Introduction
Before we get started, you should really follow my YouTube channel, my personal Websites, and if you are curious, my Flipboard magazines where you can follow the things that catch my attention.
Subscribe to Marcel’s YouTube channel where you can view the latest editions of the Cooking With Linux show.
https://www.youtube.com/user/freethinkeratlarge/
You might also want to support Marcel’s video habits on Patreon.
https://patreon.com/marcelgagne
“Cooking With Linux” on Flipboard https://flipboard.com/@wftl/cooking-with-linux-oun4gv1ly
My own site is http://marcelgagne.com where I talk about whatever comes into my head, including Linux and Open Source software. If you just want the Linux and Open Source stuff, head over to http://cookingwithlinux.com .
Today’s Wine
One of my favorite movies of all time is the Humphrey Bogart classic, “Casablanca”. Over the years, I’ve watched it as much as I’ve watched any movie. If you haven’t seen it, pause this episode and go watch it. We’ll wait. This Casas Del Bosque is a 2018 Sauvignon Blanc from Casablanca Valley in Chile. Yes, I know it’s not the Casablanca from the movie, but I was still stoked to see the name. This wine is light and fresh with good lemony citrus flavor, maybe a little green apple, and a hint of peppery spiciness. Enjoy!
News. Rumors. Conspiracy Theories
Security News! A major security flaw hits the Linux kernel. Already fixed.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-vs-zombieload/
Microsoft will ship a real Linux kernel with Windows 10
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/05/ubuntu-support-windows-subsystem-linux-2
What’s that Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) doing on the front lawn?
https://torontolife.com/city/life/giant-starship-enterprise-sale-scarborough-lawn/
Bash one-liners
https://github.com/onceupon/Bash-Oneliner
The Book of Secret Knowledge
https://github.com/trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge/
Mozilla offers grant to integrate Tor into the browser
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-offers-research-grant-for-a-way-to-embed-tor-inside-firefox/
Free SSL Certificates
https://letsencrypt.org
Today’s Featured Topic
AI and Natural Language Processing
The AI Writer Too Dangerous to Release has been released. Partly. It’s called GPT-2, which which stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer 2 which, I think you’ll agree, isn’t the sexiest name imaginable for a civilization-ending text bot. And since it’s version 2, I imagine that like Star Trek’s M-5 computer, perhaps GPT-1 wasn’t entirely successful. That would be the original series episode titled, “The Ultimate Computer” if you want to check it out.
So what does the name “GPT-2” stand for? Well, “generative” means pretty much what it sounds like. The program generated text based on a predictive model, much like your phone suggests the next word as you type. The “pretrained” part is also pretty obvious in that the model released by OpenAI has been built and fine tuned for a specific purpose. The last word, “Transformer,” refers to ‘transformer architecture’ which is a neural network design architecture suited for understanding language. If you want to dig deeper into that last one, check out the following.
Google AI Blog: Transformer: A Novel Neural Network Architecture for Language Understanding
OpenAI GPT-2 on GitHub
OpenAI Blog: Better Language Models and Their Implications
YouTube clip from Star Trek’s “The Ultimate Computer”
If you want to try GPT-2 but you don’t want to go to the trouble of building it, check out https://talktotransformer.com/. The catch with this site is that you don’t have the option of tweaking any of its command line parameters. Some of these do interesting things like change the complexity of the text generated, throw in more randomness, limit the length of generated text, and even let you specify a number of different samples per run.
Distribution Focus
Today’s featured distribution is from a company that specializes in computers with Linux pre-installed, System 76. The distribution is called Pop!_OS and I confess that I was completely unaware of this one. Of course, that’s not surprising given how many Linux distributions there are.
https://system76.com/pop is the download link.
Pop!_OS is based on the latest Ubuntu distribution and uses a modified GNOME desktop. It’s also interesting in that it offers different flavors, not based on desktop environment, but graphics processor.
Some of the apps are pretty standard, but Pop has a focus on development and research. Also, possibly because they are a hardware company as well, System 76 has put a lot of emphasis on drivers, hence the download by graphics card.
Until next time . . . A votre santé! Bon appétit!
— Marcel Gagné