DevOps Papa, SysAdmin Greybeard, and Web 1.0 refugee writing from the cloud.
As a SysAdmin, I am awed by AI's ability to troubleshoot error codes, logs, and bits of information. A simple copy and paste, and usually it will come back with a fix for the exact issue. Even pasting a screenshot will get you the desired results; there is no need to extract the text from the image. Gone are the days of searching Google or specific websites.
No, seriously, you avoid all the ads, popups, and custom formatting, dark patterns, etc. Via an LLM, you get nice, clean, formatted content. Then again, the content you get might not be correct. So maybe only stick to things you really know? Not that misinformation doesn't exist via a search result. Right? Again, use your brain.
Today I learned that Quake was available in arcade cabinet form.
I was surprised to read that not all states recalled lettuce during the Cyclospora outbreak, as those states did not receive the contaminated lettuce. 22 states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming.) did not receive the lettuce according to Two People Have Died in the Cyclospora Outbreak. The Fifty-State Count Is Now 21,913.
Please stop copying and pasting AI output. I'm begging you. I get it. You prompted it correctly and used one of those fancy skills. The output is relevant. The thing is, have you read it? Have you actually read all the output? Because if you didn't, then I don't want it. Is it still relevant? Is there anything you can trim?
I don't think Microsoft knows what to do with Xbox. They raised GamePass by a whopping 50% increase!
Microsoft is raising the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription price by 50% to $29.99 per month, effective immediately, the company announced Wednesday.
Apparently, they lost some players and potential subscribers.
Xbox substantially raised Game Pass prices in October 2025, a price hike that cost Microsoft millions of players, according to Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball.
Then they went and raised the Xbox console price three times.
Microsoft announced yet another price increase for the Xbox Series X and S consoles, starting Aug. 1. This is the third time Microsoft has hiked the price of its Xbox consoles since May 2025, another example of gaming hardware increasing in price due to the ongoing global memory shortage.
After all this, Game Pass Ultimate now costs $22.99 a month instead of the $29.99. I am not sure if that will bring people back.
I have a certain sense of anxiety and maybe even dread when updating software on just about anything, be it on my computer, phone, server, TV, etc. Windows 11 seems to be a great example of this and the reason I moved off it years ago. I'm not saying Windows was ever good or stable; no operating system is without issues, not any version of Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, etc. I think operating systems tend to go back and forth when it comes to stability. But as of late, I feel like Windows, especially 11 and macOS 26 have had it the worst. I've moved off both, and I have been using Fedora KDE for the last few years, and no, it too has issues. But I feel it has fewer issues than Windows and macOS as of late. To be fair, I still use both Windows 11 and macOS 26 from time to time as needed. I also have an iPhone and Pixel phone. I like to stay impartial and use them all.
AI seems to have lit a fire in, under, and all around securing software. The industry seems to be at odds with patching and maintaining software. As someone who had to patch a lot of infrastructure in the past, I don't see how teams are copping with this or how they are allocating time and resources to patch without inducing downtime. I see patching moving to a daily or hourly schedule in the near future with AI assistance. Especial since exploits aided by AI can be ready in hours. Soon that time will be minutes. I wonder how soon real-time patching will become the de facto standard?
With the recent OpenAI model breaking out of its sandbox and hacking Hugging Face and now others, I'm reminded that maybe we need something like Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
I'm also reminded that software comes with no guarantees, and most EULA and terms of service basically absolve everyone from everything, yet we all blindly accept them so we can play with the new shiny toys. I am aware that the U.S. government has thoughts about regulating AI models. Which I would imagine being similar to the regulations, reviews, and audits that are done by various federal branches that use software. But I think that's a slippery slope; if they start doing that to AI, then what comes next? All software?
I'm looking forward to the Neuromancer TV series. I must say that the trailer looks good to me, and after reading William Gibson's comment below, I am fully committed.
"I answer showrunner’s and director’s questions about the source material. I read drafts and make suggestions. And that’s it, really, though my previous experience has been that that winds up being quite a lot of work in itself. I don’t have veto power. The showrunner and director do, because the adaptation’s their creation, not mine. A novel is a solitary creation. An adaptation is a fundamentally collaborative creation, so first of all isn’t going to “be the book”. Particularly not the one you saw behind your forehead when you read the book, because that one is yours alone. So for now let’s leave it at that."