Category: technology
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The Source of Truth
When we use truth and fact synonymously we lose the very precision that folks who care about things enough to want a “source of truth” are seeking in the first place.
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Solving the problem
There are lots of voices bemoaning the use of copyrighted materials in the training of large language models, how much energy and water is consumed by their creation, and how they are enclosing a commons to create a new generation of robber barons. Congress could, if they were a functioning part of human civilization, enact…
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On the management of the operations of information systems
or how to monitor your *aaS Operating any software is an expensive, mysterious, and terrifying proposition. For most people software is an arcane craft and the people who author it are witches. Operating software at any scale is to summon dark forces and try to harness their power as your own. Operating software to provide…
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Does k8s encourage fragility?
This is a question I’ve been toying with off and on since Kubernetes was made available. It goes hand-in-glove with a similar question about microservices, but I think of them as two separate questions, that happen to be related because there are loud voices urging us to deploy microservice architectures on Kubernetes, not as one…
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The mirror universe gets your product, too.
AI personal assistants sound great, until you look at the user journeys for the evil personas – spammers; phishers; identity thieves; various fraudsters, hucksters, and grifters; organized crime; corrupt officials; zealots of various beliefs; bureaucrats in totalitarian regimes, etc. When the efficiencies gained by a technology are hard to get, understand, or use, they tend…
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Ahead of its time
Today I learned that in 1983 I could have downloaded games into my Atari 2600 using a modem, stored them in ROM and played them off-line. In 1983. And that the company that offered that service only offered it because their original idea to allow you to download music over a modem to listen to…
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The Web is what is wrong with the Internet
HTTP is fantastic. HTTP is also a scourge. It is fantastic in the sense that what is does well, it does exceedingly well. But when it gets used to do those things it doesn’t do well it sows the seeds of doom. Want to move hypertext between computers? Good on you. Want to move things…
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Postel’s Triangle
Postel’s Triangle is the name for the idea that Domain Names, Certificates for those Domain Names, and the IP address allocations of the servers for those Domain Names that have the Certificates are a single information object that ought to be administered, configured, and propagated as a whole because doing that is the prerequisite for…
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Federation is contextual
Federation at the server instance is different from federation at the account instance. That feels like it is obvious, but still needs saying. Server federation is email. Account federation is spycraft in cold war Berlin. The reason why spam is endemic is that server federation must be default-accept to be valuable. The reason why PKI…
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Portability
Played Cyberpunk 2077 for five hours yesterday (because I’m an adult, 😛 ) and all I have to show for it is this: AAA video games that don’t let me save+clone+version+re-hydrate+share character state like skill trees, point allocations, and gear are starting to feel like a missed opportunity. We’re talking about the digital version of…