Lars Wirzenius
Lars WirzeniusI told some friends recently about the on sentence in German I can still manage, and now I'm going to inflict it on you too:
eine kleine Tasse Schokoladenschnitzel mit Bananenkartoffeln und Kabelsalat auf der Hauptbahnhof, bitte
Lars WirzeniusIn their recent episode @europeanspodcast@mastodon.social mentions that Mastodon (a.k.a. the fediverse) is where they have the fewest followers and the most interactions.
I've avoided commercial social media for a while. I'm here because I've found interesting people with interesting things to say, and I'm not being manipulated into trying to buy stuff, or being force fed stuff I'm not interested in.
Thank you @cwebber@social.coop , @evan@cosocial.ca , @Gargron@mastodon.social , and others who've built this place for us.
Lars WirzeniusI had a discussion with all the other programmers in the world, and we've agreed that it's time we stop creating bugs. I hope this comes as a relief to everyone.
Lars WirzeniusI maintain, for myself, a "dates in geek history" calendar in my Google Calendar, from where I spot things to post to the fediverse about. If I had tools to maintain it as files in Git, I'd do it that way and then share it publicly, but alas, I've never had the energy to find or write such tool. Maybe some day.
Lars WirzeniusOn this day in 1998 the first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was laucnhed. That's 26 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
#OTD #OnThisDay #ISS #space
Lars WirzeniusYesterday I moved 60 terabyte of data in about 15 seconds.
I removed drives from my old file server in my office and carried them to the dining table where I'm assembling the new file server.
Then I carried them back, because I need to shuffle data between drives so I can keep only some of the drives, as the new server is physically much smaller.
Lars WirzeniusSelf-hosting means taking on system administration duties. For some software that's remarkably easy. Most software makes it painful.
The duties include things like vetting software for suitability, installing it, making sure it runs, making the hosted system safe and secure for its users and the rest of the Internet, applying security fixes, upgrading to new versions, making sure backups exist and can be restored, helping users, dealing with spammers, dealing with hostile scrapers, ...
Lars WirzeniusAll of this is fine, if you're willing to accept the responsibility. It's usually not even difficult, as such, if you're into tinkering with computers and software anyway. But it's almost always tedious and annoying.
Not something anyone should pressure someone else to do, unless that someone will be fairly compensated for their time and effort.
Lars WirzeniusSelf-hosting means taking on system administration duties. For some software that's remarkably easy. Most software makes it painful.
The duties include things like vetting software for suitability, installing it, making sure it runs, making the hosted system safe and secure for its users and the rest of the Internet, applying security fixes, upgrading to new versions, making sure backups exist and can be restored, helping users, dealing with spammers, dealing with hostile scrapers, ...
Lars WirzeniusFrom my "Geek dates" calendar:
On this day in 1988 Dade "Zero Cool" was sentenced to not use computers or touch-tone telephones until he was 18 years old. He'd crashed 1507 computer systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(film)#Plot
#Hackers #HackersMovie #OTD #OnThisDay
Lars WirzeniusI expect the current LLM craze to fade away over the next three years. Some useful tools and services and approaches may survive, just like from previous "AI" fads, if they're useful enough.
We will have lost years of junior software developers who were never given a fair chance to start a career, as well as truly huge amounts of garbage that will take decades to remove.
There will also be many unnecessary data centers, and, most importantly, many people who were hurt helping train models.