prealpinux

There is a lot of hype around LLM (Large Language Models), the technology behind artificial intelligence, but less interest in SLM (Small Language Models).

I think this is due to the fact that LLM can use cloud services to be used anywhere (you just need an internet connection).

But there are scenarios where there is no connection available or you want to avoid using the cloud for privacy reasons.

That’s why I believe Small Language Models is a very promising technology.

Think about small devices that can use specialized SLM to do things without being connected to the web. Another case study can be smartphones that use local artificial intelligence (on the device) without having to send their data to a cloud server.

Small Language Models can perform very specific tasks, providing people and companies with an off-grid solution.

It’s a very interesting technology and I’m very curious to see how it will be implemented.

Recently, there has been a terrible trend in the tech industry: selling devices that WILL have great features. You pay them now, and they promise to bring you new functionalities in the future.
Rabbit R1, Humane AI Pin, Apple AI enabled features, Copilot+ PCs are only few examples of that.
It’s a shame that market is accepting this way of selling unfinished products.

One browser to rule them all.

This seems to be a kind of mantra in the tech world. Companies have been fighting for browser supremacy since 1995 (eons ago, if we are talking about software).

The point is that your browser is your door to the Web.

Not surprisingly, browsers are now implementing Artificial Intelligence features into them so they can help you get information, article summaries, and more.

The price for this is likely to be our privacy and a major change in the way we use Internet.

I’ve made a lot of small improvements to my blog recently.
I wanted to make my blog theme more personal and give people the opportunity to share my posts and leave comments. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but for now I’m quite happy with the results.
I believe a blog is a public space where people can come and go freely, but I want them to feel at home anyway. A cosy place they can return to whenever they want.
Building an open social community means giving people the opportunity to share and discuss ideas and thoughts. I think the social web is based on building connections between people and individual blogs can play a huge role in that.

Some weeks ago I read an interesting blog post by Manuel Moreale about “The social web”.

Manuel correctly clarifies that being social on the web does not mean you are part of the social web and that there is also a lot of misconception around IndieWeb definition.

How can we define a human web where there is no algorithmic filtering and where we can deliberately be part of?

That is the web I’m arguing for. A web that is intentional, where what you consume is curated by you and you alone, where connections with others happen because you made the conscious effort to connect. And at this point, I don’t fucking know how to call that web. Maybe “personal web”? I guess I’ll go with that from now on. - Manuel Moreale · The Social Web

I think calling it “personal web” is still confusing because even algorithms are tailored to be personal.

That said I’ve decided to use the term “intentional web” from now on.

Intentional web is the web that YOU choose to interact with:

• Having your own website and blogging on it is intentional web;
• Surfing the web personally choosing online content is intentional web;
• Following sites with RSS is intentional web.

I want to be part of this kind of web.

A few days ago I came across an interesting post by Annie Mueller about getting older:

I remember having a conversation with my Dad right after I graduated college. So I was 22 and he was 52. I don’t remember what we were talking about but I remember when he looked at me and said, “You know, I still feel just the same inside as I did when I was 22.” - anniemueller.com

I was discussing the same thing with one of my colleagues last month and we came to the same conclusion, even though we’re getting older we feel the same as we did when we were much younger.

Probably our brain plays a big part in this, there are young people who seem old (not biologically but mentally) and other people who feel young even though they are in their eighties.

I believe that blogging (writing) is a kind of good therapy.

You write things down and let your thoughts flow. When you are in a flow, words can come one after the other.

As I’ve written many times, I don’t write for an audience (though I’m very happy if you find my ramblings useful), but for the need to let my ideas flow freely.

Does that make sense to you?

Thanks to Robb Knight’s explanation of how Author Tags work on Mastodon, I was able to activate them on my Micro.blog site.

Prerequisite: I’m using the Sumo theme, which has full support for Microhooks.

The process is very simple from the Micro.blog web dashboard: go to Design -> Open Theme -> New Template

Give the template this location and name:

layouts/partials/microhook-head.html

insert this code using your fediverse handle name instead of mine:

<meta property="fediverse:creator" content="@prealpinux@mastodon.uno" />

Well done, you’re ready to go!

Disclaimer: I tried to use multiple author tags, but there seems to be no support for them at the moment.

There are a lot of funny domain extensions you can use for your website today. Some of them are run by companies (like .blog), while others are country top level domains. Examples of country top level domains are .it for Italy, .us for the USA, .de for Germany and so on… Most of us might think that using a “national top level domain” is safer than using a domain completely run by a private company, but this isn’t entirely true.

For example the British goverment has recently approved the transfer of sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This means that .IO domains seriously risk to disappear in few years, as explained in this article.

Climate and political changes can put your domain existence at serious risk. It is always better to keep this in mind, especially if you choose an exotic domain name for your website (as I did several times).

As I just wrote on my jrn.sh blog, I’m trying to consolidate all my blog posts here on prealpinux.com.

There is a new slash page /subscribe where you can find all the feeds you can use.

For my 🇬🇧 English readers, I suggest you just add this one to your feed reader: https://prealpinux.com/categories/eng/feed.xml

If you speak 🇮🇹 Italian, please also add this one: https://prealpinux.com/categories/ita/feed.xml

Do you like photos? I’m on 📷 Pixelfed, but if you prefer I have a feed just for you.

You can also add micro-posts to your feed reader, but in this case it’s probably better for you to follow me on social networks, unless you’re a big fan of mine 🤣🤣🤣.

I have tried Nostr (a new protocol for decentralized social media) and would like to give a personal & non-technical verdict on this system.

First doubt: if the average user is already struggling to use Mastodon at first glance, I can imagine how they might find themselves overwhelmed by such a system.

Second doubt: the fact that it is uncensored is a good thing, but also a major Achilles’ heel. As far as I understand it, there is in fact no content moderation.

Have you tried Nostr? If so, what do you think?