Paco GB fgblanch

Anti-hype LLM reading list

Goals: Add links that are reasonable and good explanations of how stuff works. No hype and no vendor content if possible. Practical first-hand accounts of models in prod eagerly sought.

Foundational Concepts

Pre-Transformer Models

Purpose

Bootstrap knowledge of LLMs ASAP. With a bias/focus to GPT.

Avoid being a link dump. Try to provide only valuable well tuned information.

Prelude

Neural network links before starting with transformers.

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn

Disclaimer: This piece is written anonymously. The names of a few particular companies are mentioned, but as common examples only.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I'd known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I'm not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would

Using Apple’s Aerial Screensavers on Ubuntu After coming across the [Aerial] (https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial) screensavers for Mac, and installing them, I decided that I had had enough of the graphics-demos of my Ubuntu Precise system. I hope to provide a simple guide on how to add them to your setup as well.

First, you need to install xscreensaver (for example with aptitude, but your distro should have it):

sudo aptitude install xscreensaver

Quick List of Resources for Topological Data Analysis with Emphasis on Machine Learning

This is just a quick list of resourses on TDA that I put together for @rickasaurus after he was asking for links to papers, books, etc on Twitter and is by no means an exhaustive list.

Survey Papers

Both Carlsson's and Ghrist's survey papers offer a very good introduction to the subject

Topology and Data by Gunnar Carlsson
Barcodes: The Persistent Topology of Data by Robert Ghrist

Other Papers and Web Resources

Extracting insights from the shape of complex data using topology A good introductory paper in Nature on the Mapper algorithm.

Chromium OS ft. Docker

Chromium OS is cool. Chromium OS with crouton is cooler. Chromium OS with Docker is even cooler. This is specifically a guide for the Chromebook Pixel 2 (2015), but I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work with other devices.

Create a build environment
Customize the kernel
Build Chromium OS
Flash Chromium OS to USB
Install Chromium OS

Customize Chromebook Chrosh Shell Environment

Requirement: Chromebook, Common Sense, Commandline Ablity, 1 hour of time

Dear developers with a spare Chromebook lets inject a little personalization into your Crosh shell with custom fonts, the solarized theme, and extra secure shell options.

Also, keep in mind that the terms Chrosh, Chrosh Window, and Secure Shell all refer to various versions and extentions built around the ChromeOS terminal. Settings that affect the ChromeOS terminal are global.

Custom Fonts

Operational PGP

This is a guide on how to email securely.

There are many guides on how to install and use PGP to encrypt email. This is not one of them. This is a guide on secure communication using email with PGP encryption. If you are not familiar with PGP, please read another guide first. If you are comfortable using PGP to encrypt and decrypt emails, this guide will raise your security to the next level.

#Non-mathematical Introductions

#Videos

	#!/bin/sh
	## Requires custom kernel to be installed in Chrome OS
	## Copies files from my archlinux chroot into a temp folder and runs docker from there.
	## Running this on boot of Chrome OS so my version of the docker daemon is upgraded by
	## pacman in the chroot.

	set -e
	chroot=/usr/local/chroots/arch
	run=/usr/local/tmp/docker