- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

REMINDER: Tomorrow Night, General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 10 Feb '25

10 Feb '25

Open Source AI with Marcel Gagné <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=198> Description: *In this session, we’re going to take a practical, hands-on look at the state of generative AI, with a special focus on open-source models, particularly DeepSeek R1. I’ll cover what makes DeepSeek R1 noteworthy, how it compares to other models, and why there’s so much excitement around it. More importantly, I’ll show you how to run these models locally on Linux using tools like Ollama and LM Studio, so you can experiment without relying on the cloud. Since this is a friendly crowd of Linux enthusiasts, I’ll tailor the discussion to practical, real-world applications—including AI-assisted scripting, coding, and documentation generation, among other things. Expect a lively Q&A, so bring your curiosity—whether it’s about self-hosting models, fine-tuning, or the broader implications of AI in open source.* Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: February 11th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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DeepSeek and FOSS - some thoughts
by Evan Leibovitch 04 Feb '25

04 Feb '25

Hi all. As I watch the stock market and geopolitical analysis melt down over the emergence of DeepSeek, I am reminded of a Linkedin (of all places) post by Meta's chief AI scientist. Deepseek is not a triumph of Chinese innovation over US sanctions and unlimited capital. It's a triumph of open over closed models. It could not have existed without building on top of Llama and other open tools. it wrecks the pseudo-openness of OpenAI with something completely transparent. Having said that, neither Llama nor DeepSeek is truly open source. The rub is limitations on use, disallowed by both the FSF Four Freedoms and the OSI Open Source Definition. For DeepSeek, the code is under the MIT license, but the data may not be used: - In any way that violates any applicable national or international law or regulation or infringes upon the lawful rights and interests of any third party; - For military use in any way; - For the purpose of exploiting, harming or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way; - To generate or disseminate verifiably false information and/or content with the purpose of harming others; - To generate or disseminate inappropriate content subject to applicable regulatory requirements; - To generate or disseminate personal identifiable information without due authorization or for unreasonable use; - To defame, disparage or otherwise harass others; - For fully automated decision making that adversely impacts an individual’s legal rights or otherwise creates or modifies a binding, enforceable obligation; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against or harming individuals or groups based on online or offline social behavior or known or predicted personal or personality characteristics; - To exploit any of the vulnerabilities of a specific group of persons based on their age, social, physical or mental characteristics, in order to materially distort the behavior of a person pertaining to that group in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against individuals or groups based on legally protected characteristics or categories. (from https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-LLM/blob/HEAD/LICENSE-MODEL) Now, some of these are pretty vague and a Chinese entity will have a hard time enforcing them internationally, but I think may people can live with these limitations. What do you think? If Deepseek is successful it could break proprietary models. Could it break open source ones too? -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Utility to parse HTTP response
by William Park 03 Feb '25

03 Feb '25

Hi all, To build HTTP request, you use 'curl'. After you get HTTP response, what utility do you use to extract stuffs you want? JSON format has 'jq', and XML format has 'xmlstarlet'. I'm looking for something like that but for HTTP format. --

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Re: [GTALUG] Service resource management: i.e. Mailman3 vs Mailman2
by Ron / BCLUG 01 Feb '25

01 Feb '25

ac via talk wrote on 2025-01-30 04:02: > many projects are becoming 'over developed' > (my pet peeve is all desktop environments) As a KDE user & fan, I'm going to respectfully disagree. Even on my ancient computer, I have multiple cores running at billions of cycles per second, and I want and can afford many of the features that devs immersed in desktop environments implement. It's not like I have a coin-operated computer where a bit of "eye candy", or loading a few extra libraries costs me anything. If it's a few milliseconds slower to accomplish something (and that's an "if"), who cares. I can do things that no other DE can do, and those things have become essential. If it can do everything I could possibly want and some things I never thought I'd want, and it's free, it's one of the few areas of modern tech that hasn't been enshitified beyond recognition. I often compare the "over development" of software complaints to someone in the '80s or '90s complaining about PCs being an over complicated way of doing what slide rules, ledgers, and adding machines can do. > we are still using mm2 and if > no longer supported, we will probably fork or maintain security as the > functionality is enough and it is working fine. I'm honestly kind of surprised that no one has forked MM2 to run on Python3. Maybe the effort required to end up with the same ugly interface vs just moving to MM3 and its nicer interface, plus the burden of support and maintenance just isn't very appealing. > I do not use MM3 and I was wondering, is it the many modules that are > using all the resources? (I have not used google, but I am thinking maybe > hyperkitty (i think it's called?) and/or any of the other modules that are > resource hungry? (can some of the modules be disabled?) It, like MM2, runs its various tasks as separate Python scripts. They get loaded - scripts and Python interpreters - at start up and remain resident in RAM. So, yeah, these modules are what's consuming resources. Hyperkitty (the archiver) and other components of mailman3-web can be disabled and I believe messages to the list will still be distributed, but then there's no archiving of messages, no admin interface, etc. It probably isn't worth it to just run mailman3 without mailman3-web. Cheers

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Re: [GTALUG] Service resource management: i.e. Mailman3 vs Mailman2
by Steve Litt 30 Jan '25

30 Jan '25

ac via talk said on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:02:30 +0200 >Thank you for this info, imnsho, many projects are becoming 'over >developed' I think so. >(my pet peeve is all desktop environments) My experience is that LXDE and LXQt are still reasonably simple and I use LXDE when I'm in front of an audience. That being said, on my daily driver I use just OpenBox. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

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February Meeting Reminder: Open Source AI with Marcel Gagné
by Alan Heighway 28 Jan '25

28 Jan '25

Open Source AI with Marcel Gagné <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=198> Description: *In this session, we’re going to take a practical, hands-on look at the state of generative AI, with a special focus on open-source models, particularly DeepSeek R1. I’ll cover what makes DeepSeek R1 noteworthy, how it compares to other models, and why there’s so much excitement around it. More importantly, I’ll show you how to run these models locally on Linux using tools like Ollama and LM Studio, so you can experiment without relying on the cloud. Since this is a friendly crowd of Linux enthusiasts, I’ll tailor the discussion to practical, real-world applications—including AI-assisted scripting, coding, and documentation generation, among other things. Expect a lively Q&A, so bring your curiosity—whether it’s about self-hosting models, fine-tuning, or the broader implications of AI in open source.* Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: February 11th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call.

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Meetup Today
by Sun, Max (CA) 19 Jan '25

19 Jan '25

Hey all, Max here from the meetup today. I'm the one in the purple shirt in the classroom. Great to see the enthusiasm about open source, programming, and hardware from Ron and everyone! I plan on going to the next meetup in Toronto. Hope you see you all again :) Max DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this e-mail transmission (including any accompanying attachments) is intended solely for its authorized recipient(s), and may be confidential and/or legally privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, or responsible for delivering some or all of this transmission to an intended recipient, you have received this transmission in error and are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from reading, copying, printing, distributing or disclosing any of the information contained in it. Please note that BCA Research Inc. accepts no liability for the content of this e-mail, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. The recipient should check this e-mail and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail. Should you have any questions please contact BCA Research Inc. at (514) 499-9550 or e-mail at support(a)bcaresearch.com. Les informations contenues dans cette transmission électronique (y compris les pièces jointes) sont destinées exclusivement à leur destinataire autorisé, et peuvent être confidentielles et/ou légalement privilégiées. Si vous n'êtes pas le destinataire, responsable ou partialement responsable de la transmission à un destinataire ou si vous avez reçu ce message par erreur, veuillez être informé qu’il vous est strictement interdit de lire, copier, imprimer, distribuer ou de divulguer toutes informations contenues dans le courriel. Veuillez noter que BCA Research Inc. n'assume aucune responsabilité pour le contenu de ce courriel, ou pour les conséquences de toutes mesures prises sur la base des informations fournies. Le destinataire doit vérifier la présence de virus dans ce courriel et les pièces jointes. La société décline toute responsabilité pour tout dommage causé par un virus transmis par ce courriel. Si vous avez des questions veuillez contacter BCA Research Inc. au (514) 499-9550 ou par courriel à support(a)bcaresearch.com.

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Arch Linux doc tries to explain PC sleep modes
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 18 Jan '25

18 Jan '25

PC sleep modes are a mystery to me. I don't play with this stuff because I don't understand it. But I have a few itches I want to scratch: - my MacBook Air's battery charges lasts a lot longer sleeping when running MacOS than when running Fedora Asahi. - tablets with only "Modern Standby" capability didn't sleep well under Linux (haven't tried in a few years) This documentation might help. I haven't done the experiments. <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate> Arch Linux documentation is often very useful.

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(off topic) Anyone with welder?
by William Park 14 Jan '25

14 Jan '25

Hi, I want to weld "locking bit holder" to a cordless screwdriver which just has regular non-locking magnetic bit chuck. The weld doesn't need to be solid around. Just 3 spots will do. I tried all kinds of "glues", but they don't last. Does anyone have (arc) welder, and willing to accept a dozen donuts as payment? Relevance to Linux: Less time I spend on this, more time I can spend on Linux. --

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Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 13 Jan '25

13 Jan '25

React Java script Website buildingOpen Source AI <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=154> with Ron BarnesAgenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: January 14th, 2024 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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