Over the past few weeks, I've found myself increasingly having to explain to people close to me that those videos on social media are not reliable sources of information. That the so-called guru isn't really a guru. That having a degree doesn't automatically make you respectable. And that installing those apps on your phone is dangerous.

Then, just a few days later, they're back to sending me the same videos, from the same platforms, or reinstalling the same shady apps. "Because they're cute" or "because they're useful."

Never mind all the security issues I warned them about, starting with the fact that they downloaded the app from "g00gle.com".

Then, one day, their phone stops working properly, showing ads everywhere. Or worse.

"Who they gonna call?"

More and more often, I've also found myself saying: no, I'm not giving you root access to the server so you can "let Claude optimize it."

Who's responsible for that server, me or Claude? Either it's me, or it's nobody.

Because when Claude inevitably messes something up...

"Who they gonna call?"

Then I get an email asking for my opinion on a quote from a large competing company. A quote that's worse than the one I prepared months ago, which was never approved. And now they're "ready to approve this company's quote if you tell us it's okay."

Never mind mine, of course. As always, with that particular customer.

And the problem isn't that they've consciously evaluated two proposals and decided to go with someone else. That would be perfectly fine.

But apparently, mine had completely slipped their minds. As usual.

The problem is that the well-dressed, nice-smelling salesman shows up with his AI-generated documents, a few impressive promises, and the usual "most amazing service ever" pitch. And suddenly, he's credible.

Meanwhile, my proposals, perhaps less flashy, but at least containing actual technical details, something mysteriously absent from those wonderful sales pitches, are consistently pushed aside.

They trust my expertise when something goes wrong. But when it's time to make decisions, somehow a shiny sales pitch from a total stranger is more convincing than ten years of mutual trust.

And for over ten years, I've been the one cleaning up the mess left behind by these people's brilliant solutions. Fixing problems, untangling chaos, and trying to make things work after the excitement has worn off and the salesman has moved on to the next customer.

Because at 5:30 in the morning, when someone is suffering and that shiny, wonderful system isn't working as promised, guess what?

"Who they gonna call?"

Me.

Not the charming salesman who sold them the dream. He's probably still dreaming. Especially at 5:30.

And not their wonderful support service either, because the call center doesn't open until 8:30, when they'll finally be allowed to open a ticket.

Meanwhile, there's a real person with a real problem, and a system that needs to work. Now.

And for more than ten years, I've been the one picking up that phone and cleaning up the mess. More than ten years of this.

So this time, I suggested they go ahead. But I also reminded them that when things go wrong, they won't be able to call me to fix them.

Not for that. And not just for this project. For anything else, either. After more than ten years of being the one who picks up the pieces, my availability ends here.

I'm happy to share my knowledge. I'm happy to help. But I'm no longer willing to take responsibility for decisions made by people who consistently ignore my advice.

Not anymore.

Always a barista. ALWAYS!

An idiot? I try to avoid being one whenever possible. 😆

#ITLife #SysAdminLife #ITConsulting #TechSupport #ProfessionalEthics #Barista

As the Fediverse grows, the amount and frequency of harmful spam also increases. The feudalistic structure of the network creates notable moderation overhead as every instance admin has to ban offending remote accounts and remove their content themselves, if the originating instance does not act quick enough or such delete actions are not federated properly.
An example (and my motivation for this post) are reports from the last days about accounts which post CSAM content. This is especially problematic, as media content gets duplicated to every receiving instance.

The following idea came to my mind: A software which sits on top of Activity Pub and creates a kind of court. Instances of this software are independent courts. All users can elect admins / mods of their home instance as judge. Everyone can post a case via normal Fedi posts to the court and the elected judges give a verdict via majority vote (votes are also normal Fedi comments with special formatted content). Once a case has a verdict, all instances should immediately apply the decided action against the offending content / account. This can be done via a bot which is set as an instance moderator and follows the published verdicts of a court instance the local admin trusts.

This way swift action can be applied through all instances which follow the court at once. By having periodic elections it is kept democratic.

And the task of the court is to defend universal rules all following instances agree on. Not to handle politics between instances.

What are you thoughts on this matter? Or do other approaches to solve this issue already exist?

So I discovered that old Dell Latitude (that I blogged about a while ago) is supported by #libreboot and was almost painless to get running