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2024-03-24

Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2024

I attended the Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2024 and it was great fun1:

Disclaimer as within my last conference: I’m paraphrasing (italic) the speaker based on my notes and memories as best as I can.

Content

Analoge Fotos mit freier Software digitalisieren

The kernel developer Heiko Stübner held a talk (video) about digitalizing analog photos using free software. Since I’m a hobby photographer (see various self-made featured images), this was a great opportunity to get more in-depth knowledge.

I’ve asked what is the best setup to start with: The best analog camera is the on you can get on ebay.[…] If you already have a digital camera, stick with the brand to re-use the equipment.[…]. Start with negative films Fomapan or Kodak Gold.

Wie funktioniert ChatGPT?

Michael Christen’s lecture (video) was a historic journey through 120yrs. of artificial intelligence break-throughs.

Learnings:

RocketLang - Mein eigener kleiner BER

Robert (former colleague, now at Mozilla) gave a talk (video) about his implementation of MonkeyLang called RocketLang based on the book Writing An Interpreter In Go.

It was an insightful journey through one of those never-ending hobby-projects. It was interesting to see how Robert took language decisions and more interestingly reverted/fixed former decisions. He encouraged people to feel ok in abandoning personal projects for a while, come back later and to make more useless projects. I can totally relate to that. Take this blog for example: I write every now and then, correct old blog posts or correct nothing at all. Who is judging my posts anyway apart from myself? This is fun and it should stay fun :)

Shameless plug: I’ve introduced itterable integer in RocketLang.

Der Compiler: Eine Einführung für Anfänger

This compressed roller coaster ride (video) through my compiler module back then at the HTW by Benjamin Stürz reminded me of the good old times :‘)

Mini-LLM selbst gemacht

The learning about language models within this lecture (video) was insane. Martin Neitzel showed how a minimal LLM (Large Language Model) works using the array-language J and markov chains. It’s basically “autocomplete on steroids”.

Minimal approach using one follow-up character:

  1. define an input text, e.g. Chemnitzer Linuxtage
  2. for each unique character, make a list about each follow-up character, e.g. n -> [i,u]
  3. end of the input is connected to the beginning, so e -> [m,c]
  4. define an input char and grab a random character from its map, e.g. f('n') = random([i,u]) = i

This works similar to autocomplete but rather than suggesting every follow-up character, it chooses a random one.

Extended approach with n followup characters and m output length:

  1. use larger input, e.g. scrape CLT24 website
  2. for each unique character, make a list about each n follow up string, e.g. with n=2, e -> [mn, ch]
  3. define an input string, append a random followup and repeat until m has been reached

Outputs with different parameters:

It was very interesting to see how a simple markov-chain can be used to generate readable text. We1 were so excited about the lecture and the J language, that we registered for the J Workshop.

(Fast) alles was man an der Uni nicht lernt

The lecture (video) from the SUSE Software Engineer Dan Čermák was about contributing to- and maintaining open-source projects. He described his experiences with open-source communities and their dynamics: Technology changes, [but] you always have to work with people.

J Workskop

We1 had three awesome hours of learning the fundamentals of the array-language J from the inventor Kenneth E. Iversion.

Sticker


  1. Together with Flipez
  2. Didn’t find a proper translation…
  3. I get the intention for combining negative and doctor, but the name is nevertheless bad. Some alternative suggestions: happyNegative (because happy is a positive emotion and it converts a negative to a positive), NegativeNegative (inverting the inverted makes it uninverted), DrDark, DrNegative…