Yes and:

IIRC, Bryan Cantrill has compared the value proposition of an Oxide (rack?) to an IBM AS/400.

>Bryan Cantrill has compared the value proposition of an Oxide (rack?) to an IBM AS/400.

I've heard Bryan and Co. call it a "mainframe for Zoomers," but it's much closer to what Nutanix or VxRail is/was doing than it is to an AS/400.

It's not really a mainframe because the RAS story (Reliability, Availability, Servicing) story is sorely lacking compared to what a true mainframe gives you. So a midrange machine like AS/400 is probably a better comparison.

An AS/400 has a similar RAS story to mainframes than to Oxide/Dell. Oxide is closer to Dell (Oxide RAS is effectively the same as any sled hyperconverged) than they want to admit.

For those of us who are unaware of "the value proposition" of an "IBM AS/400," could someone spell it out for us?

When the AS/400 came out circa 1989 or whatever, you could replace an entire mainframe with a box not much bigger than a mini fridge. The hardware is built for high reliability, and the OS and application software stack have a lot of integration. If Unix is "everything is a file" then AS/400 is "everything is a persistent object in a flat 64 bit address space."

The result is a system that can handle years of operation with no downtime. The platform got very popular with huge retailers for this reason.

Then in later years the platform got the ability to run Linux or Windows VMs, so that they could benefit from the reliability features.

High capacity, super reliable box that you could run your entire business stack on, if you could afford it.

The money IBM made with the AS/400 is actually completely mind blowing when you compare it to the rest of the computing industry at the time.

Hi Brendan. Thanks for the update. Ignore the haters.

WRT "AI saving the planet", obviously.

We need ungodly amounts of machine learning. Weather modeling, forecasting, resilience planning, risk mgmt, planning, etc.

To implement virtual power plants (aka P2P distributed grid), everything needs to get smart. Just this transformation alone is a generational project.

There's dozens more of "must have" stacks we need to tackle climate crisis. Replace industrial heat. Decarbonize agriculture. Build out geothermal. Find and stop methane leaks. Pretty much everything needs a makeover, really.

OpenAI is as good a place (for you) to start as any.

Happy hunting.

A fish rots from the head back.

Yup.

My personal counterpoint is Norman's thesis in Things That Make Us Smart.

I've long tried, and mostly failed, to consider the tradeoffs, to be ever mindful that technologies are never neutral (winners & losers), per Postman's Technopoly.

Enforcement.

Yes and: Good for the nations underwriting all that domestic competition. Playbook followed by Japan, South Korea, etc, and most recently China.

Agree with all.

> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.

My understanding has been (some fraction of) taggers are disaffected. So I could buy that some are reasserting ownership.

Some are just dumb teenagers acting out (shitposting), like my son did.

A handful are pretty good artists. Like some of the kids in my kid's extended social group. Worthy of resources and media. eg Commissions for murals.

Rubber Ducky is a terrific name for a GPT.

Also, always reminds me of Kermit singing "...you make bath time so much fun!..."

Maybe Kermit has sung it at some point, but that's Ernie's song usually

Ha. Well spotted. I totally hallucinated that.

Maybe it was this one

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Do_De_Rubber_Duck

DOET (neé Psychology of Everyday Things) deeply influenced me. Articulated things I had observed, experienced. Expanded my thinking.

I was using, teaching, and developing for AutoCAD at the time. Knew nothing about UI beyond my intuition. Just perplexed by how difficult it was for most to use.

Reflecting back, Norman's treatment of mental models and kinds of errors were the most impactful, evergreen design challenges I faced.

Now that you mention it...

It's odd that Microsoft hasn't aggressively pushed for "openness". That's in the usual playbook for attacking a market leader.

(And then pull up the ladder once you've become king of hill.)

Microsoft will probably never topple Google, absent anti-monopolistic enforcement. But they can certainly attack Google's profits.