A Midwesterner in NYC is using AI to drop hats on pedestrians from their window, utilizing a Raspberry Pi, Adafruit stepper motor, and Roboflow AI for detection.
The project, accessible via DropofaHat.zone, allows users to book a 5-minute slot to receive a hat in seconds, showcasing a novel use of AI and automation.
The creator envisions a future where city windows can drop items on people as they walk by, coining the term "Window Shopping."
An AI-driven project called "Window Shopping" involves dropping hats from a window onto New Yorkers using a Raspberry Pi, Adafruit stepper motor, yarn, and Roboflow for AI.
The project has sparked discussions on universal income, AI applications, and legal concerns, with suggestions for both fun and practical uses, such as item delivery or sports analytics enhancement.
Reactions to the project are mixed, ranging from admiration to concerns about potential misuse.
Ruby, often overshadowed by its framework Rails, is highlighted as an excellent language for writing complex shell scripts, offering more features than Bash.
Key features include calling external commands, handling status codes, object-oriented typing, functional constructions, built-in regex matching, easy threading, and comprehensive file and directory operations.
The post encourages considering Ruby over other scripting languages like Python, Perl, and JavaScript for complex shell scripting tasks.
llama.ttf is a unique font file that also functions as a large language model (LLM) and its inference engine, leveraging the Harfbuzz font shaping engine and WebAssembly (Wasm) support.
This innovation allows text generation within any Harfbuzz-based application, such as text editors or email clients, without requiring vendor updates.
Users can download the 60 MB llama.ttf file and use it like any other font in a Harfbuzz-supported application with Wasm enabled, enabling local LLM execution.
Llama.ttf is a unique font that incorporates a Large Language Model (LLM) and an inference engine, allowing users to interact with it as if chatting.
The font file is notably large, around 280GB, making it impractical for widespread use, but it showcases an innovative blend of typography and AI.
Security concerns are raised about embedding executable code in fonts, highlighting potential risks and complexities in font rendering and browser support.
Energy Singularity has developed the world's first fully high-temperature superconducting Tokamak device, "HH70," which has successfully achieved first plasma.
HH70 is notable for its use of 26 high-temperature superconducting magnets and achieving several world-firsts, including being the first such device built by a commercial company.
This milestone positions China as a leader in high-temperature superconducting magnetic confinement fusion, with plans for a next-generation Tokamak, HH170, aiming for significant energy gains.
Traditional tools like sudo and doas use setuid binaries and privilege escalation, which have limitations in restricted user namespaces and require the entire user session to retain capabilities.
An alternative approach using s6-sudod splits the program into a privileged server and an unprivileged client, aiming to run commands as root without privilege escalation.
The author experimented with using local SSH for root command execution, configuring a dedicated SSH key, binding sshd to a Unix domain socket, and using ProxyUseFdpass to handle socket file descriptors, enhancing security and supporting various authentication methods.
Using SSH as a sudo replacement introduces complexity by requiring root binaries to communicate via UNIX sockets and asymmetric cryptography.
Restricting sudo access to the wheel group and ensuring only authorized users can read or execute it can provide similar security with less complexity.
Tools like etckeeper, Ansible, and Chezmoi can help manage and track configuration changes effectively, offering alternatives to traditional sudo usage.
A method to disrupt Facebook's ad targeting involves using a script executed in the browser's console to unsubscribe from advertisers.
The script automates the process of clicking through Facebook's ad settings to prevent advertisers from targeting users based on uploaded lists.
Users are advised not to interact with the browser during the script's execution and may need to restart the process manually if they have many advertisers.
Recent large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are increasingly used in academic writing, despite limitations such as producing inaccurate information and reinforcing biases.
Analysis of 14 million PubMed abstracts from 2010-2024 reveals that at least 10% of 2024 abstracts were processed with LLMs, with some sub-corpora reaching up to 30%.
The impact of LLM-based writing assistants on scientific literature is unprecedented, surpassing major events like the Covid pandemic in terms of influence.
The impact of ChatGPT on academic writing is debated, with some viewing it as unprecedented and others attributing changes to social contagion or traditional language shifts.
Many academics, particularly non-native English speakers, are now using ChatGPT for writing, despite criticisms that it can introduce verbose language.
The discussion includes ethical considerations and evolving norms around the use of AI in writing, highlighting its potential to improve clarity and accessibility.
Vector Databases are gaining popularity due to their ability to handle high-dimensional data efficiently, especially in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs).
Techniques like Approximate Nearest Neighbour Search (ANNS) and Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW) help manage the computational challenges of high-dimensional vector spaces.
Qdrant was identified as the best Vector Database for its performance, scalability, and community support, highlighting the importance of these databases in modern AI applications.
The comparison between human brains and GPT-4's efficiency is flawed due to differences in energy use during training and inference.
Corrected calculations indicate human brains are 1.44 times more efficient during training but 8 times less efficient during inference compared to GPT-4.
The discussion highlights the complexity of comparing biological and artificial intelligence, considering factors like evolutionary pre-training and different learning modalities (imagery vs. language).
During the summer solstice midday peak, solar power is expected to generate about 20% of global electricity, showcasing its rapid growth.
In June, solar is estimated to provide 8.2% of global electricity, with China leading the way, having increased its solar capacity by 152% in 2023.
Solar power is the fastest-growing electricity source, meeting 49% of global electricity demand growth in 2023, and transforming the power sector towards renewable energy.
Solar power generated 20% of global electricity at midday peak on the summer solstice, indicating its growing significance in the energy sector.
By the 2030s, solar is projected to become the largest source of electricity, and by the 2040s, the largest source of energy, with costs for solar and batteries expected to be lower than other alternatives.
A report from the Rocky Mountain Institute underscores the exponential growth of solar and wind energy, highlighting the increasing viability and widespread adoption of renewable energy sources.
UW researchers discovered that ChatGPT ranked resumes with disability-related honors lower than those without, indicating explicit and implicit ableism.
Customizing ChatGPT with specific instructions to avoid ableism reduced bias for most disabilities tested, but not consistently across all disabilities.
The study, led by graduate student Kate Glazko, was presented at the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, highlighting the need for more research to address AI biases in hiring.
ChatGPT shows bias against resumes indicating a disability, reflecting the biased data it learns from, which includes discriminatory hiring practices.
The scarcity of ethical hiring databases complicates the training of unbiased AI models, sparking debate on whether AI mirrors human biases or overcorrects, creating new ones.
Discussions emphasize the need for AI transparency and accountability, highlighting the broader challenges of developing fair and unbiased hiring systems.
LetterDrop is a new, secure, and efficient newsletter management service built using Cloudflare Workers, created in response to Mailchimp shutting down TinyLetter.
Key features include easy newsletter creation, distribution, subscription management, and handling failed emails using Cloudflare's suite of tools like Workers, KV, R2, and Queues.
Future improvements planned for LetterDrop include adding unit tests, email templates, tracking email open rates, supporting more third-party email services, and introducing a multi-tenant feature.
Mailchimp's shutdown of TinyLetter led a user to develop LetterDrop using GPT-4 for code generation, igniting discussions on AI-generated code's quality and security.
Users debated the reliability and maintainability of AI-generated code, as well as broader implications for software development and copyright concerns.
The conversation also explored alternatives to TinyLetter and the challenges associated with depending on AI and cloud services.
Scientists have discovered Henneguya salminicola, the first multicellular organism that survives without oxygen, challenging our understanding of life on Earth.
This jellyfish-like parasite, found in salmon, lacks a mitochondrial genome and has evolved unique mitochondria-related organelles, indicating a transition from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism.
The discovery, published in PNAS in February 2020, could influence the search for extraterrestrial life by expanding the criteria for what constitutes a living organism.
Scientists have discovered the first known animal that doesn't require oxygen to survive, challenging long-held assumptions about the necessities for multicellular life.
The organism, a type of cnidarian parasite, lacks mitochondrial DNA, which is typically essential for oxygen-based respiration in animals.
This discovery, originally published in 2020, has gained renewed attention, highlighting the adaptability and diversity of life forms in extreme environments.
When building internet applications, TCP is preferred for reliable delivery, while UDP is used for timeliness, especially in live video protocols.
Using UDP directly is risky due to the need for implementing features like retransmissions and congestion control; instead, developers should use a QUIC library.
QUIC and Media over QUIC (MoQ) support datagrams, but developers are advised to focus on using QUIC streams to avoid pitfalls associated with datagrams.
Discussion centers on the use of UDP (User Datagram Protocol) versus TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) for data transmission, highlighting the pros and cons of each.
UDP is often labeled "unreliable" or "best-effort," meaning it doesn't guarantee delivery, order, or error-checking, unlike TCP, which ensures reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery.
The conversation includes examples of UDP use cases, such as high-frequency sensor data and media art systems, and debates the terminology and practical implications of using UDP over TCP.
Unix users often create a ~/bin/ directory in their home directory to store custom scripts, but this can lead to name collisions with system commands.
To avoid these collisions, the author suggests prefixing custom command names with a comma, which is treated as a normal character in filenames and avoids conflicts.
This technique, combined with tab-completion, allows for easy browsing of custom commands and has proven to be a robust solution for over a decade.
A user shared a method to run Python scripts on Windows by setting python.exe as the default for .py files and adding .py to %pathext%.
They sought similar functionality on Linux but faced challenges due to the lack of "associated program" concepts, with suggestions including using a shebang (#!/usr/bin/env python3), renaming scripts, creating aliases, or using tools like update-alternatives.
Discussions also covered managing local configurations with git, using aliases, handling namespace collisions, and organizing scripts and configurations with tools like chezmoi or ansible.