While I’m talking about AI… (is there anything else to talk about?) I’m known to be cautious about AI and exactly what it can do. My skepticism is misplaced, you might say. After all, isn’t AI replacing thousands of coding jobs? It’s going to come for network engineers too! I’ve been playing with Warp, a […]
AI layoffs meet insomnia and cops
The flip side of my most recent post was covered by the WSJ (again, paywall) in an article from about Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who thinks that AI will wipe out tons of jobs–a prospect he seems quite happy about–joining the ranks of Mark Benioff in celebrating putting millions of people out of work. Since […]
Bubbles, dotcoms, and AI
Today the Wall Street journal published an article (paywall) asking if the AI-boom data center mania might be inflating a bubble along the lines of the “internet’s infrastructure build-out in the late 1990s”. Well, gee, ya think? I lived through that bubble. Right when I was graduating college, the Internet (I still use the capital […]
The joy of expertise
I’ve been working in the lab again, and I attempted to log in to one of my switches (IP addresses have been changed to protect the innocent): $ ssh admin@10.10.18.73 Warning: Permanently added ‘10.10.18.73’ (RSA) to the list of known hosts. admin@10.10.18.73’s password: Permission denied, please try again. Huh? I checked caps lock, and even […]
Dial-up Blues
I haven’t posted in a long time, partly because work has had me busy, partly because I haven’t been sure what to write. I have multiple drafts sitting unfinished for various reasons. The best way to get unstuck is to tell some old stories, as I like to do, and I was thinking this morning […]
Blog themes, again and again
My ongoing saga to locate a WordPress theme I like is killing me. I used a hosted version of WordPress (not worpress.com), which gives me a lot more control, but at the end of the day, I really hate WordPress. I just want a simple theme that’s easy to read. So, I’m iterating through a […]
Netstalgia: Y2K
Gather around while I tell the story of the great Y2K bug, how close we came to societal collapse until we were saved by Deloitte consultants who selflessly worked night and day to stave off this peril! In fact, the Y2K episode should serve as a reminder of the peril of “viral” thinking, panic and […]
Layer 1 Friday: Flattened Pins
How about a little layer 1 Friday combined with Netstalgia? Back in the 1990’s I was doing desktop and light network support for a variety of very small clients in San Francisco, mostly advertising agencies. Ad agencies were experiencing a boom because of the dotcom era. VCs funneled money into dotcoms who funneled the money […]
What’s with the cosmic rays?
I was reading a Reddit thread bashing Cisco today. It’s a few months old. Some of the commentary is fair enough. Some of it might be a bit unfair. But I do think all vendor execs should spend time reading customer Reddit threads to understand how they’re perceived and what they can do better. […]
Topological Qubits
I’ve been very unconvinced on the reality and benefits of quantum computing. Sure, a lot of people with fancy degrees from fancy places say it will work miracles. Sure, they make really impressive machines with cooling units that look like they’ll beam you into the movie Tron. Sure, Microsoft just released a new chip with […]