Igor Oseledko

The Black Box on the Org Chart

Igor — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:17:50 +0000

There’s a particular kind of delusion that takes hold in tech booms. It starts with a true thing, wraps itself around a useful thing, and then inflates into a preposterous thing. The true thing is that large language models can be useful. They can summarize, scaffold, autocomplete, translate from one notation to another, and generate […]

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The Post-Language Future of AI Systems

Igor — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 05:28:45 +0000

There’s a persistent assumption baked into how we talk about AI: that language is fundamental. That intelligence expresses itself through something like English, or at least through structured programming languages we recognize. It’s a comforting idea. It’s also probably wrong. Language, as humans use it, is a workaround. It’s a lossy, error-prone encoding layer that […]

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Outsmarted by a River, a Rope, and an Anchor

Igor — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 02:50:05 +0000

Before you entrust serious decisions to AI, consider that the most advanced systems routinely fail at school-level physics problems written over a century ago. Here’s why, and what it reveals about how these systems actually “think.” Yakov Perelman never discovered a law of physics. He never led a research program or published in a major […]

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To Mask or Not to Mask

Igor — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:10:54 +0000

Originally published March 31, 2020 @ 3:17 pmEffectiveness of face masks against the coronavirus has been debated to death in both popular and scientific literature. Here are the two most common mistakes made by journalists and by people who should know better. Asking the Wrong Question “Can Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus?” or “Can wearing a […]

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The AI Bubble Isn’t a Bubble. It’s a Trap.

Igor — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 05:27:57 +0000

Let’s dispense with the fantasy right away. Your $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription isn’t paying for anything remotely resembling the actual cost of running modern AI. It doesn’t cover the data centers, the power bills, the GPUs stacked like gold bars in climate-controlled bunkers. Not even close. Right now, no major AI company is profitable. None of […]

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Checking Linux Account Password

Igor — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 03:57:45 +0000

Originally published March 25, 2020 @ 4:48 pmOn occasion you may need to check if an account has a specific password. For example, when you build VMs, you may use some default passwords for some default accounts (i.e. root) that should be changed later by your password management application. Except that the password management application […]

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Coronavirus Stats in Bash

Igor — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:00:48 +0000

Originally published March 19, 2020 @ 10:37 pmThe result of my morbid fascination with the coronavirus situation is this quick bash script that parses Johns Hopkins University coronavirus data to generate a quick report for the current date for the specified countries. The plan is to add some statistical analysis to spot potential anomalies in […]

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The Coronavirus Discussion

Igor — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 21:06:25 +0000

Originally published March 5, 2020 @ 12:42 pmJust a few words about the coronavirus. Clearly, the Internet is in need of my contribution to this topic. You might’ve noticed this: whenever there is a discussion about the coronavirus, some dolt appears out of nowhere and says something along the lines of “to put things in […]

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Updating Lynis

Igor — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 02:22:08 +0000

Originally published February 29, 2020 @ 5:04 pmLynis is an excellent security audit tool for Linux and various Unix derivatives. I have a small wrapper script that runs Lynis via a cron job, does a selective diff with the previous run’s output, and sends me an email. Unfortunately, Lynis does not update itself automatically and […]

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Hiding Passwords

Igor — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:16:29 +0000

Originally published February 21, 2020 @ 9:02 amI’ve touched on this subject previously, but suddenly felt I should repeat myself. The big issue with using passwords from command line is shell history. Regardless of how careful you are, eventually you’ll enter a password in clear text in your terminal session. It will then end up […]

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