BORK!BORK!BORK! The keynote gods are a fickle bunch, as SUSE discovered at its annual shindig in Prague. What should have been a slick edge demo instead served up error pages to unsuspecting attendees, while keynote presentations attracted some unwelcome visitors.
SUSECON was an otherwise impressive outing for the Linux veteran, keen to show off its sovereignty credentials, edge computing chops, and AI proficiency. But it was a pair of unfortunate borks that proved equally memorable.
The first was a classic "have you stayed awake until the end of the keynote?" moment. Sovereignty enthusiast, Andreas Prins, had his presentation gatecrashed by a Chromium interloper: an Adobe Acrobat add-in that popped up to warn that "another program on your computer added an extension that may change the way Chrome works," helpfully listing everything the extension might do.
Adobe popup appears over sovereignty presentation - Click to enlarge
Awkward, and a reminder that sovereign systems require a little more thinking through. Lest we forget, the best laid IT plans can be undone by the thoughtless addition of an add-in.
The wheels came off more dramatically in a keynote led by Keith Basil. Earlier this year, SUSE bought Losant, an Industrial IoT outfit, and Basil took to the stage to show off the new capabilities. It did not go well.
The demonstration required attendees to scan a QR code on the keynote screen with their smartphones. Pop in some information, submit, and see a chart of responses appear on stage until a predetermined target was reached, at which point a celebration could occur.
Except it didn't work out that way. Attendees encountered a rate limit error, and there was no sign of a progress chart on stage making this exercise more failable than scalable. Eventually, the celebration was triggered with cold sparks that reached the ceiling, causing the front row to flinch and look for the exits.
Error message during SUSE keynote demo - Click to enlarge
Basil later explained to The Register what went wrong. "The rate limit was set too low … because we were just demoing it amongst ourselves. Maybe five or ten people: Yay, we got to the limit … yay, we won!' We didn't realize, like, I should have tested this before with that many people in the audience, that we literally got to the rate like within five seconds!"
To Basil's credit, he kept on going despite the wrath of the demo gods, and a point was made, even if it was perhaps not the intended one.
SUSECON 2026 was officially all about edge computing, sovereignty, and AI. We are, however, pleased to note that bork featured heavily in the most public way possible. ®
Source: The register