Not much today, just cleaning up the queue.

Wastebook

• “Look, it’s a Cybertruck!” - yelled out by a Bay Area co-worker I was talking with on the phone as they drove into work.

• “In one way this is ‘just’ the evolution of the comment section.” Here.

• If you’re saying something you believe to be true, you don’t need to tell people you “honestly think it’s true” or that you “actually think” it’s the case. That’s just, like, assumed when you’re talking. When you say those things, true or not, you’re running the risks of (1) pointing out that when you don’t use those phrases in other statements, you’re not being honest, and, (2) point out that your claims are unbelievable and likely risky-to-bonkers.

• “There are no large language models in vacuum cleaners.” Ben Thompson on CES 2024.

• “She’s like you, but lacks a sense of humor.” Ahsoka, s1e7

Relative to your interests

• How to become a platform engineer - Also a good list of the Google Cloud products you’d use to do “platform engineering.”

• What I Learned Selling a Used Pencil on TikTok Shop - “Within two minutes, I had hundreds of viewers. I asked them how they ended up there but nobody answered. I put on a face filter. I played carnival music. I showed them my dog. One informed me that the same pencil was much cheaper at the Dollar Tree. Another asked me if I had diabetes and then promptly left — much to think about.”

• Gartner Says 50% of Critical Enterprise Applications Will Reside Outside of Centralized Public Cloud Locations Through 2027 - “’Through 2027, 50% of critical enterprise applications will reside outside of centralized public cloud locations… 'Enterprises are beginning to seek placement for workloads that have not migrated to the public cloud,” said Dennis Smith, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. ‘This represents approximately 70% of all workloads.’” I think that means they’re estimating that 30% of enterprise workloads (apps) are in public cloud.

• Invisible Ink: At the CIA’s Creative Writing Group - “When an organization has, say, financed the overthrow of the government of Guatemala, you would think there might be a speaking fee.” If you’ve ever been asked to create something for free, or had a big organizations cheap out on you, that is so wickedly funny! My newer theory on this is that organization would actually be fine paying you, it’s that the individual asking for the work doesn’t want to go through the dumb-pain of working with procurement to get the money. Their toil avoidance is understandable.

Out and about

Conferences, talks, events, etc. that I’ll be at.

I’m speaking at cfgmgmtcamp on February 5th, and then DevOpsDays LA on March 15th. I’m hoping my talk get accepted for the platform engineering day at KubeCon EU, but we’ll see if I manage to escape the “wait list.” If not, does that mean I can speak at Cloud Native Rejekts? I’ve got CPFs out to Devoxx UK and DevOpsDays London - we’ll see what happens. So far, no webinars or online conferences planned.

Do you have any conference recommendations?

Logoff

Another week in the bag! Sadly, it won’t be possible to go get 85¢ tacos tomorrow morning.