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Three Ways Contractors Can Make High-End Furnaces ‘Sell Themselves’

If contractors in colder climates focus on educating their customers on what new higher-efficiency furnaces bring to the table, often times the furnaces will sell themselves.




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CISA Releases Eight Industrial Control Systems Advisories

Posted by CISA on Mar 21

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow

You are subscribed to Cybersecurity Advisories for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This information
has recently been updated, and is now available.

CISA Releases Eight Industrial Control Systems Advisories [
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2023/03/21/cisa-releases-eight-industrial-control-systems-advisories ]
03/21/2023 08:00 AM...




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CISA Releases Six Industrial Control Systems Advisories

Posted by CISA on Mar 23

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow

You are subscribed to Cybersecurity Advisories for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This information
has recently been updated, and is now available.

CISA Releases Six Industrial Control Systems Advisories [
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2023/03/23/cisa-releases-six-industrial-control-systems-advisories ] 03/23/2023
08:00 AM EDT...




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Re: LLMs and refusals

Posted by Jason Ross via Dailydave on Jul 25

It's likely this is going to happen anyway, the new Mistral just dropped
and seems to perform roughly on par with llama3 and gpt4o, so the next wave
of fine tuned versions like dolphin are almost certainly coming soon.

OpenAI also has announced free fine tuning of gpt4o mini until late
September (up to 2m tokens/day) so it may be possible to fine tune around
some of its guardrails for a reasonable cost.




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Re: LLMs and refusals

Posted by David Manouchehri via Dailydave on Jul 28

Breaking down a prompt into multiple steps works pretty well for us. e.g.
first we get generic mean reasons:

[image: image.png]

Then I just shove the mean reasons into the system message (you can do this
with another LLM call instead in real life, I just cheated by copy pasting
since there's already too many screenshots in this email):

[image: image.png]

This is with gpt-4o-2024-05-13 above, but you can see below it works with
Llama 3.1...




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sboms and LLMs

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Sep 11

People doing software security often use LLMs more as orchestrators than
anything else. But there's so many more complicated ways to use them in our
space coming down the pipe. Obviously the next evolution of SBOMs
<https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/cisa-sbom-rama> is that
they represent not just what is contained in the code as some static tree
of library dependencies, but also what that code does in a summary fashion...




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Re: sboms and LLMs

Posted by Isaac Dawson via Dailydave on Sep 12

Well this is rather timely! Although I'm not sure using an LLM for the
behavioral aspect is entirely necessary. I've been working on an
experimental system that does just what you talk about for dependencies (
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/dependency_scanning/experiment_libbehave_dependency.html,
pre-alpha!). My solution uses static analysis because I'm a fan of
determinism.

Snark aside, looking at behaviors...




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Re: sboms and LLMs

Posted by Adrian Sanabria via Dailydave on Sep 12

We've been talking about and giving "Beyond the SBOM" presentations for a
while now, but to your point, I don't see anyone actually doing it.

If Solarwinds said "here's a script that will lock down your host firewall
to just the outbound access our tools need to update themselves", that
would be amazing, and would have saved everyone some time and trouble a few
years ago.

[image: image.png]
And Biden's EO...




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Hacking the Edges of Knowledge: LLMs, Vulnerabilities, and the Quest for Understanding

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Nov 02

[image: image.png]

It's impossible not to notice that we live in an age of technological
wonders, stretching back to the primitive hominids who dared to ask "Why?"
but also continually accelerating and pulling everything apart while it
does, in the exact same manner as the Universe at large. It is why all the
hackers you know are invested so heavily in Deep Learning right now, as if
someone got on a megaphone at Chaos...




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Episode 28: Type Systems

In recent episodes we have discusses statically and dynamically typed languages and domain specific languages - topics that are much talked about in the community at the moment. In this episode we look at the foundation of programming languages : types. We explain what a type actually is, how type systems work and what polymorphism works.




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Episode 45: Round Table on Ultra Large Scale Systems

This Episode is a round table discussion about Ultra-Large Scale Systems. In 2006, a number of authors (among them our guests Linda Northrop, Doug Schmidt, Kevin Sullivan, and Gregor Kiczales) have produced a report that addressed the following question: Given the issues with today's software engineering, how can we build the systems of the future that are likely to have billions of lines of code? In this episode, our guests discuss many of the issues that arise from this kind of system and provide an overview of the research areas that should be investigated in order to tackle the challenge. If you want to get more detailed information, you can read the ULS Report (PDF).




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Episode 63: A Pattern Language for Distributed Systems with Henney and Buschmann

In this Episode we talked about the new POSA 4 book which has recently been published. We talk to two of the authors, Kevlin Henney and Frank Buschmann (the third author, Doug Schmidt was not available - and he had also been on the podcast a couple of times :-)). The book contains a pattern language for distributed systems. It contains 114 patterns that had been published before by many different other authors. The patterns have been rewritten to form a consistent language. We basically talked through the different sections of the book, which gives a really good overview over the challenges and the solutions of building distributed systems. These sections include From Mud to Structure, Distribution Infrastructure, Event Demultiplexing and Dispatching, Interface Partitioning, Component Patitioning, Application Contrl, Concurrency, Synchronization, Object Interaction, Adaptazion and Extension, Modal Behaviour, Resource Management and finally, Database Access. The book references several other previous works (as listed below). Interestingly, many of these referenced works and authors have also been discussed previously on the podcast. Here are the back references:




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Episode 65: Introduction to Embedded Systems

This episode is an introduction to embedded system. It is an introduction in the sense that we cover many topics very briefly: upcoming episodes will provides details for many of these topics. We start by discussing what an embedded system is an what the important characteristics are. Among them is limited resources, concurrency, real time and hardware integration. We also discuss the range of embedded systems from small mirocontrollers to mobile phones to distributed real time embedded systems. We also cover the different business case for embedded systems (per unit cost) and some non-trivial developmental aspects (cross compilation debugging, heisenbugs). We close the episode by discussing some important architectural styles (time triggered, event-based, microkernels, state machines) as well as tools of the trade: languages, operating systems and middleware.




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Episode 73: Real Time Systems with Bruce Powel Douglass

This episode is a conversation with Bruce Powel Douglass on real time systems. We started by discussing what real time software is, and explored the difference between hard and soft real time. We then looked at different scheduling strategies, and the meaning of terms like urgency and importance in the context of scheduling. Next was a discussion of typical architectural styles for real time systems and how architectures are described in this context. This led us to a discussion about the importance of modeling, formalisms and languages as well as the role of automatic code generation from those models. We then looked at how to model QoS aspects and the role of SysML for modeling real time systems. We then had a brief look at which programming languages are used these days for real time systems and the role of static analysis to determine various properties of those programs in advance. The last part of the discussion focused on some best practices for building real time systems, the challenges in distributed real time systems and how real time systems can be tested effectively.




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Episode 89: Joe Armstrong on Erlang

In this Episode we're talking about Erlang with its creator Joe Armstrong. We started by looking at the history of the Erlang language and why it is so relevant today. We then looked at Joe's approach to Concurrency Oriented Programming and its main ingredients: share nothing, lightweight concurrency and pure message passing. We also compared this to the classic shared memory approach to concurrency. We then looked at other interesting aspects of Erlang, such as its functional nature (and why this is important to concurrency) and pattern matching. Next we discussed how to implement distribution and fault tolerance, and we took a look at OTP, the "application server" for Erlang. We concluded the conversation with a littel discussion about how Erlang was designed, it's current community as well as its future.




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Episode 113: Building Platforms with Jeff McAffer

In this episode we talk with Jeff McAffer about building platforms. We start with a brief discussion about what a platform is in contrast to a framework or an application. Drawing from his experiences working on the Eclipse platform for years, Jeff talks with us about how to develop platforms, why developing a platform is different from developing an application, what makes a good platform great, and why API design becomes so extremely important for platforms. He provides us with some insights on how the development process and the client collaboration for platform development could look like and what has and has not worked in the past.




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Episode 128: Web App Security with Bruce Sams

The majority of hacker attacks (70 %) are directed at weaknesses that are the result of problems in the implementation and/or architecture of the application. This session shows how you can protect your web applications (J2EE or .NET) against these attacks. The session covers lots of practical examples and techniques for attack. Furthermore, it shows strategies for defense, including a "Secure Software Development Lifecycle". A "Live Hacking" demo rounds it out. This is a session recorded live at OOP 2009. SE Radio thanks Bruce, SIGS Datacom and the programme chair, Frances Paulisch, for their great support!




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Episode 153: Jan Bosch on Product Lines and Software Ecosystems

This episode is a conversation with Jan Bosch about product line engineering (PLE). Jan has worked in various roles and industries and academia in the context of product lines. In this episode we look at Jan's view of what is next for product lines: software ecosystems. What is their relationship to PLE and how should PLE change to remain relevant?




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Episode 198: Wil van der Aalst on Workflow Management Systems

Recording Venue: WebEx Guest: Wil van der Aalst Robert Blumen interviews Professor Wil van der Aalst of the Technical University of Eindhoven, one of the world’s leading researchers in business process management and workflow systems. Professor van der Aalst leads off with an overview of the main concepts in the field business processes, business process […]




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Episode 203: Leslie Lamport on Distributed Systems

Leslie Lamport won a Turing Award in 2013 for his work in distributed and concurrent systems. He also designed the document preparation tool LaTex. Leslie is employed by Microsoft Research, and has recently been working with TLA+, a language that is useful for specifying concurrent systems from a high level. The interview begins with a […]




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SE Radio 225 - Brendan Gregg on Systems Performance

Senior performance architect and author of *Systems Performance* Brendan Gregg talks with Robert Blumen about systems performance: how the hardware and OS layers affect application behavior. The discussion covers the scope of systems performance, systems performance in the software life cycle, the role of performance analysis in architecture, methodologies for solving performance problems, dynamic tracing and tracing tools such as DTrace, the disk and file subsystems, the CPU and memory subsystems, and the challenges virtualization poses for performance analysts.




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SE-Radio Episode 241: Kyle Kingsbury on Consensus in Distributed Systems




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SE-Radio Episode 242: Dave Thomas on Innovating Legacy Systems




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Camille Fournier on Real-World Distributed Systems

Stefan Tilkov talks to Camille Fournier about the challenges developers face when building distributed systems, whether the can avoid building them at all, and what changes occur once they do.




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SE-Radio-Episode-282-Donny-Nadolny-on-Debugging-Distributed-Systems

Donny Nadolny of PagerDuty joins Robert Blumen to tell the story of debugging an issue that PagerDuty encountered when they set up a Zookeeper cluster that spanned across two geographically separated datacenters in different regions.




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SE-Radio Episode 319: Nicole Hubbard on Migrating from VMs to Kubernetes

Edaena Salinas talks with Nicole Hubbard at KubeCon 2017. They discuss why WP engine is migrating from VMs to Kubernetes and how the migration is structured. Nicole explained the VM infrastructure at WP Engine and why there was a need to move...




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SE-Radio Episode 358: Probabilistic Data Structure for Big Data Problems

Dr. Andrii Gakhov, author of the book Probabilistic Data Structures and Algorithms for Big Data Applications talks about probabilistic data structures and their application to the big data domain with host Robert Blumen.




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Episode 368: Bryan Helmig on Managing Distributed Teams

The use of distributed and remote software teams have grown dramatically in the past five years, presenting new challenges for managers and engineers alike. Bryan Helmig talks about the best practices his company, Zapier, uses to manage remote software...




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Episode 369: Derek Collison on Messaging Systems and NATS

Learn how to simplify your application architecture with the introduction of a messaging system. You'll hear how different messaging patterns can make your application more flexible, easier to maintain, and improve its performance.




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Episode 388: Bob Kepford on Decoupled Content Management Systems

Bob Kepford discusses Decoupled CMS. Many CMS practitioners are adopting a decoupled approach to improve scale, allow for more specialized roles, and to separate data collection from delivery. Host Jeff Doolittle spoke with Kepford about what makes a Decoupled CMS different.




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Episode 427: Sven Schleier and Jeroen Willemsen on Mobile Application Security

Sven Schleier and Jeroen Willemsen from the OWASP Mobile Application Security Verification Standard and Testing Guide project discuss mobile application security and how the verification standard and testing guide can be used to improve your app’s...




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SE Radio 582: Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro on Learning to Program with LLMs

Dr. Daniel Zingaro and Dr. Leo Porter, co-authors of the book Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming, speak with host Jeremy Jung about teaching programming with the aid of large language models (LLMs). They discuss writing a book to use in Leo's introductory CS class and explore how GitHub Copilot de-emphasizes syntax errors, reduces the need to memorize APIs, and why they want students to write manual test cases. They also discuss possible ethical concerns of relying on commercial tools, their impact on coursework, and why they aren't worried about students cheating with LLMs.




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SE Radio 618: Andreas Møller on No-Code Platforms

Andreas Møller, founder of Toddle, a no-code tool for building scalable performant web applications, speaks with SE Radio's Brijesh Ammanath about no-code platforms. They discuss the role of developers in a no-code ecosystem and explore scalability and performance considerations, as well as enterprise adoption of no-code tools. Andreas also expands on why he built Toddle.dev and its unique features. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software.




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Clams offer clues about the Little Ice Age

-- Delivered by Feed43 service




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MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT GAMING X Review

MSI puts its usual GAMING X and TWIN FROZR 7 magic on AMD's new mid-range Radeon RX 5500 XT. Check out our full review here."... [PCSTATS]




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Should Feed Readers Count Unread Items?

Brent Simmons, the developer of the NetNewsWire RSS reader, is questioning his decision to put an unread count next to each feed, reasoning that it encourages people to be too obsessive about reading every item:

Instead of a dozen bookmarks, people had a hundred feeds. Or two hundred. Or two thousand.

And there was a tyranny behind keeping track of unread items and showing an unread count. People reacted in different ways, but many people felt like they always had to go through everything.

Including me. To this day.

I did not know this was going to happen. That was not the idea: it was a side effect of reasonable (at the time) choices.

I like seeing these counts on feeds where I need to read all items that are posted, but that's only a small percentage of the 100-120 feeds I follow. It would be nice to turn that off for others I read more casually.

Feedly presents unread counts on each feed and folder of feeds. There's a Mark As Read button to clear a count, but when you click it, the confirmation dialog acts like it's an extremely consequential decision: "Are you sure you want to mark this entire source as read? This operation cannot be undone."

I've posed a question on the RSS-Public mailing list: Do you think feed readers should count unread items?




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How well do you know your Disney films?

As Disney celebrates its 100th birthday, how much can you remember about its films?




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Noam Chomsky Talks About Universal Grammar [Video]

In this video, Noam Chomsky talks about language at Google as part of the Authors@Google series.

In this question and answer session he discusses a number of topics, but the first is about universal grammar in which he provides an in-depth description of how his ideas on universal grammar have evolved over time.

Another interesting question he answers at the end of the session relates to the effect of email, instant messaging and the like on syntax and grammar (TXT Speak). Hear Chomsky's views on whether this is just a natural part of the evolution of language and how it's affecting our minds.




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The essentials of automation applied to distribution systems via PLCs, SCADA, IEDs, and RTUs

Nowadays, it seems that everything we do tends to be somehow automated. The very same is happening in electrical distribution systems. The distribution system at the medium voltage (MV) or low voltage (LV) levels is designed using different structures such... Read more

The post The essentials of automation applied to distribution systems via PLCs, SCADA, IEDs, and RTUs appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.




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Schematics and docs needed for communication systems of substation protective relaying system

Communication systems of electric utilities have become increasingly critical to electric system protection, operation, and maintenance. For fast tripping and clearing of system faults, communication-aided relaying has become a common protection scheme, particularly in line protection. Control centers depend on... Read more

The post Schematics and docs needed for communication systems of substation protective relaying system appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.




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Three most common SCADA applications in MV/LV distribution systems you SHOULD know

Electrical distribution systems comprise a large number of remote applications and locations, and it has traditionally been challenging to monitor and regulate these remote applications and sites. Utility companies have been installing remote terminal/telemetry units, often known as RTUs, at... Read more

The post Three most common SCADA applications in MV/LV distribution systems you SHOULD know appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.






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Idioms- Furniture and Household Fittings (10 questions)

Title: Idioms- Furniture and Household Fittings
Topic: Idioms
Level: Advanced
Information: Choose the correct answer.
Link: https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/576.html






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Mr. Mrs. Miss Ms (10 questions)

Title: Mr. Mrs. Miss Ms
Topic: Vocabulary
Level: Beginner
Information: Select whether the full name in each statement below should include Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms.
Link: https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/612.html




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Voltage Drop Analysis and Calculation Essentials (MS Excel Sheet Bonus)

A voltage drop is the total amount of voltage loss that happens through all or part of an electric circuit due to impedance and other factors. The more the voltage drops in the system, the more negative impacts will likely... Read more

The post Voltage Drop Analysis and Calculation Essentials (MS Excel Sheet Bonus) appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.




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GE to sell part of its nuclear business to EDF, which aims to ramp up construction

GE and EDF signed an exclusive agreement for EDF to acquire part of GE Steam Power’s nuclear power business.




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Duke Energy aims to double renewable energy capacity by 2030, phase out coal by 2035

The utility's five-year capital plan totals $63 billion, 80% of which will support investments in grid modernization and zero or lower-carbon emitting generation.