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The Actuator – May 6th

sqlrockstar
1 minute read time

I know the calendar says May, but it feels more like March still. March 67th, in fact. We are well into what I’m going to call the Lost Spring. Here’s hoping it won’t also be a Lost Summer.

As always, here's a bunch of links I hope you find useful. Enjoy!

Want to Find a Misinformed Public? Facebook’s Already Done It
I am shocked, just shocked to discover Facebook is taking advantage of people to earn revenue.

A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks
I am surprised the USPS has not been updating their fleet over the years as a matter of course. But, yeah, now would be a good time to start converting a percentage of vehicles to electric.

As fewer people fly, rate of guns found in bags by TSA jumps
Something to look forward to when I start flying again.

How New Jersey’s former CIO learned to embrace the longevity of COBOL
It’s easy to blame process breakdowns on “legacy” code, even when the code isn’t the issue.  

Bye, Amazon
There’s a lot to unpack in this post from Tim Bray regarding his decision to leave AWS.

Great, Now Invasive 'Murder Hornets' Are a Thing to Worry About
Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse.

ILOVEYOU Virus: 20 Years After the Malware Caused $10B Losses Worldwide
Ah, memories. Today this email subject would read “I love you 3000.”

Was pruning some shrubs this weekend and found this. I guess the pruning will have to wait.

nest.jpg

  •  don't forget Fire ants and Killer bees were stowaways too....

    Then you have others that were brought here to help resolve one problem and became another....Nutria are a good example.

  • Computer viruses, like "I Love You", seem to me to be another sign of poorly managed children, poorly defined senses or morals and ethics.  There's no need for them.  But unsupervised people continue writing them, for malicious intent or for hoped-for profits, or both.

    Let's take responsibility for not doing a good job of educating kids about what's right & wrong, what's acceptable behavior and what's not.  And then continually monitor them to ensure they don't stray from the desired path, even as adults.

    I'm not talking about a Big Brother environment--no one wants that.  But I AM thinking of a world where people don't automatically plan mischief and who only avoid it if they believe the risk of being caught, and the associated punishments, are low.

  • Giant Asian Hornets arriving in North America.  Not what anyone needs.  One assumes they're arriving as stowaways since they're near shipping ports with a lot of Asian commerce.

    We've seen similar unwanted imports within ship ballasts (Zebra Mussels) and tires filled with water (West Nile Virus in mosquitoes). 

    Folks will continue bringing in unwanted exotic critters that thrive in new environments without predators as long as folks are allowed to travel / import / export without adequate education and inspection.

    For my part, I've no desire to meet one of these little (but relatively HUGE) stinging beasties.  I'd rather folks kept them back where their originated.

    At least there's at least one predator in North America capable of occasionally defeating a Giant Asian Hornet:

    blob:https://nypost.com/a4ec1f79-b496-494d-9125-ef55bda59f73

  • Amazon.  What's wrong with behaving honorably and ethically, even at the temporary expense of some market points?

  • COBOL versus newer, more efficient languages / code?  Hmmm.  Stable, but clunky.  Reliable, but not fast, not glamorous, not sexy.  Not GUI.

    You don't throw away something simply because it's old--not when it does the job well.  Even though it may not have been what you studied or have never learned.

    I'm on the fence with this one.  I know that I've appreciated newer and faster solutions--particularly when their predecessors were buggy or unreliable.  But tossing out something simply because it isn't new & cool, while simultaneously adopting something that might be less reliable, less secure . . .   That doesn't make sense, either.

    I say that, as long as I'm not using COBOL, I don't have the right to decide.  Just give me something fast & reliable & secure and affordable.  Is that so hard?

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