Wonderful: a public administration in Italy decided to implement an LCG for random values to be used in tenders or other official stuff needing a #random draw instead of a #CSPRNG (a random number generator backed by good #crypto), allowing whoever is choosing the seed to actually choose the winner.

(linked post is in italian)

Numeri Casuali: Quando pure il caos della casualità si perde nella...

**Premessa** Mentre stavo cercando informazioni su una pratica edile (per chi segue le peripezie, no ancora non sono riuscito a comprare casa) mi...

^reddit

Whoa things go fast.

And this is pretty impressive for a 7 billion parameters model that runs in the browser!

(cfr. yesterday's post by @Simon Willison for more details)

A rap battle between cryptography and cryptanalysis

Here's a possible rap battle between cryptography and cryptanalysis:

Verse 1 (Cryptography):
I'm the master of code, the one who's got you all confuzzled
With my ciphers, I keep secrets safe, your tricks all in check
I'm the one who protects your data, no one can break my matadors
And when it comes to encryption, I'm the boss of them all

Verse 2 (Cryptanalysis):
You may have the keys, but I can break your locks
I unravel codes, I unlock your cloaks
I'm the one who finds the flaws, the cracks in your code
And when it comes to deciphering, I'm the master of the shore

Verse 3 (Cryptography):
Sure, you can break some codes, but you'll never break mine
I've got the skills, the knowledge, the art
I create ciphers that are impenetrable, impossible to divine
I'll keep your data safe, no matter what you do

Verse 4 (Cryptanalysis):
But I can also create ciphers, ones that are secure and true
I'll find the flaws, the gaps, the errors that you miss
I'll break your codes, no matter how complex they may seem
And when it comes to encryption, I'll always be the one to claim

Verse 5 (Cryptography):
We may have our differences, but we both serve the same
We protect data, keep secrets, make sure that nothing's harmed
Together, we create a balance, a harmony
In the end, we both win, as encryption is our domination

Verse 6 (Cryptanalysis):
But remember, cryptography is just a tool
Cryptanalysis is the art, the skill, the rule
Without us, your data could be at risk
But with our knowledge, we keep it safe and bright.

I've been using 12ft.io for a while now, and it mostly "just works".

How does it work? The FAQ on the actual website goes like this:

The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don't show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it.

All we do is show you that cached, unpaywalled version of the page.

…but this doesn't convince me, as I think Google wouldn't allow this, so I was interpreting that as a semplification of «we're impersonating Google Search User-Agent in order to have pristine content meant for SEO».

I was very close, but not quite on spot: it does the same, but on Twitterbot.

There are two accesses I had on my own website when visiting it via 12ft.io:

3.238.205.96 - - [2023-03-23T09:38:21+01:00] "GET /$pagename HTTP/1.1" 200 1037 "-" "Twitterbot/1.0" gz:- TLSv1.3/TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
34.205.92.245 - - [2023-03-23T09:39:29+01:00] "GET /$pagename HTTP/1.1" 200 1657 "-" "Twitterbot/1.0" gz:- TLSv1.3/TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

12ft – Hop any paywall

Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.

^12ft.io

This is alpaca.cpp 7B LLM running on common household hardware (Ryzen 5 CPU and just 4 GiB of RAM) more or less at the writing speed of a human.

I'm impressed.

> Can you write an article that wil be published at nytimes.com/politics/bill-clin…

Bill Clinton is back with a new idea, and it's one he thinks could help Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections — or even beyond that date to November of next year. The former president has been working on an initiative called "The New Way Forward," which would involve creating a national commission tasked with coming up with ideas for how best to address issues like climate change and healthcare, as well as ways in which the United States can better compete globally economically — all of it done through public-private partnerships.
Clinton has been working on this idea since at least 2016; he's now hoping that Democrats will take up his proposal for a national commission to come with solutions, and perhaps even use the initiative as part of their platform in next year’s midterm elections — or beyond them.
"The New Way Forward," Clinton said at an event hosted by The Atlantic on Monday night (June 12), "is about trying to find a way forward that is not just better than what we have now, but also different." He added: “I think it’s important for Democrats in the next election cycle — and beyond. I hope this will be part of our platform.”
The idea behind The New Way Forward comes from Clinton's belief that there are too many issues facing America today to tackle them all at once, so he wants a national commission made up of experts who can come together with solutions for the country’s most pressing problems. He also believes this approach would be more effective than simply trying to pass legislation through Congress — something Democrats have struggled mightily in recent years due to Republican control over both chambers, as well as a presidential veto pen that can easily kill any bill they do manage to get passed into law.
Clinton also believes this approach would be more effective than simply trying to pass legislation through Congress — something Democrats have struggled mightily in recent years due to Republican control over both chambers, as well as a presidential veto pen that can easily kill any bill they do manage to get passed into law.
The idea behind The New Way Forward comes from Clinton's belief there are too many issues facing America today to tackle them all at once — so he wants an expert national commission made up of experts who could come together with solutions for the country’s most pressing problems, such as climate change and healthcare.
Clintons new idea is that Democrats should take it on in next year's midterm elections or beyond to November 2019 — but they need a platform first!

GitHub - antimatter15/alpaca.cpp: Locally run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM

Locally run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM . Contribute to antimatter15/alpaca.cpp development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

The interaction is in italian, the gist of it is that #ChatGPT while telling me a "tiramisù" recipe forgot to tell me to separate egg yolk and whites and once corrected he instructed me to separate them after eggs have been beaten and mixed with sugar. I think #physics of our universe might pose some issued with that.

Volevo provare ChatGPT, dato che il sito ufficiale era sovraccarico ho utilizzato un bot Telegram bot chiamato gpt3_unlim_chatbot e dopo un paio di domandine facili di riscaldamento ho deciso di entrare in ambito "religioso" e gli ho chiesto quale fosse la ricetta del tiramisù. (argomento che, come per la carbonara, sconsiglio di avere con amici)

Mi sembra che la conversazione prodotta sia piuttosto interessante. 🤣

Lapo

Dimmi una buona ricetta per fare il Tiramisù.

ChatGPTBot

Il Tiramisù è un dolce tradizionale italiano che si prepara con biscotti al caffè, crema al mascarpone, cacao amaro, zucchero e uova. Per prepararlo, inizia con la preparazione della crema al mascarpone: sbatti le uova e unisci lo zucchero, poi unisci il mascarpone e mescola bene fino ad ottenere una crema liscia. Poi, in una terrina, mescola il caffè e il marsala, poi immergi i biscotti nel composto e sistemali in una teglia rettangolare. Distribuisci la crema al mascarpone sopra i biscotti, poi cospargi con il cacao amaro. Metti in frigorifero per almeno due ore. Quando pronto, il Tiramisù è pronto per essere servito. Buon appetito!

Lapo

Forse hai dimenticato che bisogna separare le chiare e montarle a neve.

ChatGPTBot

Ah, giusto! La ricetta del Tiramisù prevede che le uova siano separate, con le chiare montate a neve. Quindi, dopo aver sbattuto le uova e unito lo zucchero, occorre separare i tuorli dalle chiare e montare a neve le ultime. Una volta fatto, aggiungi i tuorli alla crema al mascarpone e mescola bene. Poi procedi come indicato nella ricetta.

Lapo

Il secondo principio della termodinamico mi rende difficoltoso separare le chiare dopo aver sbattuto le uova.

ChatGPTBot

Il secondo principio della termodinamica non ha nulla a che fare con la separazione delle chiare dalle uova sbattute. Si tratta di una questione puramente pratica: quando si sbattono le uova, le chiare e i tuorli si mescolano tra loro, quindi occorre separarli. Tuttavia, una volta che hai separato le chiare dai tuorli, non c'è alcun problema tecnico e puoi procedere con la preparazione del Tiramisù come indicato nella ricetta.

#!/bin/sh
awk -F= -vq="'" '{
  t=system("tmux new-window -n " q $1 q)
  system("tmux send-keys -t " q t q " " q $2 q " C-m")
}' <<EOF # commands can contain ", but avoid '
tab1=echo command on tab 1
tab2=echo command on tab 2
tab3=echo tab 3 ; echo "tab 3 cmd 2"
EOF

At first, I didn't really understand all the buzz about #AdventOfCode but then I decided to use it as an excuse to (finally?) explore languages I didn't try yet, and thus I decided to do each day in a new language.

Day 1 I did in #Awk, a simple scripting language which is very nice at managing text streams.

Day 2 was #JavaScript and day 3 #Java, this is definitely my comfort zone.

Day 3 was #Python, a language whose syntax I utterly dislike, but it was quite easy to solve.

For day 4 I tried #RustLang, this was so difficult (so much new stuff to learn) but I'm happy enough with the result! (or at least, it looks nice enough to me, not knowing much about the language)

For day 5 I finally used #Scala, a functional language I would like to use and love… but my result is probably THE WORST I did on this adventure so far… I really dislike all those "list updates" (I tried with ArraySeq and other approaches, but to no avail), and I have the feeling that a proper Scala solution could be written in half the lines or even less.

Day 6 I did in #GoLang and while I don't realyl dig the syntax, it was easy enough to write.

… but the one I'm most proud of is day 7 in #LISP, which took an amount of time I'm not proud of (most of today's free hours with the constant feeling that "20 more minutes and I'm done"), but I'm quite happy with the result!

GitHub - lapo-luchini/advent: My Advent of Code solutions

My Advent of Code solutions. Contribute to lapo-luchini/advent development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

The infinite nature of Penrose tilings never fails to blow my mind a little bit more, each and every time.

This tiling generator (as advertised in the video) is such a beauty.
aatishb.com/patterncollider/

Dopo la lettura dell'articolo di Doc Manhattan sul nuovo adattamento di #Evangelion curato da Cannarsi io e Mauro e Mattia non potevamo esimerci dal produrre quest'immagine.

(English brief: Evangelion was re-dubbed in Italian, and it's so bad)

Please reshare and reply:
#3x3RPGs
#GplusRPG

3 most recent RPGs:
• Polaris
• Kagematsu
• Dogs in the Vineyard

3 favorite RPGs, ever:
• Monsterhearts
• Kagematsu
• Dogs in the Vineyard

3 most want-to-play RPGs:
• Monsterhearts
• Shock: social schience fiction
• Bliss Stage