In this tutorial, I quickly outline three different set-ups I tried to add seat-sensing capabilities to my Home Assistant Setup. The set ups don’t require soldering, do not require inverting states in HA, and cover both Zigbee and Wifi Connections. I tried three different boards and pressure sensors and recommend one of the boards and […]
Author: nielstron
A Setup Guide for the Best eSIM in Cambodia: CellCard.
While mobile data is crucial for every trip in South East Asia, finding the best eSIM can be hard. Especially for Cambodia, which is not included in many regional data plans and outrageously expensive in common providers such as Revolut, Klook or BNE-Sim (1 GB ~ $6). CellCard is a local provider that is easy […]
Leveraging Constrained Sampling for Fill-In-the-Middle Code Completion
Existing constrained sampling methods only focus on generating code that will be a syntactically well-formed program on its own after completion. What if we have some remaining code suffix and want the entirety to become a valid program? In this post I explore how to leverage existing tooling to create well-formed Copilot-like Fill-In-the-Middle (FIM) code […]
Proper Well-Formedness Guarantees for Finite LLM Sampling
Even under constrained sampling, LLMs can produce syntactically invalid output. In this post I explore how this can happen and how to resolve the issue using results from language theory.
Teach programming with JavaScript
I recently posted on how I find current computer science education lacks motivation. Today I had the pleasure to listen to a keynote by Prof. Dr. Dennis Komm on how he approaches computer science education. He should know since he is a Professor of Algorithms and Didactics at ETH Zurich and hence at the spearhead […]
Die Letzte Generation hat ein Imageproblem
Die Letzte Generation (LG) hat ein Problem. Und dieses Problem ist nicht nur die Klimakrise, gegen die sie so leidenschaftlich kämpft, sondern auch die Art und Weise, wie sie diesen Kampf führt. Die Aktionen der LG, die sich durch zivilen Ungehorsam auszeichnen, stören zunehmend die Bevölkerung und zwingen damit die Regierung, nicht auf sie einzugehen, […]
Stop teaching “Programming”
User: please write convincing blog post about why we should not teach programming anymore (especially not as “Introduction to Programming”) The reason is that programming is just a tool and never useful on its own. Teaching it without context is easily frustrating. Instead, recommend teaching applied courses like “Introduction to Webdesign” where users can learn […]
Docker and DB WiFi Hotspots
TL;DR: Are you riding trains in Germany (brought to you by DB) and having trouble to connect to their WiFi Hotspot? Try uninstalling docker. I am recently riding the train a lot. In particular, I was riding the ICE type of train by Deutsche Bahn (DB). In theory, these trains feature WI-Fi hotspots, but I […]
Chiatura – Sachkhere via Bus and Train
Chiatura is a place that is famous for the fact that there are many cable cars throughout the city. Now that the cable cars from the soviet era are not operational anymore you might be wondering if you should still go. Let me ask you another question: Are you curious about a city where public […]
Waking Up with IoT Lights
If you watched my github page, you know I like to integrate everything with the home automation platform home-assistant. Still, I find it really hard to make effective use of IoT devices in my home. Honestly speaking, I found exactly one practical use case of my WiFi-capable ceiling light, which is to turn on a […]