Heads down in the lab this week updating the final few UNOQ bioacoustic monitors for Yeo project and doing some updates to the Chrono Lumina lights to get them working more reliably on our lab network. An annoyance I had a couple of years ago with the lights was that when they powered up a few wouldn’t connect to the network. I suspected this was due to flooding the AP with connection requests.
Made some changes to the wifi configs to reduce the signal strength (AP is close by in the lab) and set a delay based on unique device number so that there is a 350ms gap between each trying to connect to the network on boot up. Seems to work.
As we were building the last 3 Yeo boxes we realised we needed to update a couple of items in the code to improve reliability and update the species detection list. The latter meant we need to update the 10 devices also in the field so I updated the install script to automate the update when laptop is connected to hotspot. Took a few iterations but will save loads of time (and cold fingers typing) in the field.
Simon made a backing plate for the NeoPixel diffusion teaching demo. Looks pretty cool.
Finally installed some promotional material in the corridor outside the lab. Is prime location next to the cinema so great to see this in place - Simon did a great job using the laser spirit level!
The CASA AI book group are reading SolidGoldMagikarp: A Descent into the AI Underworld this week. “SolidGoldMagikarp is a first-person account of the strange few years in which large language models went from obscure research systems to everyday cultural presences, before anyone had agreed what they actually were.” I really enjoyed the investigative narrative style of the book, and how this research emerged from the Effective Altruism and Bay Area rationalist scene. What struck me most was the central contradiction it exposes: models capable of synthesising remarkable connections that give the convincing appearance of AGI, yet fragile enough that obscure tokeniser glitches reveal how little we truly understand about what is happening under the hood.
Looking at links.duncanwilson.com, these parts of the internet crossed my path this week:
- Microsoft 364 ish - Cory on why we get to the position where Microsoft can have a global outage for 24 hours.
- Watch videos together without a server - via Kottke
- Physical AI - nice project by Ben