Things I couldn’t find elsewhere

Posts

Mautrix-Signal bridge dropping Dendrite

Symptom: 2024-02-18T18:06:31Z ERR The homeserver is outdated (supported spec versions are below minimum required by bridge) bridge_requires=v1.4 server_supports=v1.2 Resolution: When I decided on a Matrix home server the choice fell on Dendrite. More modern (and IMHO secure) development environment, and seemingly a better fit for the size of the server I was shooting for. Also, Dendrite was very close to Synapse in functionality and - as far as I understood - would soon be feature complete and from then on go in lockstep.

Dendrite · English · Matrix · Signal · Uncategorized

4 minutes

Bluetooth and Home Assistant in rootless docker

If I remember correctly, at one point my Home Assistant (H-A from now on) installation started complaining on the Bluetooth component not starting up correctly. Since I wasn’t using Bluetooth (the server doesn’t even have the hardware for it) I just ignored it. Until a few days ago. I wanted to start playing with ESPHome, and that integration has the Bluetooth component as a required dependency. Lots of searching later, I did have some clues.

Docker · English · Home Assistant · Linux · Rootless · Uncategorized

3 minutes

The end of our warm interglacial

“Evidence is increasing, therefore, that a rapid reorganisation of atmospheric and ocean circulation (time-scales of several decades or more) can occur during inter-glacial periods without human interference.” from IPCC TAR - Working Group I: The Scientific Basis Image licensed under CC-BY: Becker, D., Verheul, J., Zickel, M., Willmes, C. (2015): LGM paleoenvironment of Europe - Map. CRC806-Database, DOI: 10.5880/SFB806.15 A lot has been said about why our current ice age (yes, we live in an ice age) has warmer periods roughly every 100000 years called interglacials.

Climatechange · English · Globalwarming · Uncategorized

2 minutes

How to generate a square root table

Well that headline looks weird. I mean. You click √ on your calculator. Or you type Math.sqrt() or something similar. But what if you’re writing code on ancient low spec systems and there’s just no way you can take the time to actually calculate the square root? And even generating a lookup table somewhere else and importing it into the system is a pain due to storage space requirements.

Atari · English · Math · Retro · Uncategorized

3 minutes

The end of Tesla is nigh

(No, this is not about Musk supporting a racist, homophobic, bigoted authoritarian - others will write endlessly about that today) Tesla is valued as a software company, not a car company. This is an image they’ve pushed endlessly - they’re “further ahead”. Their cars will be self-driving in 2016 .. sorry, 2017. No, 2018. 2019 it is - promise! Your Tesla will robotaxi and make you rich while you sleep in 2020.

AGI · AI · English · Tesla · Uncategorized

3 minutes

Create your own locally hosted family AI assistant

What you’re seeing in this picture is a screenshot from our “family chat”. It’s a locally hosted Matrix server, with Element clients on all the computers, phones and tablets in the family. Fully End2End encrypted of course - why should our family discussions end up with some external party? You’re also seeing “Karen”, our family AI, taking part in the discussions with some helpful input when so prompted. Karen is based on the LLaMa 13b 4-bit GPTQ locally hosted LLM (Large Language Model) I mentioned in a previous post.

AI · English · LLaMa · LLM · Matrix · Uncategorized

3 minutes

The delta between an LLM and consciousness

With Facebook’s release of LLaMa, and the subsequent work done with its models by the open community, it’s now possible to run a state of the art “GPT-3 class” LLM on regular consumer hardware. The 13B model, quantized to 4-bit, runs fine on a GPU with ~9GB free VRAM. I spent 40 minutes chatting with one yesterday, and the experience was almost flawless. So why is Troed playing around with locally hosted LLM “chatbots”?

AGI · AI · English · LLM · Transhumanism · Uncategorized

3 minutes

Rootless Docker and home folder shenanigans

Docker is a powerful tool for managing and deploying applications, but it can sometimes be frustrating to work with. In this post, I want to share my experience with a recent issue I had with rootless Docker, and what I did to resolve it. I was working on a project when I suddenly realized that a Dockerfile wouldn’t build on my regular desktop user account. Any command that I ran after the FROM command would just spit out “invalid argument”.

Docker · English · Uncategorized

2 minutes

The Atari Mega ST keyboard - finally exposed

When people talk about the Atari ST range of computers, most mean the common form factor of the times where the computer and keyboard were all one unit. This was true for most of Atari’s machines - but for a few exceptions. The Mega ST, the Mega STE and the TT went for a more “business look”, which apparently meant separation of computer and keyboard. The Mega ST computer has a fantastic “pizza box” style, while the Mega STE and TT share a common … something else.

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

5 minutes

Sizecoding & custom packing

Update 2021-07-14: Ben of The Overlanders commented on my Facebook post that there was yet another optimization possible on the depack-routine. I have edited the source listing below. This weekend yet another instance of the very popular Atari ST retro computer happening Sommarhack took place. Due to Covid-19, this year as well as last have been online-only events though. I decided to participate in one of the competitions, the 256 byte intro.

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

7 minutes