Technology Tales

After a period of time with a noticeable slowdown that was frustrating at times, I tried a seemingly irrelevant tweak: changing the nameserver definitions in /etc/resolv.conf to Cloudflare and away from in-house settings. So far, that seems to have helped. Only time will tell if that is not an illusion. If so, I have another option in my mind.

Looking at my visitor numbers now, they really have fallen away from what they once were. In an age when many go to LLM systems for finding information, that is not such a surprise. After all, I do it myself. In fact, it is one of the reasons that I have for retaining a ChatGPT subscription. Those extensive deep dive reports containing hyperlinked information have countless uses.

Get Safe Online was brought to my attention during a Barclays webinar. The website outlines a range of online safety resources aimed at helping individuals and businesses protect themselves from digital threats. It includes guidance on securing devices, identifying scams and using tools to detect fraudulent activity or AI-generated content. Regular updates and news articles highlight current risks, such as scams during festive periods or the use of AI in deceptive practices. The initiative also provides practical advice on cybersecurity, software updates and safe online behaviours, supported by a global network of resources tailored to different regions. It emphasises the importance of staying informed about evolving threats and offers tools and partnerships to enhance digital resilience.

Obsidian is a local-first Markdown editor designed for creating and managing personal knowledge bases, storing all content as plain text files within a user-defined folder structure. It employs wikilinks and backlinks to connect notes, enabling a non-hierarchical, graph-like organisation that can be visualised through a graph view. The application supports extensive customisation via plugins, including features such as task management, data queries and diagram embedding, which may appeal to users familiar with structured workflows and automation. While it prioritises speed, offline functionality and cross-platform compatibility, it lacks built-in collaboration tools unless paired with external services like Git. Licensing is proprietary for the core application, though some plugin components are open source, ensuring user data remains in plain Markdown files without vendor lock-in. Its strengths lie in flexibility and future-proofing, but its effectiveness depends on maintaining disciplined organisation within the vault.

Here is a gotcha that confused me recently. Having a licence for SAS Analytics Pro on Viya, I was wondering why a Docker container was being spun up for me, especially when there was no feedback. Later, it turned out that the licence file was in the wrong place. Only when I placed it in the sasinside area did everything work as it should. Because licences only get renewed annually, I am adding here as an aide de mémoire for future reference. It is too easy to forget something when you are not doing it every day.

Having deleted all my accounts on there after overcoming a certain amount of inertia, I am now free of x.com (formerly Twitter). While others are heading for Bluesky, I am going to keep away from any political discussions for the sake of my mental health. It looks as if the world is in for a rough ride over the next few years. The less violent rhetoric we have, the better.

All my recent AI experimentation has convinced me that my main workstation needs an upgrade. It was open-source data programming in 2020 and 2021 that prompted me to do the last upgrade during the summer of 2021, so there is some consistency in what could be coming. Having NPU capability may be best for running GenAI models on my own machinery, though using API's and chat interfaces will retain their place in all of this. With this year approaching an end and other plans already being made already, such an upgrade will wait until next year. Assuming the ideas come to fruition, that will be sufficient time for anything that happens. The dramatic upheaval in technology cannot but impact our computing world, much as it did to our lives thirty years ago.

Altair SLC is a software platform that executes programs using SAS language syntax without the need for translation or additional licences. It offers a full SAS language environment with the ability to integrate Python, R, and SQL, enabling users to combine diverse program modules. Its main features include multi-language support for SAS, Python, R, and SQL, comprehensive compatibility with SAS language and macro syntax, and flexible deployment options on IBM mainframes, in the cloud, and on various operating systems. Additionally, Altair SLC is cost-effective, reducing expenses by negating third-party licences and supporting advanced analytics, which enhances productivity and shortens development and deployment cycles. The platform is designed to support significant migration projects and maintain SAS language program libraries efficiently, delivering a modern and adaptable analytics solution.

This morning, I heard a story on Irish radio about someone who had their Facebook account hijacked. The impact was heavy: it was a place for fundraising for a child with cerebral palsy, a place to do business, and somewhere for social connections and sharing memories. There was assistance as a result, so I hope things work out in some way.

The cautionary tale highlights the importance of being forensic with passwords, never reusing them and using two-factor authentication. Password managers and generators are crucial, even if one wonders about all this paraphernalia overwhelms many. There also is the importance of being a paying customer in order to get support, rather than availing of a free service where you are the product for those who do the paying, advertisers in other words.

The website has suffered a bump that I inflicted on it through my own inattention. Databases do need backing up before doing anything serious with the WP Crontrol plugin, especially deleting every CRON event in the cause of getting the Site Health display to improve. A new database build was needed as a result, with the content being added in at the database level. While nothing major was lost, I still needed to iron out some creases, a few of which were time-consuming to resolve. All is steadier now, and there was a spot of flab removal too, which might speed up things following the upheaval.