Posts by NapTime ForTruth

Let's Encrypt rolls out free security certs for IP addresses

Re: "the dents i've made in the office wall when trying to explain to developers" ...

In fairness, phone books are appreciably rare of late, a bit thin on the ground. I do miss their manifold utility.

Australian airline Qantas reveals data theft impacting six million customers

You know...

... I'm not sure this ranks as "news" anymore. It seems like anyone who holds our data has, is, or inevitably will utterly lose control of it or otherwise squander that data with no meaningful repercussions.

It's like people getting shot during a war, there's no way to avoid it and nattering on about it is just depressing.

Water is wet. War is terrible. The vaunted "tech industry" is a chaotic scam to turn personal and business data into gifts for criminals.

If we're not willing or able to change that, can we at least stop taking about it?

(Icon for this being enough to drive a person to drink...more, a lot more.)

UK students flock to AI to help them cheat

I can't help but wonder...

... how many professors use AI to find cheaters, grade student papers, or devise test questions.

(...something, something, goose v. gander.)

RIP: Bill Atkinson, co-creator of Apple Lisa and Mac

Watching the Old Guard fade...

...is painful. I miss the literal genius and intellectual enthusiasm they brought to the fore, their unfiltered curiosity, desire, and dedication not merely to the business but to the craft.

Where are their equally creative intellectual successors? Surely not the crypto-crackpots, the Musks, the "it's sorta a flying car if you squint", the merely extractive capitalists.

I don't want flying cars, I want more Douglas Engelbarts, Bill Atkinsons, Steve Wozniacs, Dan Bricklins even. I want a new Old Guard with the same ferocious, infectious curiosity and simultaneous sense of wonder and whimsy.

Eh, maybe I just want the old guard back. Here's a pint raised to the forerunners, adventurers, and inventors who got us here. I hope I meet them when my later becomes "the late...".

Canva to job candidates: Thou shalt use AI during interviews

If I use AI in the interview...

...to successfully loot the company's coffers, do I get the job or just the loot? Or maybe I then own the company, both literally and figuratively?

Asking for a friend, obviously. Or a fiend, I'm not too choosey.

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Neither. It's a flex. It's the new 1,000 push-ups per day.

Also, possibly an obscure TikTok challenge.

Once they succeed they will presumably move on to competing for the most grotesque facial plastic surgery on the moon, weeping video about how they failed to correctly install the oh-my-god-SO-CUTE helmet on their exotic dog's ev suit replete with hi-def images of it's desicated body, and how to make grilled cheese sandwiches with a 960 megawatt mining laser and/or an escape thruster.

For the clicks (though "clicks" will be mispronounced as "science").

(Mine's the one stuck in the airlock door.)

KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast'

I founded and run a small group of technology companies. We do some Linux and some Windows because our clients do. I don't tell them what tools or versions or OSs to use, I meet them where they are. Many of them use relatively ancient or highly customized versions because the machines and the computers that run them were built to run those versions and only those versions - full stop.

I'm not an evangelist, I'm not the all-singing, all-dancing, do-it-my-way pitchman. I'm here to help folks do the work they need to do with the tools that work for them. They appreciate it, and they show their appreciation both financially and personally - they keep inviting us back.

Separately, somewhere along the line my father and his wife got old. They both have some cancer scars, and a high probability of more to come. They aren't in a position to relearn Windows in its latest, distractingly awful version, and learning Linux is right out, too. They just want to pay their bills, chat with friends and family, share photos of the grandkids, and keep up with their medical appointments.

Operating system providers routinely fail them and always will because unnecessary novelty and exploitive manipulation only solve problems for the exploitive manipulators.

Why is China deep in US networks? 'They're preparing for war,' HR McMaster tells lawmakers

Re: Crazy numbers

Maybe they're confusing cyber attacks with spam.

Alternatively, perhaps this is a new version of numerology.

Sergey Brin promises next generation of Glassholes will be much less conspicuous

Re: The problem isn't that they are conspicuous

As luck would have it, I'm visiting a beach community trying to get some vacation in before peak-season crowds.

The Faceplant-Meta-Zuck Ray-Bans are everywhere. The video lenses are relatively subtle, they appear to be on the outboard edges of the frames, just forward of the temples. They mostly look like ordinary Ray-Ban Warfarers.

And, yes, people actually wear them into restrooms and restaurants. Also, the glasses apparently link to your phone and respond to voice commands, which totally doesn't look like you're talking to your invisible friend...while recording everything and everyone around you.

This we got instead of flying cars. I want my Jetsons youth back.

Re: Does the NSO sell.......

They don't need to. They can just pay - or order - Google to provide surveillance data and user identifiers.

We are providing the data for them in real or near-real time, and happily paying a premium to do so. We're like pigs lovingly handcrafting a sausage factory.

AI can't replace devs until it understands office politics

Coding isn't dead...

...but it is going the way of buggy-whips and bespoke automobiles. This is inevitable because the endgame for coders (and organizations that produce code) is producing code that produces code, in the same way that we eventually built machines that produce machines (see "cars"¹, et al.; also "the Industrial Revolution"²; and obviously "AI"³; separately, there's something of an ouroboros here, probably.⁴).

Human labor, be it physical or intellectual is reliably unreliable, terribly⁵ expensive and inefficient, and absolutely begging for replacement. This is not news; it was ever thus. Humans fit best in new and dynamic experimental roles that people and systems and machines don't yet understand. We are the vanguard, not the endgame.

And that means the very best of us will have the options of winning the rare and refined bespoke code gigs, reducing ourselves to being the disposable servants of the machines (see Amazon, et al; also Tesla; also sweatshops, also much science fiction.), or...well⁶...finding some other way to spend our new excess of free time.

Something else will come along. Coal miners became car assemblers, some car assemblers became aircraft assemblers, some aircraft assemblers became rocket assemblers, etc. And while we're waiting or searching for or inventing that next thing, we might revisit ideas like using our vast shared excess of time and technology to help each other out, to lift each other up. Jobs are mostly for money; maybe we need to redistribute that money more evenly so jobs are more about optimized choices than acts of hanging on in quiet desperation⁷.

-------

¹ not the movie, but that's also a good choice

² didn't Mel Brooks do something with that?

³ also not the movie, nor the other movie(s) of the same name

⁴ more figuratively than probably, but it's good to have a hobby

⁵ sometimes involving actual terror

⁶ not an accidental reference

⁷ understood to be the English way, but more broadly applicable if we're honest

NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix

Re: In another 50 years...

How about we swing by, grab Voyager, restore its science tools using period-appropriate technology, fix whatever else needs attention and allow it to resume its path into the cosmos chirping back data (because...why not?).

But we also tag it as an historical site and let school children and their families visit periodically via FTL bus service.

-----

I had a friend who, with his father, built a 100% accurate, period perfect Model T Ford - even using period correct tools where possible during the build. His father was into his early days of cancer and lived long enough to complete the build and drive the car regularly for the last two years of his life. Unfortunately, my friend also developed a fast-moving brain cancer and died a few years after his father.

Their family donated the Model T to a local museum, stipulating that it be used at least twice yearly to let school children go for a ride in history. They also stipulated that the family have occasional access to car for public display and occasional drives.

Old things have value beyond their original intent, yet can serve that intent - and much more - long into the future. Waste not, want not.

Annual electronic waste footprint per person is 11.2 kg

Re: Entering the life cycle...

...who are we to deny them?

To the best of our knowledge, and for better or for worse, we are the most broadly capable species in this section of the only galaxy known to support sentient life. That should mean we are also both capable of and obliged to protect this place and clean up our messes. This may mean we don't get the "best" and newest toys, but it does improve our odds of continuing to exist.

Re: If only we didn't appear to be trapped

It's not obvious, but I've found the most reliable method to open a modern smartphone is to use a chainsaw.

After "repair", however, putting the phone back together can be a challenge.

Intuitive Machines blames dim lighting and dodgy data for second lunar faceplant

Re: It wasn't always like this...

"...actioning different sides of the Faster, Cheaper, Better triangle..."

Fair point.

Which corners of that triangle failed? All eleven of them. And how many working Model-Ts have they built and landed? None, unless they count crashing into a relatively gigantic and well known immovable object as "landing". And how many have they built in crank-em-out mass-produced Model-T style? Also none.

This effort was a complete failure, the exact opposite of a Model-T, unless they somehow thought the Model-T was also designed without lights and would work best upside down underwater while also crashing at speed in the hands of three blind mice. They apparently didn't know the surface would be dark...even though we've actually been to the moon before and have pictures both local and remote, and in a sense some of the earliest "images" date back to Galileo Galilei.

It's not that they failed to make something, it's more like they didn't read the instructions or study any prior art, or do their homework. It's like someone down the pub handed them a beverage, and the recipient poured the lager down his shirt and tried to eat the glass...because he didn't know any better.

Also, I'm very much overdoing this because it's continuously hilarious. I'll stop, right here in fact.

It wasn't always like this...

Remember back in the 1960s when we managed to build and deliver actual spacecraft containing actual humans from Earth onto the moon, and they were able to get out, walk around, take pictures, plant flags, etc. - and later to drive a freakin' car across the lunar regolith like they were shooting a Burt Reynolds-goes-to-space flick?

And we did it using something equivalent to a very large firework, a couple of wrenches, primitive computers, paper notes on a clipboard, and men willing to just effing do it?

And then we sent space probes to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond that still return novel scientific data?

And then we built actual space-planes to fly repeatedly up to space and back for the purpose of building literal space stations.

And then we sent semi-autonomous scientific machines - including a space helicopter - to land on Mars to explore and return detailed information about...well, everything.

And now we have vast interconnected banks of technology spread across the entirety of this good Earth, positively guzzling enough energy every second to power an extinction event that would make dinosaurs come back from their graves just to laugh at us and watch the lights and the lives wink out, but faster this time.

And dozens of companies vying to fill the skies with multiply redundant television and social media diseases - er, broadcasts.

And we can't manage to land the new landers on our moon right. side. up.

The math hasn't changed and the technology is supposed to be eons better, sooo...

I'm thinking we're the new dinosaurs, but with claws and teeth and motivation replaced by belly fat, snark, and cellphones.

Hooray.

Infosec guru Schneier worries corp AI will manipulate us

I'm a fan of Schneier, too. I like the guy and have had a couple of brief but interesting conversations with him, but I also think he's a bit of a big-picture ideas-man. To wit:

"Schneier said that such models were a very good way forward, but corporations will fight such efforts tooth and nail. Nevertheless, it must be done for consumers, Schneier said, and legislators can't afford to fail this time."

I mean...yeah, but not exactly novel thinking, while also not contributing anything actionable. It's not going to proactively un-fail the legislators this time.

"We failed with social media. We failed with search, but we can do it with AI," he asserted. "It's a combination of tech and policy."

That's just cheerleading - it's not participating in the game, it's not *doing* anything - and agreeing, handshakes all around, that someone - specifically someone else - should and could do something this time is meaningless. Somebody should have done something last time, too - *every* time, in fact - and didn't and that's why we didn't get positive outcomes. Saying we'll do the same thing we did last time, which was nothing, but this time we'll do that nothing even better is literally nonsensical.

Fundamentally, he reflects our own passivity and laziness; we, like he, sit here fiddling while Rome v2.0.7-bug-fix-release E.1 burns.

-----

Sidebar:

Apologies for all the hyphens. I had a bunch of them laying about and wanted to use them up before they spoiled.

Your graphics card's so fat, it's got its own gravity alert

It's difficult to see this...

... as anything other than shared incompetence.

Ostensible designers and engineers, wearing consensual blindfolds of ignorance, half-assed-ly tacking shiny-shiny bits together to sell to similarly inept end-users who can't tell sh...tuff from Shinola.

It's a match made in tech heaven, really, and a boon for the "won't last but can't be meaningfully recycled" contra-environmentalists.

If only disposable culture was as disposable.

Infosec pros tell Trump to quit bullying Chris Krebs – it's undermining security

I think it's not so much what he enjoys as the need to deliver constant and unending series of noisy but fundamentally meaningless distractions that keep the press, opponents, and the populace busy chasing the nothing in a chaotic hailstorm of threats and gossip. It's a technique long popular with dictators, oligarchs, and (ostensible) strong-men throughout human history.

The enemy changes from day to day, hour to hour so no one has time to notice or act on what's inevitably happening in the background.

It works as long as we're always at war with Eastasia. Or Eurasia. Or, well...any person, group, or nation. Every obstacle or failure is attributed to them, the feared but ever-inchoate other; every success or achievement goes to Dear Leader.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, whereas those who do learn from history are also doomed to repeat it.

It's going to be a long and difficult day for a few years.

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

Re: Deus Ex Machina

You are my people!

Deus Ex Machina

"And sometimes maybe the thinking is, 'hey, should we actually even be teaching this anymore?'"

The answer to this question is almost always "Yes", because education is not strictly about getting the right answer but about understanding *why the answer is right* and *what to do with the answer now you have it*. Without that understanding no learning occurs, it's just blind acceptance and recitation.

When we fail to understand how and why the machines - be they mechanical or electronic or digital or quantum - and their results work, we fall victim to the machines, we become their hostages. Much worse that that, though, we become stupid, less knowledgeable and less curious about the world around us and less able to interact with or change it.

There's the old story about a village built around a machine that has all the answers. The machine was gifted to them by a neighboring village. One day there is unrest, rumblings of discord and even war among the various villages. The local villagers gather around the machine and ask what should be done. The machine replies "5".

"Five!", the villagers exclaim, "We must five!"

Many voices repeat the number, "Five! Five everyone! We must five!" Heads nod, there is much congratulatory back-patting, smiles of relief and agreement. "We need only to five."

And an old person, the village crank, a generally disagreeable pessimist of sorts who routinely complains about change and novelty and the weather, says, "What the hell does five mean, you bumbling nitwits? How do we 'five' something?"

The question is met with equal parts confusion and jeers, "Ah, you always find something to complain about, you old crank! Never happy with the status quo, always doing things the hard way!"

"Look, we'll just ask the machine!"

And they do ask the machine how to five.

The machine replies, "Four".

"Three".

"Two".

...

US to slap up to 3,521% tariffs on SE Asian solar imports – especially you, Cambodia

Not to distract from the important bigly billions of increased percents, but is there really any likelihood that stopping, er, "tariffing" China will cause the U.S. of Mother Freakin' A, Y'all to suddenly launch competitive products at equally competitive prices? Or any products at any prices?

I mean, surely this isn't just egomaniacal noise-making...right?

Wait, didn't Elie have a solar panel/battery gig at one point? That would be a weird coincidence.

Separately, 3,521% tariffs is how many arbitrary furlongs per fortnight?

Microsoft blames 'latent code issue' after Windows 11 upgrades sneak past admin blockades

Re: Still can't write clean code after forty years

"Don't they pay attention to CVEs or what is in their code?"

No. Obviously.

They used to be better, if not reliably better. I have a tonne of Microsoft thank you gifts spanning decades of "insider" and other beta/post-beta/pre-release customer-sourced testing. They used to really value our input and seemed genuinely appreciative and responsive when we found bugs.

I believe the engineers were replaced with bean-counters and the developers were replaced with rental-coders at a fraction of the quality...er, cost, I meant cost. Well, both actually.

AI will probably "fix" the quality and functional decline, albeit by burning everything to the ground and then lying about it. Sooner is better.

Don't delete that mystery empty folder. Windows put it there as a security fix

Pretty sure the answer to your question is either "sand" or "cheese"; "bits of metal" or "magnets" might also work.

"Do Not Enter" or "DieDieDie" tags are also authoritative by default, but not in real life or anywhere else.

OTF, which backs Tor, Let's Encrypt and more, sues to save its funding from Trump cuts

Re: You don't understand what "debt" means...

"Isn't the core problem that the US has pretty much blackmailed most countries in the world to use USD for energy purchases and international trade and so forced them to also take on USD reserves?"

I mean, as core problems go, that's at least one of them...

But it's a long list. Hey, aren't we about due for a pointless "war" in a mostly defenseless and unprepared country? Magic Eight Ball says yes!

You don't understand what "debt" means...

...between governments.

It's not like you owing your friend or your dad money. If you have debt to your friend or your dad, they can sue you and get a court to confiscate your owed wealth to close out the debt. Or they can get some friends and kick your ass and take what you owe them plus a little extra for the inconvenience. Maybe they break your legs to improve your future motivation toward timely repayment. We've all seen those movies.

National or "sovereign" debt isn't like that. The closest solution to leg-breaking is war, and all sides lose in war, and all sides know this from the outset. It's too expensive and too damaging. Ask Russia how much wealth and treasure they're winning in Ukraine, and how much that "winning" is costing them. Go back in time and ask postwar Germany how that WWII investment paid off. Ask England and the United States of America why they helped rebuild the Germany that they just bombed back into the stone age, but without actually claiming Germany for their own.

So countries take or offer debt to bind others to them as partners, but as *voluntary* partners. Carrying debt is a way to signal connection and to encourage trade, kinda like your favorite restaurant giving you a 10 <your-currency-here> coupon even though you're already a good and paying customer - they want to ensure that relationship lasts.

It's also important to recognize that countries literally print money as needed. If the USA needs to pay a five billion dollar debt, they have the option of printing five thousand units of million dollar bills (or their digital equivalents) and delivering it to whatever country they owe. As long as the USA's creditors are willing to accept USA currency at the current exchange rate, job done. And if the creditors won't accept that currency, the USA either buys an equivalent amount of some other country's currency or...they do nothing and only lose the ability to do future business with the nation(s) that extended credit - much like your favorite restaurant might refuse to serve you if you stiffed them on the check last time.

Here's more detail and a pint up top to get you through it:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/10/sovereign-debt-default.asp

CISA: We didn't fire red teams, we just unhired a bunch of them

Re: Purgatory

The goal was never cost savings. The goal was to disassemble the government, weaken it's transparency and inbuilt checks and balances, and either claim it as a thinly-veiled extractive dictatorship or sell privileged access to foreign powers - or both of those last two in succession.

This isn't a presidency, it's a minimum-violence coup.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

Are we the baddies?

The problem here is everyone:

Users inevitably want everything to be free, both in the gratis (no payment) sense and in the libre (no rules, restrictions, or limits) sense, and from the beginning the Internet tried - and later pretended - to offer exactly that.

Makers inevitably want those things, too, but also want to be able to live indoors and have access to comforts like clean water, survivable food, safe shelter, and reliable medical support - which, oddly are also things that users want.

Corporations, in the generic business structure sense, want to be both continuously successful, which falls under the survival sense, and to be free in the libre sense. This is unsurprising because corporations, like Soylent Green, are people.

It all goes horribly wrong when one or more of the above groups start thinking that they should have more power and authority than the other group(s), and, perhaps inexplicably, the other groups tacitly or explicitly agree. This is where corporations shine - for some values of "shine": they already exist and operate at (relative) scale and are equally already hierarchically structured while users and makers tend to be more like loosely affiliated autonomous collectives.

All the corporations need do is make something interesting, offer it at little or no cost (e.g. "no worries, the first taste is free"), and, once the clientele are hooked, start raising prices and adding rules about what the users - and the corporations - are allowed to do.

The astonishing part is that it works every time. Nearly every user rebellion is quelled, if they start at all, and quickly; torches and pitchforks cast aside and users begrudgingly give up literally anything to get back on the pipe's sweet, sweet oblivivion.

So, are we the baddies? Too often, yes, whether by direct action or passive acceptance.

[weeping_angel_icon_goes_here]

(or just a bowl of tears)

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Re: Consequences will never be the same.

... Yes, but quantum moonbeams, surely.

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

Re: Mattress

Hey, you've got your version of comfortable, I've got mine, etc.

¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

FAA confirms it's testing Starlink, maybe for tasks Elon says Verizon is doing badly

Re: Grease is the word.

And...

It's got groove, it's got meaning.

Grease is the time, is the place is the motion.

Grease is the way we are feeling.

Turns out grease is really doing yeoman's work, definitely staying busy. I can see why Elon is into it.

100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

Re: Fired, but ...

Nah. Not fired for sex talk, nor for stupidity. It's a reduction in headcount of those who could spy effectively against the current regime.

<Arbitrary number of people> can keep a secret if <arbitrary number of people minus one> are dead...or removed from service.

Sex talk is trivially unimportant, but titillates the masses and distracts them from other events and actions. Fewer skilled spies, however, reduces the likelihood of whistleblowers and other revelatory actions.

Of late, news like this should suggest we look at everything else except the news. What's actually happening in the background while we gossip, gasp, and giggle?

Hint: it's a coup d'état.

coup d'état /koo͞″ dā-tä′/

noun

The sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority. The sudden overthrow of a government, differing from a revolution by being carried out by a small group of people who replace only the leading figures.

So, hang on a second...

...the U.S. has a department (or several) dedicated to spycraft, which, if robust documentaries like "James Bond" and "Mission Impossible" are accurate - and clearly they are, just look how long we've relied upon them for truthful information - seduction, sex talk, and actual sex in all their versions and variations are among the most reliable means of gaining access to foreign intrigues, discovering secret plans, exploiting or removing other spies, and acquiring your very own President of the United States in part by marriage to a totally not Russian operative...

...why in the world would they fire their own spies - in volume, and publicly - for chatting within secure, inside channels about varied and possibly kinky sex?

It's so weird!

It's almost like a foreign influence campaign working from within the U.S. government.

HAH! Just kidding. It's definitely about workplace rules and moral fiber.

Clearly.

This open text-to-speech model needs just seconds of audio to clone your voice

Fortunately...

...there is no way anyone would use this with existing media to clone, say, a national leader who has access to top secret information or nuclear weapons.

Or every national leader who has similar access.

So that's a relief.

Our world faces 'unprecedented' spike in electricity demand

Re: The problem, like Soylent Green...

Yeah, people like me. I helped, on a small scale, to build some of the underpinnings of what became the modern tech sector. I get to look back on what we started and what it turned into, and to weigh my contributions - for good or ill - to both the timeline and the decline.

I understand that it's uncomfortable to look some truths in the eye, especially when we see our own reflections grinning back at us, so I'll give equal thought to killfiling my post - or maybe a mod will get to it first.

Often the ease of false comfort readily assuages the discomfort of truth.

The problem, like Soylent Green...

...is people.

I have every confidence that nature, armed with its unlimited access to time, will correct the destructive anomaly that is humanity and make better choices in the future.

(Icon voicing our impending eviction, and to urge the universe onward in our absence.)

SAP snared in revenue trap unless it extends legacy ERP support

What kind of fool...

...has a well-established customer base lusting to hand over cubic money for products and services, and instead of sweeping up that wealth with big brooms and gratitude instead demands those customers either use a new, unfamiliar product or leave?

This reeks of classic corporate foot-shooting, the New Coke edition.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

Musk's move fast and break things mantra won't work in US.gov

Re: Break it, smash it

The previous attack on the U.S. was the test case.

Re: What are the odds

You're giving too much credit. The disaster monkeys will just chop through the power line with a fire axe and shout, "there, I fixed it".

See also "Night of the Long Knives", because axes work on people, too.

Note to admins:

We need an icon for modern Nazism. I guess we could just use the old symbol; Nazism clearly hasn't changed much.

Creators demand tech giants fess up and pay for all that AI training data

There is a technological solution for this...

I believe the term of art is "Rods from God".

https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god/

(Icon is literal.)

Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support

Off-time phone calls? Ha, that's just the beginning.

Back around the turn of the century I worked at a company that was pushing hard into an IPO. We were shepherded through the process by a team of cutthroat investors and stand-in leadership, and everything reliably sucked. The company philosophy changed from "kind, supportive, collaborative, and communicative" to very much "move fast and break everything (people included), fire anyone involved with the broken part, and repeat until successful".

And, yeah, company or client calls flooding in 24/7, be sure to keep your cellphone on and be responsive.

We burned through people like kindling. The reduction in headcount was sold as "lean attrition", demonstrating to potential investors that we were cutting away the dead weight and doing more with less.

We pushed, god did we push. Ten hour days became fifteen became twenty became twenty-four. Dedication was measured in days without sleep or showers or change of clothes. We smelled like a frat house, we smelled like dead men.

And our exhaustion built failure, with code as a side effect

In the midst of this, and an entirely predictable divorce at home, I had a relatively minor heart attack lovingly distilled from pure stress and lack of sleep, was out of work for a couple of months, and returned not to my office but to the bullpen where new employees started and failing employees ended. I lasted maybe three weeks and hit the silk.

A few weeks or maybe a couple or three months after, I received a call from my equally-cursed successor, a good colleague - smart, capable, great with people. One of our teammates had committed suicide on the eve of their planned wedding. He was a good man. We lost him to effing software.

It is worth noting that this had no discernable effect on the great machine; it continued separating wheat from chaff and grinding each to powder. The IPO proceeded, remnant leaders succeeded. One former colleague acquired a gorgeous vineyard in Argentina, another executive bought a giant yacht and sailed around the world with his family.

The point of this recitation, dear reader, is that "we need you to take some calls after hours" is a gateway drug, just a little taste to get you hooked, a loyalty test hidden in a nod, a wink, and a secret handshake.

Don't sign up for that. Go do something sane and constructive that benefits you and the world around you as much as it does your clients or employers.

Icon for raising a glass to absent friends.

Microsoft vet laments a world where even toothbrushes need reboots

Re: How else...

Probably the same brand, not because it's good or because you want to, but because its lowest price/highest volume targeting won the market and there aren't any real competitors left.

As an example, see Microsoft, et al. Also, the volume of mobile device competitors: Apple or Goog-Android-le, your choice. Both reliably suck, and both reliably profile you at very high resolution and sell you...er, I mean "your data". (Yes, even if they pinky swear that they don't.)

Dell ends hybrid work policy, demands return-to-office despite remote work pledge

Re: All quit so we don't have to pay you

The ideal employee response would be for every employee to quit. Every employee in every service, business unit, location just stops showing up.

It's not a practical response, but it's probably the right one. The alternative is something along the lines of "...but if I don't let them run me over with a truck twice a day, how ever will I make a living?"

We can't make this stuff up: Palantir, Anduril form fellowship for AI adventures

Further evidence...

...that The Lord of the Rings was not fiction but prophecy, a direct warning from the future.

I vote we do what we always do and just ignore the warning. It's the least-possible-effort solution, and that's where we, as a species, truly excel.

Play to your strengths, say I.

FTC scolds two data brokers for allegedly selling your location to the meter

Well, that's fixed then, yeah?

"Both have now agreed to check their databases for information obtained without people's permission, and implement appropriate consent safeguards."

"Crucially, they have agreed to delete any improperly collected location data, and promised not to distribute location information of people visiting certain sensitive places,"

Well, that's all wrapped up, done and dusted, say no more! They've agreed to self-check, implement safeguards, delete some data, and not share some locations sometimes.

Clearly an impenetrable, incorruptible solution, particularly since they've promised - there might even have been some pinkie-swears.

Just one tiny added suggestion, the merest triviality: when it comes out that *somehow*, by some *mysterious* and *utterly incomprehensible, truly unpredictable circumstance* it all proves to be bollocks and everyone is still getting tracked, data-raped, and exploited, I get to wield the Holy Flamethrower of Correction. Or we can take turns, make a party out of it.

AI poetry 'out-humans' humans as readers prefer bots to bards

In fairness, a vast number of well known, if rambling, poems are nigh indistinguishable from hallucinatory LLM output.

I'm not looking directly at you, Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric", but I'm not not looking at you either.

LLM-GPT-uvwxyz output is on acid is what I'm saying, like all the kids are, and is probably...<some incoherent mumbling>...communism taking our wimmens and jerbs.

And you can't spell Haight-Ashbury without hate, even though that's technically a misspelling. Or Tory Spelling, I'm not proud.

(Be sure to wear flowers in your hair.)

Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

This is the way the world ends...

... Not with a bang, but a whimper.

WordPress's Automattic openly tracks websites bailing from rival WP Engine

Re: Are all CEOs

To a first approximation, yes.

If Trump gets elected, get your tech buying done asap

Setting aside the "you're a Nazi! / No YOU'RE a Nazi" act for the moment...

Tariffs have a way of dissolving right after they're put in place. Let's say [NATION] can only sell to [COUNTRY] at very high tariff rates, because (something, something, jobs 'Murica).

Option one:

[NATION] moves manufacturing to a different, friendly, or more acceptable country, and the new DifferentFriendly Co. sells the same products from essentially the same fundamental origin but aren't covered by [COUNTRY]'s nationalist tax, er, "tariff". Third Party Land where DifferentFriendly Co. is, and is *totally* not Mexico Border Place, also gets a boost in skilled jobs and income that, we might note, are not shared with [COUNTRY] who are printing money to pretend to build a wall, but one you can drive midsize light-duty pickup trucks through in salable volumes.

Option two:

[NATION] continues building the same products they already do, the ones that people in [COUNTRY] have been buying all along and like very much. Then nationalist tax, er, "tariff" happens. And [NATION] does something really weird: they take the portion of the products originally destined for [COUNTRY], partially disassemble them (or just don't quite finish assembling them to begin with), put them in tidy boxes with instructions, and send them on to [COUNTRY]. Since boxes of parts are *technically* not the banned or tariffed products, people in [COUNTRY] can either assemble them at home, or, more likely, business partners of [NATION] will spin up a new, barely-over-minimum-wage, totally-not-Amazon-or-Uber-like third-world assembly or "un-chop" shop, AssemblyCompany, LLC, to bolt the bits back together and sell them as completed units at a modest markup. In the automotive industry, these un-chop shops already exist (and have for years for just this reason) and are known as CKDs, for Complete Knock Down kit assemblies.

So, yeah, BAN-ALL-THE-THINGS!!¡, then squint just a bit when everyone is buying them anyway because shopping isn't national pride fight strategy, it's just meeting established needs.

Also, sharing commercial interests binds companies and nations together. You're much less likely to nuke other countries or steal their womens and chirrens if you're successfully doing business with them already. A rising tide actually does lift all ships, except for the ships that have run themselves aground out of spite.

Your mileage may vary.