Gregarious Engineering

Hello, Gemma3n! Jetson + MatFormer + PLE Caching + Audio Input Bringing Google latest open-source model, Gemma3n, to NVIDIA Jetson Orin to enable on-device, live audio chat! Google Gemma 3n is nothing short of incredible! In addition to incredible multi-modal performance in a tiny, efficient package, they also managed to add multi-language audio input!!   Design Considerations:  Python + transformers + torch Audio input is so new, we'll have to leverage the latest tranformers package from HuggingFace to leverage it. jetson-containers To make things easy, I'll build a container with the latest transformers for the Jetson using  jetson-containers Piper for efficient on device text-to-speech   …video coming when I get a chance shrink it… Full build and details on GitHub:  GregariousEngineering/hello-gemma   Up Next! Wake word and query completion detection Internet access Remote LLMs 

A multi-model agentic app to provide internet backed, consensus based answers from a configurable panel of LLMs (ReAct , Self- and Cross-Consistency) Open Source Greatness in Numbers Open Source LLMs have come a long way and can now challenge closed source models! Excitingly several Instruction Tuned open source models are now out and proving quite capable. Moreover, thanks to great improvements in efficiency and quantization, capable models are now small enough to run many on one system. Building on the idea that groups outperform individuals on various cognitive tasks, I set out to create at simple application to see if these latest models perform better as a group! Python Leading Llama Leading Llamas 🐍🦙🔎🦙🦙🦙 For simplicity, I built the app in Python on top of Ollama. A large capable model, ideally instruction tuned, leads the investigation, querying the panel of models and internet until a reasonable consensus is reached! Sample Run! gregarious@hal9000 : ~/llama_panel $ ./lla...

Bad Decisions: In moves seen aimed at ensure I finally switch devices, in addition to recently adding ads to Prime, Amazon decided to start autoplaying ads as soon as the device turns on. Buried Settings: Fortunately, this can be disable under Settings > Preferences > Featured Content. While in Preferences, I stopped in Privacy Settings to turn Off the slew of tracking On by default. Repeated Pain Sadly these settings are per device, not account, so you’ll have to make them on every device.

Hackles Feedback Hypothesis “The  facial feedback hypothesis , rooted in the conjectures of  Charles Darwin  and  William James , is that one's facial expression directly affects their  emotional  experience. Specifically, physiological activation of the facial regions associated with certain emotions holds a direct effect on the elicitation of such emotional states, and the lack of or inhibition of facial activation will result in the suppression (or absence altogether) of corresponding emotional states.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_feedback_hypothesis I ask, does smoothing or raising a dog’s hackles affect their emotional experience??

Change these “Off-Facebook” Facebook (and Instagram) Privacy Settings New Settings! OK, perhaps not new. It’s been many years since I checked any social media regularly and I should really just delete my accounts, but like many, I leave them collecting dust… But then, over the weekend I received a slew of recovery tokens for my Facebook account, which prompted me to head over to Settings to check activity and enable MFA. While there I noticed the new settings, buried deep as you’d expect. I am genuinely ecstatic about these settings. Their defaults leave nearly everyone open to widespread invasion of privacy, but they still have the settings available. I suspect we have the ever increasing barrage of new consumer privacy oriented laws from cities and states (e.g. California Consumer Privacy Act) to country unions (GDPR). Apply these in addition to standard privacy settings, as described well in Consumer Reports’ How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings . They also apply to connected Instag...

The Smartest “Dumb” Sprinkler on the Block! Options Galore There’s no shortage of smart sprinklers available—internet connected, Bluetooth enabled, learning, weather forecasting marvels!  They save water and for many they are probably just right.  But most are expensive, can be challenging to configure, may require an ongoing subscription, and might even collect your data! The Free (and Fun!) Option Moreover, I already have a sprinkler controller that works! It's just a difficult to use timer, but with plenty of tinkering it gets the job done. And importantly for this endeavor, it has a spot for you to wire in a Rain Sensor! They overpriced switches allow disabling scheduled waterings when recent rainfall is detected. I believe they are sold largely to meet regulations, are seemingly rarely functioning (case in point, my HOA sprinklers run in the rain despite having a sensor "installed"), and are at best reactive. Plus, my controller was in my basement so Rain Sensor inst...