Taggart Tech

I keep running up against this argument about LLMs and generative AI:

Data centers. The "cloud." If you haven't yet recognized it for the threat it is, now's the time. In this era, entrusting your sensitive data to third parties is not the safest bargain, and may be downright dangerous, depending on your situation.

What a year huh? I thought about doing a broad review of the year in cyber news. Over a year of running the TTI Intel Feed has given me a front-row seat to the weirdest show on earth. Problem is, there's just too much. 0-days, ransomware, nation state activity, cybercrime—any one area would take more time than I have to write, certainly more time than you have to read.

But as I read through article after article, one thought kept popping into my head:

"Boy, Microsoft sure ate a lot of shit this year."

If you're here, I likely don't need to rehash the entire melodrama that WordPress has entered since Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg declared "war" on WPEngine. But the most recent events (as of this writing) involve some rather drastic moves by Mullenweg that signal disengagement with the WordPress project.

That's a scary situation, if you're a WordPress user.

The year is 2025 (or it's about to be). That's a fake year. That's a year that should only exist on moonbases and undersea colonies. Frankly it's offensive that it's 2025 and the only science fiction dream that came true was a plutocracy killing the planet.

Oh, and hacking is a job you can have.

Well, maybe.

In Part 1, we discussed the broad debate around the nature of Bluesky as it relates to openness, independence, and safety. But here's the thing: only dorks like me (and I guess you, if you read it) care about those aspects of social media. We may think, or wish, users cared more, but that isn't the state of play. Those Big Ideas are not the primary concern for social media users. They just want an enjoyable, informative experience surrounded by people they like.

What is the value of a social network? What is the value of a decentralized social network? And why is it that for some, the only acceptable and moral kind of technology is the kind nobody can own?

I'm just a teacher. I'm no political expert; I have no special understanding of voter motivations, policy implications, procedural levers, or anything else you want an expert on right now. I'm just a teacher, but I've taught in the mad era of normalized school shootings.

Seems to me, there's an armed madman in the building.

If you've seen any of my videos, you know that I have a somewhat...nontraditional shell setup. I thought I might take a moment to explain why I set it up the way I did, and how.

When I was about nine, I saw the way-underrated movie "Explorers," starring a very young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix (!) for the first time. The movie involves creating a spaceship out of a very hacked-together Apple computer and a Tilt-A-Whirl.