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 Welcome back to the Linux Prepper podcast.

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 This weekend is the seagull, Ganyu Linux, Seattle Ganyu Linux Conference.

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 At the University of Washington Hub, I'll leave the links so you can check it out.

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 Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend.

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 They did cancel my performance about a week or two ago.

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 It's no one's fault.

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 It's just life.

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 Life got in the way, unfortunately.

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 I'm not able to be there to either table or perform my new show.

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 AI scanned my brain rot that I've been working on for over a year now, but you should still

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 definitely attend seagull.

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 It kicks off first thing in the morning at 9 a.m.

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 And there's a lot of focus on local infrastructure, local tooling, a lot of talk about AI, an

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 open source, of course, and decentralization, which is pretty classic for the Seattle Ganyu

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 Linux Conference.

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 So there will be a lot of community focus, more so than any other conference you'll

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 ever attend.

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 It's just really amazing.

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 So for example, there's like refining the Linux elevator pitch when you're talking to

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 a new person, right, who may be interested and curious, or you might have something like,

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 what is a flight computer, which is used for say, modern rockets, and accomplished as

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 nine possible tasks, taking off from Earth, getting very accurate into orbit.

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 And this person will go through a simulation and explain it to you.

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 And it's just like all kinds of cool talks and some of them get extremely technical.

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 One of my favorite talks that I ever heard at the seagull conference was all about mirroring

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 for all of the repositories, all the major repositories.

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 And people got to ask questions about Debian or Fedora, and how all these different projects

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 set up mirrors around the globe to mirror their package repository availability.

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 And I thought that was one of the coolest talks I've ever heard because it was regular

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 people who basically put a lot of this together.

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 So I think it's, it's definitely exciting and it's a great, um, it's a great experience.

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 And the good news is if you can't be there in person, they do a lot of streaming onto

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 YouTube as well.

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 So I'll leave links for the conference.

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 And then I'll also leave links for their YouTube, which is where they stream to.

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 So that should be streaming tomorrow for the majority of the talks.

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 And you can check that out.

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 The next episode that's going to be coming out in this series on local tooling is all

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 about assembling a ghost lab, running services within your home where other people don't

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 have to know about it and don't have to be impacted by it.

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 So that episode is coming up.

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 And I think it's worth addressing something, which is like, basically, where have I been?

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 Where has this show been?

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 Where is it gone?

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 And I think it's interesting to acknowledge that.

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 So in the last episode, I talked about battle stations, right?

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 And repurposing old hardware.

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 And maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't notice that was the most technically involved complex

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 episode that I have ever done.

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 There was no musical lead in.

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 There was, it was just nonstop, you know, going, going, going, and took many attempts

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 to get through that.

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 And in relation to the right now of like specifically in regards to AI, I want to make

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 a note because like, because I'm not able to perform, scan my brain rot at the conference

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 this weekend, a lot of the material that I have in there is, is it's not just entertainment.

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 It's like actual real information.

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 And one of the things that I realized in engaging with AI this last year, which I'd never done

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 before, I did it specifically for the show, right?

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 For making this scan my brain rot performance, I realized I should engage with AI.

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 And something that really just, I was like totally shocked to experience and learn about

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 what was the idea that large language models, number one, are just here to stay.

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 And I, I loathe to talk about it because I think people don't want to hear about this

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 stuff necessarily or they have strong feelings.

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 And I think that's fair.

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 And I have a story related to that.

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 So if we go back in time, 10 years, and I'm hanging out at my local hackerspace and a

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 guy came up to me at that time I was teaching a Linux sys admin class, and he said, James,

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 he was like, uh, yeah, like, how's the class going?

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 I'm like, that's going great.

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 He's like, yeah, dude, it's been cool.

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 You should really take my database class.

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 And I was like your database class, the MySQL one, and he was like, absolutely.

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 You got to get on on this dude.

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 He's like, you got to get on this machine learning.

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 You got to get on the machine learning and learn about these language models, which you

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 can use with my MySQL database, you can get started.

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 He was like, do you want to be in my database?

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 And I was like, oh, no, thanks.

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 And he was like, Oh, okay.

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 If I'd been smarter, I would have realized 10 years later, the only difference in that

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 interaction is he wouldn't have asked.

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 Think about it.

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 You just put the person in the database, you stop asking, and, and this is where I think

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 this relates to why people have such strong frustration and other feelings in regards

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 to this technology, which I heard described interestingly just today by a friend, because

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 I was talking about working on recording this.

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 And they mentioned that an AI is like a chainsaw.

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 That's a tool and I thought, Oh, interesting way of putting it.

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 And they go, yeah, you can take a chainsaw and you can gravely injure yourself and cut

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 up the floor and ruin your house.

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 But at the same time, the chainsaws still a chainsaw.

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 And I thought, hmm, interesting way of putting it, the perspective of like it being a tool.

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 And obviously it's more complex than that.

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 But it's an interesting way of looking at it, of framing it.

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 And in a world where we're already in this situation, we're basically, we're in the database,

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 right?

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 Everyone's sort of in the database.

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 And we're dealing with the repercussions of this, like new reality.

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 I think it's something to, it's good to be able to try to like, laugh about it and also

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 to be more understanding and acknowledging of like, what's happening around us.

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 So I think that's where like, I'm sure there will be a ton of great talks about this at

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 Siegel in regards to like concerns and also like new things and, you know, but what it

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 made me realize personally is that the only things I can really trust are things that I

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 understand.

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 And this threads back directly into the previous parts of the season of local tooling, local

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 workflows.

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 And I think Siegel is also on this same kick, which is I only trust tools that I understand.

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 And to me, the things that I actually understand is like plain text, plain text workflows that

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 I set up that I understand at the local level.

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 And if I don't understand something at the local level, then I feel like I don't understand

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 it at all anymore.

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 It's just too, you know, there's too many unknown variables in this frontier in this

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 world we live in now.

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 So that's right now.

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 There is, if you might know, some people already on it, but there is a newsletter.

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 So now Linux Pepper podcast has the Linux Pepper dispatch.

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 It is an email newsletter.

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 Why?

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 Well, previous to Siegel at Linux Fest Northwest when I was there, I had actually gotten injured

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 from work.

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 And I realized that I'm like, oh man, I could be sidelined as a performer.

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 And at the same time, I realized that with the centralization of technology, it would

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 be very easy for my show to be sidelined.

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 I was asked actually if I was worried about, you know, the centralization of podcasting

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 through major companies and gatekeeping and age restriction.

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 And I said, yes, if you know what I'm talking about, this is still a thing coming into this

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 new year, holding content creators responsible for any potential harms to like underage audiences,

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 things like this.

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 And this show obviously is trying to be family friendly, but I mean, it's technical.

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 And it's just an unknown of like, will people be able to do what I'm doing now in the future?

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 And I don't actually know.

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 And I realized that I want to take things into a more text basis.

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 So the newsletter is part of that.

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 It's removing the gatekeeping of needing anything besides an email to get the newsletter.

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 So that's one step.

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 And then migrating all of my content into a text-first experience.

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 And that's been something that's been going on.

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 Not just for the last five months, but for the last full calendar year.

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 And at this point, those who are on the wiki are having a really good experience at this

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 point.

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 Like 250 pieces of curated software I think I have listed on there.

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 So there's a lot and a lot of topics and it's still very much under construction because

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 it's just a huge project, but it's all files and folders, plain text, doku wiki.

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 And I'll link to it in the show notes, but yeah, the best way if you want to know about

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 what I'm working on with the show is to join from dot living cartoon dot org.

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 And there is a newsletter, both one for Linux prepper dispatch and one for living cartoon

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 and performance stuff for the future.

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 And I hope that if you're interested, you go check out seagull the 23rd and 24th this

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 weekend.

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 If you're going to attend, otherwise you can check out the YouTube streaming links for

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 most of the talks happening over this weekend.

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 It should be a really cool event.

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 I'm really sorry that I can't attend and we'll get back into the swing of things.

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 I just wanted to give you some background of what I've been doing and what's up with the

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 show.

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 So a lot of hard work being put in.

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 I know that you're like, well, I don't know, but I'm telling you we're getting back on

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 track and yeah, you can check out from dot living cartoon dot org, join the Linux prepper

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 dispatch and that'll just come out like once a month no matter what telling you about the

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 projects and tools that I'm playing with, whether or not they get talked about on the

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 show because there's a lot of stuff going on the background.

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 And then we'll get back to our regular programming of local tooling.

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 But yeah, I just want to keep in mind in the world of AI, I think it's more important than

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 ever that we take a moment to actually learn how our tools work and not just blindly trust.

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 Anytime you have blind trust, come at it from a level of understanding, focus on the things

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 that you can understand and you can get better at.

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 And I feel like if I don't do that, who am I to talk about for the sake of being a cool

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 guy, I want to throw out some pics that you should check out, one of them is it's actually

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 somewhere between a piece of software and a game.

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 It's called tiny logic and tiny logic is a game where you build a risk five 32 bit computer

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 for real in a simulation.

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 And it's available on it's also available through GitHub repos.

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 And this thing is awesome.

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 This is like the coolest game I've ever seen.

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 You start at the transistor level and through a series of challenges, you build your own

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 computer and then you program the logic into the computer so that it will run doom.

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 It will run like Minecraft.

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 It'll run Java and it is a real computer that is past the risk five benchmarking.

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 It's amazing.

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 It's tiny logic.

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 And I was also turned on to an older project, which is taught through MIT and all the course

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 materials online, which is called NAND to Tetris.

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 And NAND to Tetris is a similar idea where you start from a NAND circuit and you end

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 up building a computer that runs Tetris, the game.

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 And I'll link to both of those and you can check it out.

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 Thank you so much for listening to Linux Prepper podcast.

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 I hope you have a great time at seagull.

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 Check out some of the talks online or check them out in person and take care y'all.