SaaS
- For at least the big tech bro companies SaaS is all about them owning your data. Almost impossible to pull it out. The cost of doing so exceeds the ever rising cost of maintaining the service. Over time you ability to even govern your data is eroded as well.

AI
- Well huge risks here. You data isn't even remotely stored in formats that you are used to. The AI model is effectively hardwired to your data over time. If the AI model is replaced or enhanced or what have you and poof. You data can easily be corrupted, changed or lost. Numerous cases of this already.
- Also there is AI delusions. Fake data, bad interpretations, errors, etc.
- Letting AI make decisions for you with out vetting is basically asking for trouble.
- There is no security model for AI as of yet. This is completely uncharted waters here. We haven't even begun to explore the security, privacy, integrity aspects associated with AI systems. You will get burned at somepoint on a security front.

SaaS can be very bad. It takes a strong IT oversite to make sure you don't lose access to your data over time. But there is maturity enough in the industry that this is still possible with effort.

AI is very bad at the moment. It's a very risky proposition with the likelihood of being burned very high. But with risk the payoffs can be huge. I think the prediction of 18 months before this space solidifies is ignores the greater issues surrounding AI.

I don't think we have found the sweet spot for AI tools yet. The whole AI revolution is very young.

1. Cable used to be easy to consume.
2. Then Came pay per view services. Then it became complicated and expensive
3. Response was easy to consumer pirate disks.
4. Streaming service mature and become easy to use. Lots of content It was a good time.
5. New services start up and take control of content that was once centralised. Now we have Lots of marginal but expensive streaming services.
6. Response is to pirate using download or pirate digital streams. It's easy and less expensive again.

The pattern is pretty obvious. Once the greed kicks in and fractures what is a decent experience the response is for people to migrate to something that is a decent experience again. Often it's pirating. Right now all of the content providers are battling it out for your eyeball time. With quality content scattered in turf wars. Pirating just brings those fragmented piles of content back to a single place again.

The studios can flip out all they want. People clearly want a smooth easy experience, with price being part of that equation.

We are already seeing content being rolled into bundles and packaged together. Prime is half way there. One UI to access multiple studios content. How ever they charge a fortune for bundle content so i can't see that working overly well. Netflix is a fraction of what it used to be with content constantly being removed due to rights negotiations.

It's all about the path of least Annoyance.

You ever watch something and the first thing you say when it over is this.

I can't believe I watched the whole thing.

I think this is the first movie where someone was working from home during the shoot. Ice looks like he phoned in literally the whole thing in an afternoon from his bedroom.

And honestly thinking about it now. I don't remember a damn thing about this movie other than seeing Ice's face in a chat window.

It gets a 0 from me simply because I don't have the faintest clue what it was about other than from the title.

If it's to be believed that productivity has sky rocketed because of AI. Then the problem lies with business/government being able to take advantage of that massive boost.

Every advancement in productivity since fire and the wheel has ultimately resulted in jobs expansion with people being able to do more.

The problem here as I see it is that the business have stayed the same. It's just that the effort required to achieve those business goals has plummeted. What hasn't happened yet is businesses capitalising on this and expanding or diversifying. Business are doing the same old thing with just less people doing it. Companies that operate like this will be smothered by younger organisation that maximise the labour pool rather than slashing it.

And with AI really advancing rather rapidly this gap is widening FAST. There is a real opportunity for business to grow at insane speeds.

It's that business still don't know how to efficiently use AI.

NFT is anything.

NFT's remind me of smoke. Try and grab smoke. Nothing there. Your just waving your hand in the air hoping that you grab onto something.

So how can a copy cat NFT be sued when the source NFT is just further smoke? NFT's are just pretending to be something.

You copied my nothing, I'm suing. I'm so angry.

Clear was very promising for awhile. I liked it's numbers and it looked pretty solid.

For me it never actually got to a production environment. Oracle unbreakable managed a few showings in production, ( not my choice ) RHEL in those days smashed everything. CentOS be a close second.

I farted around with clear a lot in my home lab.

However in recent years it's been debian flavours that take the lead. RHEL is completely dead to me. I trust debian flavors more than others won't burn me in the future with a cash grab. It's a matter of time however. The standard Oracle and IBM cash grabs that happen a few years.

( Note I don't speak of container flavours here. )

Two factors come into play.

1. Casual engagement.
2. Overloaded human inputs.

Casual engagement is simple. Illustrated with a phone perfectly. We often stop pull out our phone and egage with it for seconds then put it away. We get what we want then disengage. This is down physically. Glasses to date do not have this, AR VR are all fairly persistent. An acceptable physical queue has not yet been found. TV and Movies claim it a tap to the side of the head.

Overloading our sensor inputs with overlays etc. simply do not work. When we layer on more inputs out attention drifts and it causes issues. This is the precise reason why laws around the world have been put in place around distracted driving. It's why people are making billions with cameras that detect drivers who use their phones.

Additionally VR requires dedicated space and time isolated from other to operate. So it's not going to be a simple glasses interface. It's going to be a immersive visional device. So not glasses.

AR is overloading, it's also still laggy. It's a nightmare of distraction. AR might see some adoption. But not for some time yet. The tech is still probably 2 decades away. It will likely also be limited to dedicated spaces or functions where it can add value.

Also both AR and VR have a limited number of people that can actually use it. A sizeable portion of the population can not adjust to the "lag" and it causes illness. So this limits it's ubiqutiousness something phones do not suffer from.

So no glasses are not going to suddenly be the thing to have. They will fail yet again.

What will finally make it happen. Well actually it's probably real holograms. And we are decades if not centuries away from that tech. As a hologram will take the place of real world objects. something that will not overload our brain inputs. Something that will not induce latency induced nausea.

The thing is a lot of the use case for AR / VR around human productivity etc. are mute. robotics and AI will assume those functions far faster than AR / VR will. AR / VR will be limited to experience roles rather than productivity roles.

Not to mention the abuses of business smashing interfaces with opportunities to advertise. This will almost complete obliterate any value from the interface making it more annoyance than assistance/entertainment.

So no I don't think AR/ VR glasses will be a thing.

You have to start wondering if Trump even knows what the purpose of government is for?

Trump's administration promises reduced energy costs yet tries to kill a program that directly reduces energy costs. You have to wonder what behind closed doors was discussed that prompted this line of action. Who got in his ear and what agenda was behind it.

OR

Was it that he just didn't like the stickers on appliances?

EU is acting fast and smartly on this one.

With Trump openly trying to dictate educational content and regulate what is taught in schools including university it's the perfect time capture top talent.

Add to this Trump's gov is actively deporting students, cancelling funding ( See Harvard funding clash ) and business holding off growth and hiring until this all settles down. You have a talent pool that is willing and in some cases has to migrate to other countries.

I wish Australia would do exactly the same. Put out some talent bait for the uni's.

Trumps Tariffs are a massive consumer TAX. It's not foreign nations paying the bill. It ultimately US citizens that are paying the tariff charges.

Trump keeps floating billion dollar numbers around on how a tariff is going to raise money for the government. Those tariffs are paid for by the people buying those products in the US.

When you spike inflation like that, people stop spending. If they stop spending less money is circulating which means less jobs and lower wages.

Yes foreign companies will feel a sting. They simply won't be selling as much product. Which might also increase prices even more. Economies of scale and all being eroded.

Trump somehow has forgotten that the US has a highly integrated international supply chain. So domestic goods in the US are also being hit with tariffs. Just to get the parts for the domestically produced goods.

Internal trade agreements will adapt far faster than US industrial ramp up. Most companies will be hesitant to ramp up anyway. As the US economy craters as it is. Companies are not going to risk investing domestically on production. They'll actually seek foreign opportunity to invest and develop where economic growth and stability are stronger outside of the US.

The US is really on the an economic edge here. Trump is gambling hard on this strategy. Hoping the world will blink. I just don't see it happening. Rather quickly the rest of the world is enacting economic stimulus packages to offset the impacts of the US tariff wall. They are very quickly reworking trade agreements with each and cutting the US out almost completely. Then there is the absolutely massive shift in military spending in the EU. Some reports that number at $850USD. That's almost a trillion dollars NOT going to the US. Just instantly shifted to Europe and it's close allies.

OK All of that was about TRUMP. But the above says. Less money circulating, Massive inflation, Lower real wages and less jobs for everyone in the US. Trump has destroyed for a lot of people any hope of a healthy + happy future in the US.

Everywhere I go certificate management is always on the tech debt pile. Left for some poor guy in Ops to panic and fix at 3:00am.

Automated certificate management systems have now been around for years. But rarely do I see it rolled out in the edge devices and software systems. It's always bundled into the firmware or as part of an application package. So it's often difficult to fix. Especially once a product reaches end of life. It becomes a ticking time bomb. Most companies just go. Ooops sorry we bricked your toy. At least google is trying to fix it.

I always make sure the ticket is on the kanban/sprint backlog. But funny thing is the card seems to vanish near release time. So do a bunch of other cards. Hmmmm.

It doesn't help that most shops barely maintain their central secrets management store. I've seen these things out right deleted blowing away any chance of recovering lost key pairs.

You know I have to eat my own words here.

Like so many others out there I thought this thing would never fly. 20+ years of farting around from what we could see.

But lets look at some of the amazing check boxes they made on this flight.
1. On first ever attempt to reach orbit they did.
2. First ever to use metholox to reach orbit. ( Starship still hasn't )
3. First orbital class rocket is a direct competitor with the hands down market leader in launch. No other company is even ready to compete.
4. Put a ship into MEO. Skipping LEO. That's a pretty considerable task.

OK they didn't stick the landing. But damn they did a lot.

They do have a lot of iterating to do to become the second rapid lift capability on the planet. But they had done something others haven't really done. They have built a factory intended for mass assembly. Most other rocket companies are still geared for slow one at a time production. So I do suspect they will get iteration speed up. They have a long way to go before catching up to Musks rocket production capabilities. Musk definitely holds the cards here.

Now of course China is going to be stealing tech relentlessly. And they clearly aren't better on one path either. They are copying everyone. China definitely has the lead on willingness of the government to push forward. Western countries will never match this political drive.

I think we will see a lot more stability in Blue Origin's rockets over time. They are taking a much more cautious approach. Starship is going to have many more issues with launches. But that's how each company is approaching this problem. Ultimately Starships approach will yield a more efficient design, New Glen will have a better engineered design. Both are valid outcomes, Just Starship will ultimately be the cheaper and more common rocket. Something the automotive industry has proven.

My comments are likely tainted by optimism brought on by this weeks list of space achievements. Both New Glenn and StarShip have a long way to go before my words above can be properly tested for accuracy. Space was at it's lowest when the shuttle retired. That left the world with the only 1 rocket being almost 40 years old that could do any decent volume to space. And this week it looks a lot different.

You never know, If starship succeeds with it's low cost to orbit ideals it may just nullify they efforts of Blue Origin due to the low cost of cargo to space.

PS. Props to India for it's first docking in space this week too.

If all US sports were to be channelled into a single streaming service it would effectively kill off all other provider channels almost instantly.

But as other people have flagged it would kill cable bundles almost overnight. Addon on Sports channels basically prop up basic cable TV packages. Sports are what really keep the big players in the US TV game afloat these days. Most of the non-sport TV watchers have long since migrated to online streaming service and cut the cable. Sports is in my opinion the last holdout in the cable TV market. Note other markets around the world cable TV is barely hanging on, with sports being the only thing keeping them viable. Australia is a great example. The culture is sports mad down there. With cable TV channels heavily biased to sport. approaching 50% of channels are effectively sports, sport betting, sport culture etc. An aggregated sports streaming service in Aus would have an near instant impact wiping out the cable TV providers over night. ( Side note it would also cause an increase in traffic accidents. As more people would stream sports content while driving. Yes that's a thing down there. )

If of course it wasn't some massive $$ ripoff. With ever event being a pay per view on-top of the streaming service. Which lets face it, it would be ripoff but by how much. But likely to be priced just under what your cable package would be over time.

The bigger issue is it would introduce a new player that is going to no matter what get a significant skim of the sporting dollars. And this is what killed the deal in my opinion. Fat cats in sports seeing their personal pay check shrink as a result. US law makers would have an issue with monopoly services in time as well. But that would be down the track.

There have been countless articles being spoon fed into media about return to the office. Most feel like they are a public reaction gauge by big corporations to evaluate what they can push.

We've seen countless 3/2 work split articles. We've seen tons of articles about return to office mandates and people leaving as a result. We've seen several on mandatory return or else stories.

Now we are starting to see a trend of remote at less pay.

They seem to be tests of people reactions. With some clearly bating social media responses to fish on particular subtopics. It's also quite common to see responses blatantly plug and industry or region to illicit responses on those filters.

Some forums just seem to be full bot. Slashdot has a solid core of real human responders. But you can often see suspicious responses that are very targeted.

On this topic of reduced pay. We specifically see precise numbers like 15%. An obvious gauging number. This puts a line in the sand. How many people will stand on each side of 15%? How vocal will they be? How deep will the threads of opinion be on each side etc.?

We also see responses stating very specific regions and industries in the article and the threads that spawn. Most I believe are honest people.

The shear number of articles in circulation on remote work leads me to think that enterprises are trying to push this return to office agenda and failing. Using social media coercion as a tool of this agenda. You know how when you see an Movie advertising blitz that is so intense, trying to get people in the theatre and you all know the movie is a bomb without anyone seeing it. So the companies doubles down, once, twice, three more times with the blitz trying to save it. Only to have it bomb even faster. This is the impression I'm left with when I see all these articles on return to the office.

Now none of what I have put here is scientific of course. It's just an observation tied very loosely to a theory. Others and myself of course could cherry pick articles and responses to fortify and break down this "theory" of mine. Which is why I specifically avoided precise article/response references. Thus avoiding getting mired in the minutia of a specific piece of text. I'm more looking at this from a removed position and possibly falsely seeing a pattern to it.

( PS don't bother picking at my spelling or grammar skills. I know I'm horrible at both. :) )

Meh could be argued in either direction. But it's basically 50/50 depending on how you look at the data.