Tech Lounge

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Peering Into The Black Box Of Large Language Models

hackaday.com

How do LLMs *actually* work? A surprisingly small amount of people know, or bother to find out. But slowly, their creators are starting to ask questions about their creations, like any good creator really should.

A revolution in your hand: Happy 45th birthday to the Sony Walkman

musicradar.com

I had a depressing conversation with a 22 year old recently where they had no idea what ripping or burning CDs was. Imagine if I’d told them about cassettes, battery life, and changing sides…

How Labour Can Fix the UKs Tech Industry

wired.com

I am still registered to vote in the UK, and I’m not going to get to optimistic (yet), but it’s nice to see some attempt to build upon an already fairly strong tech industry from the new government.

The telltale words that could identify generative AI text

arstechnica.com

Have you noticed how overly verbose and full of verbiage AI-generated text is? And, of course, the more that goes in, the more comes out again in some kind of self-fueling flurry of verbs. Lovely.

EuRuKo 2024

2024.euruko.org

EuRuKo is the annual European Ruby Conference. Join us in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2024 on 11th — 13th of September.

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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In this episode, more interviews from KubeCon Paris.

I speak with Dinesh from CIVO, a European cloud-native hosting company, and Thierry of the Open Infrastructure Foundation, whose projects typically power data centres.

This episode is powered by magic mind, a little green bottle of goodness that helps your focus and energy. Head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code "CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20" for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one-time purchases.

Want to come see me do sounds and lights for a play in Berlin?

https://www.eventbrite.de/e/the-house-of-bernarda-alba-tickets-920747038177

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
• To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/
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I am literally powered by Magic Mind right now. It's helping me focus and keep going in some tough weeks of poor sleep and too much to do. If you also need that helping hand, head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code "CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20" for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one time purchases.

It’s a tough time for content creators right now. If you enjoy what you read, then consider a contribution. Here’s the ways you can help me out.

Or please share or review the newsletter!

Thanks :)

theguardian.com

I am an on/off long-suffering poor sleeper. The middle-of-the-night insomnia is better than it used to be, but I still find it hard to stay in a deep sleep and wake up too early most of the time. I have also been trying to stay up later, hoping it might mean I wake up later, but it’s not working especially in summer. I am not sure I want to push things to this extreme, but maybe it’s worth trying.

macstories.net

I love macOS’s menu bar, but it can get cluttered quite quickly. Thanks to Setapp I’ve been using Bartender for some time to keep mine tidy. Recently, the developer sold the company to a new owner who, shall we say, didn’t handle the transition well. Most people’s concerns around security and privacy seem to now be resolved, but it still gave developers of alternative applications a great opportunity, and this list summarises some of the best.

technologyreview.com

Did I mention before I used to be a professional musician? I think I did 😅. Anyway, as I still make some money from that part of my life, it makes me more sensitive to those exploiting musicians’ work. Oddly, AI-generated music is one of the rare cases where the archaic archaeology of the music business works in favour of artists. They are not an industry with a reputation for taking a hit to their bottom line lightly, and now the AI companies are firmly in their sights.

bbc.com

While some companies are still beginning their journey with cloud-native, some of the early adopters are already moving to the next thing, which seems to be back to running your own servers. The promise of flexible costs hasn’t been the reality for many, and the loops and hoops providers make you jump through too much work. 37signals (and isn’t it great to hear from them again!?) are one of many recent examples of this trend. While I don’t think we need to worry about the big three providers yet, what’s next?

2024.euruko.org

And on the subject of Ruby! EuRuKo is the annual European Ruby Conference. I’ll be there in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2024 on 11th — 13th of September. Hope to see you there!

wired.com

Anyone reading for a while might know I am a fan of building-style games (on the rare occasions I play games anyway). Sim City is a classic of this genre, and it became so popular that its influence spread further than you may realise. “Simulations” being something new meant that the game’s developer was asked to create simulation games for a lot of different industries, but not all of them were as successful as the original.

micropolisweb.com

And if all this talk of SimCity makes you nostalgic or experience what we oldies had to put up with, you can play it in the browser thanks to the power of WebAssembly.

2024 hasn’t been the best year for many of us. Unfortunately, the same applies to me. Especially in the past few weeks, I have had several projects cancelled, but there’s one I am most annoyed by and would like to try to find a new home for.

I was working on a book covering Ableton Live 12, and the project was suddenly cancelled. I was quite enjoying the process and was building up a good plan and body of work covering the topic, bringing a dose of practical “analogue” music experience to a largely electronic topic.

It’s too late for a specific Live 12 book now, but I would love to take some of what I have to a new home. A new book, a course, maybe. I was thinking of ideas around “Live for drummers”, or “Live for analogue musicians”, that kind of thing. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in this, let me know!

Finally, I am planning a rebrand of the podcast and newsletter. I still need to investigate a few things and all being well, I will push ahead in August, as it’s a quiet month.

I’ve been painting

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
• To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/
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Two of my interviews from the State of Open Con in London back in February. Featuring Lorna Mitchell, VP of developer experience at Redocly and Amanda Brock, CEO of open UK.

Lorna and I cover open source developer experience and with Amanda, we discuss the unique role the UK can take in open tech in the world.

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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security.apple.com

Depending on who you speak with and how much attention they actually paid to the event, WWDC was either one of the best or worst events Apple has ever done. Personally, I was excited by a lot of the user and developer-facing announcements and can't wait to try them. Among all the announcements was this detailed post on how Apple intends to keep its new AI cloud services private and secure. It is a fascinating insight from a company that isn't typically so forthcoming with details.

wired.com

For years, I, like many others, have tried to reduce screen time before bed due to it and the infamous "blue light" effect on my sleep. It turns out that many of the reports we based this belief on were not as accurate as we maybe thought and that, as always, "it depends".

getpocket.com

Grim, but I am always a fan of hearing of those who, well, erm, died, for what they loved and believed in.

musicradar.com

As a sometime professional musician from the pre-streaming times, no streaming service is exactly great for musicians, but Spotify, ever since they created the idea, have always had disdain for artists, and I refuse to use them. Well, the latest news from the company has not changed my opinion.

every.to

A balanced and pragmatic discussion on how we always get used to new things. Eventually.

spectrum.ieee.org

Anyone who regularly follows me knows that I love computing history. But most of what I know has a Western bias, and I have also always had a side fascination with different keyboard layouts, especially those that don't use Latin characters. Unsurprisingly, one of the largest nations in the world has quite a history of its own keyboard layout.

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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I spoke with Kalyan of Datacebo, a company that creates open-source and enterprise tools for generating synthetic data for testing, load testing, and more.

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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I speak with Saravana Kumar of Document 360 about their enterprise-level solution for documentation and knowledge management and what AI could mean for the industry.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
• 00:50 Interview with Saravana Kumar Begins
• 01:11 Document360: Use Cases and Benefits
• 02:18 The Origin Story of Document360
• 06:52 Customization and Integration Options
• 15:21 AI and the Future of Document360
• 22:50 Wrapping Up the Interview
• 31:37 Chris's Latest Updates and Sign-Off

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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relay.fm

Another MPU recommendation from me and a trip down Apple memory lane. John Buck published a book covering the “Apple Technology Group,” a division within Apple that operated back in the 1980s and 1990s and experimented with many forward-looking bits of technology that we take for granted today.

bleepingcomputer.com

It was a matter of time before Stack Overflow admitted defeat in their own AI efforts and asked Open AI for a big pile of money to access their data instead. However, as an almost entirely user-generated content site, the people who write said content aren’t happy, and unsurprisingly, Stack Overflow isn’t handling this well.

zdnet.com

Less noisy than other long-lasting competitors, Dell have been there longer than most, quietly in the background making a big pile of money in varying degrees.

theregister.com

Nokia, once a diamond of European tech, slowly sold off parts of its business until even those who bought those sold them on again.

404media.co

Publishers, small and large, are already asking for hopeful submitters to sign disclaimers on AI-generated content. But even this is not enough to prevent the flood of AI-generated crap flooding publishers and ruining it for those of us who actually want someone to read our very human words.

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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In the first round-up of interviews from KubeCon EU 2024 in Paris, I focus on developer platform-related tools and productivity. The episode features interviews with Luca Galante of Humanitec, Sebastian Stadil of Scalr, and Lev Lazinskiy of Dagger.

0:00 Intro
02:26 Humanitec
17:23 Scalr and OpenTofu
40:27 Dagger
01:01:23 Outro

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
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In this episode of Chinchilla Squeaks, I delve into two main topics. First, a series of articles on how AI, specifically GPT-4 and other models, struggle to understand and generate sheet music, highlighting issues with tempo, dynamics, and basic music theory.

Second, the financial hardships faced by touring musicians today, with insights into the low profitability and high costs of touring, even for bands with significant chart success. 

I also shares updates, including recent work on writing for robots and a demo of the cloud-native security tool Falco.

• Can AI read music? By Yennie Jun
• ‘The working class can’t afford it’: the shocking truth about the money bands make on tour by Daniel Dylan Wray
• Writing for robots
• Cloud-native threat detection with Falco

00:00 Welcome to Chinchilla Squeaks!

00:38 Exploring AI's Understanding of Sheet Music

03:37 The High Cost of Touring for Musicians

06:46 Personal Updates and Engagements

08:04 Looking Ahead: KubeCon Coverage and More

• For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/
• To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/
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