For as long as AI Large Language Models have been around (well, for as long as modern ones have been accessible online, anyway) people have tried to coax the models into revealing their system prompts. The system prompt is essentially the model’s fundamental directives on what it should do and how it should act. Such healthy curiosity is rarely welcomed, however, and creative efforts at making a model cough up its instructions is frequently met with a figurative glare and stern tapping of the Terms & Conditions sign.

Anthropic have bucked this trend by making system prompts public for the web and mobile interfaces of all three incarnations of Claude. The prompt for Claude Opus (their flagship model) is well over 1500 words long, with different sections specifically for handling text and images. The prompt does things like help ensure Claude communicates in a useful way, taking into account the current date and an awareness of its knowledge cut-off, or the date after which Claude has no knowledge of events. There’s some stylistic stuff in there as well, such as Claude being specifically told to avoid obsequious-sounding filler affirmations, like starting a response with any form of the word “Certainly.”

While the source code (and more importantly, the training data and resulting model weights) for Claude remain under wraps, Anthropic have been rather more forthcoming than others when it comes to sharing other details about inner workings, showing how human-interpretable features and concepts can be extracted from LLMs (which uses Claude Sonnet as an example).

Naturally, safety is a concern with LLMs, which is as good an opportunity as any to remind everyone of Goody-2, undoubtedly the world’s safest AI.

hackaday.com/2024/10/12/all-sy…

A regular comment we see on electric aircraft is to “just add solar panels to the wings.” [James] from Project Air has been working on just such a solar plane, and as he shows in the video after the break, it is not a trivial challenge.

A solar RC plane has several difficult engineering challenges masquerading as one. First, you need a solid, efficient airframe with enough surface area for solar panels. Then, you need a reliable, lightweight, and efficient solar charging system and, finally, a well-tuned autopilot to compensate for a human pilot’s limited endurance and attention span.

In part one of this project, a fault in the electrical system caused a catastrophe so James started by benching all the electricals. He discovered the MPPT controller had a battery cutoff feature that he was unaware of, which likely caused the crash. His solution was to connect the solar panels to the input of a 16.7 V voltage regulator—just under the fully charged voltage of a 4S LiPo battery— and wire the ESC, control electronics, and battery in parallel to the output. This should keep the battery charged as long as the motor doesn’t consume too much power.

After rebuilding the airframe and flight testing without the solar system, [James] found the foam wing spars were not up to the task, so he added aluminum L-sections for stiffness. The solar panels and charging system were next, followed by more bench tests. On the test flight, it turned out the aircraft was now underpowered and struggled to gain altitude thanks to the added weight of the solar system. With sluggish control responses,[James] eventually lost sight of it behind some trees, which led to a flat spin and unplanned landing.

Fortunately, the aircraft didn’t sustain any damage, but [James] plans to redesign it anyway to reduce the weight and make it work with the existing power system.

We’ve seen several solar planes from [rctestflight] and meticulously engineered versions from [Bearospace Industrues]. If long flight times is primarily what you are after, you can always ditch the panels and use a big battery for 10+ hour flights.

youtube.com/embed/xp0TCoPgcdM?…

hackaday.com/2024/10/12/solar-…

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler made groundbreaking contributions to physics, and [Amanda Gefter] has a fantastic writeup about the man. He was undeniably brilliant, and if you haven’t heard of him, you have certainly heard of some of his students, not to mention his work.

Ever heard of wormholes? Black holes? How about the phrase “It from Bit”? Then you’ve heard of his work. All of those terms were coined by Wheeler; a knack for naming things being one of his talents. His students included Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne (if you enjoyed The Martian, you at least indirectly know of Kip Thorne) and more. He never won a Nobel prize, but his contributions were lifelong and varied.

One thing that set Wheeler apart was the highly ambitious nature of his research and inquiries. He was known for pushing theories to (and past) their absolute limits, always seeking deeper insights into the nature of reality. The progress of new discoveries in the fields of general relativity (for which his textbook, Gravitation, remains highly relevant), space-time, and quantum mechanics frequently left Wheeler feeling as though more questions were raised than answered. His thirst for a greater understanding of the nature of reality was one he pursued until his death in 2006. He pondered not just the ultimate nature of our universe but also why we seem to have the same basic experience of it. Wheeler saw these questions as having answers that were far from being self-evident.

Wheeler’s relentless curiosity pushed the boundaries, reminding us that the search for knowledge never truly ends. If that inspires you, then take the time to check out the full article and see whether his questions inspire and challenge your own perspective.

Scientists can now make black holes — sort of. You can even make your own wormhole. Sort of.

hackaday.com/2024/10/12/rememb…

As the current frontier of humanity in space, the International Space Station is heavily reliant on Earth not only for fresh supplies but also as a garbage disposal service for the various types of waste produced on the ISS by its human occupants. As future manned missions take humans further away from Earth, finding ways to reprocess this waste rather than chucking it out of the nearest airlock becomes a priority. One suggested solution comes from a Polish company, Astronika, with their insect bioreactor that can process organic material into useful biomass.

Interestingly, the cockroach species picked was the Madagascar hissing cockroach, one of the largest (5 – 7.5 cm) species. This is also a cockroach species which is often kept as a pet. In this closed-loop bioreactor that Astronika has developed, these cockroaches would chew their way through up to 3.6 kg of waste per week in the large version, with the adult cockroaches presumably getting turned into fresh chow and various materials at some point. Beyond the irrational ‘yuck’ factor that comes with eating insect protein, one of the biggest issues we can see with this system is that the long-duration mission crew may get attached to the cockroaches, as they are rather cute.

Joking aside, even if a final version of such a bioreactor ends up using far less cute bacteria and kin, the idea to recycle as much human biowaste as possible is a crucial step towards making remote space stations and long-duration space travel possible. A small version of this bioreactor will be sent up to the ISS, where the principle would get its first shot at showing off its space legs.

For some reason, cockroaches and NASA seem inextricably linked. We remembered that the Madagascar cockroaches apparently make pretty good robotics platforms if you are a deft hand at roach surgery.

hackaday.com/2024/10/12/cockro…

Si è recentemente concluso presso il CoESPU dell' #Armadeicarabinieri di Vicenza il 1° Corso addestrativo dell' OSCE (Organizzazione per la sicurezza e la cooperazion in Europa, la più grande organizzazione di sicurezza regionale al mondo) basato sulla simulazione della lotta alla tratta di esseri umani nei flussi migratori misti nella regione del Mediterraneo.
Durante un'intensa settimana, oltre 50 operatori anti-tratta provenienti da Stati @OSCE (membri e Partner per la cooperazione) hanno praticato la risoluzione di casi complessi, il coordinamento multi-agenzia ed approcci incentrati sulla vittima.

Gli operatori provenivano da Italia, Malta, Spagna, Algeria, Egitto e Tunisia.
Lo scenario di formazione ha incorporato flussi migratori complessi e diversificati in più Stati, dimostrando come i gruppi criminali sfruttino la vulnerabilità insita dei migranti e degli sfollati (che si trovano in situazione di precarietà) per trafficarli verso lo sfruttamento lavorativo, lo sfruttamento sessuale o la criminalità forzata.
La formazione ha riunito un'ampia gamma di professionisti provenienti da tutto l'ecosistema anti-tratta, tra cui pubblici ministeri, ispettori del lavoro, assistenti sociali, investigatori penali e finanziari, avvocati, operatori di ONG e funzionari dell'immigrazione.
I partecipanti sono stati formati sui loro ruoli individuali, nonché su come collaborare efficacemente con le loro controparti nell'identificazione delle vittime di tratta e nell'individuazione, indagine e perseguimento dei reati di tratta di esseri umani. In questo contesto, gli operatori hanno avuto la possibilità di mettere in pratica e padroneggiare le loro competenze nella collaborazione multi-agenzia, applicando approcci incentrati sulla vittima e informati sul trauma.

"Poiché la sicurezza del Mediterraneo è indivisibile dalla sicurezza all'interno della regione OSCE in generale, l'esercitazione di addestramento basata sulla simulazione regionale del Mediterraneo ha dimostrato il valore duraturo e la collaborazione continua tra l'OSCE, gli Stati partecipanti e i Partner mediterranei per la cooperazione, e come il rafforzamento degli sforzi per combattere la tratta di esseri umani contribuisca a migliorare la sicurezza nell'intera regione", ha affermato la Dott. ssa Kari Johnstone, Rappresentante speciale e Coordinatrice dell'OSCE per la lotta alla tratta di esseri umani, nel suo discorso conclusivo.

Attuati per la prima volta nel 2016, i corsi di formazione basati sulla simulazione dell'OSCE sono uno strumento formativo estremamente rilevante per migliorare la capacità degli Stati partecipanti all'OSCE e dei partner per la cooperazione di identificare e assistere tempestivamente le presunte vittime della tratta di esseri umani, nonché di indagare e perseguire i responsabili attraverso l'uso di un approccio multi-agenzia, incentrato sulle vittime, informato sui traumi, sensibile alle questioni di genere e basato sui diritti umani.

Questa attività è stata realizzata con il sostegno finanziario dei governi di Francia, Germania, Irlanda, Lussemburgo, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Svizzera e Stati Uniti, nonché della Repubblica Italiana.

Per saperne di più:
- sull' OSCE: osce.org/it;
- sul CoESPU: coespu.org/
#EndHumanTrafficking

Oggi, Dr. Polivers*, l’amministratore occulto di Poliversity.it non ha solo aggiornato il sistema alla nuova release di Mastodon, ma ha anche fatto di più. Il sistema infatti è stato aggiornato alla Mastodon glitch-soc, un fork amichevole del software di microblogging più usato nel Fediverso. Questo fork è stato pensato per fornire funzionalità aggiuntive molto interessanti…

Source

informapirata

2024-10-11 23:05:25

Poliversity.it evolve grazie a Mastodon Glitch-soc, un fork amichevole. Poliversity consentirà quindi post lunghi fino a 9999 caratteri, formattazione del testo, scrittura di messaggi visibili solo in locale, modalità thread e… gli scarabocchi

informapirata.it/2024/10/12/po…

Poliversity, l’istanza Mastodon per giornalisti e studiosi, consentirà di scrivere post lunghi e formattati! - informapirata

Poliversity.it evolve grazie a Mastodon Glitch-soc, un fork amichevole. Poliversity consentirà quindi post lunghi fino a 9999 caratteri, formattazione del testo…

^{informapirata}

"La Richard-Ginori, ufficialmente fallita nel gennaio 2013, è stata acquistata nel maggio 2013 dal gruppo Gucci[1], a sua volta controllato dalla società francese Kering."
(da Wikipedia)

E voi che pensavate alla RIchard Ginori come un'eccellenza tutta italiana, eh?

Francesi, i soldi e la proprietà sono dei francesi

Poliverso.org è il sito che abbiamo creato nell’estate del 2021 e contiene un social network piccolo fatto da poche centinaia di persone che ogni mese accedono al proprio profilo, ma integrato con il grande universo social costituito dal Fediverso che conta qualche milione di utenti in tutto il mondo. Se qualcuno se lo stesse chiedendo, no: il nome Poliverso non vuole affatto richiamare…

Source

informapirata

2024-10-10 14:57:02

Ecco come un problema che abbiamo riscontrato sul nostro server Poliverso.org ci ha fatto accorgere dell’invasione dei crawler che Meta sta sguinzagliando per il Web con l’obittivo di addestrare la sua intelligenza artificiale. E i media italiani, muti!

informapirata.it/2024/10/10/me…

METAstasiVERSO vs POLIVERSO: ecco come l’informazione italiana ha ignorato il più grande sversamento di rifiuti compiuto da Facebook nel Web - informapirata

Ecco come un problema che abbiamo riscontrato sul nostro server Poliverso.org ci ha fatto accorgere dell’invasione dei crawler che Meta sta sguinzagliando per…

^{informapirata}