2025-04-19 21:00:00
Cross-posted from my NAO Notebook.
This is an internal strategy note I wrote in November 2024 that I'm making public with some light editing.
In my work at the NAO I've been thinking about what I expect to see as LLMs continue to become more capable and get closer to where they can significantly accelerate their own development. I think we may see very large advances in the power of these systems over the next few years.
I'd previously thought that the main impact of AI on the NAO was through accelerating potential adversaries, and so shorter timelines primarily meant more urgency: we needed to get a comprehensive detection system in place quickly.
I now think, however, that this also means the best response involves some reprioritization. Specifically, AI will likely speed up some aspects of the creation of a detection system more than others, and so to the extent that we expect rapid advances in AI we should prioritize the work that we expect to bottleneck our future AI-accelerated work.
One way to plan for this is to imagine what would be the main bottlenecks if we had a far larger staff. Imagine if each senior person had AI support equivalent to all the smart junior people they could effectively manage. Or even (but my argument doesn't depend on this) AI systems that are as capable as today's experienced researchers. I think if in a year or two we found ourselves in this situation we would wish that:
We had collected a lot more data, because with a very large virtual computational staff future-AI-assisted-NAO can wring insights out of data far more efficiently than present-NAO.
We had started large-scale collection sooner, because, even if AI accelerates sequencing's price decreases and we can collect a lot more data in the future, it can't give us historical data.
We had a lot more partnerships for bringing in samples and data, because these take real-human time to scale up.
While I don't think this is the only way things could play out, I think it's likely enough that we should be taking these considerations very seriously in our planning.
April 2025: since initially drafting this we've started an ambitious effort to scale up our pilot system.
2025-04-18 21:00:00
As an American who works with some people who speak British English, the language differences are usually not a problem. Most words mean the same thing, and those that don't are usually concrete enough not to cause confusion (ex: lift, flat, chips). The tricky ones, though, are the ones that differ primarily in connotations. For example:
In American English (AE), "quite" is an intensifier, while in British English (BE) it's a mild deintensifier. So "quite good" is "very good" in AE but "somewhat good" in BE. I think "rather" works similarly, though it's less common in AE and I don't have a great sense for it.
"Scheme" has connotations of deviousness in AE, but is neutral in BE. Describing a plans or system as a "scheme" is common in BE and negative in AE.
"Graft" implies corruption in AE but hard work in BE.
These can cause silent misunderstandings where two people have very different ideas about the other's view:
A: "I can't believe how much graft there was in the procurement process!"
B: "Yes, quite impressive. Rather keen on going above and beyond, aren't they?"
A: "And did you see the pension scheme they set up?"
B: "Sounds like they'll be quite well off when they'll leave office."
In this example A leaves thinking B approves of the corruption, while B doesn't realize there was any. It could be a long time, if ever, before they realize they misunderstood each other.
Are there other words people have run into that differ like this?
2025-04-17 21:00:00
I do a lot of work on EC2, where I ssh into a few instances I use for specific purposes. Each time I did this I'd get a prompt like:
$ ssh_ec2nf
The authenticity of host 'ec2-54-224-39-217.compute-1.amazonaws.com
(54.224.39.217)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:...
This host key is known by the following other names/addresses:
~/.ssh/known_hosts:591: ec2-18-208-226-191.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:594: ec2-54-162-24-54.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:595: ec2-54-92-171-153.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:596: ec2-3-88-72-156.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:598: ec2-3-82-12-101.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:600: ec2-3-94-81-150.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:601: ec2-18-234-179-96.compute-1.amazonaws.com
~/.ssh/known_hosts:602: ec2-18-232-154-156.compute-1.amazonaws.com
(185 additional names omitted)
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?
The issue is that each time I start my instance it gets a new hostname (which is just derived from the IP) and so SSH's trust on first use doesn't work properly.
Checking that "185 additional names omitted" is about the number I'd expect to see is ok, but not great. And it delays login.
I figured out how to fix this today:
Edit ~/.ssh/known_hosts to add an entry for each
EC2 host I use under my alias for it. So I have
c2-44-222-215-215.compute-1.amazonaws.com ssh-ed25519
AAAA... and I duplicate that to add ec2nf ssh-ed25519
AAAA... etc.
Modify my ec2
ssh script to set HostKeyAlias:
ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking=yes" -o "HostKeyAlias=ec2nf"
...
More secure and more convenient!
(What got me to fix this was an interaction with my auto-shutdown
script, where if I did start_ec2nf && sleep 20 &&
ssh_ec2nf but then went and did something else for a minute or
two the machine would often turn itself off before I came back and got
around to saying yes.)
2025-04-09 21:00:00
People are often a lot more interested in hot meals, and my kids are no exception. I've tried a bunch of options here including putting rocks in thermoses (turns out kindergarteners worry more than you might think about whether they'll accidentally eat rocks that are bigger than their mouths), bringing a microwave and toaster (good, but too bulky for school especially when you count the battery), and ramen (great, but Lily only likes one kind and I'm worried she'll get sick of it). We recently got an electric lunchbox ( this one because it was on sale, but there are a bunch) and it's pretty great!
It's insulated, and we prepare it the night before and put it in the fridge:
In the morning I set the timer:
It only goes up to 4hr, perhaps for danger zone reasons, but since the kids leave at 8am and lunch is at 12:30 that's just right (4hr timer, 30min heating).
When the timer gets to zero it starts heating, and counts down from 30min (by default; adjustable):
Tastes marginally better than microwave food, and loads better than cold food.
I haven't yet tested if it's powerful enough to handle frozen food. I hope it is, since then you could prepare it whenever and leave it in the freezer until ready to eat.
I also wonder if it could bake bread. It only goes up to 90C and it be a bit like steamed bread, but freshness might outweigh texture here.
2025-04-05 21:00:00
The ideal seat height for foot percussion is significantly higher than a typical chair. I've tried a few things over the years:
Stacking chairs: works great, until you come to a venue without any stackable chairs.
Drum stool: good (unless you buy a very cheap wobbly one like I did) but heavy and not good for flying with.
Adjustable booster: ok, though unavoidably bulky and the one I made is also too heavy for flying.
At Hashdance Weekend Kelsey had a set of furniture risers she let me borrow, and I liked them a lot! I decided to get a pair.
They do slide around a bit, though, because they're hard plastic on the bottom:
I decided to put on a layer of silicone for better grip. I roughed them up a bit with 220 grit sandpaper:
And put on a thin layer of old silicone from what I had left in a tube from a bathroom renovation:
It's certainly grippy, but it turns out not very robust. Here's after my first gig with them:
I really like how light and compact they are, and a bit of sliding isn't a complete dealbreaker, but I would still be a lot happier if they'd stay put under me.
I was thinking of maybe using cyanoacrylate to attach a thin layer of rubber, probably from an old inner tube. But I'm worried this might mark the floor. Suggestions for things to try?
2025-04-04 21:00:00
The quarter inch jack (" phone connector") is probably the oldest connector still in use today, and it's picked up a very wide range of applications. Which also means it's a huge mess in a live sound context, where a 1/4" jack could be any of:
Unbalanced or balanced line level (~1V). Ex: a mixer to a powered speaker.
Unbalanced instrument level (~200mV), high impedance. Ex: electric guitar.
Unbalanced piezo level (~50mV), high impedance. Ex: contact pickup on a fiddle.
Unbalanced speaker level (~30V). Ex: powered amplifier to passive speaker.
Stereo line level (2x ~1V). Ex: output of keyboard.
Stereo headphone level (2x ~3v). Ex: headphone jack.
Send and return line level (~2x 1V). Ex: input to and output from an external compressor.
Switch (non-audio). Ex: damper pedal on a keyboard, which would be normally open or normally closed.
1V per octave (~5V). Ex: older modular synth.
Here's a compatibility matrix with a bunch of these:
| If you plug _____ | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| balanced line level output | electric guitar output | powered amplifier output | stereo line level output | effects loop (mixer side) | ||
| Into ____ | balanced line level input | ✓ | too low, bad timbre | boom! | left - right | no audio |
| DI input | distortion w/o pad | ✓ | boom! | distortion w/o pad, right channel dropped | no audio | |
| speaker input | nearly inaudible | no audio | ✓ | nearly inaudible, right channel dropped | no audio | |
| stereo line level input | ✓ | too low, bad timbre, right channel no audio | boom! | ✓ | no audio | |
| effects loop (mixer side) | no audio, possible damage | no audio, possible damage | boom! | no audio, possible damage | no audio, possible damage | |
Note how few "✓" cells there are.
As much as possible, set things up to avoid 1/4" connectors. If you use Speakon to connect amplifier outputs to passive speaker inputs and XLR for balanced line level signals you'll avoid all the "boom!" outcomes, along with most of the ways of connecting an output to an output. You can't get away from them entirely, but ideally the only 1/4" cables on stage are short runs to DIs.