This could also make a fun version of cyberpunk’s datakrash, or explain why a computer to run a spaceship is measured in tons in traveller.

I guess my point is what if the Cylons could make it so that an infected computer could only make infected computers? You would have to build a new computer from scratch and then make sure that computers it made could be verified by either humans or a computer that a human could directly verify.

Although Battlestar Galactica was about networked computers, the Pegasus was a more modern battle star which functioned perfectly well once its networks were disconnected (or hardened, I can’t remember).

Basically, why everything about Battlestar Galactica exists

So everything looks like technology from the 80s because it is easily verified as containing nothing that could have been compromised by the rogue AI. CRTs and magnetic storage have the advantage of being more easily constructed with that same technology.

Now you have to boot strap modern computers from basic components. It is possible to make an old school CPU from the 80s using nothing but transistors and wire, by hand. It is not an efficient use of resources, but if it’s the only way to get a non-compromised computer, then you will do it

There is a real fear that if someone managed to compromise the software that makes the instructions to make computer chips, those computers might then themselves be compromised.

Now imagine that a sci-fi rogue AI had compromised that software, so now all computers built by that software are suspect

Modern computers use chips that have been produced through producing circuits made from incredibly thin traces on silicon produced by firing UV lasers at silicon wafers to etch them (massively oversimplifying) but generally you cannot prove what a given computer chip does non-destructively.

Retro!

This has reminded me I need to look into some of the alternate handles again. It has also reminded me of the time that I accidentally ordered the wrong brochure from them.

It had pictures, of the various blades in use. It was not a pretty sight.

Funnily enough, I am getting together with some friends to recreate fourth edition armies, largely using new modern models.

I certainly don't miss the era of just running stuff on whatever LAMP stack I had lying around when I set up a server, but at the same time it does feel like the dependency treadmill is way more onerous than it used to be.

March 2026 is significantly sooner than you think! It's not like we have to do something today, sure, but it's still a significant chunk of development effort we're now going to spend swapping out the ingress.

Well that’s soured my morning. Can’t expect everything to be maintained forever, but we’ve just come out of a gnarly upgrade cycle for several of our dependencies and I was hoping to avoid the upgrade mines for a little longer.

I am so envious of the textures you have on the carapaces there

Almost all of them are designed to inflict a sense of learned helplessness on business owners and operators, that you can't possibly do the thing, you must pay a company to do the thing or let the machine do the thing.

Everything is too dangerous or too serious to risk yourself.

If it can discover the person’s time zone it will use that instead. We have a lot of cross time zone communication at work and Outlook does the right thing in regards to that message.

Now I feel like email being an asynchronous communication mechanism means that this shouldn’t matter though.