Blog

It's my job as an advisor to say no

Over the past few months, I’ve had multiple conversations with PhD students around a similar topic: the fact that a significant part of my coaching involves critiquing their work and suggesting alternatives.

Llama's Legal Labyrinth

Meta just introduced the Llama 3.1 AI model and accompanied the launch with a blog post explaining “Open Source AI is the path forward” [a]. But buyer beware: Llama 3.1 itself is a legal labyrinth.

What is the Apache 2.0 LLVM Exception?

Some open source projects use the Apache 2.0 license “with LLVM Exception” SPDX: "Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception"). So what is the “LLVM exception” exactly, and why do some projects add it to their license?

A year in the Ubuntu Community Council

Let me tell you a secret. When I was elected to the Ubuntu Community Council in the fall of 2022, I had no idea what to expect. I was excited to start working, but I had no idea what I would be working on.

Dell EcoLoop Pro vs Premier backpack

I bought the Dell EcoLoop Pro, so you don’t have to. Dell EcoLoop Pro At the beginning of this year, I bought the Dell EcoLoop Pro Slim and regretted it immediately. The advertising for it is borderline deceptive, in my opinion.

Our students can use AI for their master's thesis - the policy

During my day job, I teach a number of computer science courses in the Information Engineering Technology programme at Ghent University. The release of ChatGPT and GPT-4 has a large impact on our education because it can get grades of above 80% on most exams and can effortlessly write essays on complex subjects. Students are aware of this, and are thus increasingly using Large Language Models (LLMs) in their education for a number of tasks.

Using Dell MH3021P speakerphone on Ubuntu Linux

I recently bought the Dell MH3021P speakerphone. I want to use it for hybrid meetings and for recording audio during lectures. Dell doesn’t say the device supports Linux, so I was curious to see how much of the device works. Google didn’t have an answer so I bought the device to test it for myself.

You can finally disable Snap updates

During the Ubuntu Summit, a long-awaited feature was quietly released for preview: You can now completely turn off automatic updates of snaps. “The snap refresh --hold command holds, or postpones, snap updates for individual snaps, or for all snaps on the system, either indefinitely or for a specified period of time.”

Lightweight Kubernetes Operators with WebAssembly

We created a prototype that runs Kubernetes operators in WebAssembly (wasm) and suspends them to disk when they are not used. Why Developers want to use Kubernetes in the edge, but it uses too much memory for most devices. Running k8s operators in wasm greatly reduces their memory overhead and allows us to start and stop them dynamically. This way, they only run when there is actually something to do.

Open Google Drive and Google Calendar as a specific user

Quick tip: did you know you can open Google Drive, Google Calendar and more as a specific user? Just add ?authuser= and your URL encoded email address behind the address.

Older blog (in Dutch)

In 2013 I blogged almost daily about my internship in Kigoma, Tanzania.

Read it →