gavinj.net

Thoughts on technology, infrastructure, and AI

Is Ubuntu 26.04 the Start of the Linux AI Desktop?

May 10, 2026 • ubuntu, linux, ai

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is not trying to turn the desktop into a chatbot. It is making it easier to run AI tools locally, see what hardware is being used, and choose which models belong on your machine.

The Open Source Path from VPN Sprawl to Zero Trust Access

May 6, 2026 • pangolin, zero-trust, ztna

My hands-on evaluation of Pangolin Community Edition as a possible production access layer for a small multi-team environment, including Enterprise Edition features and comparisons with Headscale, Tailscale, and Twingate.

Essential Eight on Linux, Part 8 of 8: Regular Backups on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

May 5, 2026 • essential-eight, asd, ism

Part 8 of an 8-part series on implementing the Essential Eight on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, covering regular backups with restic, snapshots, immutable storage, and Linux-first recovery design.

Essential Eight on Linux, Part 7 of 8: User Application Hardening on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

May 4, 2026 • essential-eight, asd, ism

Part 7 of an 8-part series on implementing the Essential Eight on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, covering browser and user application hardening with Firefox policies, snap confinement, AppArmor, and isolation controls.

Essential Eight on Linux, Part 6 of 8: Restrict Microsoft Office Macros on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

May 1, 2026 • essential-eight, asd, ism

Part 6 of an 8-part series on implementing the Essential Eight on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, covering the awkward Microsoft Office macro control gap on Linux and the best compensating patterns.

gav.ilicio.us

GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities
Same base model, better training: GLM-5.3 turns post-training alone into a claimed 50% coding boost—and an unsettling leap in end-to-end cyber exploitation.
Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork
Look out, Claude! Another multi-trillion-parameter open-weight model from China is landing, this one geared for coding.
Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management
A sharp defence of PKM: tools like Obsidian don't create knowledge; they give people a place to do it.
The Shape of Things to Come, Part 1: The Continuous Thunderdome
A dizzying vision of agent swarms, self-rewriting workflows and post-human CI/CD. I found it thoroughly confusing, but there may be gold here once it clicks.
WASTE — Weight-Aware Streaming Tensor Engine
Locally hosted Kimi K3 at a blistering 0.5 tokens per second!
Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era
A Microsoft Research visualization language that helps AI agents turn compact, human-editable specifications into polished charts across Vega-Lite, ECharts and Chart.js.
Because We Can
A great blog post that mirrors some of my feelings about AI export controls and how they relate to U.S. cryptographic export controls from 25 years ago.
Castle Map
Amazing map of castles located around the world.
late.sh
A cozy command-line clubhouse for computer people.
A Practical Guide to SSH Tunnels
A clean, visual guide to local, remote and dynamic SSH port forwarding.