In case you haven’t heard, we are experiencing what some have termed as “the worst global Internet outage in history”. It’s because of Crowdstrike, a security company used by many, many companies. They sent out a security patch to systems running Microsoft Windows yesterday, and that patch had issues. Computers that applied this patch then crash and can’t be restarted without removing said patch. The kicker is, getting the computer to a state where the patch can be removed is tricky, especially if the computer is not locally accessible by someone that knows how to do this sort of thing.
And because of this, airports and airlines and DMVs and banks and hospitals and telecoms and all sorts of businesses that run Microsoft Windows and use Crowdstrike to keep their systems secure and hurting bad today.
Apple devices (Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc) and Linux computers are not locally affected by this outage, but systems they access could be affected. Microsoft based computers on their own (not managed by Crowdstrike) are also not affected. I’m 99% sure your gaming computer is fine.
We have been dealing with Crowdstrike all day at work today and it looks like the fun and frivolity is going to continue into the weekend. Luckily, the applications my team at work supports all run on Linux based servers, outside of two legacy applications we inherited from another group during a recent re-organization at work.
I’m surprised a patch from a prominent security company made it into the wild with such a defect. Usually these things are caught well before they’re released to the public. As of this writing, Crowdstrike’s stock price is down over 11%. I’m a little surprised by that; I thought it’d be much more.
This blog is approaching 23 years old. Having started out as HTML pages built from scratch, then moved to Movable Type, and then moved again to WordPress, I think it’s been living on the same WordPress platform for 18 years or so.
WordPress has changed a lot over the nearly two decades I’ve been using it.
I’m not completely satisfied with my WordPress experience. There’s a lot of elements that just get in my way. But it does offer a fairly “low friction” experience when compared to some other workflows. I just want an editor where I can easily post media, write a bunch of words, and basically hit “Print”. WordPress still affords me that opportunity, albeit a bit slower than it did in the past. There’s a lot of cruft in the platform.
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of moving something a little less resource intensive, but moving 22+ years of blog posts to a new platform is an extremely daunting task. A good chunk of my life is documented in this blog thingee, missing photos notwithstanding, and I don’t want to lose the words I have written over the years. I also don’t want to lose the comments of others. Even though blogs are not really a “thing” anymore, I do get comments once in a while and they make me smile.
So while I tinker with the idea of moving the whole shebang to another platform, I probably will end up just changing the appearance and tweaking under the hood to make things run a little better and a little faster.
If you see me swinging around wallpapers and chandeliers in here, you know when the dust settles I’ve done everything I can to keep the history alive.
As you can tell by the posts here on this ancient bloggy thing, I’ve been making a lot of videos lately. I enjoy sharing these videos with folks via YouTube and then subsequently posting these videos through the various social media outlets. I’m not in it to make money; it’s an art endeavor.
Apparently the YouTube algorithm, which makes or breaks influencers on a daily basis, doesn’t like my cavalier, “I’m not going to shock you with my thumbnail” approach. Either that or folks just don’t care for videos of a 55 year old man climbing mountains and popping in and out of frames like Paul Lynde on “Bewitched”. Though, I tend to think of my witchcraft presentations to be more along the lines of Maurice Evans on the series.
I’m having fun and that’s first and foremost on my priority list. I’d really like to make other people smile or at least forget about their worries for some moments with my “art”. If you know someone that’d be interested, feel free to share.
As I get older, I’ve been finding it harder to focus on tasks. I’ve never been one for “deep focus” if the activity is not on my checklist of intense interests. Unfortunately, work tends to not be on that list.
In the past I have listened to music to try to eliminate distractions around me. This generally works, but over the past few years I’ve noticed that anything with lyrics in the music tends to be a distraction as well. I blame this on listening intently to the words, a habit learned since becoming a pilot, where I’m always listening to my call sign from Air Traffic Control.
There’s a part of me that wonders if this increased struggle with maintaining focus at work has something to do with my couple of rounds of COVID since 2020. I know most of the world believes COVID was a hit ‘n run sort of thing, where we got vaccinated, and if we feel recovered from it we were just as we were before we contracted it. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I know that I’ve never been able to shake off a certain amount of brain fog since my experiences of having COVID.
I have found that listening to soundscapes like thunderstorms or even brown noise has done wonders for my focus at work. Luckily, I’m in a position that lets me enjoy such a thing. I alternate between my Apple AirPod Pros and my Bose noise canceling over-the-ear headphones.
Today I discovered an app, via the Apple Store Story page, called Portal (link to the Apple App store). A beautifully designed app, not only is it a joy to use, but it provides gorgeous imagery to go along with the amazing soundscapes. Here I am enjoying the sights and sounds of a waterfall in Iceland.
At $49.99/year (or $250 for a lifetime) it’s a bit on the pricey side. I just started the seven day free trial today. So far in the past hour I’ve knocked out more work than I’ve knocked it in the previous three.
Peace of mind and feeling grounded through better focus might be worth that price of admission.
While I was out on the Great Plains chasing storms, I apparently missed Microsoft’s announcement of their latest ventures. While I don’t have a lot of Microsoft in my life, outside of work where it’s mandatory, I still like to keep tabs on what’s going on with the company. And of course, since it’s 2024 and everyone has discovered that cryptocurrency isn’t what it was cracked up to be, Microsoft is joining the chorus of screamers going all in on “A.I.”. They’re doing this with their new line of PCs, called Microsoft Copilot+PC, and a new feature to Windows 11 called “Microsoft Recall”.
First of all, I don’t really need to meet the marketing genius that came up with the term “Copilot+PC”. Talk about unsexy and clunky. But whatever, it’s Microsoft, not Apple coming out with this new line of computers so my expectations are lower.
But let’s talk about Microsoft Recall. As I understand it, Microsoft Recall is a nifty new feature in Windows 11 that will take a screenshot of whatever you’re doing every three seconds and throw it into a database on your device and keep it there for three months. Looking at the news? Captured. Look at photos of your last vacation? Snapped. Look at porn? Gotcha. Look at your bank statement? Grabbed. It’s all there in the new Microsoft Recall database that lives on your computer so that Copilot, Microsoft’s version of “A.I.”, can go back and tell you where you stored your photo since you can’t remember where you stored it.
First of all, if you don’t know where you’re storing things on your computer, and secondly, if the existing Microsoft search can’t find it, perhaps you need to reexamine your computer use methods. A good chunk of the people I know using Microsoft products tend to just throw everything on the desktop anyway, so if it’s not there it’s probably not important.
Can we talk about what a privacy nightmare Microsoft Recall can pan out to be? Yes, the database is stored locally on your computer and for all intents and purposes, your data on your computer should be encrypted. Windows 11 offers this right out of the gate. But imagine if someone grabbed your P@ssw0rd! Not only do they now have access to the here and now, they also have access to screen shots grabbed every three seconds for the past three months.
What the heck.
Now, not to be too shiny in my tin-foil hat, but Microsoft isn’t exactly know for their strong privacy practices. Microsoft is rapidly introducing ads of all persuasions into their products, and how long will it be before the magic “A.I.” takes a gander at those every-three-seconds-for-the-past-three-months screenshots and determines what’s your likes, dislikes, etc. are and starts fashioning ads after those tastes? I keep thinking back to an old podcast featuring a prominent tech guru of the time (we’ll call her Gina Patrani), where the speaker was touting the wonders of the just released Gmail. “I don’t mind a few ads based on keywords from my email if it let’s me have this fantastic new email service for free.”
What that little approach turned Google, heck the entire tech sector, into today is a whole ‘nuther ball of chaos we’ll discuss when I’ve had a few drinks at breakfast.
There is no way that Microsoft is going to let that gold mine of three months of data just sit on your computer and not get mined for the revenue generation potential it promises. Corporations don’t work that way and with every corporation shimmying and needling every scrap of user data possible to turn it into a revenue stream, anyone with any sort of understanding on how the world works will agree with me.
I can’t imagine how this new feature, one that you must opt out of because it’s on by default, will be received by lawyers and doctors and bankers and stock brokers and the like. As mentioned earlier, my workplace has an unnatural love for all things Microsoft, but I can’t imagine a screenshot every three seconds and stored for every three months would be received well when it comes to the company’s proprietary secrets. Though, admittedly, I bet the folks that monitor employee productivity will find it a hoot and a half; it’s one less thing they have to install to monitor the my computer.
I’ve been using computers for a very long time. I’ve been writing software for a very long time. I’ve been online in some fashion for nearly 40 years. In the interest of your personal technological safety, run, do not walk as far away from these new PCs as possible. Breathe as much life out of your existing equipment, switch to something else (Linux, Apple, etc), or hope with the rest of the world that this idiocy does not see the light of day.
And as a quick side note, no government, and especially no government in the U.S., is going to step in to stop these sort of advancements from happening. There’s way too much lobbying and other ways for elected officials to benefit from these sorts of “A.I.” ventures.
I have been clamoring for years for our technology to be moving forward again. Trust me, this ain’t it.
OpenAI, the company that brought ChatGPT to the masses, had a big spring event yesterday. It was their opportunity to show the latest technology the company is bringing to the masses. It didn’t have the polish of an Apple presentation but I still found it to be an interesting thing to watch.
In yesterday’s presentation, OpenAI introduced us to their latest advancements in ChatGPT. It has been dubbed “ChatGPT-4o”. While the “o” looks like the zero on a 1970 Sharp Microcompet calculator, it’s actually pronounced “o”. The “o” stands for Omni.
The presenters went on to share all the new things these LLMs, or Large Language Models, can do. This involves being able to interact with users via video and speech, as well as the default voice sounding a lot like Scarlett Johansson in the movie “Her”.
And that’s not where the similarities to Samantha in “Her” end. There were also many demos where two AIs were talking to each other, singing with each other, and exhibiting other activities that has normally been relegated to the likes of Sci-Fi movies.
I have complained for the past decade that it seems like technology advances have been iterative. Apple’s Vision Pro headset, revealed earlier this year, had promise of technology that would take us to the next step, but from what I’m seeing in various tech circles, it hasn’t really taken off.
We all know that some fear “Artificial Intelligence” taking over the world. These AIs, even in their latest incarnations, are still very much Large Language Models, being quite clever in the presentation of human derived knowledge, logic, and thought processes. But hearing them interact with one another immediately made me realize that the phrase, “I’ll have my people talk to your people”, is going to become much more commonplace.
Those humans that work in call centers might have a reason to be concerned about the longevity of their careers. If any space is going to be invaded by this technology, this is going to be it.
I can’t remember if the first web-based search engine I used was Lycos, Excite, or AltaVista. Prior to web-based search engines I remember using things like Gopher (which wasn’t really a search utility, per se) and Archie. But that was back in the day when one was looking for text and text-based files. Ads were still on television and billboard. The good ol’ days.
I know that of the three (Lycos, Excite, AltaVista), AltaVista was my favorite and I hoped it would continue to give search engine goodness for a long, long time. Yahoo! was dancing around with the concept back then but then Google came along and became a verb. This was before the company that pledged to “Do No Evil” started getting greedy and crazy with monetary goals.
These days I don’t really trust Google’s search results. If I search for anything, the top result is likely to hit our bank account. Even if I’m looking for a recipe for baked beans or something, the top result in a Google search is going to either be an ad for pre-made baked beans, take me to a link that is splattered with a tedious number of ads touting botox or something, or a dissertation on why I should talk about baked beans in a YouTube video.
I don’t like Google’s ad based model.
I’ve been running with DuckDuckGo but it doesn’t feel like it’s giving me the results it could be giving me. Granted, DuckDuckGo is respecting my privacy and not trying to monetize the fact that I enjoy baked beans, but I still get strange results like photos of baked beans and links to videos on people making baked beans, eeking out each step in between ads for things like soap on a rope.
I’m a Gen-Xer, I want a list that I can read and a step-by-step guide I can follow.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I have been giving ChatGPT a whirl. It’s nowhere near “intelligent”, artificially or otherwise, but it does give me lists to follow and, after a month of focusing on the service, the conversational interface feels much more natural than typing keywords in a search box. It’s a shame it isn’t powered by Majel Barrett-Roddensberry’s voice.
My husband has been messing around with ChatGPT as well and he is enjoying the experience. He knows to double check the facts, but he really likes the other parts such as the aforementioned conversational style, the ability to discuss submitted, photos, etc.
There’s a running joke in our family that my name is Cole Slaw. Usually, when folks of the gay community are looking through photos or approaching us out in public, they’re all about the rest of the family and their beards and beefy appearances and the what not. Occasionally I get a “and who’s this?” with a finger waggled in my direction. I tell the waggler that I’m the cole slaw and that I’m included with the main dish whether you like it or not.
I watched Apple’s event (after the fact) when they announced “their best iPad lineup yet”. I long for the day when Apple decides to take a left turn and NOT announce their best iPad lineup yet but instead just say, “here’s a bunch of iPads we thought of” just so everyone in the tech press can clutch their pearls, gasp, and then go on and on about how Apple is failing again.
So there’s new iPad Airs and iPad Pros that have all sorts of spec bumps and size bumps and new accessories and more importantly, thickness reductions that will allow you to bend the iPad like the Six Million Dollar Man or The Bionic Woman (depending on how you identify).
And while I’m talking about bending iPads, what was with the commercial at the beginning of the Apple Event where they crushed everything like so much garbage in a landfill, complete with something’s eyes bulging out as it gasped for its last breath. I mean, they were crushing guitars and televisions and all sorts of things and, perhaps it’s because of my brain chemistry, but I found the intro to be really off-putting and so unlike Apple.
Anywho, we have the new iPad Air and the new iPad Pro lineup. I was really hoping for something, anything, to be upgraded on the iPad Mini, but Tim barely mentioned its existence like so much cole slaw next to the main dish.
I can relate. And it looks like I’ll continue to use my rapidly aging iPad Mini for flying until something, anything happens to that particular model.
I really enjoy Jeff Geerling‘s YouTube channel. His geek related content is awesome, he seems like a nice guy, and his videography skills are top notch.
Like many others in North America, Jeff had a stunning view of the recent the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, and shares his experience through his latest video.
There’s one line at the beginning of his video that particularly captured my attention, “make the videos you love”.
I’m writing this blog entry while my work laptop goes through its fourth update since the beginning of the week. This is not unusual, though the frequency of updates has increased since the “Windows Desktop Specialists” upgraded this underpowered laptop to Windows 11 a few weeks ago. I guess productivity isn’t particularly important when it comes to work computers, at least where I work.
Speaking of updates, I made some changes to the underlying infrastructure for ye ol’ ancient bloggy thing I have going on here. If you see something amiss, please advise via email or something so I can fix it. I know there’s a bit going on with pictures sometimes facing the wrong direction. The hosting company has to install a new PHP extension to the shared server to get everything kicked back upright. Hopefully that will be fixed within 24 hours of me posting this entry.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
