The Continuation of a Genocide
The WSJ with an article out on the continuation of a genocide began twenty years ago:
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and other allied militias in recent days have attacked and torched villages in war-torn Darfur, according to satellite images and interviews with survivors, stirring fears of more mass killings in the region.
Satellite images analyzed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab show significant new fire damage in 11 villages west of El Fasher since late March….
Amani Jalia said she discovered the charred bodies of her elderly parents in their home in the village of Sarfaya, about 20 miles west of El Fasher following an attack by RSF fighters and Arab militia on March 29.
“They were setting fires on all houses and firing in all directions,” Amani Jalia, who asked to be identified only by her first and middle names. “They were shouting and calling us slaves.”
Another article described a mother forced to watch murderous fighters set fire to her house while her children were trappd inside, to be burned always.
It is tempting to say that there are no easy answers — and there are not. The West, and America in particular, re-learns the dangers of foreign engagements in situations that don’t directly involve us every decade.
But we can skip to the end to decide on the next action.
History’s Guide tells us the violence will continue until it is out of control. Killings and absolute atrocities will reach a level that we can’t unwatch, that we can’t ignore, even with Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza. The UN will decide to send in armed forces, or threaten an air campaign, something, to force the RSF to cease open atrocities and genocide.
But only after tens of thousands are killed.
It’s a double real-politik. Foreign engagements are tough, unpopular and have unintended consequences.
But if we are likely to engage when the violence is high, the existing sides stronger and more dug in, then the rational thing is to jump in now, when we can prevent more harm, both for the region and for us.
Not Every Breach Is A Critical Breach
This week it was revealed that Cisco’s Duo had a vendor breached that handled VOIP & SMS for Duo. Duo does MFA, so this is potentially a big deal. I had a vendor send me this language for our own PR:
The severity of this incident cannot be overstated. The compromised information could be exploited by cybercriminals to launch highly targeted attacks against you and your organization.
It can be overstated.
It’s estimated that the attack affected 1,000 people.
The exposed data is relatively minor1
The data contained in these logs includes an employee’s:
Bleeping Computer
- Phone number
- Carrier
- Location data
- Date
- Time
- Message type
MSPs and cybersecurity professionals will undoubtedly fatigue the public if we cry wolf every time something happens in the cybersecurity realm.
- I’m sure someone will flame me for saying this. Of course any data can be used for phishing or other nefarious purposes. I’m not saying that it can’t be. But it also isn’t a full set of PII and credentials. Notably, names, addresses, employers and related applications are all missing from this list. ↩︎
2020 Never Ended
I just finished How to Human by Carlos Whittaker. While, not the point of the book, a thesis within it is that 2020 — and all that 2020 was — made so many of us forget how human.
We forgot that it is a human instinct to help each other.
We forgot to put empathy over politics.
We forgot how to be generous to everybody, and not just those from our own tribe.
It is a very optimistic take on the last few years: the idea that the social and political climate that we live in today — which is more toxic than that any other time in living memory — is an output of the disaster that was 2020.
Reading this section of the book made me realize that in many ways I feel like 2020 never ended for me.:
- My primary office is still my bedroom.
- The racial discussions that began in 2020 are unresolved and still part of my life.
- The political environment is crazier, more malicious, more dangerous, and more divisive among friends and close community than it was in 2019 (which is saying something.)
- The 2020 presidential campaign never actually ended.
My mind is never too far away from a hair-trigger. I feel like I struggle to ever really embrace the good things coming in the not-near future. I can see good things 4-8 weeks away but anything further out gets demoted by my attention which is more attuned to anything going wrong now, or that might go wrong, or that I just don’t think will go right.
If a few years ago I had vision to see a mile ahead in life it is now down to a couple hundred yards, past that there is only fog that always looks dark. Not because life is that uncertain, because I am unable emotionally to process what will happen beyond that.
In my mind, yesterday is always lockdown, George Floyd, January 6th, the Ukraine war, keeping a small business afloat during COVID, getting COVID, up-ending how I do all of life. Today I need to get through today, and I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow because I don’t have any energy left today.*
Anything good that happened in that time (and there was a lot for me) is somehow moved from the main story line of my life to the appendix as I re-read it in my mind.
I didn’t even realize how much I thought this way until getting through the first chapter or two of the book.
Wow, looking back at what I just wrote, sounds a little like PTSD, eh?
A few paragraphs ago this post was more of a public-journaling exercise: I did not plan out a conclusion, just a description of my own life and thoughts.
But if my experience in any way matches yours, then maybe Carlos is right: many of us are still dealing with trauma — not of any one thing but of all the things — that cloud our feelings, our perception and our judgement.
I think our deeply inhuman response to everything that happened in 2020 left the deepest mark and, for some, the deepest wounds. The year 2020 jacked up humanity. It threw many of us off course, and the problem is that we can’t seem to rebound… it still feels like most of us got knocked off course and can’t find our way back. I’m still processing. Still working to understand. Maybe you are too? Why? Because 2020 was about so much more than 2020.
Carlos Whittaker, How to Human
Maybe in trying to cut through the fog we have forgotten “how to human,” as instead we find ourselves in a low-state of anxiety about everything.
Carlos has a prescription for us — if you want it listen to the book, it’s only six hours — but this is my first step. Acknowledging through writing, the effects that 2020 is still having on me. Not just reverberations, a very much right-now-still-in-the-present effects.
My second step is to end 2020. Maybe not in 2021. Or 2022. Or 2023. More like April of 2024.
Then I can start a new year.
*Not like the birds of the air here, it’s just anxiety all around.
Eclipse
Will Kaseya Make an Industry Shaking Announcement, Is It AI?
Fred Voccola has been marketing a major announcement at Kaseya Connect.
…in November, he previewed a Powered By Kaseya branding campaign that would roll out at this month’s Kaseya Connect Global 2024 conference. The CEO said the campaign “will disrupt the entire industry and that’s why end customers are going to start to look for MSPs powered by Kaseya, the same way that we bought a PC 15 years ago powered by Intel. We’re going to make it impossible for people not to be ‘Powered by Kaseya.’”
At the Kaseya+Datto M&A Symposium for MSPs in London last December, Voccola added that Kaseya would deliver news in 2024 that will make the Datto acquisition “seem insignificant.” He certainly wasn’t talking about layoffs.
At Robin Robin’s Bootcamp in Nashville in April of 2024 he said:
We’re announcing in Vegas and three or four weeks, we believe we will fundamentally alter [the industry]. That’s a big statement. [This is a] 20, $16 billion bet, and this is my career bet — that we will fundamentally alter our industry for the better, change the dynamics of it, so this will be one of the most lucrative and rewarding industries on this planet period.
I think we found the way to do that, it’s a combination of a lot of things… it’s a culmination of everything we’ve done over the last decade.
I think the most interesting portion of those two quotes is “this is my career bet.” A $16bn bet would be a career bet for Vocolla for sure. A few months ago it would have been the Datto acquisition. With a valuation of nearly 10x ARR, it was a big bet that Datto would significantly outperform the market.
Let’s talk about why it can’t be anything special, and then how it could be ground-breaking AI.
The Pessimist
Of course, for those of us in the industry, it is not remotely clear how “Powered by Kaseya” could “fundamentally” alter the Channel. Kaseya has a mixed reputation in the industry and virtually no reputation outside of it, except for those who remember its mammoth cybersecurity incident a few years ago.
Honestly, it isn’t clear how any single announcement from any single company could “fundamentally” alter the MSP industry. AI has the biggest potential to transform how things are done — as in take tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of low and mid-level tech jobs — but that will be a transition with incremental progress made by multiple companies.
The second most interesting thing is him throwing out $16 billion dollars. Kaseya does $2 billion in ARR1, which means it isn’t anywhere near a $16 billion company,2 and nearly a third of that ARR came from the Datto acquisition3. It also doesn’t seem likely that this is simply more acquisitions, if for no reason than there are no rumors of deals remotely that big circulating, at least that I am aware of.
The Optimist
Let’s take two of the pessimistic ideas and flip them on their head: Kaseya doesn’t have that kind of money and AI doesn’t move that fast. In fact, the two of these together make more sense than other options, AI still attracts lots of money and high valuations, and Insight Partners has (or can raise) the money.
I believe the biggest challenge to applying a general AI to IT is data: you need a lot of data to train on from a wide variety of industries, and Kaseya has that.
- Kaseya owns two PSAs, full of 10+ years of tickets, solving processes and the ultimate solutions, from hundreds or thousands of MSPs serving probably every industry in the US (or the world?)
- Kaseya owns two RMMs, also full of 10+ years of information
- Kaseya owns the industry-leading IT documentation platform — IT Glue — which is full of documentation and SOPs for tens of thousands of IT environments
In fact, Kaseya is probably one of only a handful of companies globally that has this much IT data from such a wide variety of sources. ConnectWise would be the only competitor here. Not even Microsoft has this kind of data.
If Vocolla was talking about $16-$20in in R&D over several years both the total expense would make sense, and why he wasn’t sure if it was $16bn or $20bn, kind of a big gap to not know otherwise.
Critically, Kaseya also has all of the pieces needed today. An interface for customers and AI (PSA), an interface between the AI and the endpoint (RMM), and documentation including passwords (IT Glue). And all of these are already validated tools. If you use Datto (Kaseya) Networking or are using their M365 RMM plugin, Kaseya also has network and cloud visibility into client platforms.
Finally, Kaseya doesn’t need to invent a model from scratch. It’s possible to take an open-source model and fine-tune it, or partner with OpenAI/Microsoft to fine-tune a general LLM to work for IT. If you had a multi-model model you could ingest screen captures and, possibly, return keyboard and mice commands in an RPA-like product.
It would be slow to start, sure, but well within the realm of possibility. It would also be expensive, but probably less expensive than a tech.
It would also be one of the few products that might attract enough attention that “Powered by Kaseya” could mean something to a general audience.
Now use your imagination and start tying all of these together: a client sends in a ticket to a PSA. KaseyaAI looks at the ticket and responds, possibly scheduling a remote session. Next, KaseyaAI remotes in with the RMM. It has access to passwords in IT Glue, along with client documentation. Between specific documentation, general IT knowledge and publicly available KBs it can solve most low level issues by itself. Finally, validating with the client that the issue is solved and closing the ticket.
Kaseya could also automate RocketCyber (their SOC) this way. Get an alert, research it, and automatically remediate on the endpoint.
Insight Partners currently lists 82 investments in ML/AI/Data on their portfolio page, and their news is absolutely dominated by AI stories. They have 99 investments in IT Infrastructure companies, although some of those overlap with AI.
We’ll see in four weeks if my predications hold water.
The second quote is my transcription, as always, I’ve lightly edited it for clarity.
- Per Robin Robins at the 2024 TMT Boot Camp. I’m pretty curious how Kaseya got to that level. ↩︎
- At least not shy of massive valuations ↩︎
- From the December 2021 Datto annual report: “As of December 31, 2021, our ARR was $658.4 million and our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021 was $618.7 million, of which approximately 93% was recurring subscription revenue.” ↩︎
Kaseya Layoffs
From CRN, Kaseya laid off 150 employees last week in Miami. Whether it was a layoff or a “performance based termination” depends on which side you believe.
It always sucks to be fired, regardless of the reason. If you are an MSP that doesn’t like your account manager (I love mine, FTR) then maybe this is good news; except I expect that performance-based terminations is a euphemism for not meeting quota.
As Yahoo Finance noted, there are dozens of openings for new account managers on Kaseya’s website, (Archive) which would fit with the theory of current (now former) AM’s not making quota.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian Existentialist
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian Existentialist. Or at least that’s what I got out of hearing him speak for an hour at Robin Robin’s (aka Technology Marketing Toolkit) Boot Camp.
First, let me say, it was enjoyable, he has very memorable soundbites.
Second, this one-hour is all I know about Peterson. Maybe his books say something else — but I doubt it.
The entire hour of content could be boiled down to:
- Life is miserable, you must admit it and confront it.
- After you’ve admitted it, you should embrace it as the adventure that it is
- You have a moral calling to do good, which is essentially getting rid of the worst parts of you one layer at a time
- The point of the adventure of life is to explore and expand your (limitless) limits by doing good (as good is defined above) and finding and doing the things that make you happy
And he used a lot of words to get us there.
And a lot of those words are Christian-y. Faith, heaven, Abraham, Christ, God, Job, sacrifice, spirit, calling, pearl of great price, fool*, and so on.
But the message he gives is quite different. It is about finding meaning in the struggle of life.
Let’s break down a couple of the Christian-y things he says, and then briefly unpack some of the existential stuff he said.
First, his interpretation of Jesus’ command to seek first the kingdom of God:
The injunction [in the passage] was, put the love of God above all else. Well, what does that mean?
It means aim at the highest thing you can conceive of in all that you do. That’s your best bet practically. So orient yourselves in the most stringent and disciplined and hopeful and courageous and faithful manner possible in everything you do….
There’s nothing you can do that will make things work out better around you than that.
This is not what that passage in Mathew means. The passage is about going all in with God. That means to live righteously and have faith that God will provide for you in your daily needs. Most specifically for food and clothing, meaningful items in the poor society Jesus was talking to.
Sure, that’s practical, but it isn’t practical for practicality’s sake, it’s practical because God is good so He will provide.
Later Peterson says that we are called upon to confront “the entire burden of life, all of its injustices, its moral limitations, it betrayals,” and to:
“give up everything about yourself that isn’t worthy in your attempt to cope with the limited conditions in the fact of malevolence. Theres no difference between the spirit that dwells within you and God. That’s the same thing. That’s the core message of the Judeo-Christian enterprise, fundamentally, that if you’re willing to take on that burden, the more of what you’re willing to take on that burden the more of what it is within you to enable you to even celebrate that, the more that would become manifest within you.”
I think he means that “taking on” and “confronting” the “burden of life” is about admitting that those things are part of life, and may seem arbitrary, and that by struggling through those things in life you discover more of yourself. (Which is not the core of Judiasm or Christianity)
Later he said, “you’re going to bear the full burden of your existence one way or another,” and also vaunts becoming a person “who can bear up under the catastrophe of existence properly.”
What he doesn’t mean is “confront” in the sense of righting injustice in the world, standing up for those who are oppressed, or fighting an objective and tangible evil. (Which are tenants of Judiasm and Christianity)
He would go on to define heaven as “the highest good you can conceptualize.” Again, this isn’t a Christian idea, which believes in a literal, probably physical, heaven.
As he wrapped up he threw out:
You might say, “well I don’t know what the ultimate good is.” Well, you don’t and neither does anyone else, but you could probably at least to start to envision a good that is higher than the good you occupy now.
Finally, a very stark departure from Christianity, which very clearly believes we know what the ultimate good is, and how to aim at it. Also, an existential idea that we essentially create the good by deciding what the good is.
But lets allow him tell it:
If [a person] could have what [they] wanted, what would [they] aim for? And here’s the rule: aim for that which would satisfy you in your struggle. That’s the great aim. Life is very difficult and it’s rife with betrayal and it’s rife with travesty and yet there are times when it’s so rich that it delivers to us what we need and want in a manner that makes us appreciate that we’re alive.
Well, that’s what you need. You need an aim that would make you appreciate being alive if that was realized, what would satisfy you? And that’s going to depend on some degree to how much suffering you have to do. Some people have heavier loads.
It would also depend to some degree of how easily you are satisfied, but you can ask yourself, “what would be sufficient?” What would keep you going another day or another week or another year? Happily, without resentment — imagine that — without resentment. We lay out that vision, that focuses you. Your whole enterprise will fall into place behind that. Partly because this is how perception works. Once you specify an aim, you see a pathway forward.
So: Life (existence) is difficult and at the same time life (existence) is what makes life worth living, so define the things that make living worth it and go after those.
He’d go on to say that we need to do this “in faith,” but at this point it should be pretty clear that this isn’t faith in God, it’s faith that you can find joy in life during its struggles, and that is what happiness and self-realization is.
And if you think that all of this seems circular, well, he’s still easier than reading Kierkegaard.
—
At one point he said, “That’s why we celebrate Christmas, the notion that every child is a locus of divine possibility.” (Which is neither Christian nor existential)
I guarantee you no one ever looked at Santa to consider “the locus of divine possibility,” and second, that Christmas in the religious sense is about a single child who was the locus of divinity. In simpler words: Christmas is about Jesus, Jesus is God, and celebrating that Jesus-God came to earth.
*This is not a word used much in every day English, but is used frequently throughout the bible, and so in churches and similar contexts.
Burning Desire
Can you get rich as a Christian?
Most people would say yes. Many would also say it was a sign of God’s blessing on your life.
Napoleon Hill (author of Think and Grow Rich) advocates thinking about riches every day, visualizing it, it becomes an all-encompassing mental focus:
Here is where a BURNING DESIRE will come to your aid. If you truly DESIRE money so keenly that your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to become so determined to have it that you CONVINCE yourself you will have it.
Think and Grow Rich (Emphasis mine)
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
1 Timothy 6:10
Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.
Ecclesiastes 5:10
The further I get into life, the easier it is to become convinced that this type of thinking is good, or correct, or necessary. It isn’t as obvious that I am falling for a BURNING DESIRE for wealth, it is the small(er) things. I need to save for retirement, I need to save for college, I want to be able to bring my kids to Disney World some day (with 8 kids that is a lot of money).
Of course, none of those are bad or problematic by themselves. They are even wise things to consider. But when they begin to become a focus, it is problematic.
I don’t know if I struggle with this more than most people as a business owner or not. I’m sure I spend more time with a Profit & Loss statement than most people, and have to watch the profit if I want to continue to have a business. One that provides valuable services, employment and supports multiple families.
But providing valuable services, employment and supporting families is an entirely different focus.
“You cannot serve both God and money.”
Matthew 6:24
I am at a conference this week that is all about growing IT businesses. Better service, better products, better profits. This is what I expect out of a conference for business owners, of course. But it’s dangerous, too.
All week, I am surrounding myself with people, sessions and lessons that are on some level, antithetical to the call of Christ.
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Mark 8:36
Moreover, it is a situation where there are pretty high potential downsides to success.
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Mark 10:24-25
A secular Kara Swisher made this observation about many that she covered in tech:
the richer and more powerful people grew, the more compromised they became—wrapping themselves in expensive cashmere batting until the genuine person fell deep inside a cocoon of comfort and privilege where no unpleasantness intruded.
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
So, can a Christian be rich and stay a Christian? I don’t think we answered that.
What we can answer, definitively, is this: it’s dangerous to focus on it, and dangerous to try, if that is the end goal.
This is a post I wrote for myself, it doesn’t matter if you never read it, so long I took the time to consider it.
Only a few hours after I wrote that, a speaker threw up this slide and stated, “That’s why we are all in business, to save money or to make money.”
Ew
If I were one of those athletes, I think I would have a hard time stomaching this. You know that some will have issues that they (rightly?) blame on infested waters, especially if it is a long distance swim.
Short Takes
Like Twitter, but only here.
Israel Prepares for More Invasion
Nothing good will come of this.
Buckees
Fox Meet Henhouse
No conflicts of interest here.
🤔💰⛪️
Autobiography for sale
Irreligious
US Companies Bring Back Less Goods from China
🔓 Unlocked: Gambling!
The idea that Uber eats somehow gamiified and allowed me to unlock the ability to gamble always amuses me.
GPT2 in Excel
Some Excel loved manages to get OpenAI’s GPT-2 into an Excel spreadsheet. It also comes with a tutorial on how transformers work.
God Bless Rome
TikTok Deep in the Red
The Information reports that TikTok loses money, a lot of money:
ByteDance investors estimate TikTok lost several billion dollars last year on revenue of roughly $20 billion.
Do We Want An Armed Europe?
Aaron MacLean in the WSJ with an op-ed reminding us what an armed Europe looked like in the 20th century. (And while he focuses on the 20th century the arguments would hole true for most of the previous 20 centuries)
He asks:
Do we want European states to rearm, to achieve something closer to strategic self-sufficiency, perhaps including nuclear proliferation to the east?
And reminds us:
Perhaps we forget the vast slaughterhouse into which the Continent transformed on two occasions in the first half of the last century
He concludes:
In the short run, the main risk is still that European nations will overfund their social priorities, underfund their security, and fail to deter further westward Russian expansion…
There is… a risk for a disengaged America even if Europe does rearm. Putting these countries on their own feet may merely be the prelude to their hands reaching for one another’s throats. The two possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive…
Report: no reason to fire Sam Altman
After reportedly interviewing dozens of people and reviewing over 30,000 documents, [the legal firm hired to investigate Altman’s firing] found that while the prior board acted within its purview, Altman’s termination was unwarranted. “WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman,” OpenAI wrote, “but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.”
I am neutral on Sam Altman as a whole. I think that this episode is a net—negative for keeping AI development in check — especially at Open AI, as Sam Altman now essentially seems invincible.
WSJ Has Some Truly Awful Ideas
You’re not fooling anyone that they aren’t at work…
Slackb0t
Tom McKay successfully masqueraded as a “Slackbot” on Slack after leaving Gizmodo in 2022, going unnoticed by the site’s management for several months. The Verge reports: If you’re not glued to Slack for most of the day like I am, then you might not know that Slackbot is the friendly robot that lives in the messaging service. It helps you do things like set reminders, find out your office’s Wi-Fi password, or let you know when you’ve been mentioned in a channel that you’re not a part of. When it was his time to leave, McKay swapped out his existing profile picture for one that resembled an angrier version of Slackbot’s actual icon. He also changed his name to “Slackbot.” You can’t just change your name on Slack to “Slackbot,” by the way, as the service will tell you that name’s already been taken. It does work if you use a special character that resembles one of the letters inside Slackbot, though, such as replacing “o” with the Unicode character “o.”
This Headline Won’t Age Well
🏈 2024 Super Bowl or The Moon 🌖
One small step for man, one giant touchdown for the Chiefs. (Also: That was the most relevant blocked extra point in the history of football) BBC:
Preliminary US TV ratings put Sunday’s game just behind Apollo 11’s historic landing, which was seen by an estimated 125 to 150 million people.
Politico’s Dueling Biden Headlines
A Republican arguing that Biden will stay in the race and Democrats arguing that they need a plan B 🙃
Athletic Brewing Companys Gets Its 15 Minutes
WSJ has an interesting article on Athletic Brewing Company, one of the premier non-alcoholic beer brewers in the US.
I won’t summarize the article, but I will say I’ve enjoyed Athletic’s beers since my cousin Drew introduced me to them a couple of years ago. They are easily better than O’Douls, which is Anheuser-Busch. They are easily better than anything Bud — or most mainstream brewers — make.
I’m not here to evangalize you on NA beers, but if you like beer and you want want to try something new, Athletic stands on its own. Find it at Target, Kroger, Total Wine.
Professional Bridesmaid is a Thing
When a bride reaches out, Glantz’s services start at $2.5k and go up from there, depending on how much support someone needs. Do they need unlimited texting and calling? Bachelorette party planning help?… Glantz gets to work learning everything she can about her client’s life, relationship, and hopes for her big day.
Working with the bride, she develops a cover story to explain her identity to other wedding guests…
Wild.
But, at least it is just one company?