Many developers are terrified of losing their jobs for this very reason: AIs sometimes program better than them. And, in my opinion, they are right to be afraid. But I'm more afraid of a world (and not just in IT) where code will depend exclusively on the companies that sell us AIs.

Today, writing code is something free, potentially doable even on a beat-up laptop. But tomorrow? Will we be completely dependent on AIs (even) for this?

I will just have to concede that maybe I’m wrong. I don’t have the skill, or the knowledge, or the energy, to demonstrate with any level of rigor that LLMs are generally, in fact, hot garbage. Intellectually, I will have to acknowledge that maybe the boosters are right. Maybe it’ll be OK.

Maybe the carbon emissions aren’t so bad. Maybe everybody is keeping them secret in ways that they don’t for other types of datacenter for perfectly legitimate reasons. Maybe the tools really can write novel and correct code, and with a little more tweaking, it won’t be so difficult to get them to do it. Maybe by the time they become a mandatory condition of access to developer tools, they won’t be miserable.

Sure, I even sincerely agree, intellectual property really has been a pretty bad idea from the beginning. Maybe it’s OK that we’ve made an exception to those rules. The rules were stupid anyway, so what does it matter if we let a few billionaires break them? Really, everybody should be able to break them (although of course, regular people can’t, because we can’t afford the lawyers to fight off the MPAA and RIAA, but that’s a problem with the legal system, not tech).

I come not to praise “AI skepticism”, but to bury it.

Maybe it really is all going to be fine. Perhaps I am simply catastrophizing; I have been known to do that from time to time. I can even sort of believe it, in my head. Still, even after writing all this out, I can’t quite manage to believe it in the pit of my stomach.

Decided to do some #Linux terminal hopping.

This is my completely unscientific test: maximised window, tmux with a NeoVim session, paging quickly through some code. I wanted to see what the most CPU usage would be for these terminals. I'm testing on a Ryzen 7 7840U.

Why worry about CPU? Laptop users and low-power machine users will care about CPU usage. I'm trying to eke as much life out of my equipment as possible.

A funny thing happened on the way to the future. The mainframe outlasted its replacements.

icrosoft, tacitly admitting it has failed at talking all the Windows 10 PC users into moving to Windows 11 after all, is – sort of, kind of – extending Windows 10 support for another year.

For most users, that means they'll need to subscribe to Microsoft 365. This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept in a US-based datacenter. That isn't sitting so well with many European Union (EU) organizations and companies. It doesn't sit that well with me or a lot of other people either.

This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed three sessions under the same condition. In a fourth session, LLM users were reassigned to Brain-only group (LLM-to-Brain), and Brain-only users were reassigned to LLM condition (Brain-to-LLM). A total of 54 participants took part in Sessions 1-3, with 18 completing session 4. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess cognitive load during essay writing, and analyzed essays using NLP, as well as scoring essays with the help from human teachers and an AI judge. Across groups, NERs, n-gram patterns, and topic ontology showed within-group homogeneity. EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use. In session 4, LLM-to-Brain participants showed reduced alpha and beta connectivity, indicating under-engagement. Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning.

Samstagfrüh haben die Kliniken der Oberösterreichischen Gesundheitsholding (OÖG) mit einem Ausfall der IT-Systeme zu kämpfen gehabt. Nach zwei Stunden konnte der Fehler behoben werden.

Nachdem ein 21-Jähriger an einer Grazer Schule elf Menschen erschossen hat, möchte Österreichs Bundesregierung Kinder aus Sozialen Netzen draußenhalten. "(Wir werden) uns auch für strengere Regeln für Kinder und Jugendliche im Umgang mit Sozialen Medien einsetzen", sagte Bundeskanzler Christian Stocker (ÖVP) am Montag bei seiner Regierungserklärung zum Amoklauf. "Denn wir sehen: Digitale Plattformen sind längst nicht mehr nur Orte der Information oder der Unterhaltung. Sie können auch Orte der Radikalisierung und der Verrohung sein. Hier braucht es klare Regeln und klare Verantwortung auf Seiten der Plattformbetreiber." In der deutschen Bundesregierung ist ebenfalls die Forderung nach wirksamen Altersgrenzen für Social Media erhoben worden.

Der für Digitalisierung zuständige österreichische Staatssekretär Alexander Pröll (ÖVP) möchte "die Plattformen dazu verpflichten, dass sie ihren Altersbeschränkungen auch nachkommen. Sie müssen quasi Türsteher sein für die Jugendlichen, und wir werden in Österreich eine nationale Lösung machen." Das sagte er im in der ORF-Radiosendung Ö1 Mittagsjournal am Dienstag. Die Methode der Durchsetzung ist nicht geklärt. Pröll zeigt sich offen für die Idee, Konten in Sozialen Netzen mit der staatlichen elektronischen Identität ID Austria zu verknüpfen.

Die Wunschliste an die Regierung ist lang: zu viel Ballast, ein wackeliges technisches Fundament und nervtötende Anmeldeprozeduren. Dabei könnte die digitale Welt so schön und einfach sein

Grund für den Ausfall waren technische Performance-Engpässe bei der ID Austria, was zur Folge hatte, dass sich einige User zeitweise nicht anmelden konnten. Mittlerweile stehe die ID Austria wieder im vollen Umfang zur Verfügung, heißt es aus dem Bundesrechenzentrum.

On Linux, Control-C and Control-V don't work for copying and pasting in terminals. The Control modifier is used for its original purpose of inserting control codes. Instead, terminal apps require an extra Shift modifier, like Control+Shift+C.

But what if there were hidden shortcut combos for copy and paste on Linux that work across most apps without adding any additional software or configuration? By the end of 2025, this will be the case, and many apps already support them. Here's the scoop!

This is meant to be the first part of a 3-part series discussing the space & types of IP addresses, with a particular focus on what has changed between IPv4 and IPv6. In this first post I’ll take the audience through a historical tour of some developments within the IPv4 address space.

In a second part I’ll discuss the properties of different types of addresses from a routing and from a security perspective, both in the IPv4 and in the IPv6 space. In the third part we’ll look at the implications of deploying IPv6 in certain networks based on those differences, e.g. “how to handle ACLs and IP address based log analysis approaches in a dual-stack network where systems have one RFC 1918 IPv4 address and multiple IPv6 GUAs?” (for specific reasons the latter two parts might be published on another medium though). In any case let’s start with a brief history of IPv4. The goal here is to understand how we got to the state that we have today.

Kurz' ehemals engster Kreis aus Regierungszeiten war mit Ex-Ministerin Elisabeth Köstinger und Ex-Minister Gernot Blümel vertreten, auch Familienministerin Claudia Plakolm und Ex-Staatssekretär Florian Tursky folgten der Einladung des Ex-Kanzlers. Die kritische vierte Gewalt repräsentierten Ferdinand Wegscheider, Intendant von Servus TV, Wolfgang Rosam, Herausgeber von Falstaff, Gerald Grünberger, Geschäftsführer des Verbands Österreichischer Zeitungen, und Hans Bürger vom ORF.

Coworker: ...and the IP address are compared with a string match.
Me: grinning manically
Coworker: Why are you looking at me like that?
Me: Open up a terminal and type ping 4.2.514 and hit enter.
Coworker: ...what's the fourth number?
Me: grin widens Just hit enter.
Coworker: WTF!?

Wer am Sonntag im Wahllokal erscheint, sollte also unbedingt den verstaubten Führerschein wieder aus dem Kasten holen. "E-Ausweise (digitaler Führerschein oder digitaler Identitätsnachweis) können im Wahlreferat nicht überprüft werden und werden als Ausweisdokumente nicht akzeptiert", heißt es vonseiten der Stadt Wien.

Der Bericht der OÖNachrichten über mutmaßliche Unstimmigkeiten und Fehler bei der Entwicklung einer digitalen Plattform zur Anlagengenehmigung mit dem Namen „EPA-OÖ“ schlägt hohe Wellen. Wie berichtet, sollen die Kosten für die Entwicklung massiv in die Höhe geschossen sein, bei gleichzeitig bescheidenem Ergebnis. Gleich drei Parteien im Landtag haben im Lauf des gestrigen Tages Anfragen an Landeshauptmann Thomas Stelzer (VP) geschickt.

The following are lines from ~rsyncer/.ssh/authorized-keys on my dbclone host – which gathers database backups from various hosts.

from="x8dtu.example.org,10.1.1.1",command="/usr/local/sbin/rrsync -ro /usr/home/rsyncer/backups/bacula-database/postgresql/" ssh-ed25519
AAAAC3thisisalsonotmyrealpublickeybcxpFeUMAC2LOitdpRb9l0RoW7vt5hnzwt rsyncer@x8dtu.example.org

The above appears on two lines to make it easier to read without horizontal scrolling – in the file, it’s all on one line.

This says:

• when an ssh connection comes in from a client at x8dtu.example.org, or 10.1.1.1
• run /usr/local/sbin/rrsync -ro /usr/home/rsyncer/backups/bacula-database/postgresql/
• and that client must have this key (as shown)
• rsyncer@x8dtu.example.org is a comment, and has no effect

"What kind of script is it?"

• "A Bäsch script."
  "Bash?"
• "No, its German cousin."
  "???"
• "???"

Remember the way strings work in C: they consist of a bunch of bytes followed by a null character, which has the value 0. This has two obvious implications:

There is no way to know where the string ends (that is, the string length) without moving through it, looking for the null character at the end.
Your string can’t have any zeros in it. So you can’t store an arbitrary binary blob like a JPEG picture in a C string.

Why do C strings work this way? It’s because the PDP-7 microprocessor, on which UNIX and the C programming language were invented, had an ASCIZ string type. ASCIZ meant “ASCII with a Z (zero) at the end.”

Kundinnen und Kunden der Post-Tochter Bank99 werden über das Osterwochenende nicht auf ihre Konten zugreifen können. Das berichtete der „Standard“ unter Bezugnahme auf ein Schreiben des Geldhauses an die Betroffenen.