I'm really really really not interested in computers getting more powerful.
I am super interested in them being more repairable and modifiable, drawing less power, lasting and being supported for way longer etc. That stuff still gets me excited

In software architecture you have to recognize when you're adding a rocket stage.

In rockets and aeroplanes it's a simple truth that weight adds more weight. To carry more you need bigger engines, a bigger fuel thank, more fuel. More weight becomes even more weight.

For rockets to make it out of the atmosphere they use multiple stages. Each stage carries the rocket to a certain height, once the fuel is used up the stage is ejected so the next stage can push forward a lighter rocket. So adding a stage will get you further, but at the cost of much more machinery, engineers, and complexity. You now have a much heavier rocket to launch.

Switching to kubernetes, kafka, microservices, a single page app, ... is adding a rocket stage. Maybe it's what you need to get where you want to go, but be clear about the extra weight, operational cost, engineering overheard, mental overhead.

The tragicomedy of corporate dependence on free labor continues:

Here, we see $3.1T-market-cap Microsoft, who've built a dependency on ffmpeg into Teams, trying to convince an all-volunteer community to treat their bug as high priority.

https://twitter.com/FFmpeg/status/1775178803129602500

Will they pay for a support contract or anything? No, of course not. Instead, they'll try the advice of some rando calling themselves "Elon Musk".

https://twitter.com/FFmpeg/status/1775178805704888726

(Err: originally read $400B, not $3.1T; thanks @danielnazer)

🤯 The level of sophistication of the XZ attack is very impressive! I tried to make sense of the analysis in a single page (which was quite complicated)!

I hope it helps to make sense of the information out there. Please treat the information "as is" while the analysis progresses! 🧐 #infosec #xz

One of the things I have been doing to approve my language skills is reading science fiction in Italian. It's surprisingly hard to find books by Italian SF authors (even though there are many of them) rather than yet another Tolkien translation; this is especially true in Italian bookstores, sadly. Ebooks fill in nicely, though, once you discover who you're looking for.

I recently read WOHPE by Salvatore Sanfilippo. The story, which deals with fears of the AI apocalypse, was a fun read, and it was clear that the author actually had a clue about how systems like language models actually work. I definitely enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, I'm a kernel person, relatively ignorant of areas like databases. So as I was reviewing an upcoming article by another LWN author about the Redis mess, I learned a lot. One thing I picked up was that one of the creators of Redis was ... a certain Salvatore Sanfilippo (aka @antirez) Some searching establishes that it's indeed the same person; no wonder the book was as clueful as it was.

Small world...and people say hackers can't write :)

today I again had occasion to refer to @danny's 2003 piece https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2003/10/13/the-register/ on private communications

"...we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t." [1/2]