Bringing back Gnutella.

The best thing about MongoDB is that you can stop using it completely and switch to PostgreSQL, which will happily accept all the horrible JSON data you can cram into it.

“…If there’s a problem writing your data, you’re fucked. Does that sound like a good design to you?”

“If that’s what they need to do to get those kick-ass benchmarks, then it’s a great design.”

Oh God. I am laughing so hard watching this.

Hi dad!

The Mayor should just go ahead and resign. Take the city attorney with him while he’s at it.

What a bunch of asshats.

I wouldn’t pay for an AI subscription but I have no problem using my own PC for work on the condition that they give me a VM to remote into. Mainly because I like using my three big monitors and the shitty laptops my previous employers provided are either underpowered or locked down to the point where multi-monitor support is really poor.

I do pay for tools that I use outside of work and if it’s something that helps me with my day job, I have no problem using it for that. That said, using AI to generate code is usually a waste of time. Unless it’s something really, really basic.

You’re not missing anything.

That works when you have access to a SQL database instead of a bunch of massive CSV files.

And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

Capability is a double edged sword. Any tool that is capable of doing something is going to be used by someone to do that thing, regardless of whether it should be. Excel gets abused and used for things that it shouldn’t be frequently in corporate environments because of its capabilities. I can understand being frustrated by that.

I use Excel for reporting and analytics because it makes manipulating and visualizing data very easy. Especially if you know what you’re doing. No need to write a UI or worry about portability between workstations, etc. At the end of the day it’s a tool. A very capable one. Like any tool, it’s not the right one for every job.

Lol. Don’t bother asking Chat GPT for help. You will get so many completely wrong answers. At least the answers will be formatted nicely. Complete bullshit. But easily readable bullshit.

You’re entitled to your opinion but I would say Excel is one of the best, if not THE best spreadsheet application ever produced. It’s one thing that Microsoft actually got mostly right and one of the only reasons I still pay for an Office 365 subscription.

If you’re just creating simple spreadsheets, there’s plenty of other options out there.

But, if you’re a power user doing a lot of complex data analytics, Excel is still the king.

My main gripe is that I still have to use VBA for a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Yuck.

Unfortunately, the current penalties are insufficient.

Even if it were actually doable, this a dumbass idea. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that night/darkness are necessary for life and that we already have enough environmental problems related to artificial light pollution.

If you can stand the fuss, buy corded tools and skip the brand loyalty that comes with batteries.

Just want to second this. A good quality corded tool can last you a decade or two, even with moderate use. You’ll probably be replacing your cordless tool batteries within 5 years.

The only cordless tools I have are a drill, lawn mower, and chainsaw. That’s only because I use them often enough to justify it.

I seem to recall about 13 years ago when “the cloud” was going to put everyone in IT Ops out of a job. At least according to people who have no idea what the IT department actually does.

“The cloud” certainly had an impact but the one thing it definitely did NOT do was send every system and network admin to the unemployment office. If anything it increased the demand for those kinds of jobs.

I remain unconcerned about my future career prospects.

False. I am definitely an introvert but if I’m going to pay for it, I’m going to get what I asked for.

Just the other day, the Mixtral chatbot insisted that PostgreSQL v16 doesn’t exist.

A few weeks ago, Chat GPT gave me a DAX measure for an Excel pivot table that used several DAX functions in ways that they could not be used.

The funny thing was, it knew and could explain why those functions couldn’t be used when I corrected it. But it wasn’t able to correlate and use that information to generate a proper function. In fact, I had to correct it for the same mistakes multiple times and it never did get it quite right.

Generative AI is very good at confidently spitting out inaccurate information in ways that make it sound like it knows what it’s talking about to the average person.

Basically, AI is currently functioning at the same level as the average tech CEO.

“OMG. Are you a hacker?”

“…I’m just using Powershell.”

Resiliency and security have a lot of layers. The crowd strike bungle was very bad but more than anything it shined a bright spot light on the fact that certain organizations IT orgs are just a house of cards waiting to get blown away.

I’m looking at Delta in particular. Airlines are a critical transportation service and to have issues with one software vendor bring your entire company screeching to a halt is nothing short of embarrassing.

If I were on the board, my first question would be, “where’s our DRP and why was this situation not accounted for?”

We got our oldest a smart phone a few years ago. Based on that experience, our younger two can buy their own smartphones when they’re adults because we’ve decided we’re not going to repeat that mistake.