Planeta Libre en Español

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for systemd for Linux SysAdmins , a book published in Apress systemd. Yes, in full lowercase. If there was ever a technology to cause controversy in the Linux world, this is it. Since its inception in 2010, systemd’s goals were set quite high: to replace the vital part in every Linux system that takes care of the system boot process. It quickly reached maturity, allowing it to be adopted as the main init system in most major distributions just five yea...

Today we went to see a theater play in UNAM’s Cultural Center, very near our home. No, not inside any of the theaters — in the square just between Sala Nezahualcóyotl, Foro Sor Juana and Sala Carlos Chávez. . So, yes, not only we had fun, but we had fun for free! UNAM’s El Carro de Comedias is an itinerant theater company that often presents in this same spot (but you can see the stage is foldable, and they do have presentations elsewhere, of this same play even). I went with my family, and we e...

I am a teacher. Since January 2013, I have been teaching the “Operating Systems” course at the Engineering Faculty of UNAM . And yes, that means May and November are highly stressful months, where I have to review the work done by my students and… sigh … come to the difficult decisions leading to a numerical score that will, in very very short, represent the 64 hours they spent listening to me talk and how they shaped their understanding, plus the countless (in the sense that I cannot count them...

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for Heads we win, tails you lose — AI detectors in education , a article published in Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management • Routledge Taylor&Francis Group Educators throughout the world are tasked with the difficult requirement of evaluating student work, making sure the grades meaningfully reflect the students’ understanding of the subject, and that a graded assignment maps to the relevant work used in solving it. After the “eruption...

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for As Answers Get Cheaper, Questions Grow Dearer , a article published in Communications of the ACM This opinion article tackles two much-discussed issues: the impact of large language models (LLMs) on job displacement, and workplace productivity. The authors begin by making a comparison, likening the effects of LLMs on knowledge-intensive work to that of photogrpahy on early 19th-century artists. While the invention of photography didn’t result in pa...

Finally, some light at the end of the tunnel! As I have said in this blog and elsewhere, after putting quite a bit of work into generating the Debian Raspberry Pi images between late 2018 and 2023, I had to recognize I don’t have the time and energy to properly care for it. I even registered a GSoC project for it. I mentored Kurva Prashanth, who did good work on the vmdb2 scripts we use for the image generation — but in the end, was unable to push them to be built in Debian infrastructure. Maybe...

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for The Innovation Engine • Government-funded Academic Research , a article published in Communications of the ACM David Patterson needs no introduction. As the brain behind many of the inventions that shaped the computing industry (repeatedly) over the past 40 years, when he put forward an opinion article in Communications of the ACM targeting the current political waves in the US, I knew I had to write this review. Patterson worked for a a public uni...

This post is an unpublished review for Python Workout 2nd edition Note: While I often post the reviews I write for Computing Reviews , this is a shorter review requested to me by Manning. They kindly invited me several months ago to be a reviewer for Python Workout, 2nd edition ; after giving them my opinions, I am happy to widely recommend this book to interested readers. Python is relatively an easy programming language to learn, allowing you to start coding pretty quickly. However, there’s a ...

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for Artificial Intelligence • Play or break the deck , a book published in Traficantes de Sueños As a little disclaimer, I usually review books or articles written in English, and although I will offer this review to Computing Reviews as usual, it is likely it will not be published. The title of this book in Spanish is Inteligencia artificial: jugar o romper la baraja . I was pointed at this book, published last October by Margarita Padilla García, a w...

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for Unique security and privacy threats of large language models — a comprehensive survey , a article published in ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 58, No. 4 Much has been written about large language models (LLMs) being a risk to user security and privacy, including the issue that, being trained with datasets whose provenance and licensing are not always clear, they can be tricked into producing bits of data that should not be divulgated. I took on reading...