Rock out with your Spock out

Guys…

This is almost exactly what happened to me on Monday, resulting in a fifteen hour day.

My particular jenga piece was an Access query that none of my predecessors had deigned to document or even tell me about… but was critical to run monthly or you had obsolete data embedded deep within multi-million dollar reports.

Thank god I don’t work on salary anymore, or I’d be really upset.

Treason.

Side note for instance owners - the Turks are fucking insane about this shit. Twenty years ago I was hosting an artist’s website. One of the users was from Cyprus and posted pictures from the aftermath of a riot there - nothing extreme, just some graffiti and broken windows.

I started receiving threatening messages (this was early 2000s, so before takedown notices) from someone claiming to be from the Turkish government. I ignored them, as they had no legal authority and fuck autocrats straigtht up Edrogan’s ass.

So then, the site gets taken down by a hacking attack the next week. Some sort of Turkish bullshit appeared on the front page. I fixed it, thought I locked them out.

It was hacked again. I thought I missed something, and when through an even more extreme lockdown process, banning the entire country’s IP.

It was hacked a third time. That’s when I realized they weren’t hacking my site - they were hacking the hosting provider. I proved it by switching providers - the attacks stopped immediately.

That’s how extreme they were about suppressing this stupid picture of a broken window from a riot no one remembered even a week after it happened.

Welcome to the dark side, young padawan…

cackles manically in DAX

It’s not really a fatal flaw as other users have pointed out.

The ATP protocol could be improved by including a published “delete” request for the content ID of an item, so that the receiving instance would get notification that the item had been removed. This could then be automated to push a delete action on the receiving instance, or manually removed by the receiving instance admin.

Regardless, however, you’d have to trust that the “delete” tag was being respected by your federating instances.

However, one interesting element is that editing your content is actually more effective in the Fediverse than deleting it, as it will overwrite the content on remote servers when they re-query your instance. You’re still relying on that remote action before the old content changes, but at least it doesn’t just stay up while the content is deleted on your site.

You will understand in time, young padawan…

It depends on how long you use it:

Year 1: Ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

Year 2: How is it still fucking breaking?

Year 3: I just don’t fucking care why it keeps breaking. I think I hate this program.

Year 4: I hate this program

Year 5: Let the hate flow through you, consume you. Feel the dark side flowing through your fingertips. Yes. Good. Why is it breaking? It’s the end users. Yes… they’ve been plotting against you from the beginning - hiding columns, erasing formulas and even…

merging cells

Que heavy breathing through a respirator.

Year 6: It’s a board meeting. They ask you if you can average all the moving averages of average sales per month and provide an exponential trendline to forecast growth on five million rows of data.

You say “sure, boss, I can knock that for you in Excel in about an hour or two.”

Your team leader interjects “I believe what he was trying to say was we’ll use Tableau and it will take about a month.”

You turn to him with a steely glare.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell. All data flows through you and the holy spreadsheet, and the board is terrified of firing you because no one knows how your sheets work but you and their entire inventory system would collapse if you leave.

But then the inevitable happens. Dissension in the ranks. The juniors talk of python, R, Tableau, Power BI - anything to release your dark hold upon the holy data. You could crush them all with a xlookup chain faster than they can type a SELECT statement. The Rebellion is coming, but you’re ready. You’ve discovered the Data Model, capable of building a relational database behind the hidden moons of Power Pivot, parsing tens of millions of rows - and your Death Star is almost complete.

You’re ready to unleash your dark fury when the fucking spreadsheet breaks again.

Year 8: New company. They ask if you know Excel. You just start cackling with a addictive gleam in your eye as tears start streaming down your face.

They hire you on the spot.

All they use is Excel. And Access.

You think, ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

Personally I prefer my junior programmers well done.

deleted by creator

Agreed - actually came here to say this. The Saudis have been pretty blatant in how they time their pricing manipulation to American politics and economic trends. Like how oil prices stayed high even after COVID killed demand while Biden was in office, or how they flooded the market to try and kill the American fracking industry after Trump was elected the first time.

Post Traumatic Shit Disorder, to be precise.

Your points are valid, but I look at AI as an unavoidable trend in the tech space, which is why I experiment with local models. I’d rather understand how they work (and how to protect oneself from them) as I believe avoiding them isn’t really possible in my field.

Thus far, the local models I’ve worked with have gotten a C- on coding, but an A+ on bullshit. I think the tech still has a long way to go before it lives up to the hype, both negative and positive.

Me trying to figure out Trump’s tariff math.

Ok, this part is pretty cool:

Thunderbird Assist will also be available. This experimental feature, developed in collaboration with Flower AI, offers optional artificial intelligence functionalities for users who want them while also addressing privacy concerns head-on. On devices robust enough to handle AI models locally, Thunderbird Assist processes everything on the user’s own machine.

However, for users on less powerful hardware, the development team has integrated NVIDIA’s confidential computing to keep any remote processing secure. Rest assured, those who prefer to skip AI services can continue using Thunderbird without these extras.

I’ve been unwilling to touch cloud based AI, much less expose my emails to it as there’s no guarantee of privacy, but being able to run a local model allows you the functionality without the risk. Haven’t used Thunderbird in years, but this is tempting me to give it another shot.

Link to full article from the Atlantic - Raw Story’s version is just a summary.

Penguins right now: