Tag: how to

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How to Use ChatGPT

I’m late to the party, but maybe that’s better. I’ve forgotten some of the hype around AI, and the pace of innovation has settled down a little. Think of ChatGPT as a thinking tool with access to an internet-sized – but imprecise – database. That database was last updated in September 2021, and is imprecise because due to how neural networks work. The thinking part of this tool is rudimentary, but powerful. It does many things well with the correct input, but also fails spectacularly with the “wrong” input.

I separate the idea of what ChatGPT is from how it functions and where its knowledge comes from, because it helps me think of uses while remembering its limits. For example, I used it to help me journal more effectively, but when I tried to probe its knowledge of Havana Syndrome – a conspiracy theory commonly presented as fact by USA officials, it expressed useless information, because it has no conception of how it knows anything, or where its knowledge comes from.

Things ChatGPT is Good At

This list is presented in no particular order, but it is important to stress that AI often lie and hallucinate. It is important to always verify information received from AI. This list is based on my experiences over the past month, and will be updated as I use ChatGPT more. It is not comprehensive, but is intended to be what I find most useful.

  • Socratic method tutoring: The Socratic method is essentially “Asking questions helps you learn.” ChatGPT is very good at explaining topics, just make sure you verify its explanations are factual. (Questions I asked: Why are smooth-bore tanks considered more advanced while rifling in guns was an important innovation? Why do companies decrease the quality of tools over time?)
  • Writing: ChatGPT tends to be too verbose, but you can make it simplify and rewrite statements, and it can help you find better ways to write. (I asked it to explain the Socratic method a few times, then wrote my own version.)
  • Scripting: I created a utility script for file statistics in 2-3 hours by refining output from ChatGPT. The end result is more reusable, better written, and more functional than it would’ve been if I had worked on it alone. And that’s ignoring the fact that I got something I liked far faster than I would’ve on my own. (Just.. you need a programmer still. It can do some pretty cool things on its own, but also forgets how to count often.)
  • Planning: This is a todo item for me. I haven’t successfully used it for planning yet, but I intend to, and have heard of good results from others.

Things ChatGPT is Bad At

  • Facts & math: AI hallucinate. Check everything they teach you.
  • Finding sources: ChatGPT’s knowledge is formed by stripping the least useful data out of most of the internet, and who said what is far less important than specific pieces of knowledge – like how do you make a heading in HTML?
  • An unbiased viewpoint: While ChatGPT is fairly good at avoiding most bias, everything is biased. Removing bias completely is impossible. Discussing anything where there is strong motive to present a specific viewpoint will lead to that viewpoint being presented more often than an unbiased viewpoint.
  • Violent, illegal, and sexual content: While it is possible to bypass OpenAI’s strict handling of content, it is difficult, inconsistent, and can lead to having access revoked. Sadly, this prevents many ethical use cases due to a heavy-handed approach, and embeds the bias of OpenAI’s team into the model directly. There are ways around this with non-ChatGPT models.
  • What to do in Minecraft: I tried so many TIMES to get interesting ideas. It just can’t do it.

Things ChatGPT is Okay At

It’s important to know where AI can be a useful tool, but must be used carefully due to mixed results, so I am also including a list of things that work sometimes.

  • Advice: Similar to the Socratic method, a back and forth conversation can help you with your thoughts. Just be aware that ChatGPT can give some really bad advice too. For example, I wanted to see what it had to say on turning hobbies into jobs, and it covered none of the downsides, only talking about it as a purely positive experience.
  • Game design: I have spent too much time telling ChatGPT to design games for me. It will generate an infinite rabbit-hole of buzzwords and feature ideas, but cannot understand the concepts of limited time or scope. If you try to follow its designs, you will never complete anything.
  • Summarizing: If given text as input directly, when it is short enough, a summary can be reliably generated. If asked to summarize something extremely popular before its data cut-off, the summary can be okay. The drop-off on this is insane. Try asking it about Animorphs for example, something talked about occasionally, and certainly known about, but not something it can summarize.

This draft sat around for about 2/3rd of a month nearly complete. I would like it to have even more information, but I would like it more for it to be public. Apologies if it was a little short for you, but hopefully someday I’ll make a better version.

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Google Chrome’s DNS Fucked Up, What Do?

Google Chrome's domain does not exist error page.

Google Chrome on my laptop randomly decided my blog’s domain doesn’t exist. Except, it clearly does. Searching for a solution tells me to do everything from restarting the computer to deleting all browser history – which should be obviously wrong, not to mention annoying. Here’s the laziest quickest way I solved it:

Google Chrome's net-internals' DNS page.
Step 1: Clear host cache.
  1. Go to chrome://net-internals/#dns and click “Clear host cache”
  2. That didn’t work.
  3. Go to chrome://settings/security and use a different secure DNS provider from the default
Google Chrome's security settings page.
Step 3: Use an actually secure DNS provideer.

Considering Google decided to be evil and does the same mass data hervesting and privacy violations as every other big tech company, we shouldn’t be using anything they touch. However, the least we can do and still have a compatible browser is to stop using their “secure” DNS provider anyhow..

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Generating Terrestrial Planets Pt.1

This is related to Semi-Empirical Stellar Equations. I have had some questions easily answered, and others which are difficult or impossible to get the kind of accuracy I want.

I’m going to order what I’ve learned by the order I am planning to use these equations, marking equations loosely based on empirical data with an asterisk, and double asterisks for things I’ve completely made up to simplify calculation.

  • Radius of Surface* (Rsurface):
    5500km mean, 1550km standard deviation
  • Density* [based on common rock types] (Dplanet):
    4.7g/cm3 mean, 0.55g/cm3 standard deviation
  • Volume [assumes a perfect sphere] (Vplanet):
    4/3 * π * Rsurface3
  • Mass (Mplanet):
    Dplanet * Vplanet
  • Surface Gravity (gsurface):
    6.673×10-11Nm2kg-2 * Mplanet / Rsurface2
  • Surface Area [assumes a perfect sphere]:
    4 * π * Rsurface2
  • Atmospheric Pressure Reduction Rate** (Pr):
    Pr [unit: none] = -0.00011701572 [unit: s2 / m2] * gsurface
  • Atmospheric Halving Height** (hd):
    hd [unit: m-1] = ln(2) / Pr
  • Atmospheric Volume at Constant Pressure** (Vsim):
    (4/3 * π * (Rsurface + hd)3 – Vplanet) * 2
  • Surface Atmospheric Pressure (Psurface):
    Psurface [unit: kPa] = ???
  • Lowest Safe Orbital Height** (h0):
    h0 [unit: m] = ln(1.4×10-11 / Psurface) / Pr
  • True Atmospheric Volume (Vatm):
    4/3 * π * (Rsurface + h0)3 – Vplanet

Vsim exists to support a simulation of an entire planet’s atmospheric contents using my simple fluid simulation mechanic. The magic constant used to calculated Pr is based on Earth’s atmosphere, it can be changed to set an exact “atmospheric height” while maintaining other properties of this simulation.

  • Atmospheric Pressure at Altitude** (Paltitude):
    Paltitude [unit: kPa] = Psurface * exp(Pr * maltitude) [Pr may be -Pr, I don’t remember]

This post is obviously incomplete, but it’s been a while since I posted anything here, and I felt like I should go ahead and share what I’ve been up to.

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Better Fluid Storage

A while back, I posted a prototype fluid storage system with a mechanic for handling breaches in a pressurized system. I thought I’d be clever by storing fluids as a percentage of a defined volume and pressure. For a “simplified” system, it was quite complicated, and fundamentally flawed.

This time, it is straightforward. Keep track of the amounts of each fluid, a total sum, and volume of the container. Pressure is the sum divided by the volume, and the percent of a fluid is its amount divided by the total sum of all fluids.

tank = {
  volume: 200, sum: 300,
  contents: { hydrogen: 200, oxygen: 100 }
}
pressure = tank.sum / tank.volume -- 1.5
percent_hydrogen = tank.contents.hydrogen / tank.sum -- 0.67

Everything needed from a container can be accessed immediately or with a single calculation involving only two variables.

But what about hull breaches?

Fluids vs Mechanical Classes

I realized that I should define fluid containers very narrowly, all they need care about is a small set of numbers, and have a few functions to modify that state. Enter the Breach class.

Breach(fluidA, fluidB, volume)

Specify which fluid containers are interacting and the volume ( I guess technically it should be area) of the breach. Each update cycle moves the pressure difference multiplied by the volume (area) of the breach from the higher pressure container to the lower pressure container.

What about pumps? I have those, with a “volume” and a “rate” modifier to allow you to adjust how fast the pump works. Pumps only work in one direction, but have a function to reverse them.

Want only one fluid to go through..say, a filter? Made that as well. Valves, so that you can adjust flow rate, filter-pump combos for pushing just the right amount of one fluid, and one-way valves to allow pressure to escape but not allow any blowback.

The Flaws

  • Once pressure is equalized, contents do not mix between fluids.
  • All fluids have the same density. This probably isn’t that hard to fix, but is unneeded for my purposes.
  • All fluids mix. This may or may not be harder to fix depending on how it is approached.
  • Temperature isn’t simulated at all. I would love to have heat transfer and heat affecting density, but these details are not necessary for my current project.

The Code

As of publishing this article, I don’t have a library to give you, but I will update it as soon as I do release it. For now, here is where I have the beginnings of a library. No matter what, I can promise it will be available by the end of April (or upon request).

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Simplified Fluid Storage System

(A flaw in the design of this system was fixed and posted about here.)

One of my game ideas involves constructing 2D spaceships, and the concept of a simplified system for storing fuel, oxygen, water – really any kind of fluid mixture – in storage tanks. Along with this, it allows simulating breaches between containers, hard vacuum, and the pressurized areas of the ship itself!

{ -- a rough approximation of Earth's atmosphere
  pressure: 1
  volume: 4.2e12 -- 4.2 billion km^3
  contents: {
    nitrogen: 0.775
    oxygen: 0.21
    argon: 0.01
    co2: 0.005
  }
}

{ -- hard vacuum
  pressure: 0
  volume: math.huge -- infinity
  -- the contents table will end up containing negative infinity of anything that leaks into the vacuum
}

It all comes down to storing a total pressure and volume per container, and a table of contents as percentages of the total mixture. The total amount of mass in the system can be easily calculated (volume * pressure), as can the amount of any item in the system ( volume * pressure * percent).

Breaches are stored as a reference in the container with a higher pressure, and a size value is added to the container with lower pressure (representing the size of the hole between them).

screenshot of testing my fluid system
A sequence of tests.

Limitations

  • Everything has the same density and mixes evenly.
  • There are no states of matter, everything is treated as a gas.
  • Attempting to directly modify the amount of a fluid is prone to floating-point errors it seems, while mixing containers via the breach mechanic is working as expected.

The code was written in MoonScript / Lua and is available here.