Rob Fahrni

Follow @fahrni on Micro.blog.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

So ends my week of relaxation. In the past I’d start becoming angry about how quickly my time off flew by. Not this week. I made the most of each day with some lazing about thrown in.

I managed to get some time to work on Stream for Mac and do a bunch of things around the house I’d put off for far too long. Today I plan on cleaning up Kim’s car and working on my dumpster bike. But I’m open to change.

Anywho, my coffee is ready. I hope you enjoy the links.

PZ Myers • Free Thoughts Blog

Nikki Haley got asked a straightforward question: “What was the cause of the United States’ Civil War?” She staggers back, stalls for time, and finally coughs up, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run.

This is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the Civil War was fought over slavery. So, either Nikki Haley is a racist piece of crap or extremely stupid. I don’t think she’s stupid.

This was the easiest of softball questions you could give a Presidential candidate and she failed miserably, that alone should disqualify her from holding office in any federal, state, or local government.

Of course she’s competing with the biggest asshole of all for the GOP nomination. Good luck with that, Ms. Haley.

Maybe this was part of her audition for the Vice Presidency? Gotta show the Orange Man how racist she really is to get the job. 🤬

Jessica Wildfire • OK Doomer

Meanwhile, a world-class trail runner named Emilia kills herself after a Covid infection leaves her with an unstable heart. Around the world, smart talented young men and women are losing their careers after Covid ravages their organs, their brains, their immune systems.

COVID is still around and still wreaking havoc on folks.

I still need to get my booster, you should too. 💉

Mike Hanley • GitHub

Over 15 years ago, GitHub started as a Ruby on Rails application with a single MySQL database. Since then, GitHub has evolved its MySQL architecture to meet the scaling and resiliency needs of the platform—including building for high availability, implementing testing automation, and partitioning the data.

It’s wild to see how big services can become. GitHub — the company that centralized a decentralized version control system — has over 1,200 MySQL databases. That’s a metric crap ton.

It also seems strange given Microsoft has their own SQL Server offering continues to use MySQL, owned by Oracle. 🥴

Joan Westenberg

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, used an artificial intelligence program to generate bogus legal citations in his motion for early termination of his supervised release.

The moral of the story is don’t believe everything a LLM gives you. You still need to verify the answer.

Laura Paddison • CNN

Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.

Will this pan out? If we’ve ever needed it now is the time. At the rate the climate is changing a team of scientists will emerge from their labs to announce to the world they’ve done it only to find the world on fire.

Raymond Wong • Inverse

Inside Apple’s Massive Push to Transform the Mac Into a Gaming Paradise

But will AAA games come around and make the commitment to the platform? Without developers it’s an instant failure.

Diane Duane

Can you add artificial intelligence to the hydraulics?

This is a link to a comment on a post — at least I think it is? Regardless it’s a funny read. If you only follow one link make it this one. AI is taking over all the things even if it can’t.

Alex Castro • The Verge

Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you’ll start seeing them: it’s January 29th.

I’m kind of surprised they don’t just bake this into Amazon Prime pricing.

Brandon Paul • Flo Racing

With over 1,600 total entries on hand for the Tulsa Shootout this week, there is bound to be some NASCAR connections to the biggest Micro Sprint event in the country.

I’m not sure how many folks not into NASCAR would know that drivers often compete in multiple different types of races throughout the year.

Sprint Cars seem to be a real favorite and winning a Golden Driller is still a highly sought after prize. Even for highly talented NASCAR drivers.

Tiny Apple Core