Fuel is now so expensive that counter in pumping station firmware overflows 🤦

Two more items I can cross off my bucket list: ✔️ Finish development project (almost) on schedule ✔️ Have the project featured on the @esa website esa.int/Applications/Connect…

I took this photo at 1:30 AM last night. Almost full moon, no clouds, -12 °C, and phone camera set to "Night mode" with 2 sec exposure. Almost looks like daylight 😃

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

The irony if this... The good news is that the MS365 spam filter appears to be working quite well

For those who want to take Kerbal Space Program to the next level:

With all the hype around AI, I'm surprised that companies still use humans for chatbot management - perhaps the job is too boring for AI? 😂

Nice try but 'O' and 'Q' are missing. I can use '0' instead of 'O' but I'm not going to type ASCII code every time I need a Q 🤪

Assuming it was Netscape v1.0, there are now only 12 years left to complete the download!!!

The setup could use a seat belt some airbags 😂

I find it quite amusing that you can buy military grade 0 ohms resistors for $2 (vs. $0.11 for an automotive grade) 😂

I finally chose a publisher for my lecture notes on signal processing. I went with github and CC-NC license. Feel free to download the source code: github.com/jvierine/signal_p…

For the first time in my 20 year carrier, I have submitted an application more than 18 hours before the closing date. What's next? Finish the project on schedule??? No way! Feels like a slippery slope 😂

I mean, I know that current ion thrusters only generate a fraction of a mouse fart, but that will hopefully change as technology evolves, and we will have ion thrusters that can generate 10s and 100s of mouse farts worth of thrust. What do you think @Astro_Sheila ?

Your antenna tower is tall enough if it goes up into the clouds 😃

Last chance to stockpile! allaboutcircuits.com/news/en…

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, where businesses strive for resilience, productivity, and sustainable growth, the potential of technology cannot be overlooked. Check out the latest blog from our co-founders, @Astro_Sheila and @csete sheilex.com/unveiling-the-po…

Judging from the color of the egg shells after boiling, this new WiMo power converter must be based on energy harvesting by high density electron compression.