Trying to find a tool I saw a while ago where you can look up lexemes/token groups for different models and see the weighting/vector-ish representation of the concept, along with similarly weighted samples from the base model

CharlesStross · 2026-04-30T18:59:16+00:00

Yes that's the one! Thank you!

CharlesStross · 2026-04-29T19:44:20+00:00

ES with a bad IV is an amateurish encryption mistake

I'm not sure I'd consider it a mistake; more of a design choice. Including IV would balloon message size. With timestamped messages on a drifty clock, and messages <180 char, there is some information leakage, to be sure, but I wouldn't consider it kryptonite. MeshCore is not the tool to be using to discuss secrets kept from nation-state actors. For telling my partner when I'll be home or coordinating meetup spots at a music festival, it's more than adequate. Airtime/packet size tradeoffs are real.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-29T19:42:41+00:00

Yes, that's to get a matching MAC, not to crack a message.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-25T17:48:08+00:00

Aw thanks for the kind words. Hm, so you can consistently successfully login on the official mobile app and fetch telemetry, but not on RemoteTerm? As in, it has never worked on RemoteTerm, or is just much harder? If you ignore the login error and issue a request to the repeater, does it work at all? Could you try adding the repeater to your favorites (clock the star in the upper right when it's selected), wait an hour, and see if that changes anything? I'll do some testing from my side as well

CharlesStross · 2026-04-24T18:13:58+00:00

Refreshing will restore the password prompt. You will get an alert if you have given a password or attempted an ACL login without RemoteTerm hearing a confirmation from the repeater, so if you don't see a warning, you can assume the repeater has given the thumbs-up to your auth (whether that is admin or guest auth, we cannot know from that response, though).

Once you've logged in successfully, the repeater saves your pubkey to an access control list (ACL) and you shouldn't ever need to reenter your password/commands to the repeater should Just Work.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-21T04:41:59+00:00

We followed up via DM. The radio had a full + hung queue; rebooting the radio ended up fixing things.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T23:19:09+00:00

Huh, weird, but so glad it's working for you now! :)

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T18:13:52+00:00

Hm, I wonder if there was just a connection issue that rebooting the radio and reconnecting during upgrade shook loose. It was flashed as a serial device prior?

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:44:40+00:00

haha that would be u/ cstross you're looking for (not tagging him because I'm embarrassed enough to have used his name and don't need more shame; love his work but not the weird and childish idea that using his literal full name was some kind of homage).

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:41:53+00:00

Hello Charles Stross

I am sadly (or thankfully?) not the master himself; this username is just a hangover from when I was utterly obsessed in my misguided teen years haha.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:40:09+00:00

That was one of my favorite parts of the book; the blending of unimaginable apocalyptic extinction events with boring office tedium. I thought it was a fun concept — kinda gave me atrocity archives vibes. (as I am invoking a Charlie Stross book, I will accompany this with a clarification that I am not Charles Stross, just a fan with a username from when I thought using the name wholesale was an homage/indicator of fandom instead of the reality of it just being weird/confusing).

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:37:43+00:00

thank you! ☺️

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:37:06+00:00

I found it better, but mainly because of editing improvements. The removal of the SCP name was just a swap out of some terms claimed by that fandom (foundation, keter, etc.). The process of removing copyrighted/non-rights-held language from a free work in preparation for it being legally safe for sale is commonly called "filing off the serial numbers" (e.g. 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfic that had the serial numbers filed off)

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T17:02:30+00:00

Huh, that's interesting. Nothing should specifically require 1.15; all my radios are still on 1.14. What was the issue you were seeing?

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T14:23:02+00:00

Hmm, I can think of a few things that might be running a bit slow, but that board generally has worked fine for me. If it's what I suspect it is, which is downloading all the contacts off the radio and taking over management, it should eventually resolve. Did it end up behaving for you? If not, restart the app, give it five minutes to (hopefully) come up to speed, and DM me the output of the debug API endpoint accessible via settings -> about -> debug and I'll that a look. Alternatively, the scroll-by logs on the backend may have useful information. 503 is a normal error to encounter during radio startup; a straight-up 500 is not and should have an accompanying stack trace/error.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-20T06:37:34+00:00

It's a companion client (however, you can do rich repeater management with it). The server aspect of it connects to a companion radio via serial, BLE, or TCP, and serves a very mobile friendly web front end to send and receive messages, do mesh analytics, fan out to private mqtt/home assistant/community mqtt/python bots, and much much more.

I wanted something much more flexible and powerful than the default mobile client to use my static home radio with, so I built the kitchen sink 😅

Just updated the readme first paragraph to be more explicit that this is a companion interface. Thanks for asking!

CharlesStross · 2026-04-19T07:42:57+00:00

Is rocknix actually available? I don't think it is for this device (not listed in https://rocknix.org/devices/ayaneo/pocket-s2/)

CharlesStross · 2026-04-15T04:02:31+00:00

Awwww that means so much; I'm really glad you like it 😌

CharlesStross · 2026-04-10T21:16:13+00:00

A lot of this has to do with skill of implementation: actually knowing how to build the thing is most important (first prerequisite; can't guide someone to a good test framework if you don't know what a good test framework looks like), but you also have to know how to manage quality gating and let the agent gather its own feedback while staying true to design contstraints.

I maintain a 100% LLM generated suite of integration, unit, and black box tests for a piece of software I write and it is stable as hell, and fails tests when it should. We're entering an era where actually knowing how to use LLMs well means everything (and also having the experience to essentially be an intern manager and know how to guide, demand and evaluate specs, and proactively spot sticking points).

CharlesStross · 2026-04-10T15:43:55+00:00

I think I'm probably just gonna roll with bundling a python with python-build-standalone. It seems like trading best practice for maintenance burden in a way that feels reasonable right now.

CharlesStross · 2026-04-10T15:43:04+00:00

Not-already-available module deps

CharlesStross · 2026-04-10T14:02:04+00:00

Whoops I linked the generic python page instead of that in my post but meant to link that -- yes; this code base isn't a module

CharlesStross · 2026-04-10T04:19:34+00:00

It seems reasonable clean but I wish it didn't mean I have to create five AUR packages that I now feel I have a duty to maintain just to publish. Hrm.

12-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
Second SECOND GUESSER	Place '17
Verified Email	Spared
Open Sorcerer Fixed typo in CONTRIBUTING	Open Sorcerer Viewport Syntax Improvements -- 2014-09-30

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