We have next meeting of python user group coming up on Wednesday with a talk + coding challenge on LLM delusions.
> "Digital Delusions and the Dirty Little Secret of LLMs." -Tim Clarke
>
> Ever wondered why LLMs confidently spout fabrications as fact? Uncover the "dirty little secret" behind managing these digital delusions. Diving into the why from tokenization to training data. Then, explore practical techniques like RAG and semantic search to bring accuracy back to the forefront. Finally we will build a Streamlit-based semantic search tool to give you an introduction to the hands on experience of serving up the truth to your LLM.
>
> Bio: Tim is driven by a passion for harnessing cutting-edge technologies to bridge the gap between humans and machines, transforming the way we understand, interpret, and interact with information. Holding an MA in Religious Anthropology and an MSc in Data Science, Tim has had a diverse career, initially working internationally in the Energy Sector before shifting his focus to tech, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Knowledge Graph techniques. In his current role at Katoni Engineering he looks at implementing digital technologies to empower the workforce.
https://ti.to/code-the-city/apug-mar-2025
Robert
--
________________________________________________________
Robert McWilliam rmcw(a)allmail.net argh.technology
I go the extra mile.
Usually because I missed the turning I was supposed to take.
I’ll be in around 7:30 probably. Looking at server stuff. Maybe thinking about spacefed if things go well enough to move onto the next phase in the auth project.
If anyone is having issues accessing hub since the change I can help you get back in.
Iain.
--
*Iain Learmonth* MSci MBCS AICB PM.Dip (he/him)
This email is sent in a personal capacity. The views expressed in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of SR2 Group Limited, its subsidaries, or any other organisation in which I am a member, officer, employee, or volunteer.
On Tue, Mar 4, 2025, at 11:42 AM, 57North Announcements wrote:
> Fit like,
>
> Happy UNESCO World Engineering Day to those who celebrate!
>
> It's Tuesday, so we will have our weekly open night! I
>
> If you've not heard of us, 57North get up to a range of activities on
> Tuesday nights in our shared workspace, including (but not limited to)
> social contact, programming, manufacturing weird things, consuming
> sugary treats and the odd can of alcoholic beverage.
>
> We're located at:
> Suite H Kettock Lodge
> Innovation Park
> Campus Two
> Bridge of Don
> Aberdeen
> AB22 8GU
>
> Instructions for getting in are here:
> https://www.57north.org.uk/open-evenings .Hit the buzzer (Suite H) and
> someone shall come and rescue you from downstairs after a brief wait.
>
> There's plenty of parking, but if you don't have transport, then get in
> touch either here or IRC and someone may be able to help you out! The
> number 1 bus comes nearby too.
>
> If you're new, I'd suggest you bring a laptop, and perhaps a project
> you want to work on.
>
> If you're not new, shoot a reply to the list and tell us what you'll be
> up to, and maybe consider bringing a friend. Please mention a time if
> you'll be in before me!
>
> We like our space being accessible for all. When visiting, please
> ensure you tidy up after yourself, clean any dishes, cups, cutlery and
> store them away. There are vacuum cleaners too, for cleaning the floor.
> If you have any questions, please ask one of the regular visitors or
> members for advice.
>
> I will be in today from about 8pm, presumably thinking about our new
> auth system, remote members and looking at things which are linux
> shaped while grumbling about software.
>
> What are you up to?
>
> --
> Dave Hibberd <hibby(a)debian.org>
> Debian Developer
> Packet Radioist
> MM0RFN
> 57North Hacklab Ltd. is a company registered in Scotland (No. SC470230).
> 57North and 57North Hacklab are trading names of 57North Hacklab Ltd.
Hi All,
tl;dr: The way you login to hub has changed. You'll get sent to "Keycloak" and will need to do a "Forgot password" and then reset your password via the emailed link. You shouldn't notice any difference after that other than the login screen is different.
If you go to log in to hub you will find that you get sent to a system called "Keycloak" instead of the former 57N ID. The old ID application served us well for many years, but had a dependency on a very unsupported and early version of node.js. Updating that code was going to require someone that knew not only modern node.js but also historic node.js to ensure the update was correct and complete.
Keycloak is a modern single-sign on system that implements protocols like OAuth2 and OIDC which means that we can integrate this with many of the existing space applications, like Home Assistant and the wiki. I have also configured it using an LDAP backend for user account and password information so we could use this for applications that only support LDAP authentication. We are lucky that someone has also provided a CAS plugin, as that's what Hub uses, and so no changes were needed to Hub at all other than re-pointing where it was looking for the CAS server.
I will be publishing the Ansible playbook used to deploy the system shortly under the BSD 2-clause licence. I'm also using it for my company and for one of my company's clients that runs digital security helpdesks. At some point it will probably get audited professionally.
The stack is built on a rootless podman setup, using quadlets to define the services. Network isolation is employed to prevent interncontainer connections between applications that do not need to communicate. The full stack includes:
• Nginx
• Certbot
• Keycloak
• 389ds (LDAP server)
• PostgreSQL (Relational database used by Keycloak)
Right now this is running on a Vultr VM while we continue to work towards retiring finzean. I believe the last service there is Hub which I think we can containerize and add to the podman setup. At that point we can migrate the whole stack to a replacement finzean.
The podman features we require only exist in Debian testing, and finzean currently runs Debian jessie, so we cannot do this upgrade in place.
You *can* enable 2FA to secure your Keycloak account but this is *not* required. We may later choose to require this for some or all of our applications but as this is something that needs documentation I don't think we should do it until we have that documentation.
If you have any questions then you can ask them and I might answer them.
Thanks,
Iain.
--
*Iain Learmonth* MSci MBCS AICB PM.Dip (he/him)
This email is sent in a personal capacity. The views expressed in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of SR2 Group Limited, its subsidaries, or any other organisation in which I am a member, officer, employee, or volunteer.
Hi all,
I need to make an RS order. If you want to get small things and not pay delivery then please let me know. You can get the stuff at space Tuesday.
Thanks,
Iain.
--
*Iain Learmonth* MSci MBCS AICB PM.Dip (he/him)
This email is sent in a personal capacity. The views expressed in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of SR2 Group Limited, its subsidaries, or any other organisation in which I am a member, officer, employee, or volunteer.
Hey, hello, happy Tuesday
Hope you're well, it's Tuesday again, so open evening at the hackspace.
We're in the throbbing heart of Bridge of Don south, at...
Suite H Kettock Lodge
Innovation Park
Campus Two
Bridge of Don
Aberdeen
AB22 8GU
...there is sort of useful blurb on...
https://www.57north.org.uk/open-evenings
...and...
https://www.57north.org.uk/contact
...just press buzzer H and someone will come and let you in after a brief
wait. Reply if you have any questions, if you want to share your plans, or
if you'd like a lift.
I'll be along around 7 ish, will be doing some mixture of looking at sewing
machines, 3d printing, tinkering with PHP, pootling about, and moving
things around in a semi intelligible way.
See you there :)
Hi all,
I've been working on some improvements to my and my company's email security and this is a test mail to see if anything breaks when the mailing list tries to forward my mail on.
They've got crazy schemes like MTA-STS now where you need to publish DNS records *and* run a web server to host a policy file to tell other mail servers not to talk to you unless the connection is encrypted.
Mostly you can ignore this though.
Thanks,
Iain.
--
*Iain Learmonth* MSci MBCS AICB PM.Dip (he/him)
This email is sent in a personal capacity. The views expressed in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of SR2 Group Limited, its subsidaries, or any other organisation in which I am a member, officer, employee, or volunteer.
Hi
Happy tuesday! Open evening today, come one, come all, we get up to a range
of things on Tuesday nights in our shared space, chatting, programming,
making things, drinking tea, coffee, and the odd can of alcoholic beverage.
We're located at:
Suite H Kettock Lodge
Innovation Park
Campus Two
Bridge of Don
Aberdeen
AB22 8GU
Blurb on getting there is at https://www.57north.org.uk/open-evenings. Hit
the buzzer (Suite H) and someone shall come and rescue you from downstairs
after a wee wait.
Hit back with a reply to share your plans, I'll be along at about 8pm,
anyone heading in before then? Also shout here if you need a lift or
anything.
Cheers
Andy
Hi
I'll be in around 7:30, probably be tinkering with web stuff and
complaining about bitbucket downtime.
See y'all then.
:)
On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 at 16:09, 57North Announcements <
57north-announce(a)lists.57north.org.uk> wrote:
> Fit like,
>
> It's a fine Tuesday, so we will have our weekly open night!
>
> If you've not heard of us, 57North get up to a range of activities on
> Tuesday nights in our shared workspace, including (but not limited to)
> social contact, programming, manufacturing weird things, consuming sugary
> treats and the odd can of alcoholic beverage.
>
> We're located at:
> Suite H Kettock Lodge
> Innovation Park
> Campus Two
> Bridge of Don
> Aberdeen
> AB22 8GU
>
> Instructions for getting in are here:
> https://www.57north.org.uk/open-evenings .Hit the buzzer (Suite H) and
> someone shall come and rescue you from downstairs after a brief wait.
>
> There's plenty of parking, but if you don't have transport, then get in
> touch either here or IRC and someone may be able to help you out! The
> number 1 bus comes nearby too.
>
> If you're new, I'd suggest you bring a laptop, and perhaps a project you
> want to work on.
>
> If you're not new, shoot a reply to the list and tell us what you'll be up
> to, and maybe consider bringing a friend. Please mention a time if you'll
> be in before me!
>
> We like our space being accessible for all. When visiting, please ensure
> you tidy up after yourself, clean any dishes, cups, cutlery and store them
> away. There are vacuum cleaners too, for cleaning the floor. If you have
> any questions, please ask one of the regular visitors or members for advice.
>
> I will be in today from about 8pm, looking at things which are game show
> button shaped, grumbling about software no doubt.
>
> Fit are you deein?
>
> --
> Dave Hibberd <hibby(a)debian.org>
> Debian Developer
> Packet Radioist
> MM0RFN
> 57North Hacklab Ltd. is a company registered in Scotland (No. SC470230).
> 57North and 57North Hacklab are trading names of 57North Hacklab Ltd.
>
Hello,
It's Tuesday again, so Open Eve at 57 North Hacklab.
Open evening details are on https://www.57north.org.uk/open-evenings and
location details are at https://www.57north.org.uk/contact
Come along, bring people, if you've not been before, it'll be great to meet
you, if you have, awesome to have you back.
I'll be in from around 7:30 I think, reply back with your plans,
particularly if you're heading in before then. Reply if you need a lift or
anything.
See you there :)
Andy
PS, here is an AI generated poem about hacking on Tuesdays, it's not super
terrible, but it isn't great either...
On a Tuesday, crisp and dimly lit,
The glow of screens, a perfect fit.
Fingers dance on the keyboard's face,
In code, I find my sacred space.
A curious quest, a puzzle unfolds,
Through labyrinths of ones and zeroes cold.
Packets whisper secrets untold,
Their trails of data, pure and bold.
The hum of fans, a rhythmic song,
The thrill of righting what feels so wrong.
Not for chaos, not for greed,
But to uncover, to sow the seed.
Scripts are written, exploits run,
Each line a battle hard-won.
Firewalls breached, the barriers fall,
Echoes of triumph in every call.
The clock ticks on, the night grows deep,
But curiosity denies me sleep.
Tuesday fades to Wednesday's hue,
Yet still, there’s more to break and do.
For hacking’s art is more than play—
It’s crafting futures from the fray.
On a Tuesday night, beneath the stars,
I stitch together this world of ours.
