Transformer by hand ✍️
The Prompt Foreman
Writing about technology, culture, media, data, and the ways they interact.
zebbern/claude-code-guide: Full guide on claude tips and tricks and how you can optimise your claude code the best & strive to find every command possible even hidden ones!
Full guide on claude tips and tricks and how you can optimise your claude code the best & strive to find every command possible even hidden ones! - zebbern/claude-code-guide
Become a command-line superhero with Simon Willison’s llm tool
Christopher Smith ran a mini hackathon in Albany New York at the weekend around uses of my LLM - the first in-person event I'm aware of dedicated to that project! …
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) for LLMs Explained Intuitively
In this video, I break down Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) from first principles, without assuming prior knowledge of Reinforcement Learning. By the end, you’ll understand the core RL building blocks that led to PPO, including:
🔵 Policy Gradient
🔵 Actor-Critic Models
🔵 The Value Function
🔵 The Generalized Advantage Estimate
In the LLM world, PPO was used to train reasoning models like OpenAI's o1/o3, and presumably Claude 3.7, Grok 3, etc. It’s the backbone of Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) -- which helps align AI models with human preferences and Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR), which gives LLMs reasoning abilities.
Papers:
- PPO paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.06347
- GAE paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.02438
- TRPO paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.05477
Well-written blogposts:
- https://danieltakeshi.github.io/2017/04/02/notes-on-the-generalized-advantage-estimation-paper/
- https://huggingface.co/blog/NormalUhr/rlhf-pipeline
- https://iclr-blog-track.github.io/2022/03/25/ppo-implementation-details/
Implementations:
- (Original) OpenAI Baseslines: https://github.com/openai/baselines/blob/ea25b9e8b234e6ee1bca43083f8f3cf974143998/baselines/ppo2
- Hugging Face: https://github.com/huggingface/trl/blob/main/trl/trainer/ppo_trainer.py
- Hugging Face docs: https://huggingface.co/docs/trl/main/en/ppo_trainer
Mother of all RL books (Barto & Sutton):
http://incompleteideas.net/book/RLbook2020.pdf
00:00 Intro
01:21 RL for LLMs
05:53 Policy Gradient
09:23 The Value Function
12:14 Generalized Advantage Estimate
17:17 End-to-end Training Algorithm
18:23 Importance Sampling
20:02 PPO Clipping
21:36 Outro
Special thanks to Anish Tondwalkar for discussing some of these concepts with me.
Note: At 21:10, A_t should have been inside the min. Thanks @t.w.7065 for catching this.
Copilot VS Code Customizations
VS Code AI Customization: Learn to use custom instructions, prompt files, and custom chat modes to personalize AI code generation, reviews, and chat responses.
Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP | Austen Stone
How I'm using GitHub Copilot agent mode with MCP to supercharge my development workflow through structured planning, implementation, and testing.
Optimizing Tool Selection for LLM Workflows: Differentiable Programming with PyTorch and DSPy
How local, learnable routers can reduce token overhead, lower costs, and bring structure back to agentic workflows.
BEARCLAUDE - Think first. Code right.
A focused macOS editor for turning specs into software—with Claude Code built in.
Apple just released an interesting coding language model - 9to5Mac
Apple has just released an AI model that, rather than generating code from left to right, does it out of order and all at once. Here's how.
Cat Facts Cause Context Confusion
Adding unreleated text to questions can cause LLMs to consistently stumble.
Botshit Gone Wild
The downsides of generative AI are growing like wildfire
awwaiid/gremllm
Delightfully cursed Python library by Brock Wilcox, built on top of LLM: from gremllm import Gremllm counter = Gremllm("counter") counter.value = 5 counter.increment() print(counter.value) # 6? print(counter.to_roman_numerals()) # VI? You …
Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) About AI Evals – Hamel’s Blog
FAQ from our course on AI Evals.
Guest Post: How I Scanned all of GitHub’s “Oops Commits” for Leaked Secrets ◆ Truffle Security Co.
GitHub Archive logs every public commit, even the ones developers try to delete. Force pushes often cover up mistakes like leaked credentials by rewriting Git history. GitHub keeps these dangling commits, from what we can tell, forever. In the archive, they show up as “zero-commit” PushEvents.
'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers
Instructions in preprints from 14 universities highlight controversy on AI in peer review
sohzm/cheating-daddy: a free and opensource app that lets you gain an unfair advantage
a free and opensource app that lets you gain an unfair advantage - sohzm/cheating-daddy
Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking
How I keep up with AI progress (and why you must too) - nilenso blog
Atharva Raykar
...
Identify, solve, verify
The more time I spend using LLMs for code, the less I worry for my career - even as their coding capabilities continue to improve. Using LLMs as part of …
The American DeepSeek Project
What I think the next goal for the open-source AI community is.
Critical Vulnerability in Anthropic's MCP Exposes Developer Machines to Remote Exploits
Critical RCE vulnerability discovered in Anthropic's MCP Inspector, impacting AI developers and networks.
Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds "AI powered" earbuds, running DOOM, stealing their OpenAI API key and customer data.
So my journey with these earbuds started after I saw them on this Mrwhosetheboss video about pointless tech. This device seems to be also popular on TikTok. My suspicions were confirmed, this runs android. So of course i went ahead and bought them.
245 euros later... and they finally arrived!
Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations
Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Ad…
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah Ginger
In one of my favorite Far Side cartoons, Gary Larson tells us our dog’s vocabulary is rather limited; in fact, they really only know or hear their names. While this cartoon always makes me la…
Tools: Code Is All You Need
The solution to agentic flows was code all along.
PocketCal Build Log
I made a date-sharing app called PocketCal. Here's how I did it!
Is a bee not conscious in the same way that an AI is not conscious?
Posted on Thursday 3 Jul 2025. 1,012 words, 10 links. By Matt Webb.
GraphRAG Local Setup Via vLLM and Ollama : A Detailed Integration Guide.
Introduction to GraphRAG
LLM Hacking Defense: Strategies for Secure AI
Ready to become a certified z/OS v3.x Administrator? Register now and use code IBMTechYT20 for 20% off of your exam → https://ibm.biz/BdnNJp
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How do you secure large language models from hacking and prompt injection? 🔐 Jeff Crume explains LLM risks like data leaks, jailbreaks, and malicious prompts. Learn how policy engines, proxies, and defense-in-depth can protect generative AI systems from advanced threats. 🚀
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#llm #secureai #aihacking #aicybersecurity