steve – Page 3 – Gingercatsoftware

August 8, 2023

Python3 and http!

Python, a versatile and widely-used programming language, has proven its worth across various domains, from web development and data analysis to artificial intelligence and automation.

The command

python3 -m http.server

is an interesting one I’ve been thinking about and using of late.

This one little cli command can make all files accessible in the directory that the command is executed in… I checked it as an admin and standard user and sure enough you can share any data in any directory you have access to!

This opens up some significant security vulnerabilities. Since the server allows public access to the files in the directory where it is executed, there is a risk of exposing sensitive information inadvertently. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to gain unauthorised access to confidential data or sensitive configuration files. This should never be used on a production server!

With great power also comes great responsibility…. I think all young programmers and developers should watch the Oppenheimer movie!

August 4, 2023

Patterns of random

Ever since I started my adventures with computers, I’ve been fascinated by the process and delight of random. Of taking something so precise as a computer and having it cough up random information. I think my first experience of this was with the venerable “Hypercard” running on a mac. Danny Goodman wrote a wonderful book on how to use and write for this product and it was a good initial introduction to programming.

I was thinking about how creativity contains elements of random – or new concepts (created because of random actions) and how AI is becoming rather good at defining, refining and regurgitating content to create the new.

Machine learning, giving a set of criteria and a desired result – infinite testing and the ability to weight or to project concepts. To test at an incredible rate – add to this the possibility of quantum computing and humanity is at a very interesting nexus.

Recently a group of researchers hooked an AI up to a robotic arm and sensing device (effectively giving the AI access into the physical world via the robotic arm and something similar to vision) when asked to identify an extinct animal it picked up a plastic model of a dinosaur. When asked what object might be the best for hammering a nail, it picked up a rock.

We live in interesting times.

July 11, 2023July 11, 2023

AI secrete source!

So it’s interesting comparing AI’s. I’ve been hacking away and recently I got privateGPT to run locally on my own machine. It’s an old and under powered beast and an average query will take about 15 minutes to process. It uses up all the ram, and the cpu’s sit at about 98% utilisation. The fans turn on and when they stop howling it’s usually an indication that the machine has spat out an answer (I think I saw 42 at one point!).

So this training of the AI and quoting of sources is interesting. PrivateGPT will produce sources – but with that product I’ve also run into my first AI hallucination (basically where an AI trys too hard and brings up false info).

This all begs the question – considering much of the available human knowledge used to train AI came from all of humanity, shouldn’t AI companies be taxed at a very high rate and pay that money back into the community with say the aims of establishing an international sovereign wealth fund that would eventually go on to supporting / establishing a universal basic income for all of humanity (one can dream I know)?

A couple of the publicly accessible AI’s that I’ve been tinkering with will not quote sources and will not tell you much if anything with regards what they have been trained on. But there is now this very interesting development that the Guardian have reported on which is that Sarah Silverman is current sueing OpenAI and Meta claiming AI training infringed copyright

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/sarah-silverman-sues-openai-meta-copyright-infringement

I’m going to be holding on to my pop corn real tight as this works it’s way thru the courts, and the big wigs in silicon valley work out what to do and how to do it. I told you 2023 was going to be a very interesting year for AI.

July 8, 2023July 8, 2023

Zuck doesn’t care about 14,000 people

Although I hate FB I do use it some time. So I’m in this Face Book group – and from what we can work out the owner has passed away.

All the admin accounts have been hacked, and despite a number of people attempting to appeal to the criminal a-hole that usurped this group, and of course a number of us have written to the so called FB support and I even sent an email to Zuk himself.

We have been met by this huge wave of silence. Nothing nada – and it really makes me mad – this is a community that has/had 14,000 people and probably about 10 or more years worth of data in it. This has been usurped, abused and the only thing one can really do is abandon it.

Part of me thought it would be / might be a good idea to hack back. But you know is it worth it?

In life I have learnt that one must chose one’s battles with care – or to put it another way “Never wrestle with pigs- you both get covered in mud and the pig likes it”. For now I’ll put this on the back burner … but If I ever meet Mr Zuckerberg we are going to have an interesting and probably rather short conversation.