False Fear of Open-Source AI Models

Introduction I’ve blogged recently on running AI models locally using open-source product such as LM Studio or ComfyUI. Many AI models are released as open-source, and anyone can run…

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First Look at LM Studio Bionic

First Look at LM Studio Bionic Introduction Agentic AI is the new in thing, and we see it built into Microsoft Office and Visual Studio via Microsoft’s Co-pilot feature. These allow AIs to edit you…

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Generating AI Images with ComfyUI

Introduction A couple of weeks ago, I talked about LM Studio that lets you run AI models like ChatGPT locally on your laptop. LM Studio is great for text-based AI models but doesn’t suppo…

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Is AI Making Things Better or Worse?

Introduction AI dominates the news both good and bad. The only reason the US economy hasn’t completely collapsed under Trump is due to the ongoing AI investment frenzy. There is a huge building boo…

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Do We Really Need Data Centers?

Introduction There is a lot of opposition to tech companies building data centers in various communities around the world. The objections have to do with the data centers taking all the water and e…

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Linux Kills strncpy

Introduction The C string library is compact, fast and efficient. However, if not used correctly and carefully, it leads to buffer overrun errors which either cause programs to crash or worse allow…

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ARM Tries to be Everywhere

Introduction ARM is best known for providing the CPU chips used in smart phones and tablets. Its CPUs are power efficient allowing longer battery life while still providing a lot of processing powe…

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Exploring the Virtual OS Museum

Introduction The Virtual OS Museum is literally a museum of 570 distinct operating systems. Check out their website for screen grabs and a list of everything included. You can’t physicall…

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Broken speaker? Finicky zipper? Anticonsumerist Repair Cafes urge you to fix it instead of pitch it

Repair Cafes are part of a new brand of anticonsumerism. The cafes and other efforts try to offer an alternative to mass-produced, disposable goods that have dominated the economy for the last half-ce...

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Can Nvidia RTX Spark Let Windows Catch up to the Mac?

Introduction Apple has changed CPU architectures for their desktop and laptop computers several times. The original Apple II’s used the 8-bit MOS 6502. This CPU never transitioned properly to …

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Problems with Canada’s Bill C-22

Introduction Bill C-22, also known as the Lawful Access Act, aims to modernize Canada’s legal framework for law enforcement to investigate digital crimes, including provisions for accessing d…

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Ubuntu 26.04 Review

Introduction I reviewed Ubuntu 25.10 late last year on my M1 Apple MacBook Air using UTM virtualization software. Ubuntu 26.04 was released last month which is an LTS version, t…

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Writing Your First ARM Assembly Program (Step-by-Step)

Introduction A couple of weeks ago, I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of blog topics. “Writing Your First ARM Assembly Program (Step-by-Step)” was one of the topics, so I asked Copilot embedde…

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B.C. Search and Rescue teams stream to Clearwater for rope rescue training - Clearwater Times

About 100 search and rescue members attended from across the province

clearwatertimes.com

Why Learn Assembly in 2026? Still Relevant or Pure Nostalgia?

Introduction In my last blog post, I asked ChatGPT for a list of blog topics. This is the first one it suggested, which I fed into ChatGPT to get a blog post. The interesting thing is that I cover …

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Is AI Replacing Bloggers?

Introduction I started MS Word to create today’s blog posting. When you create a new blank document in Microsoft Word, above the blank document is a dialog that says: “Describe what you’d like to d…

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Single Sign-on, Privacy and US Big Tech

Introduction Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft offer single sign-on solutions to simplify signing on to a variety of websites and other services. If you are already signed on …

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AI Companies Recent Bad Behaviour

Introduction AI companies such as OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Anthropic and Google have been in the news a lot recently for all the wrong reasons. None of the AI products are profitable and all require huge…

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Moving off American Tech – Continued

Introduction US Tech companies are Trump’s biggest supporters and seem intent on doing harm to everyone’s democracy and freedoms. All in the fear of regulation and taxation. Most US tech companies …

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Elbows Up

Introduction Today the Supreme Court of the US ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs are invalid and illegal. This doesn’t affect Canada so much as most of our exports are covered via CUSMA and some o…

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#featuredfriday #raspberrypi #assemblylanguage #programming #python #apressauthor #motivation #tech #computerhardware #robotics #programminglanguage | Apress

This week’s #𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 shines the spotlight on Stephen Smith, author of “𝗥𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆 𝗣𝗶 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝟮𝗲: 𝗔𝗥𝗠 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴.” 𝗤: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸? “The fir...

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Dutch defense chief: F-35s can be jailbroken like iPhones

: No worries if the US doesn't want to be friends with Europe anymore

theregister.com

Bias and Toxicity in Generative AI

Introduction There has been quite an explosion of Generative AI programs recently including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Facebook’s Llama, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Anthropic’s Claude, and xAI’s G…

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The Generative AI Race

Introduction Over the past couple of days Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have seen their stocks plummet when they released generally good earnings, but gigantic plans to each spend about $200 b…

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Canadian Tech Resiliency

Introduction I’m with the Sunshine Coast Amateur Radio Club Society and one of the goals of this club is to offer communications resiliency. What happens if during an earthquake, forest fire …

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Review of Science Under Siege

Introduction I recently finished reading “Science Under Siege” by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez. Michael Mann is a climate scientist who writes extensively about global warming and hence has been at…

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Destination dupes: Where to go instead of the US

Big skies, bold cities and iconic prison islands: these destinations offer a familiar feel with a global twist.

bbc.com

Review of Taming Silicon Valley

Introduction I recently read the book: Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us by Gary F. Marcus. This is a quick review of the book along with some thoughts on how things hav…

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