Liam Proven

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/08/waves_of_tech_bs/

After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles

<- by me on @theregister

#FOSDEM #CENTOSCONNECT

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

Opinion: After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles

The Register
Feb 8 at 1:12pmWeb
Show threadColinFeb 8

@lproven @creideiki containers and related are innocent..

If you wanna complain about something like it tho, look at microservices. Now those are a 'load.

Show thread Hex ⸳ Alice ΘΔ&Feb 8
@colinstu Yeah I was def a bit confused when they mentioned containers? They're not the be-all and end-all shouldn't be used for everything but I think containers are really really nifty.
Show threadLiam ProvenFeb 8
@colinstu @creideiki I see microservices as a symptom of the mania for containerisation, myself.
Show threadjzakotnikFeb 8
@lproven @theregister I don't get the point of the article. The same could have been said about the internet, personal computers, modems, transistors in the past. If you abstract from the hype, you can always find something useful from engineering, so what's the point of complaining about the hype.
Show threadLiam ProvenFeb 8
@jzakotnik @theregister Interesting. May I suggest you read the other comments here?
Show threadfedops 💙💛Feb 8

@lproven @theregister thank you for summarizing this so eloquently!

15-20 years ago was also the time IT management stopped to be people who rose through the ranks and knew what they were doing, and was starting to be MBAs with PowerPoint and color-coordinated pencils. At that point all the outsourcing and rightshoring and KPI-based IT started to happen which created the zombie mess of clueless managers and puppy mill-spawned grunts we have today.

Show threadRamin HonaryFeb 8

#LLM technology, what people call #AI or #GenerativeAI nowadays, has long had trouble counting how many R’s there are in the word “strawberry,” or winning a game of chess against a computer built in the 1970s. Quoting @lproven in the linked article:

As Daniel Stenberg, author of curl, caustically observed

“The “i” in “LLM” stands for intelligence.”

And yes, @lproven I too am sick and tired of these damn hype cycles. In my lifetime, the only technologies for which hype around them have been vindicated are:

  • the invention of the “microcomputer,” which made personal computers a reality. Before that, everyone thought computers were only useful for huge corporations who needed to do accounting and payroll for thousands of employees, and/or physics simulations. The idea that anyone would need a computer in their home was absurd, until the invention of the microcomputer.
  • the invention of the World Wide Web, which was the technology that made the Internet useful for ordinary people. Prior to the WWW the Internet was pretty much only available to academics, scientists, and engineers. The idea that you could use your computer to collaborate on projects with anyone anywhere in the world suddenly went from science-fiction to reality.

    • I have yet to see a hype cycle around any technology that comes anywhere near the level of “disruption” than those two things. Smartphones don’t count, they are just a result of “Moore’s Law” applied to microcomputer technology. If anything, Smartphones have been a regression in UI/UX design; one step forward, one step back. Combine that with massive centralized social networks, then smartphones amount to two steps back.

    #tech #computers

    RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven/116035179986331353

    Show thread🐈‍⬛David SommersethFeb 9
    @theregister @lproven I believe you missed the Big Data phase; IIRC that was a bit before virtualization kicked in.