I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again. “…spending half of the planet’s engineering efforts to add chatbot support to every application under the sun when half of the industry hasn’t worked out how to test database backups regularly.”
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Comments 9
thread
latest
popular
I thought it was funny that he kinda ignored the zero-trust option in the poll he referred to, and had a footnote about not knowing what it was. That was the one option in the poll that actual security people might care about!
(It just means using authentication within your environment. E.g. your database doesn't just trust your web frontend, the frontend has to actually authenticate to the database. And employees have to authenticate to internal tools, they aren't trusted just because they're on the corporate network or a corporate computer.)
I recently started a state government job. Everything is zero trust now. I don't think anybody even knows what it means, but they neeeed it.
such a delight to read informed opinions that align so closely to my uninformed ones
My thoughts exactly!
Just wait. Any day now, we'll see food labeled "Now with AI!"
All these companies with panicked FOMO, desperately shoehorning AI into irrelevant functions and features.
Somebody please stop this hamster wheel and give it back to the hamsters.
This IS hilarious as satire for The Onion.
Yes the AI hyped tech bros have become a depressing cliché — that definitely could use some tempering — However, the grumpy sysadmin using a few Straw Man and blatant Red Herring arguments is equally cliché.
Of course testing DB Backups is important.
Which of his points do you consider to be Red Herrings?
1. This is not a grumpy sysadmin. He is a principle software engineer and data scientist with creds and bragging rights.
2. I was a grumpy sysadmin for 30 years and have actually seen large firms collapse because of shit tech policy.
3. So far as I can see pretty much everything Nikhil writes here is not just true but very, very true.
4. Blythe minimization of concern is exactly what makes sysadmins grumpy.
I mean:
and
...these two pull quotes alone establish the speaker as someone who gets it.
Hello! In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions. Or try logging out and then back in. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation.
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!