Posts by Michael Hoffmann

From 15 billion miles away?!

My wife complains she can't jog my memory from across the dinner table!

Ai feeding off AI

So the hyped-up LLM glorified search engines called AI will trawl all the AI scam/spam and feed on itself.

In an ever increasing cycle of increased energy usage. until we become a second sun and then we can name Mars "Tatooine".

Parallel article in ElReg today about AI crashing democracy and causing wars.

So would that be 25% of remaining electricity on the ruins of civilisation?

With most prompts going along the line of "suggest alternative preparations for cooking weeds and fellow humans" and "how to prevent prion diseases from excessive cannibalism"

Who will buy their precious products?

Or will that not even matter anymore? Just some fantasy constructs of shuffling AI generated make-believe profits into stock buybacks for the next golden parachute as it all crumbles into a decline that makes the last years of the Western Roman Empire look like a pillar of stability.

Thinking of my own time in the hellhole and some of the kool-aid satiated cheerleaders I worked with, I wonder how many of those have received their layoff notices in the recent massacres. Thereby receiving a harsh lesson in corporate reality of late stage capitalism.

Of course...

... I've been staring at the SMART data on one of my oldest SSDs with increasingly furrowed brow for a while now. I expect it to die when prices reach their peak - and crash afterwards.

For those of you holding out, I will announce it so you can start planning for lower prices!

Reason #854637

... why I got out of security.

Figleaf and scapegoat. Circumvented over and over by besuited Big 4 consultants who couldn't configure the firewall on their home network modem.

Alas!

We will never learn if they defeat the Blight! :'(

Just as I suspect we will never see how the Uplift Saga ends.

That's OK

Security budgets have been used for stock buybacks and executive bonuses, so they didn't do to waste!

POKE, CALL

Ah, the memories, looping through a huge (for the time) DIM and POKE the values into sequential memory, finally a CALL to the first one, thereby running a machine language program on my Apple 2.

Beers to the V1 team and all those who also remember those days!

Currently reading and highly recommend "Flying Blind" by Peter Robinson.

Probably the most depressing book I've read in ages - and one that very seriously makes me not want to step into a Boeing aircraft ever again. Reading it, none of this comes as a surprise. And it was "merely" written in the wake of the 737MAX disasters, so doesn't even cover the door mess or the Boeing rocket fiascos.

I'm screwed

My ESXi whitebox is locked to 6.7U1, last one to support my old hardware.

That said, it's not routed to the Internet, but the VMnet is of course...

That thing was supposed to run until the heat death of the universe. Or mine. Whichever comes first.

Why why why?

Why does the supposedly "good guy" in this interminable saga have to be Epic?

Peddler of lootboxes and play-2-win.

We're not talking noble Like taking on evil Palpatine here. A pox on both etc etc etc

There is nothing dumber than a man with an erection -- proverb in probably every language and culture, ever

Been there done that

Many many years ago, while still living in the US, case of same name, same birthday. The other guy had a rap sheet as long as your arm, all violent, and fugitive from the law. Why do I know that? Because for some reason that guy came up *with all that info* on a friggin DMV computer screen, where I could see it as well!

The DMV drone, probably already seeing themselves on the evening news as hero of the hour, just about started calling police officers.

The much-maligned social security number - and the fact that we weren't even born in the same country, never mind state, eventually came to the rescue. After just about yelling at them to look at what was staring at them on the screen. But it couldn't be that there could be a mix up, or coincidence, and that I maybe was NOT that wanted person.

Whenever I hear "private equity" I look like I'm having a seizure, because I can't decide whether I should facepalm, run screaming or have paroxysms of rage.

Will this mob follow the usual pattern of trying to leech off the IP? Start lawsuits? Try and force users of the free version into a subscription model? Close-source MariaDB, in the usual incomprehension of OSS, leading to another fork? JosephDB, I presume, this time around?

"If you're a Putin supporter, you might hope it distracts and dismays the warriors on the other side. If you're American"

Sadly, even unbelievably, these days that is a Venn diagram with a shocking amount of overlap in certain circles.

C-Suite solution?

Mandatory in-office hours from 6am to 9pm! Plus, commute times will be considered uncompensated working hours.

The peons WILL be shown who's boss, until a new government can be purchased.