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SQLServerCentral Editorial

The AI Bubble and the Weak Foundation Beam

The problem that I continue to struggle with the AI Bubble is not innovation, but who has leverage. The AI industry has quietly constructed a capital stack with too many mutual dependencies and too few independent cash flows. When AI profitability hiccups, the financial impact does not land in one place. It cascades across the entire championship and everyone loses and not all players are equally positioned to survive it. This is the AI Bubble in a foundational nutshell.

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2025-12-13

719 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Economics of AI: What is the Real Cost to Profit?

Artificial intelligence is everywhere: It’s in our tools, our workflows, our marketing pitches…and increasingly, in our bottom lines. But a thought-provoking article published recently on the AI bubble asks a far more sobering question: What’s it really going to cost to profit from AI? Many people will roll their eyes and say, “Isn’t that obvious? […]

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2025-11-08

96 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Lessons from the Postmark-MCP Backdoor

The Koi Security team recently uncovered the first known, malicious MCP server in the wild: a package called postmark-mcp, downloaded over 1,500 times per week, that silently BCCs every outgoing email to an attacker-controlled domain. So, what happened?  High-level, a lot: The attacker cloned the legitimate Postmark MCP repository, made one small but nefarious change […]

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2025-10-04

178 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Building AI Governance and Policies- First Steps

AI has moved from experimental to operational in record time for many organizations. In industries like fintech, healthcare, and retail where sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) and relational databases are the backbone of daily operations, this innovation speed to adopt AI brings enormous opportunity, but also significant risks

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2025-09-27

90 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Why Tech Events Matter for Data Pros (and why I’m grateful)

I just got back from the Redgate Summit events in New York City, where I had the chance to present, swap stories, and nerd out with a lot of brilliant data folks. I came home energized… and then promptly slept for 14 hours on Thursday. That’s the best kind of exhaustion in my book.  The […]

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2025-08-23

54 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Using Ollama on Windows 11 as an Alternative to Public LLMs

In my ongoing war against shadow AI, I’ve been testing out alternatives that most everyone can use, no matter what your technical expertise.  Although somewhat limited depending on your resources available, (laptop CPU/GPU, memory, etc.) If you want to try the newest open models without sending your prompts to the cloud, or you just want […]

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2025-08-16

359 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Everyone Wants a Piece of the AI Pie

Swiping through LinkedIn feels like watching a campsite suddenly flooded with s’mores. Every other ad, i.e. post, promises the next miracle AI service, platform, or “AI-powered” widget. It’s a frenzy that says: “If buzzwords paid the bills, we’d all be billionaires already.”  I can’t fault the reasoning, there’s a lot of buzz out there telling […]

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2025-08-09

101 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Critical Data and Insomnia

Most evenings I spend some time soaking in the tub and reading articles/watching videos on InfoSec, Data Protection and AI.  It may sound like a terrible way to spend some time, but I always find it educational and I’m in shock by the lack of concern around data security, and yet….I’m not.  For decades, the […]

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2025-08-07

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Question of the Day

The Decoded Value

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000)));
SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded) 

See possible answers