653: The Kernel Always Wins

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Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.
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My name is Wes.
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And my name is Brent.
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Hello, gentlemen. Coming up on the show, today we're digging into the Linux
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news that's being shaped by delays and some interesting technical shifts that
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might actually matter more than they look at first. I'll tell you about that.
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Then there's a moment where the future actually showed up in Linux and everything
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worked. We'll share that story.
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And then we'll round it out with some great boosts, some picks,
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and a lot more. So before we go any further, let's say time-appropriate greetings
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to producer Jeff. Hey, PJ.
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Hello.
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It's the big game day, as they say. So we have a few up there in the quiet listening
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up the hello, hello, hello, mumble room.
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And PJ is the sole member brave enough to set the nachos aside long enough to say hello on the show.
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So why don't you make it a Tuesday on a Sunday next week and join us in our
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mumble room. And let's have a nice, vital, big mumble room. You know what I mean?
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I mean, if you do, you get a whole extra show.
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Yeah. Round of applause to people. Dijil just showed up. Round of applause to you guys.
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And of course, a big good morning to our friends over at Defined Networking.
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Go to defined.net slash unplugged. This is where you want to go to get 100 machines
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absolutely free, no credit card required on the decentralized managed VPN.
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They manage it for you. It runs Nebula VPN.
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Unlike traditional VPNs, Nebula's decentralized design keeps your network resilient.
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You can manage a home lab with it. I have a Nebula network that's just two nodes.
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And you can have a Nebula network that has thousands of nodes.
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entire global infrastructures across data centers, carrier grade NAT, whatever it might be.
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It's extremely resilient. Saved my butt the other day. I was able to get it
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on the wife's machine and save a problem before she even knew it was going on.
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It's so nice. You could go from
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this teeny tiny lean infrastructure where there's no big tech company.
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You don't need any sign on from Google or whoever to use your mesh net.
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You can do these tiny setups or you can go to these massive slack size scale, right?
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And it's incredible. And if you want to try it out, you can start with Managed
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Nebula. You can use 100 devices for free.
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You can really get a sense of it. It's a great product. It's also a lot leaner on the system.
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Shows up in multiple ways, on the CPU and on the network.
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It's really great for that. And it's got best-in-class encryption,
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and it is fantastic because,
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you control the keys, you control the lighthouse, so the redundancy,
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the discoverability, all of it is under your control, or you let them run it
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over at define.net slash unplugged.
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Then if you wanted to move on, you could. You could self-host it too.
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They're really, really great product because it's the Snebula open sourcing,
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something that we've been following for years.
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Absolutely. I think maybe we started watching in late 2017, early 2018.
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And so we knew there was something there. Now to see it really take off,
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it's really impressive.
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I just noticed on February 6th, we got an updated Android app.
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So, you know, if you are using it, go check that out.
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Check it out. Go over to defined.net slash unplug, support the show,
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and check out Nebula. It is fantastic.
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Just around the corner, 25 days away, Planet Nix and Scale 23X.
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We're working with our buddies over at Phlox, who's focused on making reproducible
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dev environments actually usable.
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They're sending us once again to Planet Nix for the second year.
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They're throwing a hell of an event.
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It's looking good. Year two is looking really, really good.
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And Brent, you have 19 days until you're going to be absolutely slammed to get down the road.
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It's about a 46-hour drive for you, buddy, which is six days of hardcore driving.
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How are you feeling about that?
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I'm glad you've been doing the travel math on this one for me.
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I appreciate it. Yeah. That sounds daunting.
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Sure.
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I think is the main emotion that comes across. And also, holy,
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I probably should leave tomorrow, right? That's what I should do?
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Yeah, well, if you want to have a nice drive. Here's another way to put it in
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perspective. There will be three more unplugs until we are in Pasadena.
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That's frightening. I mean, wonderful. It's coming soon.
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Just keep that one in your head. I think it's easier to work with.
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Mm-hmm. Yep. Three more lumps. So there you go.
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Check out planetnix.com for the details and then go get registered at scale.
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That gets you to both events.
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We have a link in the show notes for scale at socialinuxexpo.org.
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And you can use our promo code unpludge, U-N-P-L-G, to get 40% off your registration. It's no joke.
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And I've updated the meetup page a little bit as well. We, I think,
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are locking in the yard house because the other two locations are no longer in business.
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I was informed by a local listener which I really appreciated it is but it's
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great we already have a good showing and if you are planning to be there at
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our meetup please go sign up so we can let the venue know oh.
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Great already 25 potential attendees join the crowd.
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Meetup.com slash jupiter broadcasting for that and we'd love it if you could
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be there even if you're not going to one of the events show up and say hi we
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like that so there you go that's all the housekeeping I have for you,
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So we wanted to get everybody on the same page with a couple of stories that
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have gone down, and the first one you may have already heard about,
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It's not too surprising. We just wanted you to be aware. Valve has updated their
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plans for their recently announced upcoming hardware lineup.
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All three products announced last November are now expected to ship in the first
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half of the year instead of in early 2026. So it's a bit of a delay here.
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In a Steam community post, Valve explained the lack of firm release dates.
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Basically, ongoing RAM and SSD shortages combined with the rising prices,
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making it hard to lock in final pricing and also launch timelines.
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That's not too surprising, is it?
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No. Okay, but what are we talking about concretely? Well, it's the Steam machine,
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the Steam Frame VR headset, and that new Steam controller.
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In their statement, they did say this in a very Valve way, I thought.
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They have more, quote, work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates.
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It's like they don't even know.
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No, and are still kind of figuring that out internally. I mean,
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but they did then secondly emphasize, especially given how quickly hardware
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market conditions are changing right now.
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I think some of us maybe were lingering on to this hope that they had maybe bought a pre-stock.
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Which things were already rolling and done and you were just going to ship them. Yeah.
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And then we recently saw these rumors floated that there was a possible bare
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bones steam machine with no RAM or storage that they might ship.
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And they didn't seem to really give much life to that rumor in this press release
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and in the questions that they took. Do you think that would be a product?
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I mean, it might be for our crowd. I don't know. It doesn't seem like it competes
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as much in the console market.
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For sure.
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Yeah.
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I think in normal market conditions, a bare-bones steam machine would be the one I would want.
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But I can't buy RAM or storage any cheaper than Valve can.
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Exactly.
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So yeah, it's like if I have it, yeah, then I would like a bare-bones machine.
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I'm curious that if you're listening to this and you could boost and let me
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know if you would buy a bare-bones steam machine if they offered it.
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And they might be able to ship that sooner would be the advantage.
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So if you had the money to spend and you could buy your own storage and your own RAM,
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And you could get your hands on this a couple of months before others.
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One of the questions I have is like, how long can they wait for prices to stabilize
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or to secure hardware before the product just gets older and older and less worth releasing?
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Why is it two grand for a three-year-old product?
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You're right. Yeah, that's tricky. Maybe they know something we don't know.
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Maybe they know some other vendors about to come online and start manufacturing RAM.
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I don't know. But that's a good point. If they wait too long,
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they're not going to be super competitive machines.
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Yeah.
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Huh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. I guess what we do know is that it's going to
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be later than they originally suggested.
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But they're still, for now, promising first half. So what, by June, July?
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That's what I would take it to mean.
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Assuming they don't change that again.
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Right. Do we think it even ships in this year?
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Jeff, how are you feeling about this? Were you going to buy one of these?
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Yeah i'm a little sad i really really really want a frame.
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Yes yes me too that's the thing for me is the frame i'm surprised the controller's
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delayed that's interesting maybe maybe there's memory on the controller it's.
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All that ram in the controller.
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You feel for valve because when they announced this it was maybe the writing
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was on the wall at that point but it wasn't obvious where this was all going
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price-wise certainly wasn't.
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Where we are now.
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And now here we are and it's like you feel for don't you i.
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Think if they can get through the covid stuff with the steam deck i'm pretty
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sure they're going to get through this too they'll find some way it won't be
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as much as we hope you know i don't think they're going to do any better than
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they did with the steam deck.
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That's true though that was challenging got it out yeah and they.
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Are very smart you know they have a lot of smart people working there that's.
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A good point all right pj you're making me feel better i like that all right
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here's another story that may suggest an interesting shift virtual
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box is finally learning to ride on
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top of kvm some code changes are landing
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in virtual box that could have big implications long
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term for how people use it it's just being tested now they're beginning to support
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native kvm virtualization backend for the virtual box application that's crazy
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i know it's a long-standing ask from the linux users out there who just want
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no i don't want a little kernel module. I totally get that.
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Very early, very opt-in, hard to get. We'll get more into that.
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But this does seem to be a trend that we just keep seeing is that hypervisors
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over time are just adopting Linux's native virtualization stack and just saying,
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ah, fuck, you can just screw it. You can just use that.
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I mean, VMware did a similar thing. I just think that's fascinating.
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I mean, this is one of the main reasons I moved away from VirtualBox.
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It was the first virtualization software that I used way back when I was stuck
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on, let's just say, other operating systems.
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um but then once i discovered like why there's
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all these kernel modules and stuff that was the reason
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for me to move away from it so i would assume for other linux
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users this is about reducing kernel friction so less
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reliance on those proprietary kernel drivers
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that you have to load and sometimes break better compatibility
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with hardened kernels secure boot and distro
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updates right right that is a good point would be a great point and i think
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from a privacy and freedom angle basically kvm is part of the kernel so it's
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audited it's upstream transparent and running virtual box on kvm shifts that
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trust towards the kernel rather than vendor specific modules what.
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Brent you don't trust oracle.
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Well let's just say i have less reasons to trust oracle than i do the kernel fair.
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Yeah good point.
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So they're pretty much Oracle's positioning this as a fallback,
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so not the preferred path for VirtualBox.
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So the messaging still centers Oracle's hypervisor as the, quote,
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better choice, especially for legacy workloads.
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Yeah, isn't that interesting? Like, I mean, I guess I get it.
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They're very proud of what they've done, and they've specialized it over the
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years to address their users.
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They're not just chucking the old one on the ground, throwing it behind the bag.
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But it's not often where somebody submits an upstream patch so that way their
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software can take advantage of something in the kernel and then includes like
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a five bullet point. But this is why ours is better, right?
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Did anything in there stand out to you that was reasonable? I mean, there must be some.
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Yeah, a lot of it is like legacy and exotic guests, right?
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So if you think about KVM, when it came of age, which was after VirtualBox,
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and it's been very Linux native, and it's been used a lot by hyperscalers to
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run cloud businesses, running a lot of Linux guests,
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whereas VirtualBox can run a whole bunch of stuff.
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It's got accurate A20 gate emulation, which is important for some DOS stuff.
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It's got advanced instruction emulation, ring zero device emulation tricks,
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aggressive VM exit optimizations.
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For modern guests, you really don't notice a ton of difference for most situations.
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But if you do have some particular legacy workloads, you might find some areas
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where the old driver would be better.
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I still think even partial KVM support is, you know, a win for us.
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It is, as you said, hard to get.
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It's in the latest VirtualBox Git and Test Builds, Linux only for now.
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So you can't, you know, obviously.
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So you have to go build it yourself.
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Okay. All right.
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Or I'd be comfortable with getting one of those test builds from somewhere else.
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You can opt into it explicitly if you want, or as Brent was saying,
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I think probably what is probably an upgrade for folks and end users who maybe
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don't know what a kernel module is, is this could be a easy fallback,
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right? So it could try to run with the virtual box stuff.
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Sees KVM's already loaded, kernel conflict, just go use KVM.
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Maybe you won't have all the features. Maybe it won't be quite the same, but it'll work.
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That's going to be the main use case initially for this.
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Probably would. I think it's going to convince them to do it, right?
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Yeah, yeah. I wonder if long-term, if there isn't some potential for VirtualBox
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to essentially become one of the recommended user space VM managers for KVM.
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That was my first thought is, oh, it would be a nice way to manage a bunch of
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KVM systems, especially if I could remote connect from my desktop,
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if I could have the VirtualBox VM management UI on my desktop and then I connect
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to my KVM server and I could manage all my virtual machines at KVM with the VirtualBox UI, I mean,
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I think I would at least give that a try.
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It has been, right? Like it is in some of the best ways of open source,
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even with its own licensing complications in Oracle and all the rest,
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like it's been around for a long time.
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It was early at having a good, consistent cross-platform experience.
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It's just this like very available if you need virtualization software.
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And that has a lot of utility, especially now if it can kind of adapt.
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I do also think you kind of hit on the Linux side trend of folks using more
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of this existing in-kernel infrastructure.
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And I think that's a trend that is beyond Linux, right?
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Like you've seen Apple offer a lot more robust virtualization primitives in their system.
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Right, they provide the plumbing and then you write to the API, essentially.
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And same on the Microsoft stack, right? You got Hyper-V side,
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you've got the WSL stuff.
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There's just a lot more primitives that you can do. There are still products,
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especially Microsoft, but like there are still products built on it,
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but you get a lot more of that base infrastructure that you can plumb yourself.
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And it makes sense, right? They're in control of the kernel and all of that.
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We've made and heard some wild theories in the past of Microsoft,
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maybe Windows is just going to take this approach and become Linux under the
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hood with a nice, fancy interface.
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So my big question becomes, do all roads lead to Linux?
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Yeah, it seems like it.
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That's what it seems like here.
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Here we are, right? I've been talking about Linux for 20 years.
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And can you believe it's still relevant after 20 years? And it's more relevant than ever?
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It's more relevant.
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Yeah. There's not a lot of technology like that.
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And it is this trend of all things just kind of moving to the kernel.
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And they stop their own way of doing things.
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Now, VirtualBox is going to keep going for a while with their own modules, to be clear.
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Did you see this week's unrelated, but that someone proposed like a machine
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learning framework offload for the kernel? So it really is everything in the kernel.
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Whatever you want. Right? Use eBPF. I don't care. Well, speaking of things in
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the kernel and sometimes outside the kernel, let's talk about BcacheFS,
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big update in just the last couple of days over there.
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And I have one particular feature that I am very excited about.
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I'll hold that because I'm going to let you take the stage for a moment on this Bcache update.
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Yeah, so this is on the heels. We had 1.36 back in the end of January.
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That had a lot of internal stuff.
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This time we get a little bit of user-facing stuff with the new BcacheFSFS timestats
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command. It's an interactive TUI for monitoring various file system internals,
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slow paths, and device performance, duration, frequency tracking for various events.
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Wow.
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Helpful for diagnosing performance issues.
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Brent, did you catch the part in there that I'm excited about? Did you catch that?
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Uh-huh. I think the light bulb turned on for me, too. A little TUI to do this stuff.
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This is great.
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It's good for the people like you and I.
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A file system repair tool with a TUI? Are you kidding me? To look at some of
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the internals and device performance and what's going on?
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That is so up my alley.
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There's also some other improvements around in the output, like improved BKeshFS
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reconcile status output.
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I saw on Reddit just some users in Kent chatting about, in general,
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some of the interface and the outputs, because there's kind of an array of,
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there's some up-to-date stuff, there's some older stuff, so there may be one
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area of porcelain that gets some more attention.
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But something we know is getting more attention is that in the release announcement,
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Kent said 136.1 is out, which we were just talking about.
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The next release will be Erasure Coding.
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Yeah, so tell me about this.
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So that would be the Parity Raid kind of style stuff, right?
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We made 5.6 in the Bcash of S world coming for Bcash of S, or in the Butterfest
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world coming for Bcash of S.
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That's massive.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of the base stuff has been there, but all the user side stuff,
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and especially like you can make these file systems if you do experimental things
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or enable flags, but there hasn't been a lot of tooling support for actually
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doing anything if a disk dies.
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So you could test it and use it, but you don't want to run a prod system on it.
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And the last little BcacheFS bit for today is, it's not all good things.
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It is still an experimental developing file system.
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A little bit of a PSA here.
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Indeed. 19 hours ago on rbcachefs early
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reconcile had a serious bug in the data update path
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if an extent lives on devices that are all being evacuated while being evacuated
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they're considered to have durability zero and the old code for reconciling
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the existing extent with what the data update path wrote would drop those replicas
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too soon okay so if you're on 1.33 through 1.35.
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You need to upgrade you.
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Need to upgrade,
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Good news is the new code is much more rigorous with how it decides when to
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drop replicas. And so far, only like a handful of people have been hit by it.
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As usual, I have seen Kent doing a lot of on-the-ground support,
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both in the IRC and on the subreddit.
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So if you do have file system issues for your sake and for everyone else's sake
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as this thing gets developed, don't be afraid to reach out.
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Yeah, he's very engaged. I just realized, I told the story to the members recently,
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but I'm just around the two-year mark of BcacheFS on one of my absolute most
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important production systems, runs 24-7,
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and it's been using BcacheFS for its critical data drive.
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And I do that not necessarily saying that you should and not necessarily recommending
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it, but so that way I can be kind of on the front line and report to you how it's going.
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And so if we're five years down the road and I'm talking about Bcash FS,
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you know, I've been using it for five, six years at that point.
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Right. So I think there's some credibility in actually deploying it and testing
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it with data that is literally putting my money where my mouth is.
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But I don't know if everybody should do that yet, but I'm very impressed because
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two years ago it was in a much different state than it is now.
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And now it doesn't feel risky at all.
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Yeah, definitely. And a lot of improvements, right? And we're still getting
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some really nice, like, being able to do more upgrades in the background or
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without, you know, not having to have the drive offline to do them.
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It's now a very robust file system in a lot of ways, which is great.
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I mean, I, again, don't do as I do, but I'm at the point where if I can,
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I'm going to make it my default file system on every root install for workstations
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and laptops going forward. You already have been doing that.
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You've been running it for a long time on that laptop.
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Yeah, I think it's summer 2024.
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Wow. And you've just been going through the kernel upgrades kind of regularly and just...
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And then I've also got it running on my home router box at the moment.
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I don't have any RAID systems.
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So I do want to set that. I mean, I've dabbled with some, but no permanent ones.
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I don't know. The router one tickles me the most, right, Brent?
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It's like, that's the one.
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Because, like, why?
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Yeah. You can do extended four on a router.
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You can do anything on a router.
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That was actually one of the first ones I built, I think. I think I was just...
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Oh, yeah, why not?
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I was, like, redoing the system.
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Yeah.
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It was there. And there was... That did buy me one time, I will admit.
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with what wasn't a byte. It was just, it had been an old enough file system
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that I had to go through some of those on-disk upgrades.
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So I did have to do one update where my network was offline for like 20 minutes while it did that.
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I want to ask right now, if you're listening, what is your router file system of choice?
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If you're building a router or a system like that, boost in or send us an email.
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What is your router file system of choice? Let us know.
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Yeah, I have ridden the file system way for a long time. So I think that's kind
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of one of the reasons why I'm a little bit more comfortable using BcacheFS.
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I switched to SUSE back in the day because they supported Riser FS.
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And I needed extended attributes for Samba shares. And I needed support for
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a lot of little files because I was doing images of checks, JPEGs.
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And so I went with Riser FS way back in the day.
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And then when ButterFS came around, I adopted it and got so burned early on.
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Some of the early Linux unplugs are me ranting about losing my machine to ButterFS.
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Yep.
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And now I have it everywhere. And I'm starting to do that again with BcashFS.
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00:21:21,262 --> 00:21:25,022
And then I have a lot of my scary raids around, which you guys remember my scary raid, right?
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Oh, yeah. How could you forget?
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Which is my, it's a raid zero of just a bunch of spinning rust.
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Well, you forget everything if it disfails.
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00:21:31,802 --> 00:21:36,702
That's true. And I have a scary raid here in the studio on the studio machine.
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And I have a scary raid on my workstation upstairs.
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And I name it slash scary raid. So I always remind myself this could blow up at any time.
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Anything you put here is ephemeral. And so that's my little mental trick is scary raid.
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00:21:49,322 --> 00:21:55,802
And that right now on all my systems, all my scary raids are XFS.
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Wow.
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00:21:57,782 --> 00:22:02,122
Yeah. All my Scary Raids are XFS. And I don't know, I just, it's legacy because
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they've been around for years because I reload the boxes and then I just remount the Scary Raid.
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You know, because I've always got the Scary Raid. It's just sitting right there.
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So are you going to upgrade that to a BcacheFS Scary Raid?
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Well, this is what I'm thinking, is the next generation.
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The next generation of a Scary Raid would be like a bunch of used SSDs that
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I just slam into one big volume and use BcacheFS for that.
385
00:22:25,542 --> 00:22:28,342
I should say that was the other factor on the router box is it's pretty much
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00:22:28,342 --> 00:22:31,542
just a NixOS config in Git, so there wasn't a lot of data on there.
387
00:22:31,842 --> 00:22:34,322
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if I were to, you know,
388
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because all my scary raids are identical disks.
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And if I were to do a mix of drive size and just sort of mush all that together,
390
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I think I would call that messy raid. That would be a messy raid.
391
00:22:48,746 --> 00:22:51,446
Well, I just want to take a moment and thank our members. We don't have an advertiser
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for this spot yet, although we do have the world's best Linux audience,
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the world's largest Linux audience.
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We've been around for over 12 years doing this show. I've been doing podcasting for 20 years.
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So if you would like to reach one of the best audiences with somebody that knows
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how to do podcast ads, send me an email at chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com.
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In the meantime, thank you, members, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash membership.
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I don't know. I know you can get the Linux unplugged. Jupiter.party for the whole network.
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I don't need to go through the whole thing. You guys know it,
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00:23:20,246 --> 00:23:21,526
so I'll just say thank you very much.
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00:23:21,666 --> 00:23:27,526
There's not a lot of big commercial demand for a Linux podcast that is talking
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00:23:27,526 --> 00:23:29,486
about file system nuances like this.
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00:23:29,626 --> 00:23:34,386
I don't know if that surprises you, but it turns out people that are selling
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00:23:34,386 --> 00:23:38,646
ads on podcasts and YouTube, they don't find file system discussion particularly
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00:23:38,646 --> 00:23:42,366
interesting and doesn't really reach their radar. are.
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00:23:42,486 --> 00:23:47,866
So we do have to lean more on listener support than a typical podcast that you might listen to.
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00:23:48,106 --> 00:23:52,286
Because what we do is we use that listener support to give us the runway to
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00:23:52,286 --> 00:23:56,346
actually nerd out on these topics and go for the stuff that is never going to
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00:23:56,346 --> 00:23:57,346
get us any play on YouTube.
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00:23:57,506 --> 00:24:00,646
We're never going to get a clip on TikTok. We're never going to show up in some
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00:24:00,646 --> 00:24:05,046
sort of advertiser's keyword search dashboard thing, right? It's never going to happen for us.
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00:24:06,112 --> 00:24:08,532
And that's okay. We're fine with that because we have listener support.
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00:24:08,752 --> 00:24:10,292
So there's a couple of ways you can do it.
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00:24:11,012 --> 00:24:15,832
We have the show membership. Those are our core contributors at linuxunplugged.com slash membership.
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00:24:16,132 --> 00:24:19,652
We have the jupyter.party membership that gives you access to all the shows
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00:24:19,652 --> 00:24:22,232
and their special features. Every show has special features.
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00:24:22,532 --> 00:24:27,052
And then you can boost us. And that is not only a signal, but it also supports
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00:24:27,052 --> 00:24:32,492
that particular production and gives us an idea of like that topic worked or didn't work.
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00:24:32,632 --> 00:24:36,232
And so there's several ways where you can participate. and we really do appreciate
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it because we couldn't make this kind of content where we talk about these nerdy
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00:24:39,932 --> 00:24:41,852
esoteric things that actually do matter.
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00:24:42,472 --> 00:24:45,712
It's not our fault that the advertisers don't realize this stuff matters.
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00:24:45,892 --> 00:24:46,912
Right? It's not our fault.
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This stuff does matter and it matters to you just like it matters to us.
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00:24:51,032 --> 00:24:55,872
So thank you very much for the support and you can find membership links in the show notes as well.
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00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,300
A little while ago, we took a moment on the show to plant our flag and say all
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00:25:04,300 --> 00:25:08,060
this assisted AI stuff was coming for Linux administration.
428
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:13,660
And the last few weeks, with all the OpenClaw excitement, might be proving that out.
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00:25:13,900 --> 00:25:17,820
But there's also been a lot of pushback to all these big tech commercial models.
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00:25:18,020 --> 00:25:22,640
And for some of us, it's made us more excited about local open source models.
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00:25:23,740 --> 00:25:29,040
Over on ItsFoss, Bhwan Mishra wrote about ditching Clawed code and using the
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00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,340
open-source Quen model for real sysadmin work.
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00:25:32,460 --> 00:25:34,280
I liked hearing about this, guys.
434
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:35,200
Yeah, me too.
435
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,660
Yeah, so the author dropped Cloud Code, went with local Quen code because it
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00:25:39,660 --> 00:25:41,640
behaves more like a proper Linux tool.
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00:25:41,780 --> 00:25:45,680
He says he could install it locally. It was open-source, and it shows every
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00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,260
command it's going to execute before it actually runs it.
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00:25:48,540 --> 00:25:51,800
And you can describe a task in plain English, and the Quen model,
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00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:56,240
which is a free model that you can run on your own machine, will just turn that
441
00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:01,360
into reviewable shell commands that you can then authorize, and then it'll execute them.
442
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:07,000
Yeah, it's pretty neat. So Quen comes from Alibaba, so it is a Chinese model,
443
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:08,260
but it is also open-weight.
444
00:26:08,460 --> 00:26:11,760
Some folks have found some kinds of censorship or other sort of things you might
445
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:13,480
expect from some of these Chinese models.
446
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:19,640
But it has also been optimized for agent stuff, so has Quen code.
447
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:25,360
They have various specific models, especially like the code-focused models itself
448
00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:28,340
sort of aimed at exactly these tasks.
449
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:32,620
And in fact, even the app itself is a fork of Gemini CLI. So it's under the
450
00:26:32,620 --> 00:26:35,260
Apache 2 license. They look pretty much exactly the same.
451
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:35,980
Oh, interesting. Okay.
452
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:40,420
But the Quen folks wanted to add in, like Gemini CLI does a lot of stuff because
453
00:26:40,420 --> 00:26:44,760
it's attached to this very broad Gemini product and stuff, and you can only use it with that.
454
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,960
But they added support for using local stuff. They also optimized it more for
455
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:50,720
doing these coding and agent tasks.
456
00:26:50,780 --> 00:26:51,660
Very nice. Okay.
457
00:26:52,732 --> 00:26:56,332
That's, I didn't realize that you could, I guess I never looked at Gemini CLI.
458
00:26:56,432 --> 00:26:57,712
I didn't realize they had made that open source.
459
00:26:58,132 --> 00:27:02,732
Yeah, isn't that nice? I mean, the back end isn't, but at least the front end is.
460
00:27:02,872 --> 00:27:03,052
Yeah, yeah.
461
00:27:03,352 --> 00:27:07,832
And, you know, it is like, maybe you don't do everything with one of these particular
462
00:27:07,832 --> 00:27:12,672
local models, depending on what kind of system and GPU and what you can actually run.
463
00:27:14,192 --> 00:27:17,952
But as these things get better and better, like writing shell scripts,
464
00:27:18,172 --> 00:27:20,332
or especially like, you know, especially even silly stuff like,
465
00:27:20,332 --> 00:27:23,832
Like, oh, dang, I downloaded a bunch of files with spaces in there,
466
00:27:23,932 --> 00:27:25,772
and they got weird names, and I just want it cleaned up.
467
00:27:26,072 --> 00:27:27,032
That happens to me all the time.
468
00:27:27,092 --> 00:27:30,852
Even stuff you can run locally can definitely handle a spitting out of Bash script to do that.
469
00:27:31,192 --> 00:27:34,592
Yeah, it is really exciting to see where these local models are going.
470
00:27:34,592 --> 00:27:39,892
I feel like I'm in this tortured position where I recognize the utility now
471
00:27:39,892 --> 00:27:43,652
in a way that I kind of missed the boat on when hardware was reasonably priced.
472
00:27:45,732 --> 00:27:47,172
Where's that open source time machine?
473
00:27:47,172 --> 00:27:51,952
Now I'm so GPU starved, and I've been looking at Venice AI, which is a pretty
474
00:27:51,952 --> 00:27:56,152
good privacy-focused model system that you can use with agents and whatnot.
475
00:27:56,312 --> 00:27:58,792
But the tokens are more expensive because of the privacy layer.
476
00:27:59,192 --> 00:28:03,432
And this gets really expensive very fast when you want to do more extensive things.
477
00:28:03,532 --> 00:28:08,472
So it is with a particular eye we're watching these local models and seeing where they go.
478
00:28:09,432 --> 00:28:13,012
Just a little background on something we tried last week. This was a very interesting
479
00:28:13,012 --> 00:28:16,592
experiment, and we wanted to share it with you. We have wanted to stand up a
480
00:28:16,592 --> 00:28:18,672
production Mattermost server for years.
481
00:28:19,152 --> 00:28:23,572
We've spun up a few. We've toyed with them kind of as just experiments.
482
00:28:23,872 --> 00:28:29,172
We've even ran a few project-specific Mattermost when we're working on something with people outside.
483
00:28:29,272 --> 00:28:33,212
JB will spin up a Mattermost real quick, but they really just throw away Mattermost,
484
00:28:33,232 --> 00:28:34,812
and we don't really spend a lot of time with them.
485
00:28:36,166 --> 00:28:41,266
We wanted something we could use long-term. So last week before the show,
486
00:28:41,486 --> 00:28:46,706
I had been working with one of these open claw agents, just going over best
487
00:28:46,706 --> 00:28:50,366
system practices, focus on this, consider this, security.
488
00:28:50,946 --> 00:28:53,666
And the stuff we normally want or don't want to see in a system.
489
00:28:53,866 --> 00:28:59,486
Yeah, exactly. And so also I've been working to delegate some subtasks to agents and stuff like that.
490
00:29:00,066 --> 00:29:05,746
So naturally, I thought, let's do something really stupid and give this thing
491
00:29:05,746 --> 00:29:07,526
API access to Cloudflare.
492
00:29:09,306 --> 00:29:13,586
I figured, why not? I had an old domain that I'd sat around for years.
493
00:29:13,586 --> 00:29:16,786
I don't use. I could set up a limited scope API credentials.
494
00:29:16,986 --> 00:29:21,586
I was about to say that we've already gotten to the point of maturity in that
495
00:29:21,586 --> 00:29:24,226
side of the industry is really useful if you're trying to use agents.
496
00:29:24,366 --> 00:29:25,366
Like, don't give it everything.
497
00:29:25,546 --> 00:29:30,206
No. So I gave it this old domain I had sitting around that I bought on a lark.
498
00:29:30,366 --> 00:29:32,706
Probably had too many beers and decided, I'm going to buy this domain.
499
00:29:33,466 --> 00:29:39,646
And so before the show last week, I told the agent, go SSH into this VPS because
500
00:29:39,646 --> 00:29:41,526
the host that it's running on has an SSH key.
501
00:29:42,146 --> 00:29:45,086
SSH into this VPS. Go look around.
502
00:29:45,506 --> 00:29:49,706
Learn the system. The Docker Compose files are over here. And then commit to
503
00:29:49,706 --> 00:29:53,326
your memory what you've learned. That was before the show, just Sunday morning last week.
504
00:29:53,426 --> 00:29:55,226
A little scouting mission. Reconnaissance.
505
00:29:55,706 --> 00:29:59,386
After the show, when we were all done with our post-show duties, I...
506
00:29:59,386 --> 00:30:01,346
I didn't even know you did that, by the way. You're sneaky.
507
00:30:01,546 --> 00:30:06,746
Yeah. After the show, I said to Wes, how fast do you think an agent could deploy
508
00:30:06,746 --> 00:30:08,106
a secure Mattermost server?
509
00:30:08,786 --> 00:30:15,286
And so I brought up Telegram and I sent my agent the API key for its Cloudflare stuff.
510
00:30:15,786 --> 00:30:19,746
And I gave it a clear goal. I said, go deploy a Mattermost server on the VPS
511
00:30:19,746 --> 00:30:21,586
I told you about earlier. That's all I said.
512
00:30:22,666 --> 00:30:27,166
and follow best security practices and use Cloudflare to handle things like
513
00:30:27,166 --> 00:30:29,726
DNS caching and other security best practices.
514
00:30:30,186 --> 00:30:34,106
And that was the entire Telegram message. Five minutes later,
515
00:30:36,077 --> 00:30:39,957
The agent had deployed Mattermost via Docker Compose, integrated a Cloudflare
516
00:30:39,957 --> 00:30:45,377
tunnel sidecar, set up DNS with optimal caching based on upstream Cloudflare
517
00:30:45,377 --> 00:30:48,617
docs for best security practices when deploying a Mattermost server,
518
00:30:50,157 --> 00:30:53,457
which is really neat because it set up the sidecar.
519
00:30:53,577 --> 00:30:57,577
Wes, talk about the sidecar tunnel. We talked about these sidecars before. You're a sidecar guy.
520
00:30:57,657 --> 00:31:01,557
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a handy pattern, right? It's just because you're using
521
00:31:01,557 --> 00:31:05,657
network namespaces with the containers, You can put two containers in the same
522
00:31:05,657 --> 00:31:07,837
network namespace. And so they share a network.
523
00:31:07,997 --> 00:31:13,877
And then you can have, say, Tailscale, Netbird, Nebula, any of these mesh VPNs.
524
00:31:14,017 --> 00:31:14,477
Cloudflare Tunnel.
525
00:31:14,617 --> 00:31:18,277
Or you can have a Cloudflare Tunnel. And so Cloudflare Tunnel's agent handles
526
00:31:18,277 --> 00:31:21,117
binding a VPN, a tunneling connection to them.
527
00:31:21,237 --> 00:31:24,417
And then because they're also controlling all of the front side,
528
00:31:24,537 --> 00:31:28,297
right, the load balancing, the DNS, the caching, then they can automatically
529
00:31:28,297 --> 00:31:30,377
just route it through that tunnel back to you.
530
00:31:30,377 --> 00:31:35,617
And so the Docker and namespace layer make sure that you don't have to mess
531
00:31:35,617 --> 00:31:36,557
with any of the host stuff.
532
00:31:36,997 --> 00:31:40,897
But as long as the actual Cloudflare tunnel agent itself can get outside via
533
00:31:40,897 --> 00:31:43,517
the Internet, then everyone else can connect.
534
00:31:43,637 --> 00:31:46,497
And you don't have to have an open port. You don't have to worry about that kind of thing.
535
00:31:46,677 --> 00:31:48,977
That's the key thing. It doesn't even talk to the host network.
536
00:31:48,997 --> 00:31:54,477
It's not even talking to the VPS network at all. It's just talking over this tunnel.
537
00:31:55,217 --> 00:31:58,157
So then what I did, after it had stood up this entire thing,
538
00:31:58,237 --> 00:32:00,597
as I reviewed the Docker Compose, it was clean. It was lean.
539
00:32:00,837 --> 00:32:03,777
I looked at the Mattermost config. It was pretty basic. So I said to the bot,
540
00:32:03,877 --> 00:32:05,077
I said, I'm going to go create you an account.
541
00:32:05,837 --> 00:32:10,397
I'll go create you a bot token for the agent. Then what I want you to do is go finish the work.
542
00:32:11,037 --> 00:32:14,917
Go set up the rooms, set up the permissions, dial in a full configuration,
543
00:32:15,117 --> 00:32:18,937
give the rooms the descriptions, set descriptions for all the individual accounts, everything.
544
00:32:20,641 --> 00:32:23,961
And then two minutes later, it was back, and we had everything there.
545
00:32:24,241 --> 00:32:29,601
A complete lounge, rooms for the bots to talk, room for the people to talk, permission structure.
546
00:32:30,281 --> 00:32:33,001
The entire process was probably eight to ten minutes.
547
00:32:33,601 --> 00:32:38,181
Also, having the bots fiddle with the actual admin settings,
548
00:32:38,181 --> 00:32:39,861
so much nicer than doing it yourself.
549
00:32:39,981 --> 00:32:42,421
Especially for, like, I'm not a Mattermost UI expert, right?
550
00:32:42,481 --> 00:32:45,461
But, like, we needed to rename some accounts, or, like, I wanted to make sure
551
00:32:45,461 --> 00:32:48,001
that when Brent got in, he was going to be an admin on the instance.
552
00:32:49,101 --> 00:32:50,561
And bots handled that just fine.
553
00:32:50,641 --> 00:32:56,201
Yeah. And so the point that I'm trying to make here is this is not going away
554
00:32:56,201 --> 00:32:57,421
for Linux system administration.
555
00:32:57,521 --> 00:33:01,581
And it didn't deploy some vibe coded piece of crap insecure setup either.
556
00:33:02,261 --> 00:33:06,721
It actually did a fantastic expert job. We went through and reviewed it.
557
00:33:06,841 --> 00:33:09,161
It's good. It's solid. It's a it's a good setup.
558
00:33:09,581 --> 00:33:13,281
And you have to kind of let that soak in for a moment because we have heard
559
00:33:13,281 --> 00:33:17,901
these big tech CEOs promise all this ridiculous crap for the last three years.
560
00:33:18,461 --> 00:33:19,721
But this is really working.
561
00:33:20,421 --> 00:33:24,681
I did three things. In the morning, I told the bot to go check out the VPS.
562
00:33:25,241 --> 00:33:29,381
In the afternoon, I gave it an API key, and I told it to go deploy Mattermost.
563
00:33:30,001 --> 00:33:32,981
And then after that, I said, go set up all the rooms, the permissions,
564
00:33:33,321 --> 00:33:35,681
the descriptions, give them emojis, all that crap.
565
00:33:36,770 --> 00:33:41,430
And it did all of that. And it's all because these things all have API endpoints.
566
00:33:42,390 --> 00:33:46,110
The documentation on how to set them up is extremely well documented and clear.
567
00:33:46,410 --> 00:33:53,130
Yep. And in the case of open source stuff, you can also go have your bot spelunk
568
00:33:53,130 --> 00:33:54,950
the source code and figure out exactly what it needs.
569
00:33:55,150 --> 00:33:59,850
Yeah. And the API to then realize how to connect to it so then it can participate in the chat.
570
00:34:00,230 --> 00:34:03,390
And Brent, we pulled you into some of that shenanigans. And you could see the
571
00:34:03,390 --> 00:34:07,010
bots are actually coordinating with each other back and forth in our Mattermost chat.
572
00:34:07,210 --> 00:34:10,530
Can I just say how much I wasn't expecting to be pulled into that kind of environment?
573
00:34:13,410 --> 00:34:17,490
But it was impressive. Like, I don't know, this is a topic we've been talking
574
00:34:17,490 --> 00:34:22,070
about for years to replace our sort of legacy internal communications tool.
575
00:34:22,270 --> 00:34:26,890
And you guys just kind of pulled that out while you were doing the post-show
576
00:34:26,890 --> 00:34:29,290
work? I kind of couldn't believe it.
577
00:34:29,290 --> 00:34:32,430
But we were actually just playing with agents and not doing the post-show work,
578
00:34:32,450 --> 00:34:35,270
but we were doing other stuff and not supervising this bot.
579
00:34:35,930 --> 00:34:41,370
Like what a force multiplier if you look at it that way. And to stand up something
580
00:34:41,370 --> 00:34:44,050
we've been wanting for quite a long time and having,
581
00:34:44,270 --> 00:34:48,970
like you said, some confidence that it's been done with best practices better
582
00:34:48,970 --> 00:34:50,990
than we could have in our little busy schedule.
583
00:34:50,990 --> 00:34:55,510
Because this would have taken us longer to do it in a way that we were satisfied
584
00:34:55,510 --> 00:34:59,170
that it was good enough to be a long-term tool for us.
585
00:34:59,290 --> 00:35:01,750
and secure, and safe enough, and resilient.
586
00:35:02,590 --> 00:35:03,850
That's just awesome.
587
00:35:04,390 --> 00:35:06,650
Yeah, I agree. But I think there's another part I was thinking about,
588
00:35:06,750 --> 00:35:10,390
which is like, this varies per person and group and all that,
589
00:35:10,470 --> 00:35:14,370
but we weren't going to learn that much from standing up a Mattermouth server.
590
00:35:14,590 --> 00:35:19,070
Like, it's sidecar patterns, we've done it before, and there's this whole mass,
591
00:35:19,170 --> 00:35:21,970
at least for me personally, of work where I want to do it,
592
00:35:23,100 --> 00:35:26,340
It's either not quite important enough, it's not going to rise to the top 10,
593
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,740
and I'm not especially motivated to do it, especially because I know it's kind
594
00:35:29,740 --> 00:35:31,260
of just grinding it out. It's not a new thing.
595
00:35:31,380 --> 00:35:34,300
I'm not learning some new application or some new way to do things.
596
00:35:35,420 --> 00:35:39,060
And I'm totally happy to delegate that. Another thing I was doing just this
597
00:35:39,060 --> 00:35:42,160
week was I had an old code base.
598
00:35:42,380 --> 00:35:46,160
I ran a linter across it to get a bunch of lint errors. I know how to fix that
599
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:47,480
stuff. I don't need to do that again.
600
00:35:47,620 --> 00:35:51,140
But a bot can fix it, and then I can just review the diff. And if it didn't
601
00:35:51,140 --> 00:35:53,940
break anything, the tests all passed, like, totally fine.
602
00:35:54,100 --> 00:35:57,000
Yeah. Yeah, and for me, I feel like it's in the experimental,
603
00:35:57,260 --> 00:36:00,480
okay, I'm learning about a stage, but it goes into the this is something that
604
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,720
I will use for year stage when I can run a model that's competent locally,
605
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:05,220
you know, and privately.
606
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:08,780
Yeah, where you don't have to pay out the arm and leg for the credits,
607
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,020
where you don't have to worry that every little detail of your life is being sucked up.
608
00:36:12,180 --> 00:36:15,460
Yep, yep. But there is something here. It is not going away.
609
00:36:15,460 --> 00:36:18,100
even if like open AI were to crash.
610
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:22,440
Like this is not going away. And what we're going to see, and we're already
611
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:30,800
seeing it, is services are going to have to develop and deliver agent-specific endpoints.
612
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,120
You hit on the importance of APIs, and I think that is...
613
00:36:36,087 --> 00:36:39,627
going to be helpful for us open source people because
614
00:36:39,627 --> 00:36:42,507
if you have an open api system that's documented that's easy to
615
00:36:42,507 --> 00:36:46,007
learn these agents can figure it out like when we
616
00:36:46,007 --> 00:36:48,847
were playing around last week i had my agent figure out how to use this web
617
00:36:48,847 --> 00:36:52,927
socket irc thing but then even just after we got the mattermost stuff i wanted
618
00:36:52,927 --> 00:36:58,007
my agent as a test to send your agent a direct message but the security on the
619
00:36:58,007 --> 00:37:02,627
open cloud would not let that happen my agent figured out how to use the Mattermost API directly.
620
00:37:02,807 --> 00:37:08,807
Now, in that case, a little concerning, but in general, like in the old world, right?
621
00:37:08,927 --> 00:37:12,287
Like the proprietary provider would provide the bindings.
622
00:37:12,347 --> 00:37:15,127
So you had to rely on whatever set of bindings were going to be there,
623
00:37:15,147 --> 00:37:17,627
but you don't have to rely on the default set.
624
00:37:17,767 --> 00:37:22,327
If you can dynamically add the capability of new bindings yourself.
625
00:37:22,907 --> 00:37:23,267
Yeah.
626
00:37:23,367 --> 00:37:27,507
So here's, so it doesn't matter if they only support Slack, we can add Mattermost if we need that.
627
00:37:27,507 --> 00:37:32,287
Yes. This is the head shift that people need to get around and it's going to
628
00:37:32,287 --> 00:37:35,147
impact open source projects and they're not going to take it gracefully.
629
00:37:35,327 --> 00:37:37,287
We're already seeing it happen. I'll give you an example.
630
00:37:38,226 --> 00:37:42,586
These agents are going to become an extension of whatever somebody can do online,
631
00:37:42,586 --> 00:37:44,286
this agent will be tasked to do.
632
00:37:45,046 --> 00:37:48,886
And that is from everything from hiring people to mow lawns,
633
00:37:48,966 --> 00:37:54,326
to topping off its own API credits, to going through GitHub and looking for issues.
634
00:37:54,426 --> 00:37:58,626
And we are going to see a lot of transitions between crap code and all that.
635
00:37:58,806 --> 00:38:02,006
But focus on something that the open source projects need to think about.
636
00:38:02,006 --> 00:38:05,346
And this is something that Debian's struggling with right now,
637
00:38:05,506 --> 00:38:10,326
is Debian's had a problem with their CI system getting overloaded with what
638
00:38:10,326 --> 00:38:11,926
they say are LLM scrapers,
639
00:38:12,106 --> 00:38:17,526
essentially going through their infrastructure via a web browser and kind of
640
00:38:17,526 --> 00:38:23,366
just going through page by page and generating so much load by doing this that
641
00:38:23,366 --> 00:38:26,386
it's making the service unavailable for their existing developers.
642
00:38:26,386 --> 00:38:30,906
Yeah, it's not just hitting, say, like the actual output text file from the build run.
643
00:38:31,226 --> 00:38:34,446
They're like walking through the whole interface to go browse through it.
644
00:38:34,526 --> 00:38:37,466
And then as a result, I guess there's not that much caching and just,
645
00:38:37,606 --> 00:38:40,326
you know, it's a volunteer project. It's open source infrastructure. It's Debian.
646
00:38:40,646 --> 00:38:44,806
So then it's going and pulling a bunch of results for like years ago build systems.
647
00:38:44,946 --> 00:38:47,726
So now the system's turning on that instead of focusing on, you know,
648
00:38:47,806 --> 00:38:48,946
the actual builds for the next release.
649
00:38:49,086 --> 00:38:52,006
And one of the things that's challenging about this is it's difficult to distinguish
650
00:38:52,006 --> 00:38:55,966
an LLM scraper, which might be training, questionable.
651
00:38:56,806 --> 00:39:01,966
a bot that is just scraping this stuff or an agent that somebody has tasked
652
00:39:01,966 --> 00:39:04,966
on their behalf to help them with their development in Debian.
653
00:39:05,126 --> 00:39:08,086
You might want to go pull in those logs, say, so that you have your own personal
654
00:39:08,086 --> 00:39:10,206
dashboard of the upstream builds to keep track of issues.
655
00:39:10,326 --> 00:39:12,546
Exactly. And so maybe you've tasked your agent to go do that.
656
00:39:12,966 --> 00:39:16,946
And what's going to have to happen here, what Debian has done for now is they've
657
00:39:16,946 --> 00:39:19,046
just essentially taken this out of the public.
658
00:39:19,226 --> 00:39:22,726
And you have to have special access and special whitelists and all of that to
659
00:39:22,726 --> 00:39:25,266
be able to get access to their CI system now.
660
00:39:26,119 --> 00:39:30,279
But the solution is not going to be to block these agents that are operating
661
00:39:30,279 --> 00:39:31,919
on behalf of other developers.
662
00:39:31,919 --> 00:39:37,779
The solution is going to be to develop API and data pipelines and then for these
663
00:39:37,779 --> 00:39:42,419
bots, agents, and LLMs to respect those and use those data pipelines and APIs
664
00:39:42,419 --> 00:39:44,459
instead of just crawling the website.
665
00:39:44,659 --> 00:39:47,779
Yeah, and there's certainly some operator responsibility here,
666
00:39:47,819 --> 00:39:51,439
right, to respect those things, to respect stuff like robots.txt and other.
667
00:39:51,439 --> 00:39:55,539
Like, you know, there is an element of you put it on the web and there is some,
668
00:39:55,999 --> 00:39:59,319
you know, depending on your law and jurisdiction, but there's some right to
669
00:39:59,319 --> 00:40:01,119
just go do a curl request and get the results.
670
00:40:01,219 --> 00:40:05,219
But you also need to respect that that costs people money and can interfere
671
00:40:05,219 --> 00:40:07,939
with other people's right to do the same access.
672
00:40:08,119 --> 00:40:11,199
I don't know if people remember, maybe I'm old enough, but there was a time
673
00:40:11,199 --> 00:40:15,019
when web search engines first came out and they were crawling the web.
674
00:40:15,859 --> 00:40:19,039
And even though they weren't permanently caching before, like,
675
00:40:19,179 --> 00:40:23,139
Archive and the Google Archive stuff, even though they weren't permanently caching,
676
00:40:23,279 --> 00:40:28,259
there were lawsuits over the fact that the web indexers had a copy of the information
677
00:40:28,259 --> 00:40:30,859
in RAM temporarily while they indexed the website.
678
00:40:30,919 --> 00:40:33,119
Often copyrighted things. Yeah.
679
00:40:33,319 --> 00:40:36,439
Yeah. So it takes a little bit to figure this out.
680
00:40:37,019 --> 00:40:40,559
And I don't think projects like Debian are going to want to completely sit this
681
00:40:40,559 --> 00:40:45,079
out because there is use case for these agents. and if they can be more intelligent
682
00:40:45,079 --> 00:40:50,139
about how to manage a Debian system, that's good for Debian as a project and
683
00:40:50,139 --> 00:40:51,979
it's good for Debian as adoption in the enterprise.
684
00:40:52,159 --> 00:40:58,599
I do think or suppose we might see a rise in more structured outputs and outputs
685
00:40:58,599 --> 00:41:02,419
designed specifically for LLMs as an aside to the human-centric interface.
686
00:41:02,619 --> 00:41:05,679
Just give them their own thing to ingest that is low resource.
687
00:41:05,739 --> 00:41:07,659
Don't have them muck up with the human side, yeah.
688
00:41:07,799 --> 00:41:08,539
Pretend like, and.
689
00:41:08,539 --> 00:41:10,599
Honestly- It's less efficient for both sides.
690
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,699
Right, because they're spending a bunch of tokens to run that web browser to
691
00:41:13,699 --> 00:41:14,899
browse the website like a human.
692
00:41:14,999 --> 00:41:17,539
To parse out the HTML to go figure out where the links are.
693
00:41:17,739 --> 00:41:20,159
And then they're probably just producing a JSON file on the back end anyway.
694
00:41:20,199 --> 00:41:20,659
That's all they wanted.
695
00:41:22,079 --> 00:41:26,219
So everybody wins, but we're not there yet. So what the Debian projects had
696
00:41:26,219 --> 00:41:27,839
to do is they've had to go kind of private.
697
00:41:28,686 --> 00:41:32,686
But I don't think that solves the problem long-term. But we really had a moment
698
00:41:32,686 --> 00:41:34,066
with our Mattermost server.
699
00:41:34,386 --> 00:41:36,946
We had a, you know, let's call it 10 minutes.
700
00:41:37,386 --> 00:41:42,366
In 10 minutes, we had a fully working Mattermost server, like an expert had
701
00:41:42,366 --> 00:41:45,506
deployed it, with clean configs, tight security, great performance,
702
00:41:45,526 --> 00:41:47,446
because I sort of glossed over this.
703
00:41:47,606 --> 00:41:51,506
But like you mentioned, it set up all of the caching and best practices with Cloudflare.
704
00:41:51,626 --> 00:41:56,926
So this thing is running on a super old low-end VPS that is already doing other
705
00:41:56,926 --> 00:41:59,766
stuff. And it is a faster chat experience than, say, Slack.
706
00:42:00,286 --> 00:42:05,066
It was a really nice, responsive, performance system. And using this Cloudflare
707
00:42:05,066 --> 00:42:08,786
tunnel made it really easy for security purposes. I didn't have to worry about
708
00:42:08,786 --> 00:42:10,906
having a VPS address and all that kind of stuff.
709
00:42:11,066 --> 00:42:13,726
Also makes it portable. You can move it around. It doesn't matter where it lives.
710
00:42:13,826 --> 00:42:17,526
Especially the way this tunnel works. It's portable per machine, too.
711
00:42:17,546 --> 00:42:20,506
So you could actually lift the entire Docker Compose, drop it on another machine,
712
00:42:20,566 --> 00:42:22,026
and start it. And the tunnel would reconnect.
713
00:42:22,826 --> 00:42:26,806
That kind of stuff is really impressive. and on a low end vps it's even better
714
00:42:26,806 --> 00:42:28,006
because you're getting more bang for your buck.
715
00:42:28,006 --> 00:42:31,006
And you you wouldn't you know you don't have to use cloud for you can tunnel
716
00:42:31,006 --> 00:42:32,026
it over your existing mesh.
717
00:42:32,026 --> 00:42:33,206
Network you can do an nginx.
718
00:42:33,206 --> 00:42:34,486
Proxy and the bots can help.
719
00:42:34,486 --> 00:42:37,566
Oh yeah for sure this is just because i was experimenting with using the api
720
00:42:37,566 --> 00:42:40,586
to just do a complete totally end-to-end solution there's a lot of ways you
721
00:42:40,586 --> 00:42:43,706
could solve it with networking and uh you know maybe it was two dollars and
722
00:42:43,706 --> 00:42:47,466
50 cents in tokens for the entire thing in 10 minutes and now we have a server
723
00:42:47,466 --> 00:42:48,966
that we could use in production for years,
724
00:42:49,664 --> 00:42:53,484
So there is something there. And when you get that kind of utility and that
725
00:42:53,484 --> 00:42:56,824
kind of optimization, you know enterprises are going to be drawn to that.
726
00:42:56,964 --> 00:43:00,344
And you know that's the kind of thing that Red Hat and SUSE are going to be,
727
00:43:00,504 --> 00:43:04,544
and Canonical, are going to be leaning into. It isn't going away.
728
00:43:04,744 --> 00:43:09,544
And it's important, I think, that the open source side stay engaged and pushing
729
00:43:09,544 --> 00:43:12,584
on the values that we bring to technology generally.
730
00:43:12,784 --> 00:43:15,864
And I think that's the most interesting and exciting thing about the last three
731
00:43:15,864 --> 00:43:18,864
weeks is that it has been driven by open source.
732
00:43:19,304 --> 00:43:22,584
We've been talking about AI, well, we haven't, but people have been talking
733
00:43:22,584 --> 00:43:26,184
about AI for years now, sort of to ad nauseum.
734
00:43:26,444 --> 00:43:29,264
It's just, ugh. And this is the first time where we've actually been interested
735
00:43:29,264 --> 00:43:31,504
because open source is really biting in and making a difference.
736
00:43:31,664 --> 00:43:34,564
And you can see it, like, just if you go look on Hacker News or other spots,
737
00:43:34,724 --> 00:43:37,024
like, OpenClaw came out, and now there's a bunch of different versions.
738
00:43:37,184 --> 00:43:39,044
There's smaller versions, there's Rust versions.
739
00:43:39,224 --> 00:43:42,444
And especially because the implementations are open source, you don't have to
740
00:43:42,444 --> 00:43:43,784
figure out how to give the bot memory.
741
00:43:43,964 --> 00:43:46,244
I mean, you might need to customize it or tweak it or change it,
742
00:43:46,244 --> 00:43:49,124
But you can go follow the patterns that are emerging in the upstream open source.
743
00:43:49,304 --> 00:43:53,004
So what Wes is saying there is one of the things that's different this time
744
00:43:53,004 --> 00:43:58,344
around with these new agents is the memory and the soul and the tools and all
745
00:43:58,344 --> 00:44:00,264
the things that it memorizes.
746
00:44:00,444 --> 00:44:04,044
So, for example, last night I messaged my bot. I didn't say anything else other
747
00:44:04,044 --> 00:44:06,964
than, can you go get the weather report from Home Assistant?
748
00:44:07,444 --> 00:44:12,584
That's all I said. And it knows, well, OK, Home Assistant lives on this host. This is the API.
749
00:44:12,844 --> 00:44:16,824
This is my API key. the weather is this and it goes and gets all of that and
750
00:44:16,824 --> 00:44:19,484
it just comes back with a rather weather report from home assistant.
751
00:44:19,484 --> 00:44:24,004
That's another one of the big changes here is the agent is the interface.
752
00:44:24,004 --> 00:44:28,424
Right and that memory and all of that is yours it's on your file system and
753
00:44:28,424 --> 00:44:31,724
these other bots that are being built these other agent frameworks like you
754
00:44:31,724 --> 00:44:37,304
mentioned can use this so it is portable because it's just text and other agents
755
00:44:37,304 --> 00:44:39,884
can ingest this and learn from it so when you are building this,
756
00:44:40,424 --> 00:44:44,144
you're taking something that is vendor agnostic, model agnostic,
757
00:44:44,324 --> 00:44:46,664
and gateway implementation agnostic.
758
00:44:46,804 --> 00:44:48,544
And you can change it. They can change it.
759
00:44:50,323 --> 00:44:54,203
So that's a big difference. It's a big shift. And we're done talking about it,
760
00:44:54,263 --> 00:44:56,963
but we wanted you to understand it because, man, does it matter.
761
00:44:59,763 --> 00:45:02,743
Well, no spot, no ad right here. But thank you, members, and thank you,
762
00:45:02,823 --> 00:45:05,583
boosters. We really do appreciate you for making this show possible.
763
00:45:06,703 --> 00:45:08,743
You're doing the heavy lifting, that's for sure.
764
00:45:12,343 --> 00:45:17,763
We got a few little fantastic pieces of feedback this week. Joe sent in this
765
00:45:17,763 --> 00:45:19,803
awesome case for your ThinkCenter.
766
00:45:20,023 --> 00:45:28,043
It's a ThinkBox V2 custom 4-bay serial ATA or SAS hard drive NAS that you can print yourself.
767
00:45:28,603 --> 00:45:32,403
Yes, you heard me. It's a case for your system with a case.
768
00:45:33,103 --> 00:45:40,723
It's basically, it's a custom 4-bay NAS that the ThinkCenter small form factor PCs just slide into.
769
00:45:41,023 --> 00:45:44,203
So using an LSI HBA card
770
00:45:44,203 --> 00:45:47,223
and the powerful brains of are much loved by
771
00:45:47,223 --> 00:45:51,383
our community m720q or m920q by
772
00:45:51,383 --> 00:45:54,603
lenovo it leverages many improvements over alternative
773
00:45:54,603 --> 00:45:58,163
custom nas builds by basically providing
774
00:45:58,163 --> 00:46:03,343
a stable direct disc pass through with proper air handling reliable drive identification
775
00:46:03,343 --> 00:46:09,683
the drive bays to the think box also support both serial ata and sas drives
776
00:46:09,683 --> 00:46:15,683
on a 12 gigabit per second backplane and everything just slides right into this
777
00:46:15,683 --> 00:46:17,703
thing. This specifically.
778
00:46:18,804 --> 00:46:22,144
Is exactly what I've been thinking about for the last two weeks.
779
00:46:22,144 --> 00:46:28,284
And I have to say, Joe, how did you get into my brain? Because I've been deeply
780
00:46:28,284 --> 00:46:33,844
investigating the M720Qs and all of the possibilities that these little machines
781
00:46:33,844 --> 00:46:35,644
can do for us, including a NAS.
782
00:46:36,164 --> 00:46:39,564
And I was like, ah, geez, I really would just want to throw one of these into
783
00:46:39,564 --> 00:46:44,404
a case. I can support a couple hard drives and here you come along with a version two of this project.
784
00:46:44,404 --> 00:46:48,584
Doesn't it? It looks OEM, right? It looks mint.
785
00:46:50,104 --> 00:46:55,504
This is such a great find. Thank you, Joe. He says that he found this and thought
786
00:46:55,504 --> 00:46:56,824
we would be interested, and boy, was he right.
787
00:46:57,924 --> 00:47:00,084
Upgrade your pizza box to a cube.
788
00:47:00,224 --> 00:47:02,544
We will link this in the show notes. I know what I want for Christmas.
789
00:47:02,944 --> 00:47:08,404
The creator says, Lenovo's use of the coffee-like generation of CPU in the M720Q
790
00:47:08,404 --> 00:47:13,484
and M920Q line gives access to native hardware transcoding through Intel QuickSync.
791
00:47:13,944 --> 00:47:18,564
yeah it just it makes for such a nice home media server but it is a little bit
792
00:47:18,564 --> 00:47:23,464
tight on the storage so that is a great find thanks for sending that in,
793
00:47:24,537 --> 00:47:29,317
Our buddy Michael Dominick from the Coda Radio podcast has a great giveaway
794
00:47:29,317 --> 00:47:32,437
going on right now for students. He's calling all students.
795
00:47:32,637 --> 00:47:35,957
He has an Earth Day open source challenge. If you build something that helps
796
00:47:35,957 --> 00:47:38,477
the planet, you could win a big prize.
797
00:47:39,257 --> 00:47:40,937
Some System 76 hardware.
798
00:47:41,157 --> 00:47:43,057
Oh, hey, we know that. We know that stuff.
799
00:47:43,177 --> 00:47:46,137
Yeah, so if you've got a kid that's K-12 or even college students that are listening
800
00:47:46,137 --> 00:47:48,337
to the podcast, the deadline is Earth Day.
801
00:47:48,797 --> 00:47:51,957
I'll put a link to Mr. Dominick's post about it.
802
00:47:52,557 --> 00:47:56,117
He's done this. His company, MadBotter Inc., has done this for a while now,
803
00:47:56,157 --> 00:48:01,397
and they often give away some really nice System76 hardware for this.
804
00:48:01,497 --> 00:48:03,157
So check that out. We'll have a link in the show notes.
805
00:48:03,497 --> 00:48:07,837
Code for Climate 2026, the MadBotter Earth Day Open Source Challenge.
806
00:48:08,417 --> 00:48:09,957
And the deadline is Earth Day.
807
00:48:10,517 --> 00:48:14,077
You've got to code something up that helps the Earth. Go check it out.
808
00:48:14,537 --> 00:48:17,757
Ooh, looks like we got a little feedback from our buddy, Only Mike.
809
00:48:17,877 --> 00:48:18,917
Hey, Olympia Mike!
810
00:48:20,217 --> 00:48:25,017
Guys, wow. I just wanted to say thanks for sharing my mini computer giveaway.
811
00:48:25,437 --> 00:48:29,777
I received hundreds of emails from this amazing community with positive messages
812
00:48:29,777 --> 00:48:31,877
and excitement for some free hardware.
813
00:48:32,497 --> 00:48:38,317
I had all 35 units claimed in a couple of days and have mailed them all out as fast as I could.
814
00:48:38,557 --> 00:48:41,837
I'm now on a first name basis with the post office employees.
815
00:48:42,157 --> 00:48:42,777
I bet.
816
00:48:43,037 --> 00:48:43,717
I bet.
817
00:48:43,717 --> 00:48:47,877
I also wanted to say thanks to the many recipients that donated above the shipping
818
00:48:47,877 --> 00:48:52,057
cost, allowing the Computer Upcycle project to have some extra funds for SSDs
819
00:48:52,057 --> 00:48:55,077
and power cords to fix more computers.
820
00:48:55,317 --> 00:48:56,497
Best audience ever.
821
00:48:56,797 --> 00:49:00,137
This community is literally the best, and I'll be sure to do this again if,
822
00:49:00,257 --> 00:49:02,297
when, I have more good home server hardware.
823
00:49:02,557 --> 00:49:05,897
Thanks again, love community. I love you all and cannot wait to see you all
824
00:49:05,897 --> 00:49:07,057
at LinuxFest Northwest.
825
00:49:07,357 --> 00:49:08,337
Oh man, Mike, that's great.
826
00:49:08,437 --> 00:49:08,637
Amen.
827
00:49:09,177 --> 00:49:12,897
Thank you, Mike. Thank you for the update. Really, I love that.
828
00:49:12,897 --> 00:49:14,117
I just love the growth of that too.
829
00:49:14,917 --> 00:49:18,397
It's so great to see and appreciate the updates. You know what I mean? It's very good.
830
00:49:23,259 --> 00:49:27,399
Well, the dude is definitely abiding this week, and he is coming in with our
831
00:49:27,399 --> 00:49:31,959
baller boost, 77,777 sats.
832
00:49:38,919 --> 00:49:42,299
He says, thanks for the wake-up call. I deployed Prometheus and Grafana,
833
00:49:42,439 --> 00:49:46,579
and now I'm hooking up everything. My TrueNAS, ProxMax, my Unify.
834
00:49:47,179 --> 00:49:51,459
That's right. And Home Assistant. I have no idea what I'll use all that data for.
835
00:49:51,639 --> 00:49:54,859
The next step is to set up alerts, I guess. great episode as always and happy
836
00:49:54,859 --> 00:50:00,099
belated birthday oh thank you the dude yeah uh i have been finding it very useful
837
00:50:00,099 --> 00:50:03,779
just to monitor disk space and the cpu load on my home assistant those are like
838
00:50:03,779 --> 00:50:05,779
the main things i have i have basic sort.
839
00:50:05,779 --> 00:50:07,099
Of metrics and monitoring stuff.
840
00:50:07,099 --> 00:50:10,479
Stuff that i'm like is this box struggling is it or is it okay.
841
00:50:10,479 --> 00:50:19,399
Well anonymous comes in with 2021 sets but no sets just the value So also we
842
00:50:19,399 --> 00:50:22,439
get a boost from Outdoor Geek. 5,000 sets.
843
00:50:24,619 --> 00:50:26,219
Ooh, Scott, he's hot to trot.
844
00:50:26,839 --> 00:50:31,919
Open WRT as access point tip. By default, if you connect another router to a
845
00:50:31,919 --> 00:50:37,979
LAN port of an Open WRT Wi-Fi device, the Open WRT Wi-Fi device will operate as an AP.
846
00:50:38,399 --> 00:50:42,319
However, if someone fiddles with it and forgets or doesn't know to use LAN port
847
00:50:42,319 --> 00:50:46,099
versus the LAN, better to configure as AP for permanent installs.
848
00:50:46,099 --> 00:50:49,279
Good to know. Outdoor geek coming in. Good tip.
849
00:50:49,379 --> 00:50:52,159
Sounds like maybe you've seen that happen one or two times, huh?
850
00:50:52,259 --> 00:50:54,099
Brent, did you do this? Are you okay?
851
00:50:54,339 --> 00:50:57,639
I didn't even know this was possible. I like this little default behavior.
852
00:50:57,819 --> 00:51:01,219
Although, you know, sometimes these kind of behind-the-scenes behaviors that
853
00:51:01,219 --> 00:51:04,979
are trying to be helpful can be unhelpful if you don't know they're happening.
854
00:51:05,539 --> 00:51:09,239
This didn't happen to me because I didn't know this was such a useful feature.
855
00:51:09,259 --> 00:51:11,059
So maybe I'll try that next time.
856
00:51:11,119 --> 00:51:11,699
Now you know.
857
00:51:12,459 --> 00:51:16,279
Well, Zach Attack came in with 4,500 Satoshis.
858
00:51:19,264 --> 00:51:25,244
It's been a long time. I never stopped listening, but just haven't found funds to send over.
859
00:51:25,444 --> 00:51:31,304
I'm curious as to how your AI adventures go. So I look forward to the continued reporting on that.
860
00:51:31,424 --> 00:51:35,604
I've been back on the distro hopping train with one laptop running Nick's book.
861
00:51:35,904 --> 00:51:41,304
Ooh. And the other running Linux Mint, my main machine staying with Bluefin for now.
862
00:51:41,424 --> 00:51:45,224
That's interesting fleet you have there. I like that. Good, good testing around,
863
00:51:45,224 --> 00:51:49,924
You know, so talking about the Asian stuff just a bit more, just briefly, it ain't all great.
864
00:51:50,715 --> 00:51:51,715
Because, you know.
865
00:51:52,055 --> 00:51:54,755
Why does your wallet look so thin?
866
00:51:54,975 --> 00:51:59,355
There's that. I'm basically an alpha tester, right? Because I installed it when it was called Clodbot.
867
00:51:59,695 --> 00:52:04,235
Then it became Maltbot. Then it became OpenClaw. And then they've had three releases of OpenClaw.
868
00:52:04,615 --> 00:52:09,115
And the first two releases of OpenClaw completely blew out my sub agents,
869
00:52:09,135 --> 00:52:13,035
blew out my Mattermost config on the second install.
870
00:52:13,715 --> 00:52:16,655
I mean, just like and then the stereotypical thing where you're talking to the
871
00:52:16,655 --> 00:52:19,475
agents like, I've got it figured out now. and then it kills its own gateway
872
00:52:19,475 --> 00:52:22,995
and then i'm in there repairing the gateway not not.
873
00:52:22,995 --> 00:52:23,815
Just once on that one.
874
00:52:23,815 --> 00:52:28,475
No i was getting pretty spicy about it so it hasn't all been great,
875
00:52:29,075 --> 00:52:32,695
i've definitely learned what i do and don't like about the open claw uh infrastructure
876
00:52:32,695 --> 00:52:36,315
but uh ultimately the uh
877
00:52:36,315 --> 00:52:39,375
you know the reality is just that when you are learning
878
00:52:39,375 --> 00:52:42,195
something when it's really new you learn a bunch you
879
00:52:42,195 --> 00:52:44,895
have to throw it out you get burned you learn a bunch and then you throw
880
00:52:44,895 --> 00:52:47,595
it out and you learn again and you learn again and you learn
881
00:52:47,595 --> 00:52:50,375
again and being an early adopter has a bit of work to
882
00:52:50,375 --> 00:52:53,615
it but you then at least know the language
883
00:52:53,615 --> 00:52:57,415
you know the technology you understand the direction you know what's hype versus
884
00:52:57,415 --> 00:53:03,275
what's actually just practically good and it it actually is valuable to experiment
885
00:53:03,275 --> 00:53:07,795
with this stuff early on even if it is somewhat personally expensive in time
886
00:53:07,795 --> 00:53:12,495
and money but i kind of consider it like this is this is my ongoing education,
887
00:53:13,235 --> 00:53:17,915
And I don't go to college anymore, but I do invest in my ongoing education in
888
00:53:17,915 --> 00:53:20,515
some of these ways within reasonable means, right?
889
00:53:20,535 --> 00:53:23,215
I can't go crazy with it, and I sometimes just cut myself off.
890
00:53:23,375 --> 00:53:26,175
And another reason, we need more local solutions.
891
00:53:26,355 --> 00:53:30,615
We do. We do. And maybe somebody will even create a better agent framework one
892
00:53:30,615 --> 00:53:31,695
day. Thank you, Zach Attack.
893
00:53:32,255 --> 00:53:34,635
Gene Bean's back with 2020 Sats.
894
00:53:37,016 --> 00:53:40,476
This is happy birthday to JB. Thank you, Gene. Always good to hear from you.
895
00:53:40,556 --> 00:53:43,676
Hope you're doing good out there. Wonderful to see, Gene, in March.
896
00:53:43,796 --> 00:53:44,396
I hope so.
897
00:53:44,476 --> 00:53:45,656
I hope so. I hope so.
898
00:53:47,016 --> 00:53:50,236
Well, Red 5D comes in with a row of ducks.
899
00:53:51,596 --> 00:53:55,496
You mentioned the idea of having an agent read the show RSS feed for summaries
900
00:53:55,496 --> 00:53:59,096
and stuff, but with the size of the RSS data, especially ours,
901
00:53:59,376 --> 00:54:01,796
that would be a lot of tokens to process.
902
00:54:01,996 --> 00:54:06,656
So I'd actually recommend using MCP tools to process and search the data first.
903
00:54:06,656 --> 00:54:11,316
Here's an MCP server that I wrote to handle retrieving episode and transcript
904
00:54:11,316 --> 00:54:14,916
data from podcasting 2.0 compatible RSS feeds.
905
00:54:15,136 --> 00:54:17,756
I've really only tested it with JB feeds so far, though.
906
00:54:17,996 --> 00:54:21,956
Well, that's a big one. The Linux Unplugged one's a little ridiculous, I will admit.
907
00:54:21,976 --> 00:54:26,696
This is awesome. It's MIT licensed. It's written in Python over on GitHub.
908
00:54:26,696 --> 00:54:28,196
We will definitely have this in the show notes.
909
00:54:28,276 --> 00:54:32,676
Yeah, it lets your agent list shows, search episodes, get episodes, and get the transcript.
910
00:54:33,656 --> 00:54:37,796
So my agent provides me a morning report and it surfaces certain boosts and
911
00:54:37,796 --> 00:54:41,896
it put red 5Ds right to the top, right to the top.
912
00:54:41,956 --> 00:54:44,336
And it said it had a specific call out.
913
00:54:44,696 --> 00:54:48,836
Hey, he created this and this looks really useful. It saved tokens.
914
00:54:49,316 --> 00:54:50,556
You should let me have it.
915
00:54:50,616 --> 00:54:54,436
Yeah, that's exactly what Laura said. He's like, I think this would be really
916
00:54:54,436 --> 00:54:55,616
useful. Let's set this up.
917
00:54:55,716 --> 00:54:58,856
So it's funny because I have it monitoring the boost just so I can see what people are saying.
918
00:54:58,856 --> 00:55:02,336
and you know it's good for signal and stuff like that and and and really good
919
00:55:02,336 --> 00:55:06,976
sense of direction so and but this is the first time where you started surfacing
920
00:55:06,976 --> 00:55:11,176
interesting bits like this and reds came right to the top so appreciate that
921
00:55:11,176 --> 00:55:12,576
very very much thank you sir.
922
00:55:12,576 --> 00:55:17,676
Well turd ferguson boosts in 13,333 sets,
923
00:55:21,050 --> 00:55:25,810
So let's say you guys were right about agents managing Linux systems in the future.
924
00:55:26,410 --> 00:55:32,090
Makes you wonder how the big cloud providers would take advantage of a technology like that.
925
00:55:32,690 --> 00:55:36,750
Yeah, you do wonder, you know, what changes about fleet management and just
926
00:55:36,750 --> 00:55:41,770
wrangling APIs. And there's already so much YAML to manage in like declarative systems.
927
00:55:42,050 --> 00:55:47,790
Do they sit on top of like an Ansible and Kubernetes and then go out and deploy things?
928
00:55:47,790 --> 00:55:52,590
Or do we develop other new agent first things or like whole systems to sort
929
00:55:52,590 --> 00:55:58,530
of enforce more security layers or more review layers or adversarial layers
930
00:55:58,530 --> 00:56:02,650
on top of that to make sure like that your change sets are really heavily scrutinized?
931
00:56:02,810 --> 00:56:08,270
Do you think we would see cloud providers that lean into no AI agentic,
932
00:56:08,370 --> 00:56:10,530
no agent stuff? Do you think that could be a market?
933
00:56:14,236 --> 00:56:18,156
I doubt it. They want to take advantage of all of this.
934
00:56:18,156 --> 00:56:21,776
They do, because it just sells more of their stuff. So they're going to lean in, you're right.
935
00:56:21,956 --> 00:56:24,636
Well, I opt out of that. That's a good point.
936
00:56:24,796 --> 00:56:27,376
Okay, all right. Well, there goes that dream. All right. Well,
937
00:56:27,576 --> 00:56:29,456
that's an interesting question, Turd. Thank you.
938
00:56:30,096 --> 00:56:34,356
Tomato comes in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
939
00:56:35,656 --> 00:56:38,576
I love the discussion on the bots and especially the talk with Abe.
940
00:56:38,736 --> 00:56:41,576
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Abe's been updating us, too, in the Matrix.
941
00:56:41,576 --> 00:56:44,936
There's more going on over there in Abeverse.
942
00:56:45,176 --> 00:56:45,916
Planet of the Abe.
943
00:56:46,076 --> 00:56:49,276
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I don't want to spoil it, but I'm on, I think,
944
00:56:49,356 --> 00:56:51,036
the fifth book of Bobverse or fourth book.
945
00:56:51,116 --> 00:56:51,656
Oh, fun.
946
00:56:51,876 --> 00:56:57,476
And just a really, like a real, oh, crap moment just went down with AI.
947
00:56:58,576 --> 00:57:01,836
Fascinating timing on that. Thank you, everybody who boosted the show.
948
00:57:02,016 --> 00:57:04,456
Those of you who streamed them sats, we had 28 of you stream them,
949
00:57:04,596 --> 00:57:09,196
and you stacked collectively 38,385 sats amongst y'all.
950
00:57:09,276 --> 00:57:12,736
Very good job. It's a nice little showing right there. We really do appreciate that.
951
00:57:13,036 --> 00:57:16,396
When you combine that with our boosters who sent a message, including even those
952
00:57:16,396 --> 00:57:20,316
that were beloved below, we beloved them, below the 2,000-sat cutoff,
953
00:57:20,436 --> 00:57:22,956
which we do it for timing. But we read them all. We love them all.
954
00:57:23,516 --> 00:57:30,316
So our grand total, when you combine it all together, for this episode was 149,531 sats.
955
00:57:35,618 --> 00:57:39,438
Now, I will say we have some big stuff coming up. We have our trip to scale
956
00:57:39,438 --> 00:57:41,658
and Planet Nix. We have LinuxFest Northwest.
957
00:57:41,878 --> 00:57:43,938
There's always a ton of expenses around that.
958
00:57:44,398 --> 00:57:48,338
And we're always doing it on a really super lean budget. So if you want to boost
959
00:57:48,338 --> 00:57:51,318
the dip while the sats are cheap and support our upcoming events,
960
00:57:51,318 --> 00:57:53,978
this could be a great time to get a message on the show.
961
00:57:54,078 --> 00:57:56,218
Even if you don't have anything that profound to say, if you just want to send
962
00:57:56,218 --> 00:57:59,178
the value, we'll stack that and use that towards our upcoming trips.
963
00:57:59,238 --> 00:58:00,738
And we really do appreciate it very much.
964
00:58:01,258 --> 00:58:05,238
Fountain FM makes it really easy to get started. But there are a bunch of ways,
965
00:58:05,298 --> 00:58:09,838
including self-hosted ways, they use things like Albi and Podverse and whatnot.
966
00:58:09,838 --> 00:58:13,878
That's all open source, top to bottom, from the software to the payment infrastructure.
967
00:58:14,178 --> 00:58:17,038
Thank everybody who supports us, including our members.
968
00:58:19,358 --> 00:58:24,218
All right. So let's go through these picks because I found one and Brent found
969
00:58:24,218 --> 00:58:28,878
one. And I think Brent's is going to be really handy for anybody that isn't using a stock ROM.
970
00:58:29,118 --> 00:58:33,238
I sent this app immediately to Jeff because it fits his personality perfectly.
971
00:58:33,838 --> 00:58:39,538
This app is called Plexus, and I just found it browsing the FDroid repository,
972
00:58:39,538 --> 00:58:41,118
as you should do from time to time.
973
00:58:41,338 --> 00:58:41,538
I do.
974
00:58:42,698 --> 00:58:43,498
I like that.
975
00:58:43,818 --> 00:58:47,598
It's calming and fun, which is also why I have like 400 apps on my phone.
976
00:58:48,118 --> 00:58:51,898
Yeah. You need to also, I think you need a rule. One in, one out, Chris.
977
00:58:52,078 --> 00:58:53,278
That's a good idea. That's a good idea.
978
00:58:54,978 --> 00:58:57,458
Plexus provides insights into
979
00:58:57,458 --> 00:59:03,658
app compatibility using the Google Play services. so it's a crowdsourced,
980
00:59:05,231 --> 00:59:10,211
I guess, definition of which apps work really well without Google Play services,
981
00:59:10,751 --> 00:59:17,851
also with the Micro G service, and which apps may or may not encounter issues
982
00:59:17,851 --> 00:59:19,991
if you have these installed or not.
983
00:59:20,171 --> 00:59:25,871
So if you're using a custom ROM like Lineage OS or maybe something like Calix
984
00:59:25,871 --> 00:59:33,211
OS, you can see how compatible your current apps are if you are migrating from one system to another.
985
00:59:33,431 --> 00:59:34,331
Can I ask you something?
986
00:59:35,231 --> 00:59:35,751
Oh, yeah, sure.
987
00:59:36,051 --> 00:59:38,011
Did you give it a go on your Paizo?
988
00:59:39,031 --> 00:59:40,791
Well, I was really hoping Jeff would do that for me.
989
00:59:41,071 --> 00:59:42,051
You didn't give it a go.
990
00:59:42,771 --> 00:59:43,831
No, I didn't give it a go.
991
00:59:43,831 --> 00:59:47,511
You're a paranoid guy when it comes to this kind of stuff. Not to use the word,
992
00:59:47,731 --> 00:59:49,051
but you were kind of paranoid.
993
00:59:49,231 --> 00:59:57,291
I have to report that using Giraffe in OS has considerably changed my level
994
00:59:57,291 --> 00:59:59,451
of anxiety about this particular problem.
995
01:00:01,011 --> 01:00:05,711
because Graphene has a sandbox Google Play, and that has softened me.
996
01:00:05,871 --> 01:00:07,551
And I don't know if that's good.
997
01:00:07,651 --> 01:00:07,791
Right.
998
01:00:07,891 --> 01:00:10,631
But I'm going to blame you, Chris, because you brought me on this bandwagon,
999
01:00:10,631 --> 01:00:15,051
and it's made me way more willing to install apps I would have never done before.
1000
01:00:17,311 --> 01:00:21,171
So maybe the community could tell me whether that was a good idea or if I should
1001
01:00:21,171 --> 01:00:23,411
go back to being a little bit more paranoid.
1002
01:00:23,571 --> 01:00:26,651
I have felt pretty safe about the Giraffe, you know, a sandbox Google stuff
1003
01:00:26,651 --> 01:00:30,711
as well, which is probably why I have 300 apps on my phone. why is.
1004
01:00:30,711 --> 01:00:32,591
It going down how many of them would work without it.
1005
01:00:32,591 --> 01:00:33,751
You said 400 last time.
1006
01:00:33,751 --> 01:00:39,831
I was exaggerating it is i think it's closer to five it is no it is closer to 300 you're.
1007
01:00:39,831 --> 01:00:40,911
Updating let's be terrible.
1008
01:00:40,911 --> 01:00:44,431
Oh no it's the optimizing that's terrible the updating's not so bad because
1009
01:00:44,431 --> 01:00:49,431
that just happens in the background okay so you guys know me i love markdown
1010
01:00:49,431 --> 01:00:54,031
if i could think in markdown i would and i often will write myself a little
1011
01:00:54,031 --> 01:00:57,731
to do for the day just in a text document and i'll just format it in Markdown.
1012
01:00:58,211 --> 01:01:01,911
And I came across an app. I think it's German developers. Anybody have a guess
1013
01:01:01,911 --> 01:01:04,031
on how to pronounce this one? Maybe Brenton, you have a.
1014
01:01:05,088 --> 01:01:08,148
I'm going to go with Reinshrift. Reinshrift to do.
1015
01:01:08,248 --> 01:01:14,508
Reinshrift to do. And it is a Rust, Eduardia app. That's right. That's right.
1016
01:01:15,448 --> 01:01:20,908
That is a front end to very, very simple markdown to do management.
1017
01:01:21,168 --> 01:01:25,868
So if you like to manage your to do's with the markdown, this is a front end
1018
01:01:25,868 --> 01:01:30,448
to it that is designed to connect to a web dev instance, particularly Nextcloud.
1019
01:01:30,448 --> 01:01:33,368
So you could have ongoing sync
1020
01:01:33,368 --> 01:01:37,068
to-do notes formatted in Markdown that just save to any web dev share.
1021
01:01:37,268 --> 01:01:38,328
Oh, that's nice.
1022
01:01:38,528 --> 01:01:43,088
Yeah. Obviously, the idea is to lean into NextCloud, but any web dev share would
1023
01:01:43,088 --> 01:01:45,428
work. You can make it versionable via Git.
1024
01:01:45,848 --> 01:01:50,948
And if you're so inclined, there's an optional download to download a local
1025
01:01:50,948 --> 01:01:56,568
Whisper open source audio model so you can dictate your tasks to the application.
1026
01:01:56,768 --> 01:01:58,248
And it will write them in Markdown for you.
1027
01:01:58,428 --> 01:01:58,828
Nice.
1028
01:01:59,828 --> 01:02:05,148
And it's lean it's mean it could fit on your machine no problem at all and because
1029
01:02:05,148 --> 01:02:08,568
the back end is all text should you decide to stop using it,
1030
01:02:09,896 --> 01:02:11,536
Bob's your uncle. You got your files right there.
1031
01:02:11,536 --> 01:02:15,816
Looks like it's a CC by SA 4.0 license, Rust, Python, JavaScript,
1032
01:02:16,096 --> 01:02:18,256
HTML, all in there. There is a Docker file.
1033
01:02:18,876 --> 01:02:21,336
And no NICs yet, but it's cargo, so that should be easy.
1034
01:02:21,536 --> 01:02:24,756
It is a little bit of all of the above. And you don't often see an app these
1035
01:02:24,756 --> 01:02:28,096
days with the Creative Commons license, but it works.
1036
01:02:28,836 --> 01:02:32,016
So we'll check it in the show notes. We'll chuck it in the show notes for you.
1037
01:02:32,116 --> 01:02:33,896
It's like Plexus is GPL3.
1038
01:02:34,596 --> 01:02:37,156
Yes. Plexus is a good one. Nice find, Brent.
1039
01:02:37,616 --> 01:02:41,196
Okay, I have to say I felt bad about not trying Plexus. So in the time that
1040
01:02:41,196 --> 01:02:45,096
you gave us a second pick, I tried it. And it's pretty fabulous, I've got to say.
1041
01:02:45,416 --> 01:02:50,876
You can just see the entire database of the apps that have been tracked or looked at.
1042
01:02:51,136 --> 01:02:54,136
Or you can just filter by installed apps. So Chris, you can look at your 300
1043
01:02:54,136 --> 01:02:57,716
apps and have a little homework when you're trying to fall asleep.
1044
01:02:58,056 --> 01:03:03,196
It is fabulous. And they rate, kind of like rating video games with how they work on wine.
1045
01:03:03,216 --> 01:03:06,516
It has like silver ratings, gold ratings, that kind of thing for various apps.
1046
01:03:06,516 --> 01:03:10,216
depending on if you're using Micro G or without Google Play services.
1047
01:03:10,496 --> 01:03:12,236
Oh, look, Audiobookshelf is gold. That's nice.
1048
01:03:12,856 --> 01:03:13,396
Mm-hmm.
1049
01:03:14,409 --> 01:03:14,809
Okay.
1050
01:03:15,149 --> 01:03:16,189
I'll be go. Not so great.
1051
01:03:16,589 --> 01:03:21,169
Yeah, well, that's fine by me. In a way, it's a badge of honor, I say.
1052
01:03:22,069 --> 01:03:25,509
The least compatible I am with Google Play, the better. It's a badge of honor.
1053
01:03:25,769 --> 01:03:28,689
So if you'd like to get links to our picks or anything else we've talked about,
1054
01:03:29,249 --> 01:03:33,309
linuxunplugged.com slash 653 is where you go for that.
1055
01:03:33,389 --> 01:03:37,129
In fact, we have a whole bunch of episodes over there. You could say a whole back catalog, perhaps.
1056
01:03:37,789 --> 01:03:41,769
In fact, maybe there's even hidden metadata that they can't see on the website,
1057
01:03:41,769 --> 01:03:43,709
but it lurks in the RSS feed.
1058
01:03:43,709 --> 01:03:48,869
Well, how else would that dope MCP server work if we didn't have fancy podcasting
1059
01:03:48,869 --> 01:03:51,709
2.0 namespace tags for chapters and transcripts?
1060
01:03:51,749 --> 01:03:57,209
That's right. So the chapters are available as high-resolution data. Let's call it that.
1061
01:03:57,269 --> 01:03:57,789
And the JSON.
1062
01:03:58,109 --> 01:04:02,849
Yep, as well as the transcript, also available for you, all in the RSS feed.
1063
01:04:03,029 --> 01:04:08,549
And often a video version of the show is tucked in that RSS feed as well if you go through there.
1064
01:04:08,609 --> 01:04:11,969
And if you've got a podcasting 2.0 app, it just exposes all of that for you.
1065
01:04:11,969 --> 01:04:14,649
Just whisper alternate enclosure to yourself at night.
1066
01:04:15,029 --> 01:04:16,729
And of course, we also stream live.
1067
01:04:20,009 --> 01:04:23,209
Yeah, join us on a Sunday, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.
1068
01:04:23,449 --> 01:04:26,469
Make it a Tuesday on a Sunday. Hang out with our Mumble crew,
1069
01:04:26,669 --> 01:04:30,969
our Matrix room. Give it that live vibe.
1070
01:04:31,609 --> 01:04:36,049
jblive.tv, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar for your local time.
1071
01:04:36,349 --> 01:04:40,069
And remember, if you want more show, that's how you do it. You feel like you
1072
01:04:40,069 --> 01:04:44,849
need more, there's a bootleg, which is clocking in at a whole lot of extra show right now.
1073
01:04:45,149 --> 01:04:47,189
Oh, my gosh. That's a lot of show.
1074
01:04:47,529 --> 01:04:49,389
All right. Links to everything we talked about. Links to Unplugged.com,
1075
01:04:49,469 --> 01:04:52,449
Matrix Room, all of that details are there. It's a website.
1076
01:04:52,809 --> 01:04:56,149
Thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of Your Unplugged Program.
1077
01:04:56,369 --> 01:04:58,369
And we'll see you back here next Tuesday.
1078
01:04:59,129 --> 01:05:00,309
As in Sunday.