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rmast

172 karma · joined April 28, 2016

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rmast··on Various Projects Find Hidden SDR Capabilities in ESP32 Microcontrollers
The GitHub README says the FPGA used: Alchitry Au (Artix-7 XC7A35T, 256 MiB DDR3)
rmast··on Fuck it, make it anyway
That appears to be using your metaphor and pointing out how being a cyclist and using an e-bike aren’t mutually exclusive. (I do know multiple avid cyclists that own e-bikes as one of several bikes they own and ride).

Ripping off the metaphor for a moment, it was basically extending what you said to point out that being a coder and using LLMs aren’t mutually exclusive.

(Asking them to reserve erm akshully’s for someone else came across as rather dismissive sounding of their thoughts, which from a former bystander in this thread appeared legitimate and just a continuation of using your own metaphor).

rmast··on Fuck it, make it anyway
A conundrum I see is that once someone releases a “solution” to a problem, it becomes much easier for someone else to come up with prompts to have AI make a clone of that solution.

Basically, the moat for many products is disappearing, and it would be relatively cheap for someone to make a clone that undercuts the cost of the first to market. The original product is charging $2? Cool, the clone will cost $1 - maybe it’s not as good due to less QA, but consumers will see the lower price and buy it.

rmast··on Fable and the end of the free lunch
Most of the things I work on are at least security adjacent. At some point chatting with Fable inevitably leads to it thinking about the security related aspects, tripping the safeguards.

Maybe Fable can do the same things better than other models, but having to tiptoe around to avoid tripping safeguards makes GPT 5.6 so much easier to work with that I don’t even bother with Fable (or Opus 5) now.

rmast··on New Defcon Badges Pack a Unique Open-Source Chip That Doubles as a Security Key
2 hours ago I got an email from Crowd Supply saying that my “Dabao Evaluation Board for Baochip-1x” order had shipped. Coincidence? Hmm…
rmast··on Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta warn against overregulating open-weight models
Was it applying to the program for an organization or individual? The description for the individual application page makes it sound pretty straightforward compared to getting access for an organization.
rmast··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
I’d been thinking maybe I should move some projects from GitHub to Codeberg… but this change has a chilling effect since now whoever is making the LLM-generated decision might arbitrarily decide to ban a project based on undefined criteria, like say an em dash in a README — so projects hosted there are not in any way safe from just disappearing.

To be honest though, I don’t know what happens when something gets banned from Codeberg, or anything about the appeals process, so my brain leap to the project just disappears forever; afaik the posts I read about this policy change didn’t say. Would welcome anyone familiar with their policies to chime in and enlighten me.

rmast··on Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days
I was thinking that the other definition was right and this correction was wrong.

Then I did some searching and found multiple examples of both definitions in use, making things murky.

So I turned to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: “ of, relating to, or being a vulnerability (as in a computer or computer system) that is discovered and exploited (as by cybercriminals) before it is known to or addressed by the maker or vendor”

And of course they use an “or” to make it ambiguous as to whether the days start counting when the vulnerability becomes known, or when the vendor has addressed it.

rmast··on A Dwarf Fortress in Docker
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538483
rmast··on Codex for open source
I applied for both. Heard back from neither. Mentioned two particular projects when applying, one with 2k stars and 5M monthly downloads, and another with 2M monthly downloads.
rmast··on Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates
Maybe the only way to win is to cheat.
rmast··on Cybersecurity researchers aren't happy about the guardrails on Anthropic's Fable
I was using it to craft a CTF challenge for summer students involving a simulated mechanical dial safe, but with the fence replaced by a IR beam break sensor and a microcontroller handling the check + flag message display.

For generating the initial 3D simulated safe using three.js it worked well, but then modifications to print a flag tripped the safeguards; eventually got it narrowed down the part in the prompt about it being for a CTF for students, and the "thinking" for the model seems to drift to ideas of encryption/obfuscation of the safe combo so students can't just read out the answer... which makes sense logically to help force students into turning the simulated dial instead. But whatever detection Anthropic I guess just naively sees the model thinking about "encryption" and "obfuscation" without taking into account any of the context.

For writing the dummy firmware, it tripped the safeguards while thinking about how to track dial position in the firmware and output the message; however, when I left out talk about safes and just told it to write firmware for a microcontroller hooked up to an i2c display for showing a message with a beam break sensor to determine the message, and an unspecified i2c chip for getting an unspecified number (e.g. internal wheel positions) it worked fine.

An unrelated software task I asked it to write some code to translate CustomActions in a Windows MSI installer into human readable stuff, which has (exclusively?) defensive security applications for recognizing malicious behavior in an MSI installer. Maybe I'm going crazy, but I'm guessing as part of its research into MSI installer custom actions Fable found articles about analyzing malicious MSI installers, and that probably tripped the safeguards.

Overall my impression is that the safeguards are perhaps using an overzealous and naive implementation that just looks for a list of banned words in the prompt or the thinking -- which drives me crazy when the model says my prompt looks fine, and then 10 minutes in some part of the thinking trips the safeguard.

rmast··on Claude Fable 5
So in other words... the people Anthropic hired to do the R&D work of training a frontier model haven't finished training their replacement yet.
rmast··on Show HN: FFmpeg WebCLI – Full FFmpeg in Browser, Offline PWA, No Uploads(WASM)
The things that are harder to get running in a browser via webassembly tend to have a GUI, network communication, or system calls that browsers don’t provide the APIs that are needed to support. But I’ve seen workarounds using websocket proxy servers to get around the lack of raw TCP or UDP socket access.

I’ve been surprised how easy it can be to get Python and C# code running in a browser.

rmast··on Show HN: FFmpeg WebCLI – Full FFmpeg in Browser, Offline PWA, No Uploads(WASM)
It looks like most of the sources might be under the “docs” subfolder.
rmast··on Project Glasswing: An Initial Update
I help maintain a project that is used as a dependency by a lot of security tools to handle PE files.

It’s disappointing that Anthropic and OpenAI never responded to the applications to their respective programs for open source maintainers. From my perspective it seems like their offers are primarily for the shiny well-known projects, rather than ones that get only a few million monthly installs but aren’t able to get thousands of stars due to being “hidden” as a dependency of popular tool.

rmast··on CARA 2.0 – “I Built a Better Robot Dog”
Train it like Disney’s Olaf where it can adjust how it walks/stands to keep motor temperature under control.
rmast··on CARA 2.0 – “I Built a Better Robot Dog”
If you read the epilogue, they weren't able to achieve the under $1000 price goal. Total cost ended up being around $1,450. Pretty good price reduction compared to CARA 1.0 though.

Hypothetically if I were to want a quadrupedal robot to experiment with it's not an impulse buy/build, but getting closer to that point... whereas $3000+ is a hard pass (e.g. Apple Vision Pro territory).

rmast··on Welcome to Hell Developer
Agreed, many types of devices don’t need to be locked down so much.

I imagine the companies making the devices think they are “protecting” their secrets from competitors, though now it might be easier to ask an LLM for whatever feature they want to copy.

rmast··on Welcome to Hell Developer
That just brought a whole new meaning to that message… and writing up a post-mortem.
rmast··on GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
I was kinda of disappointed when that happened earlier this month, but not as much now after seeing this change. My primary use had been trying out some of the newer Anthropic and OpenAI models, which probably would have burned through $10 worth of credits rather quickly given their new pricing.
rmast··on Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
FreeBSD CI testing is the part I’ll miss the most… time to find an alternative for open source projects.
rmast··on Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
I mostly clicked the link because I was curious if Cirrus Labs operates Cirrus CI and if so how that would be impacted.

Looks like I’ll need to move the FreeBSD CI jobs for open source projects I maintain to another solution. Anyone have suggestions for alternatives?

rmast··on Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
That part is amazing. Back when I first heard of tart I thought it was amazing, with the one downside being the license.

Hopefully development on it continues, or a community maintained version keeps it going.

rmast··on CERN levels up with new superconducting karts
How about for a real life Rainbow Road made by the Quantum Mushroom startup? I think that might be the aerospace applications reference in the article:

> CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Group has begun discussions with European startup company Quantum Mushroom to explore aerospace applications and powering for next-generation anti-gravity vehicles.

rmast··on CERN levels up with new superconducting karts
They’ve also got:

> schoolteacher Yoshi Kyouryuu, mid-way through painting spots on eggs

rmast··on OpenAI raises $122B to accelerate the next phase of AI
Different websites, same story.

I guess OpenAI raising $$$ billion is a big enough story that people will upvote regardless of it being at the top of the front page already.

rmast··on Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
Maybe infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters hitting the statistically most likely next key based on their training.
rmast··on Nasdaq's Shame
I wouldn’t really mind seeing the SpaceX IPO flop initially. The God Emperor of Mars has quite the ego.

However, I’m pretty sure the opposite will happen and the stock valuation will go past the moon to mars and beyond.

rmast··on Rack-mount hydroponics
Getting all the calories you need from (plain white) rice just about meet minimum protein needs for a sedentary lifestyle (around 50g protein). For every 100 calories of rice there are about 2.1g of protein, so for a 2000 calorie diet of just rice that would be 42g protein. But eating 10 cups of rice is a lot.

Protein-wise, an all cabbage diet would give you more if you’re meeting calorie needs - 5.1g protein per 100 calories, or 102g protein for 2000 calories worth of cabbage.. but that is a heck of a lot of cabbage (17ish lbs)!

Let’s be real though, people should be eating a varied diet and not just a single food. And perhaps not a junk food only diet.

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