Posts by frankyunderwood123

C-Suite first makes sense

The C-Suite in the majority of tech companies are prone to hallucinations just like AI.

This means AI is most suited to replace upper management.

The question then will be whether anyone will be able to tell the difference.

An Artifactory is mandatory for big teams

If you aren't using one yet, you probably should be.

And if you are on the JavaScript bucking bronco, where there's a new re-invented lib or framework every other week, you may want to be locking version numbers in your package.json files.

Sure, automated checks (you have got those, right?), do a damn good job of alerting you to security threats, but they'll only catch what is known about, and release updates happen in seconds.

I'm sure at one time, the companies coffers were considerably stocked...

... perhaps all of that silly "playing at being a big tech company" whilst the former CEO was onboard and driving the fat bonuses for the C-Suite gravy train emptied those coffers?

It really did seem there was a rather large start-up style play area for the top brass to muck about with, where every single venture failed, other than the core business.

That core business being the unsexy but incredibly important infrastructure that kept the companies lights on whilst the the money was frittered away on all sorts of daftness.

...not intended to appeal to existing Linux users?

"Zorin OS, like its Irish cousin Linux Mint, is not a distro intended to appeal to existing Linux users."

Wow, now just hold on a minute there El Reg!

I've been using Linux since '95 in various flavours, I used to spend hours trying to get devices drivers working by kernel hacking.

I ran slackware as my primary Desktop OS for 2 years, long before Ubuntu appeared and the days of easy installs and configuration.

I've used Linux in all manner of areas - very familiar with what is under the hood.

Guess what, I use Linux Mint for my Gaming needs. (replacing Pop_OS! because I found it to be better)

Why?

Because it's super easy and I don't waste my time on any setup - it just works.

Yeah, I could install a totally minimal distro, heck maybe antiX Linux and then manually setup everything I need, creating a minimalistic system that'll run all my games with zero bloat.

But that'll take a few more hours and really, I've got terrabytes of disk space ... and I just want to play some games dammit.

All aboard the Hype Train!

<blockquote>AI could be the mechanism to shorten notebook replacement cycles, according to the chief financial officer at Dell.</blockquote>

There isn't even any attempt to hide the fact that Dell intend to clamber onto the AI hype train in order to shift product.

You can almost see what will happen next.

Dell will start marketing new lineups of notebooks, where they hype AI capabilities due to "new" chip models - mentioning all the right buzzwords.

Forget the fact that ANY computer that can get onto the internet and use services like ChatGPT can already access AI services.

Forget the fact that even the most powerful notebook GPu/CPu combo won't even come close to matching cloud based services, assuming software on it leverages some form of LLM functionality.

They'll just be slapping stickers on the box "New and improved AI capability!"

It's bullshit.

IBM was upskilling all its employees on AI

"IBM was upskilling all its employees on AI"

So those employees can expedite their eventual replacement?

It makes sense, right?

Who better to train the AI to do their job?

The employees start leveraging AI, which improves LLM's and slowly makes those employees redundant.

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I'm fairly confident that I've got maybe 5 years before I get made redundant, but that's fine, as I'm only 10 years off from retirement age anyway.

I'm a software engineer with 35 years of experience, yet 25 years of that experience is mostly useless, such is the pace of change.

You can already see, as an engineer, where this is headed. When experienced engineers are impressed with what something like co-pilot can already do, that says a lot.

We know right now it's not capable of designing entire systems, yet it's only a matter of time before, with some experienced proompters, it can do just that.

It's echoing the industrial revolution, when machinery replaced man power.

Human intervention will still be required, but if 90% of the grunt work can be automated and be 1000x faster, a team of 20 can be replaced by a single person.

Remember, with Windows, this is not your computer...

Microsoft seem hellbent on destroying Windows, don't they?

There doesn't seem to be any joined up thinking in terms of what they ship to the Desktop or how they change the Desktop, just a series of experiments.

It seems to be one massive playground involving billions of Desktops, but the end-user makes none of the rules up and half the time, isn't sure what the games are.

Everything is "opt-out", except for things which you can't "opt-out" of.

Even the "opt-out" things can often mysteriously "opt-in" again after an update.

Talking about updates, it feels like every update is a roll of the dice - you never quite know what you'll get, never exactly know when it'll hit - aside from a few paltry options to skip for a while - and never know whether it's going to break something.

In short, if you use Windows 11 as your personal Desktop Operating system, your computer is no longer yours - it isn't under your control.

Windows 10? Not much better.

felt the same about the Quest 3

VP - niche product in a niche market.

I sold my Quest 3 on eBay after 2 months - and that has an absolute TON of content available.

VR gaming is still fairly niche, but heck, the Vision Pro effectively becomes a niche product within a niche market - it's only the Apple Hype Machine that is driving sales, which will soon dwindle.

For my tuppence, the Quest gave me rapid headaches until I got my "VR Legs", but sadly often resulted in all-day headaches the next day - classic eye-strain.

Tried everything - four different straps, different glasses prescriptions etc.

But heck, I got my fun out of it - once I'd played Half-Life Alyx, every other game I tried paled by comparison, so there was no point keeping the device.

heavily customized ...

This screams out in the story, right?

"heavily customized version of Oracle for finance"

You can read that in a number of ways,

"Hacked on core functionality, can no longer upgrade"

"Didn't understand how to develop properly, so customized (hacked), now in world of hurt"

"Oracle was the wrong solution in the first place"

Either way, whenever you read a term like that, "customized", as opposed to "extended" or "framework", it sounds very much like a cluster f0rk.

Kill-switch the internet?

I would imagine by the time the idea of regulation of AI via kill switches becomes actionable it will be far too late.

If we end up with AGI, much like AI now, as well as being in the hands of the top tech companies, it will also be open sourced - it will absolutely find its way out into "the wild".

At that point, game over - an AGI more intelligent, sophisticated and thousands of times faster than the human mind, will just hide in plain sight all over the internet.

We won't even know it's there.

If we do happen to discover it before an impending human extinction event, the only possible salvation will be pretty much turning off the entire internet - globally.

In that worst case fictional scenario, "turning of the entire internet" will probably require destruction of physical infrastructure - and thus the war between man and machine starts...

Open a second bank account...

This type of data theft due to lax security is so common these days, you pretty much have to take some matters into your own hands.

I pay all my utilities by standing order, from a secondary bank account.

So sure, my address details and whatever can be leaked online, but at least I have some security with my banking options.

If my bank account is compromised due to leaked data, the loss will be minimal, as it only ever contains the amount of money I pay for utilities.

The same secondary bank account is also used for services where I am forced to use direct debit - e.g. internet provider.

I time the payments into that secondary bank account to ensure they arrive at the right time - and these payments are staggered, so there's never a larger lump sum available.

Memory "sticks"? - stopped using them almost a decade back

My goto is simply SD Cards - decent quality high speed ones.

And the only thing I use them for, unless they are in a device like a camera or smartphone? - writing an ISO to them.

I'm struggling to recall the last time someone gave me a memory stick with something on it, or I gave one to someone - probably the same as my title, easily a decade ago.

I do have a few knocking about in drawers, but always reach for an SD Card instead.

I've got a bit lazy and put on a few pounds...

I last went into the office, for about 2 hours, over a year ago.

There's plans to meetup with colleagues at our new offices at the end of the month.

I work for a huge corporate with offices all over the world. The office I work from - or more accurately, where I had the option to work from, was sold.

It belonged to the company. They've recently leased a space 25 percent of the size, with a maximum of 140 seats.

The usual modern mix of meeting rooms, quiet spaces and all that guff.

I may start going in more often, because I really have got lazy over the last almost 4 years now!

I never realised just how much I walked when I was at the office!

The commute, however ... that always holds me back. It's a minimum of 45 minutes drive one-way, which isn't terrible - or wasn't considered terrible 4 years back.

Public transport? Forget it - over 2 hours each way.

I still struggle to comprehend how I managed to put up with over two decades of commuting in my career - having to be in the office every day, 9 to 5.

I couldn't do it anymore, no chance... well, ok, if push came to shove and being noticed at the office made the difference between having a job and not having one?

Things are looking interesting in not such a good way in the IT sector right about now...

Is ordering workers back to the office just a ruse?

Ok, so maybe not a ruse, but certainly a decision that has other potential benefits ...

If you want to "thin" your workforce in a fairly painless way, both reputationally and cost effectively, it does seem to be a useful way to go about doing it.

I'm sure this "thinning" of the workforce doesn't cut a workforce in the same manner as layoffs, but it's certainly less brutal.

Quite how this impacts talent in your organisation and holding onto it, is probably hard to measure.

It seems that those not interested in career progression are likely to be older workers - people in their 50's and 60's.

They should have an incredibly useful depth of knowledge to draw upon, so just let them work remotely and don't rock that boat.

Those willing to go into the office are clearly going to leap ahead of their peers - it's a no-brainer. No need to explain further.

Those unwilling will either go in begrudgingly or hand in notice.

Congratulations, corporate entity, you have weeded out completely unscientifically, a small portion of your workforce, with hardly any effort.

You just have to hope you haven't lost some of your best workers - and you have to hope losing people doesn't start a donimo effect with the rest of your workforce!

That's a VERY real problem that many of us have seen or been involved with.

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As a complete aside, this does open up another area of investigation when researching a new position.

Investigate the office space of companies you get offered interviews at.

If they've recently downsized office space, but still kept the same amount of employees, chances are they are into proper hybrid working for the long term.

The reverse may also apply ;)

Sadly, there's not much choice out there for printers...

... at least not affordable choices.

Many years back, probably decades now, consumers "fell" for what seemed like incredible printer deals.

Even though they knew, or most did, it was the consumables which made the top consumer manufacturers money, the deals were still fairly good.

However the likes of HP have become more and more agressive in pursuing the crazy idea of subscription purchases and clearly want to lock down printers even more.

Surely at some point consumers are going to just stop buying their products?

If you have yourself an old printer that is still running and you can still get third party inks for it, keep that sucker running as long as you can.

I recently bought a kit for my wife's epson for cleaning the ink overflow tank and doing a firmware reset with a code - it cost me £10.

The firmware reset "tells" the printer that the overflow tank is empty - without that reset, no amount of cleaning the tank and replacing the sponges will work.

That was a year back, the printer is still running - I think it must be 7 years old now.

Given the fact that its a model where the print heads are on the cartridges, I'll be able to keep it ticking over until you can no longer get the catridges.

One thing is for sure, I would NEVER buy a new cheap consumer grade printer now - so I have NO idea what my wife will use when the Epson she has finally bites the dust...

Hopefully we'll have over 95% Linux gaming compatability before Win 10 EOL

My last hold-out with Windows 10 is gaming.

I haven't used it for anything else for over a decade.

Yep, I'm aware that Linux gaming has come a long way - I have a dual boot on my gaming rig.

About 80% of games I own work flawlessley in Linux, for the others and in particular, for VR gaming, sadly windows is the only option.

I can "trick" my "incompatible" gaming rig to install windows 11, but why?

It brings absolutely nothing to the table for me personally - nothing at all. There is Zero compelling reason to upgrade. Nada. Zilch. The Big Fat Zero.

If I could get 10 percent game performance improvement ? Yeah, maybe.

If the OS was super silent and let me control how I used it, perhaps.

Perhaps the reality for Microsoft is that people really don't like Windows at all.

The shift away from Personal Computers at home, to mobile devices has revealed just how annoying windows is.

Usage of PC's in the home is way down - something to get the homework done on, or to type up a quick word document. Everything is going to be done on a fondle slab.

My guess - Microsoft will be forced to extend Windows 10 support for at least another 2 years beyond the current support end date.

Without knowing how the project was run??

I don't know.

We can make lots of assumptions based on experience and people already have in the comments here.

What those of us with the experience do know, is the following:

* Failure to scope the project correctly in the first instance = impossible to build a good product

* Failure to engage with the client during all phases of development = impossible to build a good product

* Continually changing specifications or very loose specifications = impossible to build a good product

* A waterfall development pattern = impossible to build a good product.

* Poor (no) unit test coverage, poor (no) end-to-end test coverage and poor (no) integration tests = impossible to build a reliable product

* Lack of planned rolling releases, from the very first MVP (minimal viable product), through to the first 1.0.0 release and onward - continuous development.

* Continually changing teams/squads - over a multi-year project, this can murder the best of projects if not handled effectively

* Project rushed out to meet artificial deadlines - usually imposed by someone high up promising the undeliverable.

Fascinating stuff - and related to dreams, surely?

One thing I've noticed as I get older, something I didn't really pay much attention to when younger, is the moment you start to awake from a dream.

I now get about 5 to 10 seconds of what to all intents and purposes, is a slide deck of ghostly images just before my eyes open - it's right on the cusp of awakening.

Does this mean that dreams are actually constructed using the same methodology proposed in this research?

That it's a recall of the storage of visual data at retina level - and that the brain interprets a slide deck of this visual memory data into full blown dreams?

That it fills in the blanks?

Dunno.

Got the job done

To this day, the functionality that Wordpad offered is really all I ever needed.

Sure, I haven't used it for decades, but when it comes to office software, I use the absolute bare bones to get the job done.

If it has paragraphs, bold text, italic text, underlined text, blockquotes and lists then what more do you really need?

It did the job - and you can still use it now to create a perfectly acceptable document.

Like Apple did, in other words?

Love or loathe it, macOS has remained familiar since 2001 - and indeed, some parts since inception. (The top context sensitive menu bar)

The dock has been in place for 23 years. The context sensitive menu bar since 1984, 40 years.

Apple clearly realised that extreme and sudden changes to the GUI of an operating system is not a good idea, but gradual incremental changes are.

Microsoft were very much on the same journey, until Windows 8.

Hardware restrictions? - foot, meet gun.

It seems possible that the hardware restrictions imposed in 11 were an attempt to shift sales of PCs and thus the OEM tie-in = more bucks for micro$oft.

I can't see any other reason for it. It clearly failed. There was no compelling reason to upgrade, plus punters had got burned with the disaster that was Windows 8.

Either way, windows 11 aside from this stupid restriction, seems akin to the likes of Windows ME, Vista and Windows 8.

Almost every other release of windows has been terrible.

Microsoft are still trying to recover from "chasing the market" numerous times and failing dismally.

Windows 8 was a classic example of "Oh shit, this Tablet thing is really taking off, quick, drop the netbooks, make a tablet OS, heck, make the entire OS tablet based, the punters will love it!"

We all know how that one turned out.

In terms of the hardware market and the other reason for Microsoft's woes with windows 11 is that PCs got very powerful, very quickly.

A bit like peak smartphone - the devices shipped were so powerful, nobody needed to upgrade for years, which broke the cycle of upgrading hardware to meet the demands of the OS or software.

"Hey, let's impose some arbitrary hardware restrictions to shift sales."

Will users go back to torrents?

Not that long ago, before streaming had taken off, I'd argue an exceptionally large percentage of people watched pirated video content.

They may not have downloaded it themselves, but got content from friends or more often than not, work.

I'm sure many of us will remember a sneaky network share or two. Bring along your USB stick, grab a movie.

It was so incredibly normalised - just like in previous decades, mp3s, ripping CD's and DVD's, tape-to-tape VHS, recording vinyl onto tape.

All of these things were done by otherwise completely law abiding citizens.

Piracy got easier and easier, but at the same time, streaming services started to be even easier - I think it was £6 a month when Netflix first came out.

We really believed the hype and the promise that you would soon be able to access any video content, going back decades.

That turned out to be bullshit, but we all rushed into it anyway - mostly because of original content, some of it exceptionally good.

Roll on a decade and we've got streaming services up the wazoo - all competing, all trying to grab eyeballs - and slowly but surely ramping up the monthly fees.

In the meantime torrent sites were hit hard and some of the biggest shut up shop.

I'd argue that the streaming services are on the cusp of reversing the move away from pirated content.

If they keep going on like this, especially in a cost-of-living crisis, pirated video content will once again become dominant and normalised.

No, it never really went away, but it certainly got way less prevalent.

We never did get what we hoped for - a streaming service that had everything you could ever want.

Heck, I'd pay £30 a month for that, so long as there were no ads.

I'm sure this is frequent for HSBC

I could be having memory issues, but it seems whenever there's an excessive bank service outage, HSBC always is mentioned.

I can't recall many other banks suffering the same frequency. I can't recall any incidents at my bank of choice in the last decade or more.

Seems that avoiding HSBC is the trick here and if you are a customer, time to switch!

Less intrusive ads are the answer

YouTube ads are horribly intrusive.

Waiting a few seconds to watch an ad I don't care about, sure, I can stomach that.

An abrupt advert right in the middle of a video I'm watching? That makes me sick.

I immediately reach for the ad-blocker.

Actually, the real answer is a decentralised solution, where content creators decide on how they want to earn revenue.

Already, many feature sponsors in their videos, which I'm totally fine with.

Usually, these are relevant to the content and more importantly, the creators are able to mesh adverts into their creations.

Obviously this provides no revenue to Google.

Disruption is required - but the level of disruption needs to be so damn huge, so profound, it's hard to see it happening.

Nobody yet has managed to truly challenge Twitter, FaceBook or YouTube.

The 'eyeballs' have it - the sheer volume of "hits".

It's the same reason nobody can challenge eBay - it's almost impossible to upset a Monopoly, unless laws change globally.

If it replaces marketing deadwood, I'm all for it...

Seems like a perfect fit for 99% of the marketing crap most companies churn out.

The vast bulk of it reads like AI generated content, even though it's created by humans, so may as well chop all that deadwood away and do the world a favour.

Good luck Woz! - no mystery though

The guy is 73, he's overweight. Sad to say, he's probably close to morbidly obese - not exactly uncommon in our modern times.

Yeah, I know photos online of someone don't prove it - but heck, he isn't exactly Mr. Skinny. Modern disease, many have it. Could be diabetes - could be just he's getting old.

Fingers crossed he makes it through this - and hopefully has a diet change and lives decades longer!

He's a legend.

Huge experience required...

The cloud may be the marketing buzz-word of the moment and infrastructure as code may be the developer buzz-word, but the bottom line is you need some serious chops to be managing cloud infrastructure at a high level.

The "cloud" and how services are deployed now is more aligned with automation of the grunt work - automation has taken out many jobs in the IT sector.

However, the chops required to understand the interaction of services, to understand how to handle load, how to monitor and how to secure infrastructure is much the same.

The level of knowledge required to excel and command a high salary is ridiculously steep - there's incredible depth required from an experience point of view.

Anyone with a little bit of tinkering nous can deploy services to the cloud - the barriers to that have dropped considerably - but without years of experience, they will never cut it.

You still need all the levels of knowledge that were around before "cloud" and before automation of grunt-work.

Probably more these days.

There's a reason competent devops engineers are in demand - it's a ridiculously difficult job!

Why even bother with a contract for SIM-only?

What is the standard monthly charge on some of these networks?

"Which? calculated that a customer who took out a SIM-only 24-month contract in November 2022 will end up paying £124.21 more than they had initially expected over the life of the contract if they are on Virgin Media O2."

Looks like some punters are paying £13 for 30gb of data, which can be had for £8 elsewhere - and then paying an extra fiver on top - yikes.

Pays to shop around for deals that don't have _any_ contracts at all - just a standard monthly fee.

Dependent on your location, you can choose from a quite a few - location being which network you get the best reception from.

I'm currently on Smarty - £8 for 16gb, but you can get 40gb for £10 - as I rarely use more than 1gb a month, that's enough - it's just "broadband insurance" for me - if my fibre connection goes down, I've got 15gb to play with.

GifGaf have some good deals too.

Why anyone would opt for a contract Sim only, is beyond me - especially 24 months, that's just a bit silly really.

Also phone "voice minutes" and "texts" are becoming increasingly irrelevant, when so many people just use data to make calls on the app of their choosing - e.g. WhatsApp.

The Great Firewall of Britain?

Seriously, that's what this ridiculous bill amounts to.

There is only one way to even begin to make this bill and thus online safety possible and that is to employ the same level of blocking and monitoring that China does.

Of course, there is another way - it's called education.

It's also called parental guidance.

When I was a nipper in the 1970's, our parents hammered home to us to NOT talk to strangers, to understand the warning signs, to be cautious - above all, to be street wise and savvy.

That was enough to keep most of us relatively safe - within reason.

It's a harsh world, bad things happen.

Education is the ONLY way to protect children online - to arm them with the know-how to avoid, as best they can, the bad things.

The moment any government decides they have a better plan, is effectively the end of democracy.

I think we're relatively safe right now though - the government we currently have are all about making noises rather than taking action.

The signing of this bill will be very much "we've done our job".

It will NEVER be enforced - it's just a bunch of hot air so government can say they've fixed it, simply because they say they have.

Actions are not required, just saying you're doing it is good enough.

Phew, for once, government incompetence saves the day...

The Catholic Clergy have always been keen on snakes...

Sometimes even the trouser variety.

Arm has been awesome for mac users

I guess not much to really add other than the title.

Apple Silicon is such a profound improvement over Intel that there's not a single reviewer since release that doubts the move has been incredible.

Sure, we're dealing with Apple and their often utterly awful Intel macBooks with thermal throttling up the wazoo (I'm looking at you, 2018 models) and comparing that to Apple Silicon, but it's a valid enough comparison.

Power consumption to performance is again something that no reviewer could deny has been nothing short of triumphant.

Is it all a bed of roses? Hell no, depends on the use case - the bang for buck, especially in areas such as 3D rendering, isn't all that.

Intel can still wipe the floor with Apple Silicon for many tasks - the difference is it does it with much higher power consumption.

The competition is healthy though. Microsoft seems to be totally onboard - they'd be fools not to be.

Lotus 1-2-3, 1991

How I loved that! - I was a GOD using that at my company at the time, knowing how to leverage and use it.

I'll fess up, everyone else at my company was computer illiterate - it was an electrical engineering company and I was a draughtsman using pen and ink. No CAD for us at that time.

I managed to leverage it to create printouts which I fed through our huge chemical printer, light + chemicals imprinted it onto film which we could tape onto manually draughted floor layouts also on film - we used pen and ink to draw onto them. This film drawings were then printed onto paper and sent out to site - mostly shopping centre construction sites. It was complicated, hard to describe these days.

It was such a lo-fi and nuts idea, I'd use it to make legends and the update history of electrical drawing plans.

Fond memories. I was completely unaware of what spreadsheet software even was before that. Since then, my skills in spreadsheets have not got any better - hate how they developed after those times.

I'm a software engineer now. I don't need no stinking spreadsheets for my data...

Stuck with gas way past 2050?

Or are we?

We have to dismiss heat pumps as the overall solution, due to the unbelievable cost associated with retrofitting millions of older homes in a timeframe of two decades.

Heat pumps are part of the solution, but only a relatively small part.

The grander solution is to stop using natural gas to produce electricity, switching completely to renewables.

Older properties unsuited to heat pumps would have gas boilers replaced by electric boilers.

It's a tough ask, but it is the only viable solution to net zero the UK actually has.

It's the most obvious choice - a slow and steady on-streaming of more and more renewable energy, a phasing out of using gas to generate electricity, coupled with a slow and steady replacement of the domestic gas network.

But corporates gonna corporate anyway...

I guess it's just developers or mostly developers that just know all of the products that Atlassian put out there are ... not exactly a beacon of software engineering skill.

Bloated beyond belief, frustrating to work with, riddled with bugs and upgrades are a bloody nightmare.

It seems the sales power of Atlassian appeals to bean counters and middle management - who are often not the main users of the pile of steaming cruft that Atlassian churn out.

I hate Confluence - bug ridden swamp of impossibility of discovery.

To create a document in Confluence is to pretty much send it into oblivion - good luck ever finding it again, unless you bookmark it.

That's my experience, anyway.

I literally have to make browser bookmarks for documents, because I know actually trying to find them is an exercise in sheer frustration.

Sure, this article is about confluence insecurity - but the two go hand it hand.

The system is so bloated with seldom used features and so popular with corporates, it's a hackers paradise.

As for Jira? I have so many bad words to say about that pile of steaming turd.

Corporates gonna corporate - Atlassian clearly have an aggressive sales team, willing to sell "the shiny" to upper management or middle management that don't really use the software.

I despise confluence and jira with equal measures.

The worst part is a seemingly continuous upgrade / lets change everything thing - not just at Atlassian level, but also at the corporate level. A constant meddling and dabbling with a stupidly large set of bloated features.

So often, data is lost in these kinds of processes, or it becomes a "We're upgrading to this version, but you may lose data, so move it ... somewhere."

Quite where, is never really discussed - "oneDrive!"

ANGRY developer shouting at the sky...

Careful with that screen share then...

I was having a chat with a fellow dev about Stable Diffusion and we got talking about a demo to multiple people over Zoom.

The thing is, Stable Diffusion can sometimes randomly result in some very NSFW results.

There's different types of NSFW - not all is pron related.

I can easily see AI suggestions in screen shares during live demo's going all sorts of wrong.

Perhaps the presenter had some chats on Teams about sensitive work related stuff and somehow, that ends up in the mix.

We all have seen gaffs that are just human error - the person sharing the screen forgets to close a private chat window, or doesn't close it down and a message popup appears "Yeah, I agree, Mandy has amazing tits!"

I can see AI causing all sorts of issues like this - bringing up suggestions based on private data that isn't flagged correctly.

"Suggestions based on "everyone knows Eric is a total dickwad:""

"Here's some results for "We all know the boss is shagging his PA, even his wife does:""

And there you are, sharing your screen in a meeting, with that AI generated content just waiting to trip you up.

Tried Debian flavour, decided on Ubuntu one

I'm reasonably experienced with Linux, but got tired of spending hours dabbling and setting stuff up, when I just wanted a simple env to "get stuff done"

I do have Bookworm installed on a devops test box I have, which I use ... for devops meddling about.

I've also got a gaming rig, that was running PoPOs.

Recently switched it to Linux Mint, Ubuntu flavour - I love it.

It's slick, keeps out my way and allows me to just "get stuff done"

Recently started dabbling with Stable Diffusion - and I just couldn't be arsed struggling with any dependencies and mucking about with apt sources to get the Nvidia drivers installed etc.

Installed Linux Mint, installed Stable Diffusion, up and running in minutes.

Snap? I really don't care. I understand why Snap exists, I have no dog in the fight - I just want simple.

I cut my teeth on Slackware and RedHat way back in the mid to late 90's - it was fun at the time, but I've got better stuff to do.

The debian flavour is ok - it works.

For me, personally, the Ubuntu flavour is quicker, easier - set and forget, get some work done.

Wrong direction?

I'm probably talking out my ass here - not uncommon - but I always viewed the Raspberry-pi as a device where raw computing power was secondary.

Yet here we are with another set of stats about the cpu and gpu power being x times better than the last iteration.

The problem? as I see it, is people trying to use the Pi for things it wasn't ever capable of doing with performance.

Computing that didn't suit the form factor nor spec.

Are the creators chasing that market? I don't know. I guess they are simply utilising compute power for each iteration in terms of cost - the same price point x years later takes advantage of what's available at the time.

But still, the idea persists that the raspberry pi is capable of all tasks at a low price point - sure, it is, but not at speed.

I kinda wish the direction was more attuned to the original excitement.

Expand on the versatility, rather than focussing on raw gpu/cpu power. Focus on what makes it great - low power, portability, small form factor, edge cases, iot etc.

We see people trying to use the pi for compute power that really doesn't add up at all.

Heck, at that point, a slightly bigger form factor - just get an intel NUC or something.

If you aren't into the maker game, using the Pi as a low power useful device for robotics or home automation etc. - you soon realise that for maybe $50 more you can get 10x the performance.

You no longer get blinded by the low price point and realise the Pi isn't actually for _you_

Yet here we are, the focus is just faster cpu and gpu, rather than on what the original intent was.

Management wants to manage

I think one of the biggest "justifications" for demanding a return to the office is that a lot of middle Management at big corporations have suddenly been shown to be dead wood.

Something developers in tech have known for a long time.

When faced with empty offices and nothing much to do, because the Zoom call is a screen of mostly names, as most of the cameras are turned off, what's a middle manager going to do?

Demand that people show their faces more often so the middle Manager can arrange lots of meetings and "together time" to ensure they feel like they are doing their jobs properly.

Yes, there's totally a reason for some office time - no doubt about that.

But it needs to be hybrid time, rather than demanding "3 days at the office", get people in for important meetings - brainstorming sessions, a bit of a social, to reconnect.

Also, stagger the times, so you aren't forcing people back into a hellish commute - don't start a meeting at 9am in the morning, start it at 10.30am.

Allow people to return back home after the meetings are done, should they wish to.

That screenshot - it's hideous

I guess my visual senses may be different to others - that desktop screenshot is so unbelievably ugly you may as well just use LXqt and have a very lightweight desktop that's also ugly.

I long for the day when there's a Linux distribution that actually produces a polished Desktop experience.

Some come close, but beneath the surface, horrors of design lurk.

That's why for my Linux needs on Desktop, I really don't give a monkeys about the Desktop manager - LXQt or XFCE does the job - ugly as heck, but super lightweight.

This is not even as close to as bad as acronyms are

At least with this Jargon, there's _some_ context present, even if it is obscure.

If you've never heard the phrase "Blue Sky Thinking" (lucky you), from the context of a sentence, you could probably work it out.

It all starts falling apart when that becomes an acronym - BST.

"British Summer Time" ?

Or it could be an acronym for some company software or division.

"Business System Telemetry"

_Every_ company has their own set of acronyms, as well as adopting more widespread ones.

The biggest issue is when an internal acronym is the _same_ as a widespread one - confusion reigns.

I'm sure I'm not alone in _pretending_ I know an obscure acronym people are bandying about in conversation - it gets to the point where, after a few years at a company, you become too embarrassed to admit you never learned that particular acronym.

Then one day, you find out the people often using them, haven't got a damn clue what they spell out either.

"Ah, yeah, if we just flick the switch on the POS, the AMOK should pull out of a nose dive and the BS will respond as intended and we're all hunky dory"

See, then we're getting deep into horror show territory - the combination of jargon and obscure acronyms.

"If we all pull together as a team on the FCK project, the cross-team synergy will help us out with the SHT systems and we can hit it out the park with the FUBAR rollout."

Overkill

I'm still using a Galaxy s9 - something considered "ancient" at just 5 years old.

Every year, I've looked at what is on offer, compared it to what I have and shrugged - "I don't need a new phone".

Sadly, the device no longer gets security updates - so, planned obsolescence, despite the fact it's still got at least another year with reasonable battery life.

Oh yeah ... didn't notice ...

The 2TB SSD I bought in September last year, is now £30 cheaper.

You can get an entry level 2TD SSD for under £100.

Spot the "whale" cryptobro's... and institutional investment.

If I've learned anything about cryptocurrency, it's led by media savvy "insiders" with many followers.

A circle jerk.

The media manipulation is far wider than social media posts, although those make up the bulk of the bait.

It's fairly obvious, a single whale with deep pockets and a social media following, can drum up support for the "asset" they have invested in.

They just need to post about it - and the price rises.

The more the social media following, the bigger the feeding frenzy.

Then we get to more abstract mechanisms - articles about cryptocurrency, news about it - "news" often being pretty much blatant bias.

We get the wonderfully inept "TA" or "Trend Analysis" - when used in the right hands, in the right circumstances, it totally has some value.

When used for cryptocurrency, it mostly doesn't - its tea leaf reading, bone throwing or just ... more hype.

Enter institutional investors - well heeled, soulless, incredibly savvy traders - behind the scenes, no social media needed, invisible = manipulate.

Cryptocurrency just becomes another asset to be used - and WOW, what an asset is can be - a total wild west, where under the right circumstances, a buy and sell can equal 10x profit in an hour - sometimes less.

Where you can just keep rinsing and repeating buy/sell, buy/sell when the volume is there.

A naive rube has close to ZERO chance in this speculative market - may as well go buy a lottery ticket.

Smarter folk can ride the coat tails, knowing full well that the entire thing is a casino, but it's a 24/7 soul destroying task.

Right now, it's a case of pass the parcel - last one gets the bags.

Institutional money is rapidly leaving - the super big bucks - but there may be one more "rinse and repeat" cycle left, one more stab at "tulip mania", to rob a few more dimwits from their hard earned money.

The emperor has NO clothes.

And now? - institutional investors are betting on the entire shit show going bust.

Obviously - wring the last little bit of cash out of it, emotionlessly, move on...