no more cubes

Tag: future

  • AI rant

    mataroa.blog is ranting about everything that is wrong with AI today. The article clusters into five major arguments: the believe in how LLMs will realise efficiencies, the need to remain competitive, previous successes, preparation for the future, and finally everybody else. All nicely summarised and on point.

  • The metaverse remains controversial

    Apple’s CEO has doubt about the ‘metaverse’ – The Verge reports Tim Cook wouldn’t believe individuals couldn’t make up the ‘metaverse’. On we already debated the future of hardware will define the future of this mythical space. Tim Cook apparently concludes most people wouldn’t be able to spend time in the virtual world. Meanwhile, the corporate, The Verge supports the market rumours about upcoming AR and VR gear.

    It’s still reportedly developing AR and VR hardware.

    Source: Tim Cook is latest CEO to question the ‘metaverse’ – The Verge

    The same time, Germany’s #1 Internet explainer Sasha Lobo believes in the future of the metaverse.

  • Tech’s strangest jobs of the future, recruited for today

    Tech’s strangest job listings: Straight from the “daily workplace automation destruction” protocol.com reports the future of job descriptions, as indicated by job postings today.

    Glimpsing the future in eye-opening tech job listings.

    The article found quite a few interesting job profiles that companies apparently look for today already:

    Source: Tech’s strangest job listings: Future Edition – Protocol

  • The Y2038 Problem

    The Y2038 problem is similar to the Y2K problem. We’re exactly in between both about now. Both are 18 years away, in either direction. While Y2K is over and was obvious to everyone, Y2038 is not.

    The issue here relates to a representation of date and time in Unix systems, and is therefore sometimes referred to as Unix Y2K. The root is the convention to store date and time information as 32bit unsigned integer in such systems. This means, possible values are limited. Time-differences in seconds, starting from 01.Jan 1970 cannot span beyond 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038.

    The Y2038 Problem
    Calendar

    The Y2038 problem will make all calculations beyond this date impossible, until migrated to another representation. At the time being, this seems far away. However, the problem casts its shadows already. Industries, in particular financial markets, often rely on long term forecasts.

    Governance issued treasury bonds come with with the longest maturity. Often twenty years, sometimes thirty years. Calculations for complex, long running financing models easily try to estimate returns 20 years and beyond into the future. This is already beyond the problematic date that Y2038 brings. The code to run these calculations is typically complex and stable. Sometimes, it is as old as from 1970. Back then, this date-representation Unix engineers introduced this approach. 32bit covered a long period. John Femellia has a thread, over at Twitter, telling a story about the upcoming issues today.

  • Goodbye Servers, Hello Devices.

    It’s been a wild ride for the most time of the past 9 years. The Internet came a long way and the time I spent at Akamai Technologies since 2007 were an amazing and exciting experience. Before I came there, I was working for a security consultancy, planning deployments of hundreds of Firewalls and Intrusion-Detection Systems. Having to deal with thousands of servers was absolutely the right choice at that time and the decision didn’t turn out wrong.

    During my time at the company, I worked for close to 100 brands, from all kinds of vertical like automotive, air-travel, industry, logistics, high-tech, e-commerce, media & entertainment. Mostly global corporations, all of which were well-known brands, even outside the Internet industry.

    Having held 4 different roles, I helped customers on 2 continents to get their digital strategy in place, visited uncounted customers and prospects, places and offices in 10 different countries, collecting 80+ stamps and visa on my 3 new passports, while I reported to 9 different managers. Akamai likely gained 160.000 servers in the same timeframe, coming to more than 200.000 at the time of this writing.

    And during the same time, Internet evolved further. When my time at Akamai began, the iPhone was about 3 months old, and became available in Germany only after I started. Since mobile Internet is broadly available,  technology and after all society really changed. This shift towards general acceptance of internet made the time with the company a wild ride.

    While the normal smart phone user takes Internet availability for granted today, technology doesn’t stand still. The broad availability of connectivity  came to a point where new opportunities are starting to emerge. Having stepped up the game from hundreds of firewalls in 2003 to hundreds of thousands of servers in 2007, today house hold appliances start to become available with a “connected” options, making them more smart at the promise to make life more efficient and convenient.

    The Internet of Things opens the opportunity to work with millions of Internet connected things going forward. And this forthcoming development will lead to another wild ride that I wanted to take part in right from the beginning. Therefor, I decided to join Osram’s Lightify department, starting tomorrow! I’m excited!