A couple weeks ago I saw this DEC VT102 from about 1980 at Free Geek Twin Cities. It brought back memories.
An old DEC terminal
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Category Archives: computers
Windycon 2024
Ubuntu vs. Debian
I installed Ubuntu 24.04 on my Dell desktop. This went well, but after installation I noticed the same problem with Thunderbird that I had seen on an Ubuntu upgrade on an old HP desktop. When I wrote before about not seeing the issue on a fresh installation it probably meant my testing was inadequate. This is a big problem: I am not willing to give up my multi-level email folders.
An Ubuntu upgrade
I finally upgraded my “daily driver” system, an HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF, from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04. The process went well, but I did have to do some cleanup work afterwards and not everything is working as it should..
More on the Dell desktop
I am continuing to work on my new (for me) Dell Inspiron 3670. I have now upgraded the RAM to 32 GB, replacing the 2 8 GB DIMMs with 2 new 16 GB DIMMs. I ordered the memory from Crucial, which has an “Upgrade my computer” button on its home page. With this you can look up exactly what DRAM and SSD upgrades are apppropriate for your particular system. Physically installing the new DIMMs was a little tricky simply because of where the memory slots are placed on the motherboard, but I managed. Since I am now at the maximum possible memory I will not have to do this again, unless one of DIMMs fails.
A Dell desktop
I found a Dell Inspiron 3670 at Repowered. 16 GB DDR4 RAM, a 512 GB NVMe SSD, Windows 11 Pro for about $300. I need to get some experience with Windows 11, so I bought it. It is working out quite well for me.
Circular Slide Rules
I was browsing some web sites about LLMs and found a link to The Cardboard Computer, which turned out to be about circular slide rules. I have no idea why these are are supposed to be related to LLMs or any other modern AI work, since the first slide rule was invented in 1632. I still have the circular slide rule I bought in high school (1964-68):
Cory Doctorow on Apple
The foundational tenet of “the Cult of Mac” is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:
From The antitrust case against Apple. See also:
An LLM on a home computer
I saw How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes and decided to try it on my Linux desktop system. It took a lot more than 10 minutes but I got it to work.
Looking at the BIOS, the system dates from 2013. Here are the details:
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 