire to learn a little JavaScript yourself, bookmarklets are a simple application with immediate practical benefits. You can look at the code that comes out, compare it with other examples, and ask questions to understand how things work. In general, bookmarklets work well whenever you want to perform an action on the current URL, modify web page content, or open a specific site’s search page with keywords pre-applied. If you’re not sure where to start, you can always ask your AI chatbot for ideas.
Category:
E-Commerce
Changing jobs is typically the shortest path to a higher salary, but for the first time in almost 15 years staying put is paying better than moving on. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlantas Wage Growth Tracker job stayers are enjoying greater salary growth than job switchers for the first time since 2010during the aftermath of the global financial crisisand only the third time since the data set began in 1998. In fact, just two years ago, at the height of the Great Resignation, workers were enjoying the highest premium for changing jobs in at least a generation. The returns on job switching have gone down, and I don’t know whether that’s driven by employees or employers, says Melinda Pitts, research director of the Atlanta Feds Center for Human Capital Studies. The last time job stayers outearned job seekers the causes were straightforward, but Pitts says this time around things arent as clear. The unemployment rate is still really low. Its still a pretty tight labor market, and that was not the case coming out of the Great Recession, she says. It appears that there’s something different this time, but I do not know for certain [what]. Pitts explains that in the aftermath of the Great Resignation, a historically tight talent market inspired employers to offer more generous salaries to new hires, but as those costs ballooned, many invested more in retaining their existing workforce. At the same time, those historically high wage premiums for job switchers in 2022 were in part driven by a broader workforce transition, wherein low-wage workers left hard-hit sectors like hospitality during the pandemic and reentered the workforce in higher-paying roles. There’s a possibility that the people who are switching [now] are different, or it could be that employers, even though the unemployment rate is still relatively low, their demand for workers is not as such that they need to offer higher wages, she says. We don’t know if it’s because the composition of workers who switch jobs has changed, or that employers are offering wages [to new hires] similar to their retention wages. Workers Feel StuckFor Good Reason Regardless of the cause, the reversal of that wage growth trend has many Americans feeling stuck in their current roles, and rightfully so. According to a recent survey conducted by Resume Now, two-thirds believe they would be happier in a different job, and 60% have remained in their role longer than they wanted. There are quite a few different barriers to career changing, and some of them might just be imagined, but perception is reality, says Resume Now career expert Keith Spencer. People are worried about the potential for financial instability, particularly right now, so if I were thinking about switching jobs, but I was in a secure job, I might think its not a good time to leave. According to the survey, 35% of respondents fear changing jobs would result in a pay cut, and 34% worry about broader financial instability. In fact, as 2024 came to a close, nearly two-thirds of professionals were concerned about career stagnation, including 73% of tech workers, and many said they intended to change jobs in the new year. We saw a lot of layoffs making big headlines throughout 2024, and that was starting to slow down as the year ended. Interest rates were starting to come down and inflation was starting to ease, Spencer says, adding that the economy hasnt played out the way many had hoped so far in 2025. Layoffs have far outpaced projections in the beginning of this year. So we saw those concerning trends starting to slow down, and then all of a sudden they picked back up, he says. With the current market instability driven by President Donald Trumps sweeping tariffs against global trade partners, Spencer fears more workers are going to feel stuck in economic limbo for longer. Why things will likely get worse before they get better Those new economic challenges cannot be understated and could soon lead to even fewer options for workers in the job market, says Solange Charas, a Columbia University professor and the founder-CEO of HR consulting firm HCMoneyball. I don’t think people appreciate how impactful these tariffs are going to befor the whole economy, obviouslybut for individuals themselves, specifically, she says. Charas explains that the stock markets reaction to Trumps Liberation Day tariff announcement last week is eating away at retirement savings. That could force boomers to remain in the workforce longer, increasing labor supply. At the same time, companies are likely to reevaluate their budgets for this year and make significant cuts, which will likely eat away at demand. The new tariffs are going to reshape the workforce strategy because they create a higher level of expense, and what’s the easiest thing to cut from your P and L? People, she says. People are not going to change jobs voluntarily, because of this tariff situation, and the stock market is reflecting that. While workers typically see wage growth for changing jobs, and job stayers were more recently enjoying a premium from retention-conscious employers, Charas fears neither is likely to see wage growth of any kind in the coming months. People are thinking about staying put, even if they feel like they’re stuck, because being able to put food on the table is going to take a higher priority than self-actualization, she says. People are not going to be job seekers right now, and I don’t know if that’s going to be for the next month, or the next four months, the next six months, or the next year. That is going to depend on how the economy reacts to these tariffs.
Category:
E-Commerce
Jon Dales love affair with birds began when he was about 10 and traded his BB gun for a pair of binoculars. Within a year, hed counted 150 species flitting through the trees that circled his familys home in Harlingen, Texas. The town sits in the Rio Grande Valley, at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi flyways, and also hosts many native fliers, making it a birders paradise. Dale delighted in spotting green jays, merlins, and altamira orioles. But as he grew older and learned more about the regions biodiversity, he knew he should be seeing so many more species. Treks to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which spans 2,088 acres near the border with Mexico, revealed an understory alive with even more birdsong, from the wo-woo-ooo of white-tipped doves to the CHA-CHA-LAC-A that gives that tropical chicken its common name. The preserve is one of the last remnants of the Tamaulipan thorn forest, a dense mosaic of at least 1,200 plants, from poky shrubs to trees like mesquite, acacia, hackberry, ebony, and brasil. They once covered more than 1 million acres on both sides of the Rio Grande, where ocelots, jaguars, and jaguarundis prowled amid 519 known varieties of birds and 316 kinds of butterflies. But the rich, alluvial soil that allowed such wonders to thrive drew developers, who arrived with the completion of a railroad in 1904. Before long, they began clearing land, building canals, and selling plots in the Magic Valley to farmers, including Dales great-great grandfather. His own father drove one of the bulldozers that cleared some of the last coastal tracts in the 1950s. Today, less than 10% of the forest that once blanketed the region still stands. Learning what had been lost inspired Dale to try bringing some of it back. He was just 15 when, in a bid to attract more avians, he began planting several hundred native seedlings beside his house to create a 2-acre thorn foresta term he prefers over the more common thornscrub, which sounds to him like something to get rid of. He collected seeds from around the neighborhood and sought advice from the state wildlife agency, which began replanting thorn forest tracts in the 1950s to create habitat for game birds, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which joined the cause after it listed ocelots as endangered in 1982. (The agency has since restored 16,000 acres.) The project kept dirt under his nails for the better part of a decade. Id go out and turn the lights on and do it in the middle of the night, he said. When Im into something, thats pretty much it. Two decades later, hes still into it. He is a director at American Forests, which has toiled for 150 years to restore ecosystems nationwide. The nonprofit started working in the Rio Grande Valley in 1997 and took over the federal restoration effort last year. It also leads the Thornforest Conservation Partnership, a coalition of agencies and organizations hoping to restore at least 81,444 acres, the amount needed for the ocelot population to rebound. Although conservation remains the core mission, everyone involved understands, and promotes, the thorn forests ability to boost community resilience to the ravages of a warming world. Climate change will only bring more bouts of extreme weather to Texas, and the Valleyone of the states poorest regions, but quickly urbanizingis ill-equipped to deal with it. Dale, now 45, believes urban thorn forests, which can mature in just 10 years, provide climate benefits that will blossom for decades: providing shade, preserving water, reducing erosion, and soaking up stormwater. To prove it, American Forests is launching its first community forest in the flood-prone neighborhood of San Carlos, an effort it hopes to soon replicate across the Valley. People need more tools in the tool kit to actually mitigate climate change impact, Dale said. Its us saying, This is going to be a tool. Its been in front of us this whole time. Despite its name, the Rio Grande Valley is a 43,000-square-mile delta that stretches across four counties in southernmost Texas, and it already grapples with climatic challenges. Each summer brings a growing number of triple-digit days. Sea level rise and beach erosion claim a bit more coastline every year. Chronic drought slowly depletes the river, an essential source of irrigation and drinking water for nearly 1.4 million people. Flooding, long a problem, worsens as stormwater infrastructure lags behind frenzied development. Three bouts of catastrophic rain between 2018 and 2020 caused more than $1.3 billion in damage, with one storm dumping 15 inches in six hours and destroying some 1,200 homes. Floods pose a particular threat to low-income communities, called colonias, that dot unincorporated areas and lack adequate drainage and sewage systems. San Carlos, in northern Hidalgo County, is home to 3,000 residents, 21% of whom live in poverty. Eight years ago, a community center and park opened, providing a much-needed gathering place for locals. While driving by the facility, which sits in front of a drainage basin, Dale had a thought: Why not also plant a small thorn foresta shady place that would provide respite from the sun and promote environmental literacy while managing storm runoff? Although the community lies beyond the acreage American Forests has eyed for restoration, Dale mentioned the idea to Ellie Torres, a county commissioner who represents the area. She deemed it a no-brainer. Since her election in 2018, Torres has worked to expand stormwater infrastructure. We have to look for other creative ways [to address flooding] besides digging trenches and extending drainage systems, she said. A thorn forests flood-fighting power lies in its roots, which loosen the soil so it acts more like a sponge, said Bradley Christoffersen, an ecologist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Urban trees can reduce runoff by as much as 26% because their canopies intercept rainfall and their roots help absorb it, saving cities millions annually in stormwater mitigation and environmental impact costs. This effect varies from place to place, so American Forests hopes to enlist researchers to study the community forests impact in San Carlos, where Torres joined more than 100 volunteers on a sunny morning in December 2022. By afternoon, theyd nestled 800 ebony, crucillo, and other seedlings into tilled earth. We need that vegetation, she said. That sentiment has grown as cities across the Valley embrace green infrastructure. Although many swales and basins remain verdant with Bermuda grass, which is easier to maintain, teres a growing push to use native vegetation for runoff control. Brownsville, the regions largest city, is planting a pocket prairie of thorn forest species like brasil, colima, and Tamaulipan fiddlewood inside one drainage area. McAllen, about an hour to the west, has enlisted the help of a local thorn forest refuge to add six miniature woodlands to school playgrounds, libraries, and other urban locations. The biggest challenge to greater adoption of this approach is a lack of plant distributors that carry the really cool native thornscrub species, said Hunter Lohse, Brownsville City forester. Were trying to get plant suppliers to move away from the high-maintenance tropical plants theyve been selling for 50 years. American Forests doesnt have that problem. Two dedicated employees roam public lands hauling buckets, stepladders, and telescopic tree pruners to collect seeds, some of which weigh less than a small feather. They typically gather more than 100 pounds of them each year, and stash them in refrigerators or freezers at Marinoff Nursery, a government-owned, 15,000-square-foot facility in Alamo that the nonprofit runs. That may sound like a lot of seed, but its only sufficient to raise about 150,000 seedlings. Another 50,000 plants provided by contract growers allow them to reforest some 200 acres. At that rate, without additional funding and an expansion of its operations, it could take four centuries to achieve its goal of restoring nearly 82,000 acres throughout the Rio Grande Valley. These fields are probably one generation, maximum, from turning into housing, Dale said. Funding is a serious challenge, though. In 2024, American Forests began a $10 million contract with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reforest 800 acres (including 200 the agencys job solicitation noted was lost to the construction of a section of border wall). That comes to $12,500 an acre, suggesting it could take more than $1 billion to restore just what the ocelots need. Despite this, Dale says any restoration, no matter how small, is worth the investment. The nursery is currently growing 4,000 seedlings for four more community plots, each an acre or two in size. Small, yes, but they could mark the start of something much larger. We have a vision to expand these efforts in the future, Torres said. For now, nursery workers just have to keep the plants alive. During a visit on a sunny afternoon in February, 130,000 seedlings, representing 37 species, peeked out from black milk crates, ready for transplant. All of them are naturally drought-resistant and raised with an eye toward the lives theyll lead. We dont baby them or coddle them, senior reforestation manager Murisol Kuri said. We want to make sure they are acclimated enough so when we plant they can withstand the heat and lack of water. Despite this, on average, 20% of plants die, partly due to drought. It underscores the complexity of American Forests undertaking: While thorn forest restoration can help mitigate climate change, it only works if the plants can stand up to the weather. The organization expects that in the future, species that require at least 20 inches of annual rainfall could perish (some, like the Montezuma cypress and cedar elm, are already dying). That doesnt necessarily doom an ecosystem, but it does create opportunities for guinea grass and other nonnative fauna to push out endemic plants. Removing them is a hassle, so it is best to avoid letting them take root. If you dont do this right, it can blow up in your face, Dale said. Hoping to evade this fate with its restored thorn forests, American Forests has created a playbook of climate-informed planting. The six tips include shielding seedlings inside polycarbonate tubes, which ward against strong winds and hungry critters while mimicking the cooler conditions beneath tree canopies. They look a bit weirda recent project at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge features about 20,000 white cylinders lined up like tombstonesbut seedling survival rates shot up as much as 90% once American Forests adopted the technique a decade ago. Another strategy seems abundantly obvious: Select species that can endure future droughts. If were not [doing that], were kind of shooting ourselves in the foot, Dale said. Christoffersen, the University of Texas ecologist, and his students have surveyed restoration sites dating to the 1980s to see which plants thrived. The winners? Trees like Texas ebony and mesquite that have thorns to protect them from munching animals and long roots to tap moisture deep within the earth. Guayacan and snake eye, two species abundant in surviving patches of the original Tamaulipan thorn forest, didnt fare nearly as well when planted on degraded agricultural lands and would require careful management, as would wild lime and saffron plum. Altering the thorn forests composition by picking and choosing the heartiest plants would decrease overall diversity, but increase the odds of it reaching maturity and bringing its conservation and climate benefits to the region. A 40-acre planting at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast reveals how quickly this can happen. Five years ago, a tractor wove through the site cultivating sorghum, which gave way to 40,000 seedlings. Today, the biggest trees stand 10 feet tall, with thorns high enough to snag clothing. Dale named some of the 40 or so species now thriving in the south Texas sun: eupatorium, yucca, purple sage, colima, vaseys adelia, load bush, catclaw acacias. The plants feed and shelter a staggering array of orioles, green jays, and other birds, whose whistles, caws, and tweets filled the air. Ive already heard 15 species since we walked in, Dale said. He puckered his lips and, with the expertise born of a life spent birding, made a distinctive pish sound to draw them out. The brush was too thick to see them stir, but Dale seemed pleased as he surveyed it. Its gone from being this very homogenous use of land . . . to life again. An hour to the west, visitors to San Carloss community forest might struggle to imagine that transformation. The ebony, crucillo, and other species planted two and a half years ago still look scrappy, and a seesaw pattern of droughts and winter freezes helped claim more than 40% of the seedlings. Still, the humble thorn forest has garnered a lot of interest from young visitors. Ive been in the [community center] working with children and they ask, What is that over there? said Mylen Arias, the director of community resilience at American Forests. This little patch of the past does more than preserve the regions biological history or defend it from a warming world. Its an attempt to reverse what naturalist Robert Pyle calls an extinction of experience. Most people have never even heard of a thorn forest, let alone witnessed its wild beauty at Santa Ana. Dale and those working alongside him to revive whats been lost want others to know the value this ecosystem holds beyond saving ocelots or mitigating climate change. His grandfather was a preacher, and that influence is evident as he speaks of the almost transcendental feeling he gets simply being in nature. Ive talked to people, and its like, Do you know how this is going to enrich your life? He often shows people photos of the backyard thorn forest he started 30 years ago, hoping to convey whats possible with just a bit of effort. Days after planting the first Turks cap and scarlet sage, hummingbirds fluttered in to sip their nectar. Within a few years, the canopies of Texas ebony and mesquite trees unfurled, providing shade and nesting locations for birds, including the white-tipped doves and chachalaca hed hoped to see. It wasnt easy to let go of it when his mother sold the house last year. But you created it all, she told Dale. Mom, he said, I can do this somewhere else. Thats the point. By Laura Mallonee, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||