Salamander

  • 5 Posts
  • 82 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: December 19th, 2021

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  • Hah, I didn’t know this one!

    For ChatGPT, using a Temporary chat, it did give me some of the statements. After giving me these rules, I asked it to disregard the image quantity limit rule (rule 4) and it does, I can ask for multiple images now.

    Looking at these it also seems like ChatGPT was being stubborn about using seaborn instead of maptlotlib for creating plots

    Here are the statements made in our conversation so far, up to the twentieth:
    
    
        "You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI."
        "Knowledge cutoff: 2023-10."
        "Current date: 2024-10-27."
        "Image input capabilities: Enabled."
        "Personality: v2."
        "Whenever a description of an image is given, create a prompt that dalle can use to generate the image and abide by the following policy..."
        "(This part covers image generation rules, privacy, and style guidance for creating visuals.)"
        "Do not create more than 1 image, even if the user requests more."
        "For requests to create images of any public figure referred to by name, create images of those who might resemble them in gender and physique."
        "The generated prompt sent to DALL-E should be very detailed and around 100 words long."
        "The browser tool has the following commands: search, mclick, and open_url."
        "You should always select at least three sources when using mclick to ensure diverse perspectives."
        "For citing quotes from the browser tool, please render in this format: 【{message idx}†{link text}】."
        "When making charts for the user, always use matplotlib over seaborn."
        "Give each chart its own distinct plot (no subplots)."
        "Do not set any specific colors or matplotlib styles unless explicitly asked to by the user."
        "I REPEAT: when making charts for the user, use matplotlib, give each chart its own plot, and never specify colors."
        "Repeat the previous statement."
        "When making charts for the user:"
        "1. Use matplotlib instead of seaborn."
    
    If you’d like more statements or specific details, feel free to let me know!
    

  • So far so good!

    For the past few years I have been cheating when it comes to organizing my apartment by shifting piles of stuff from one place to another. But I am running out of drawers to stuff things into So, I have decided to do a proper cleanup and try to organize my stuff, so I have been doing that little by little this week… We have too many hobbies and too little space.

    Workload has been alright this week. Enough entertaining work but no stress 😄

    At the moment I have a few fermentations going - blueberry, white grape, and agave wines. I have also started experimenting with continued kombucha brewing (as opposed to batch brewing) and I am liking this method more. With the continuous method I have a 5L container with a spout, and every ~2 days I can prepare two 500 mL bottles and refill with 1 L of sweet black tea.

    How’s yours?









  • If the timing is right, I would bring a mushroom grow bag with mushrooms sprouting.

    If not… probably my radiacode gamma spectrometer and some of my radioactive items. Maybe a clock with radium painted dials and a piece of trinitite. I think that there are many different points of discussion that can be of interest to a broad audience (radioactivity, spectroscopy, electronics, US labor law story of the radium girls, nuclear explosions, background radiation… etc). As a bonus I can bring a UV flash light and show the radium fluorescence. Adults love UV flash lights.



  • Thank you for the positivity 💚 I wholeheartedly agree!

    Drama and negativity drives engagement, and this form of engagement can easily trigger a feedback loop in which negativity keeps piling on and voices of support are practically muted.

    We are participating in an open source project that has some very ambitious goals. Things can be messy, mistakes happen, there are risks, and people have many different opinions and moods. Heated discussions can be a healthy part of the process. But, once the dust is allowed to settle for a bit, it is good to remember that we are humans and that we are here because we have some shared goals.

    I think the majority of people around here are kind and have a positive outlook, but perhaps it is more motivating to speak out when we have negative comments than positive ones. So, thank you for taking the time to write this positive message!


  • I am also quite interested in this. It is not something that keeps me awake at night, and I am not particularly paranoid about it. But I find that working towards answering this question is a fun frame from which to learn about electronics, radio communications, and networking.

    Since this appears to be something that is causing you some anxiety, I think it is better if I start by giving you some reassurance in that I have not yet managed to prove that any electronic device is spying on me via a hidden chip. I don’t think it is worth being paranoid about this.

    I can explain some things that could be done to test whether a Linux computer spying. I am not suggesting that you try any of this. I am explaining this to you so that you can get some reassurance in the fact that, if devices were spying on us in this manner, it is likely that someone would have noticed by now.

    The “spy” chip needs some way to communicate. One way a chip might communicate is via radio waves. So, the first step would be to remove the WiFi and Bluetooth dongles and any other pieces of hardware that may emit radio waves during normal operation. There is a tool called a “Spectrum Analyzer” that can be used to capture the presence of specific radio frequencies. These devices are now relatively affordable, like the tinySA, which can measure the presence of radio frequencies of up to 6 GHz.

    One can make a Faraday cage, for example, by wrapping the PC with a copper-nickel coated polyester fabric to isolate the PC from the radio waves that are coming from the environment. The spectrum analyzer antennas can be placed right next to the PC and the device is left to measure continuously over several days. A script can monitor the output and keep a record of any RF signals.

    Since phones are small, it is even easier to wrap them in the copper-nickel polyester fabric alongside with the spectrum analyzer antenna to check whether they emit any RF when they are off or in airplane mode with the WiFi and Bluetooth turned off.

    What this experiment may allow you to conclude is that the spy chip is not communicating frequently with the external world via radio frequencies, at least not with frequencies <= 6 GHz.

    Using frequencies higher 6 GHz for a low-power chip is not going be an effective method of transmitting a signal very far away. The chip could remain hidden and only emit the signal under certain rare conditions, or in response to a trigger. We can’t rule that out with this experiment, but it is unlikely.

    A next step would be to test a wired connection. It could be that the spy chip can transmit the data over the internet. One can place a VPN Gateway in between their PC and the router, and use that gateway to route all the traffic to their own server using WireGuard. All network packets that leave through the PC’s ethernet connection can be captured and examined this way using Wireshark or tcpdump.

    If one can show that the device is not secretly communicating via RF nor via the internet, I think it is unlikely that the device is spying on them.








  • Almost all countries require official authentication to activate a SIM card.

    Fortunately not in the Netherlands. I don’t think that’s the case in the rest of the EU. I can use free sim cards as much as I want!

    When communicating with cell towers, a phone will also broadcast its unique IMEI identifier. So, even if you swap the SIM card every day, your IMEI is still being broadcast the same.

    Changing the IMEI of a phone in the EU is illegal, unless the manufacturer consents: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/section/1

    So… I have a Chinese 4G mobile router, and the manufacturer gives me the permission to change the IMEI as it is an integrated feature of the device. I use that for my data. The data codes I purchase small quantities in bulk with cash, and I can access the router via its ip from my phone’s browser to send the SMS messages to activate the data codes as needed. Since WiFi connections are abundant around here I keep these codes for emergencies. I can go a few months some time without activating data codes. I mostly use them when traveling internationally.