Prognostications for 2026
The advent of a new year always seems to give us an excuse to inflict our opinions about what we expect -- or hope --...
Mozilla Firefox AI Slop
I've been using Mozilla Firefox since its original release 21 years ago. Firefox started as an excellent open source browser with a relatively small code...
What do AI and Timothy Leary have in common?
If you were around in the '60s, you probably know who Timothy Leary was. If you weren't around then, the short story is that he...
AI slop broke Windows
30% of the code in Windows has been written by AI. At the same time, pretty much all Windows core features are broken.
Electric nonsense
I recently read a story on a local TV station's website that just made we want to cringe. The story was about "Phantom energy drain."...
Finding hidden package groups using DNF
For some reason, the Fedora packagers are hiding a large number of package groups so that you can't see them when you search using dnf...
Why beauty matters in computing
Why we should care about beauty as it applies to computing? And how do we define beauty in this context?
Microsoft Nonsense
This morning, as I was reading various newsfeeds, I found some news about Microsoft these days. That's not interesting in itself, but the items I'm...
Begin the journey: Why your ethics might require adoption of Free and Open Source Software
My own journey into free software began with my ethics. It was, and is, deeply personal but simultaneously connected to my understanding of the larger world I am a part of.
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 23—Support your Favorite Open Source Project
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 25 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with significant changes to update the...
AI Terror: The struggle to stay alive
I recently wrote about an AI that used blackmail to prevent its developers from shutting it down -- killing it. That was scary. We've now...
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that
When HAL 9000 went off the rails in the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001, A Space Odyssey, the surviving protagonist was forced to lobotomize the rogue...
AI Malware strikes curl developers
Image by: securitybydefault.com, Creative Commons The scourge of misused AI1 (so-called) is attacking the developers of the Linux curl project in a new and so...
How to get started with Linux
Many of the messages I see in the #Linux feeds on BlueSky and mastodon are Windows users lamenting the end of Support for Windows 10. Many are unable to upgrade to Win11 because their hardware won’t support it. Others are fed up with Windows in general and their efforts to force user to upgrade with suggestions like donating their old computers to purchase a new Win11 one.