The Good, The Bad, and Anthropic

This new article by Anthropic is basically saying "good" and "bad" personality traits are just vectors, as everything truly is for the state of AI today.

Larger Insects

I came across this tweet by Yishan Wong about his kid's ramblings.

Thus, I began to ponder that lobsters are technically insects, and if we could do this to lobsters, why not terrestrial insects?

After our planet's inception, this was actually possible. During the Carboniferous period (~300 million years ago), oxygen levels were much higher (~35% compared to 21% today), and giant insects like dragonflies with 70 cm wingspans could survive.

Currently, large insects the size of a car or even a dog are not feasible on Earth today due to a combination of factors. Let's review these one by one and determine what changes we would need in each respective element to make large insects a reality.

1. No Lungs = Impossible ...?

Insects do not have lungs. They rely on a tracheal system; it is basically a network of tubes that diffuses oxygen directly to their tissues. However, this works efficiently only at small sizes because diffusion is slow and becomes less effective over longer distances.

However, giant insects existed during the Carboniferous period, most likely because of the high oxygen content in the atmosphere. Thus, if we want to bring back those times, I propose that we should start converting the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to increase the oxygen content through an artificially managed large-scale photosynthesis program.

2. Exoskeletal Issues

Insects have exoskeletons, not internal bones. As body size increases, (1) volume and weight grow faster than surface area (square-cube law), (2) the exoskeleton would become too heavy and brittle to support a large body, and (3) it would also crush under its own weight or break when trying to move, jump, fly, or perform other mechanical actions.

Suppose we tried to maintain their shape and structure (or at least maintain their insect-like qualities). In that case, the material that composes their exoskeleton must have a stronger microstructure.

3. Heat Regulation

Much like the lobsters Yishan's son mentioned, larger bodies expend more energy, and thus, generate more heat and lose it more slowly. Insects don’t sweat or have internal thermoregulation like mammals. Giant insects right now would likely overheat quickly in direct sunlight or during exertion, especially during these times that we are experiencing a rapid increase in atmospheric temperature brought by global warming.

If we could bring down the global temperature by some degree, larger insects would be one more step closer to being feasible.

These solutions are definitely difficult to achieve and require systematic cooperation among countries. However, if we so desire that larger insects roam our Earth again, we must do this together. I am no entomologist, but I empathize with some of them in their desire for larger insects as domesticable creatures.

GRPO and Fixed RL Algorithm on Sequence Models

New paper released by the Alibaba AI team working on Qwen:
Group Sequence Policy Optimization

It appears that they have fixed GRPO and Reinforcement Learning for sequence models.
Could not understand more than half of this, and I had to rely on what others are saying, but this is really good for LMs trained using RL. Try your hand at understanding their paper and let me know what you found!

Reviewing IT Proficiency Learning Materials

Happy 23rd of July! It is 6 PM, and I am writing to you all about my recent progress with reviewing for TOPCIT. Currently, I have only saved the PDF document and done some light reading on Book 3: Overview of System Architecture.

Each of the books is less than 300 pages, but there are 6 of them. Do you think I'll be able to finish all of them by the end of the week (July 26)? I don't think so, but I can certainly try!

Honestly, it's been a while since I've done some reading... About a month ago already. Might take a while to speed things through and I'm still at page 24... sighh...

Wish me luck.

Midnight Vent

I have just vented with someone I met more than month ago. Right now, we have established that we are more than just friends. His name is Marco, and I could describe him as a walking historical literature book. He's adept with Pre-Colonial Philippine History, and that's where I found interest in him. 

It took us a bit more than a fortnight of talking until I considered a relationship with him. He says he fell in love with me first. Little did he know when I first slid into his DMs, I was already interested in him. He talks a lot about his interests: Pre-Colonial Philippines, the novel he's writing, the comics he's read, the TTRPGs he's played. He is the yapper type. I don't mind that at all. In fact: I enjoyed it. I feel like I made a good friend and partner. Honestly, I think he's a great partner, but somehow there's always something lacking in our relationship. 

Not meaning to compare with my previous partner, but I feel like he centers himself a bit much to me. I think my future self will learn to love this part of him, but as I'm typing this, that's what I think of him.

Anyway, that's a bit of a life update I guess, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Hey there, dear readers. It's been a while. There ain't probably many of you—just a handful of you. Anyways, I made a lot of promises to deliver content in here, but I never did. I might never will and shit happens. That's what I'll be talking about.

I finished my Second Year of studying Computer Science less than 3 months ago. Hooray! For the summer vacation, I thought I had everything planned out. The first month, I'd be working on a sari-sari POS app to help my mom's canteen. I had a rough idea as to the technologies I'd be using. It would be written in Kotlin and the UI will follow the Material Design guidelines with Jetpack Compose. the local-area-hosted database will be in NocoDB with GraphQL for the querying. Not really experienced with working with databases, so I'm not sure about the NocoDB + GraphQL + LAN-hosting part.

As to the progress of this app... I only got to working with the wireframe and UI conventions. Never got to actual coding. It's already our 3rd month of summer vacation, and I only have less than a month of free time left. It's sad that I never will get to finishing this since I've picked up on a couple of responsibilities the past few days. I have been elected as VP Internal for our student body organization in our college, and we've been working with our schools in Cebu to establish an interschool organization. We're still drafting the constitution for it though.

Anyways, the second month of summer vacation was truly my regretful month. I only played games around that time. Nothing productive. Valorant. Marvel Rivals. Star Wars Battlefront 2. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I justified myself by thinking this should be the time I'm reserving for enjoyment since next summer vacation would not be a vacation anymore. Unfortunately, our summer term for our Third Year is going to be our OJT. Not enthusiastic about that.

The third month of the summer vacation is coming to a close now, and upon reflection, I could say I'm very disappointed in myself. The thing is, I always will be at this time of year. I always end up promising myself to be better but never deliver. It's an endless loop. Just an hour ago, I vented to Marco about a mini panic attack I just had a few minutes prior to us conversing. Usually, this panic attack is what drives me to action. Been like that since 8th Grade after a friend of mine committed suicide due to familial pressure and pressure to oneself. I can't describe this panic attack to be uncomfortable, but I don't like it at all. I wish this was never the phenomenon that precedes to my locking in. The loop usually flows as follows:

1. I promise myself to do X.

2. I fail to do X.

3. My body proceeds to go to a slight panic attack.

4. Normally, I would have suicidal thoughts. Nowadays, because of my late friend, I just force myself to lock in.

At least that's what it generally feels like. It's like the storm before the calm? Opposite to the phrase, the calm before the storm.

Anyways, that's all I had to share to y'all on this day. I've omitted a lot of details because I'm getting lazy and the sleepiness is getting to me. I'm just making this blog a piece about myself without regards as to who reads these and the context they might lack as they read these.

If you made it this far, thank you. If you are able to read this on or before the end of the month of this year, send me a message with a screenshot of this section of the blog post, and I'll reply to you with a gift. I love you. Thank you.