When that version of ChatGPT dropped a few years ago, I was rattled for the first time in my career. Even before I learned about all the terrible externalities that surround this technology, I wondered if I would need a plan B for the final chapters of my working life. I put on a good face for my team at the time and had the privilege of too much priority work to stop and figure out what this technology might be good for. My gut was also telling me this wasn't even the next soon to fizzle or fade to niche stuff like 4GLs or XML. But not because it had inherent staying power like relational databases or REST. My gut twinged with the feeling of an agenda pushing for adoption greater than what might occur if coders were left to pick it up more organically.
I've held my peace outside of firsthand conversations like for my $dayjob or friends who are curious. I feel it important to preface my opinions on LLMs with my standard disclaimer. My intent is rarely to suggest you do anything I say. When rarely it is, I will tell you so explicitly and why. Otherwise I am sharing my thoughts and experiences, you may make as little of them as you like. I wouldn't make very much of them. Better to figure out your own values and do your best to live into them. Hopefully sharing my experience will motivate and help you do that.
Posted in #rant
I have wanted to write here more and even podcast again for some time. I have struggled with motivation and practice so that my results have been inconsistent. I have an idea I want to explain and try out to see if it helps. I wish to make a vow but not about writing or recording here more. That isn't a very good promise to make, I already tried that in any number of forms with little success. I started thinking about what sort of devotion to pursue that would incidentally lead me to write and record more. I think I know what I want to vow and want to explain how I figured it out.
My vow simply is that I will work to understand my profession and the industry it is a part of in order to help myself cope with the changes over the last few years and that are still unfolding. There are some hopes that go with the promise and I'll explain why they aren't part of the vow itself.
Posted in #general
I started exploring what I learned from an interview with Guo Gu, a teacher of Chan Buddhism, in my meditation practice. I have been cultivating equanimity as a centering focus. Chan seems to favor what he called contentment, expressed with the phase, "It's all good". To me, I thought that could be a blending of the stable abodes, a bit each of equanimity, loving kindness, compassion, and vicarious joy. I am also drawn to what he called the junctures of life, opportunities to practice as we live our lives. This is a focus of my study and practice right now, expanding the work I do meditating into the rest of my life.
I bought a copy of Guo Gu's The Essence of Chan and started reading it. I have not practiced reading for curiosity as much as I used to. I am remembering how the more I practice, the more motivation I have to practice.
Posted in #general
This week I reached the finish line of a project I've been working on for my $dayjob for a little over a year. I've worked on a handful of projects like this in my career, few of them were successful. I thought writing about my experience would help consolidate what I've learned. I've been wanting to write more. My strongest inspiration over the years has been my own experience. Reflecting on this project I recognize a handful of topics I could write about from personal, team, and department perspectives. Writing about what I went through, witnessed, and learned will complement the preparation I did before starting this project.
Posted in #general
At the end of my last post, I mentioned my new home server opening up more possibilities. There are some projects I would have liked to run in the past but hosting them at Digital Ocean felt like too much. These are quality of life ideas that would help me work more coherently across several different machines. Not anything that would benefit from public hosting either. I would need to be on top of my security configuration. My home server makes that far less of a concern, limiting access and encrypting everything.
Posted in #tech #resilience #hands-on
Encouraged by my success so far with my home server, Lovelace, I wondered what I might add next. I enjoyed getting single sign-on working using my forge as the identity provider. I am proud that I found a way to have usable hostnames on an entirely private network with full TLS support.
Posted in #tech #resilience #hands-on
I have continued to work on my new home server. Since my last post a few months back I've actually upgraded the hardware because the next service I added was a media server, Jellyfin.
Posted in #tech #resilience #hands-on
I am catching up on some news drafts, including ones from the end of last year, like this one.
Justine Calma, The Verge, wrote about an environmental protection bill in New York state.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/30/24332241/climate-change-superfund-act-new-york-state-trump
Modeled after superfunds, the law would require oil and gas companies to pay into a fund that will be used to increase residents' resilience to climate change caused problems. The specifics remain to be worked out. If successful, other states could adopt similar, and for other policies, as a back stop to what the incoming administration is likely to do to our federal rights, privileges, and protections.
The unique role of states here is important for technology policy too. Hayley Tsukayama and Rindala Alajaji from EFF shared several stories about state legislatures and online privacy.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/state-legislatures-are-frontline-tech-policy-2024-review
Some federal law, like the ACA, are modeled on successful state laws. The potential impact of action at the state level is greater. The distance to representatives is far shorter. In smaller states you can easily visit your state legislators in person to discuss your concerns. Maybe a route to a meaningful federal privacy law is to experiment, as the article suggests, at the state level.
I debated deleting this draft but honestly think local is even more important given what we've all witnessed here in the US in the last month.
Posted in #links
I rely on the bundled file sync service on my network attached storage (NAS) appliance to work across my devices. I recently added a MNT Pocket Reform to the set of devices I use regularly. The Pocket Reform is a lovingly hand built and supremely open mini laptop with a seven inch display and a clacky, ortholinear keyboard. The sync service on my NAS has clients for the rest of my devices. The mini laptop has a different CPU architecture from the rest of my Linux machines and hence no compatible client. Figuring out an alternative started a fun incidental project a few weekends ago that lead to some interesting learning.
Posted in #tech #resilience #hands-on
I've had a security key for a few years now. I've always been fascinated by these kinds of devices, a supremely minimal computer hardened for use in an intricate cryptographic exchange that promises simpler, stronger security than a mere password. I didn't realize at first that the latest evolution of password free authentication, passkey, wasn't device dependent. My security key is capable of creating and securely storing a few passkeys but support has now been rolled out to browsers, operating systems and tools like password managers. A couple of recent stories reminded me of my interest and provided some good information on the technology.