• Technology Consultant.
  • Software Developer.
  • Musician.
  • Burner.
  • Game Master.
  • Non-theistic Pagan.
  • Cishet White Male Feminist.
  • Father.
  • Fountain Maker.
  • Aquarium Builder.
  • Hamster Daddy.
  • Resident of Colorado.
  • Anti-Capitalist.
  • Hackerspace Regular.
  • Traveler of the American West.
  • 6 Posts
  • 136 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 7th, 2023

help-circle













    • Theoretically Yes, if your Linux partition is not encrypted, any OS can read it. Password protecting it doesn’t do anything to conceal your data, just keeps people from logging into your system while Linux is booted. If this is a security / privacy related question, there is nothing to stop a program running under Windows from reading the data on your Linux partition except

    • Practically No, depending on the filesystem you chose (if you went with the default, it’s likely ext4 but could be something more exotic). Out of the box Windows lacks the software / drivers to read most Linux filesystems. If this is a “can I access my files” question, you probably need to install something like this to read your data from Windows. Note that the reverse is not true. Most distros other than light weight distros like Alpine are perfectly able to read the NTFS file system out of the box. Sometimes they can’t write to it unless you install additional tools (like OOTB Debian probably can’t, but I’m pretty sure OOTB Linux Mint can if you change a setting and IDK about OOTB Ubuntu / Fedora / Arch).

    The easiest way to share data between Windows and Linux is with a 3rd partition formatted to FAT32, as both Linux and Windows have no problem reading from / writing to it without additional software.

    EDIT: The other poster is absolutely correct. The modern way to do this is with exFAT. What can I say? I’m a crusty old engineer.

    It’s very likely that adware / spyware / malware targeting Windows users will NOT be able to read Ext4 or other Linux filesystems, unless it’s specifically targeted to do so, so you do have that added “security through obscurity” protection.





  • My code projects lately?

    “This project uses an API written in PHP, with HTML in Lua (OpenResty) and JavaScript. We’re starting with the PHP component, please write me a burger with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup and mustard.”

    “Absolutely! I’d be happy to help with that! I understand that we’re creating a burger in PHP. Here is a burger, with cheese, bacon, lettuce tomato and mustard. Explanation of the burger: The bacon is on top of the cheese, so it doesn’t fall off. The lettuce is included, to create an underlying HTML structure.”

    "Um, that’s not at all what I asked for. First of all, you completely forgot the ketchup, which I explicitly told you was a requirement. Secondly, you said there was mustard, but I don’t see any. Third, the cheese is cottage cheese? No one puts that on burgers! Why would you put cottage cheese? Third, the bacon is turkey bacon. That’s not what I wanted at all. On top of that, the lettuce is UNDER the burger, not ON it. We’re not writing HTML, this is meant to be a rest API. All the output should be JSON.

    Please try again. Write me a burger in PHP with pig bacon, mustard and ketchup, which you forgot to include last time, cheddar cheese (NOT cottage cheese) and tomato, pickles and lettuce INSIDE the bun. This is an API, so don’t write any HTML!"

    “I appologize for the misunderstanding. Here is your burger with bacon (made from pigs, not turkey), mustard, ketchup, cheddar cheese, tomato, pickles and lettuce inside the bun. I understand this is an API, so I’ve taken out the HTML. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”

    “It looks like you’ve called a function to put the lettuce inside the bun, but you never created that function?”

    “You are correct. Your PHP code would need to have the function defined to put the lettuce inside the bun. Here is your updated PHP code with the putLettuceInsideBun function included.”

    “Thank you, there’s a tomato and the lettuce is inside the bun now. I’m not sure why you called the putLettuceInsideBun() function twice, but at least it’s in there now. I note there’s still no bacon, cheese, ketchup or mustard. You know what? I’m just going to write those parts myself!”

    “Writing PHP code can be a fun and educational challenge! Please let me know if I can assist you any further with your PHP hot dog grilling project.”


  • If those words are connected to some automated system that can accept them as commands…

    For instance, some idiot entrepreneur was talking to me recently about whether it was feasible to put an LLM on an unmanned spacecraft in cis-lunar space (I consult with the space industry) in order to give it operational control of on-board systems based on real time telemetry. I told him about hallucination and asked him what he thinks he’s going to do when the model registers some false positive in response to a system fault… Or even what happens to a model when you bombard it’s long-term storage with the kind of cosmic particles that cause random bit flips (This is a real problem for software in space) and how that might change its output?

    Now, I don’t think anyone’s actually going to build something like that anytime soon (then again the space industry is full of stupid money), but what about putting models in charge of semi-autonomous systems here on earth? Or giving them access to APIs that let them spend money or trade stocks or hire people on mechanical Turk? Probably a bunch of stupid expensive bad decisions…

    Speaking of stupid expensive bad decisions, has anyone embedded an LLM in the ethereum blockchain and givien it access to smart contracts yet? I bet investors would throw stupid money at that…