Chris Ellis @intrbiz@bergamot.social

Check out the interview with Benefactor sponsor Cybertec just posted at https://2024.pgday.uk/sponsor-interviews/cybertec/

#postgres #pgconfeu #athens #opensource #database

PGDay Lowlands invites the community to contribute to the next PostgreSQL major version by giving feedback. We will raffle among all the testers:

🎫 1 free ticket to the event, sponsored by Nexteam Ltd

📖 1 physical copy of the PostgreSQL 16 Administration Cookbook sponsored by EDB

🐘 1 handmade elephant made and donated by @karenhjex

(with more prizes to be added)

To participate: https://2024.pgday.nl/testing-pg/

We've added the accepted lightning talks to the schedule. Can't wait to hear from Hettie Dombrovskaya, Teresa Lopes, Evan Stanton, Bilge Ince, Michal Nosek and others: https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgdaynl2024/schedule/

Come to @oggcamp in #Manchester on October 12-13 and geek out with the rest of us at this venerable free culture #unconference resurrected after four years.

Tickets on sale now, one more week of early-bird pricing, from https://oggcamp.org/tickets/

More info at https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/20/return-of-the-oggcamp/

#FreeCulture #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #Geek #Hacker #Event #OggCamp

Join @PavloGolub (CYBERTEC) for his PGDay Lowlands session and learn how to customize the Wordle game experience with #Postgres. Get your ticket now: https://2024.pgday.nl/registration/

New episode of the #TalkingPostgres podcast with Claire Giordano (previously called #PathToCitusCon)

In Ep18, David Rowley & I talk about how David got his start as a developer & in #PostgreSQL. Starting from motorbikes 🏍️ & cheese factories 🧀 to working as a prolific Postgres committer on the Postgres query planner (and more!)

Let me know what you think! // Boosts much appreciated ❤️

🎧 https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/how-i-got-started-as-a-developer-in-postgres-with-david-rowley
📺 https://aka.ms/TalkingPostgres-Ep18-youtube

#community #podcast #Postgres #OpenSource #Microsoft

Remember what Macquarie did to Thames water in the UK by loading it with debt before offloading it to others?

They are about to get full control of National Gas by buying out the last 20% from National Grid.

What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/macquarie-acquire-remaining-stake-uks-national-gas-2024-07-26/

#thames #nationalgas #nationalgrid #assetstipping

"We are pleased to announce postgres-contrib.org, a new website started in July 2024 by members of the #PostgreSQL #community, highlighting contributions to the project by the amazing people standing behind it. Many contributions to and for the PostgreSQL Project happen outside of writing code..."

https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/announcing-postgres-contriborg-contributions-to-postgresql-2897/

#Postgres #OpenSource #Database

Welcome Redgate as a Benefactor sponsor of PGDay UK 2024 in London! https://2024.pgday.uk/sponsors/ #postgres #pgdayuk #london #opensource #database

Welcome GITC Pro Limited (@GITCPro) as a Supporter sponsor of PGDay UK 2024 in London! https://2024.pgday.uk/sponsors/ #postgres #pgdayuk #london #opensource #database

The wait is over - PGconf.EU 2024 schedule is now up https://www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfeu2024/schedule/
#postgresql #database #opensource #athens

More on the madness & inhumanity of the DWP's 'management' of carer's allowance....

As I've said before: we should be cherishing & rewarding unpaid carers, not putting them into a position of financial jeopardy.

Here's a change Labour can make right away with few if any fiscal implications.

Just stop the DWP penalising carers, now!

#socialcare #politics

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/28/key-workers-quit-jobs-to-avoid-cash-penalties-for-breaching-carers-allowance

The schedule for PGDay UK 2024 is published! Did you get your ticket already?

#PGDayUK #PGEU #PostgreSQL #Conference #London

https://pgday.uk/events/pgdayuk2024/schedule/

So, if you ask me what my takeaway from the Crowdstrike issue is, I'd say: boot counting/boot assessment/automatic fallback should really be a MUST for today's systems. *Before* you invoke your first kernel you need have tracking of boot attempts and a logic for falling back to older versions automatically. It's a major shortcoming that this is not default behaviour of today's distros, in particular commercial ones.

Of course systemd has supported this for a long time:

https://systemd.io/AUTOMATIC_BOOT_ASSESSMENT/

KIT KAT wins the internet today

Let's cut the bullshit and spell out a few things. The IT security industry is about as trustworthy as the food supplement and vitamin industry, but somehow they escaped the same reputation. Their products are overwhelmingly based on flawed ideas, and the quality of their software is exceptionally bad. And while not everyone will agree with the harshness of my words, I'll say this: Essentially everyone in IT security who knows anything in principle knows this.

Ah yes, let's ship a kernel driver that parses update files that are pushed globally simultaneously to millions of users without progressive staging, and let's write it in a memory unsafe language so it crashes if an update is malformed, and let's have no automated boot recovery mechanism to disable things after a few failed boots. What could possibly go wrong?

🤦‍♂️

Programmers using LLMs:

I type in a comment and poof, new code appears! I am productive.

Programmers not using LLMs (like me):

I sometimes re-type code carefully that's similar to what's already in the codebase because the act of typing it out helps me bond with the concepts I'm expressing in code.

----

The thing is, we're not just arguing about tools.

*We're arguing about how to be artists.*

My code is the same as my music, photography, and writing.

Why are you outsourcing your art?