The Saddest Moment (2013) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Saddest Moment (2013) [pdf]

usenix.org

203 pointssigna1147 comments

James Mickens is great! He's listed his own work here:

https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens

> James Mickens offers his timeless insights for free, because he loves you and he wants you to succeed. Please enjoy the undeniable masterpieces which are collected below.

Discussed back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6905536

Thank you, although I'm glad this was reposted because the former Microsoft host of this pdf references in that posting is now a dead link

The name of Cthulhu is misspelt in that paper. For the author's sake, I hope that Cthulhu doesn't mind.

Cthulhu's illiterate for all we know.

One thing we know for sure, is that the Old Ones used a definite lettering system with a fixed transliteration scheme into the latin Alphabet.

It's probably safer to misspell it. I imagine it was intentional to avoid unexpected consequences.

Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse!

Lovecraft said Cthulhu was pronounced "k-tuee-tuee". When asked why he spelled it that way, he said he had no control over how cultists spell their gods' names.

This is similar in spirit to the Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (https://urbigenous.net/library/alicebob.html)

Make sure you read to the end:

> In conclusion, I think that humanity should stop publishing papers about Byzantine fault tolerance. I do not blame my fellow researchers for trying to publish in this area, in the same limited sense that I do not blame crackheads for wanting to acquire and then consume cocaine.

This makes it a good thing, doesn't it? Cocaine is healthier than crack.

Exactly! This is not a criminal problem, but a public health problem.

This brings so much joy. It sums up my experiences with supporting homebrewed, half-arsed distributed systems.

And the truth is most systems of any kind seem to fail from simple things that everyone could have prevented but overlooked. Wasted engineering. Best to think like the Arpanet was designed. Have a way to heal once things are normal, not work around the bizarre failures.

I've spent a bunch of time in light manufacturing. In testing assemblies I've come to the conclusion that for ordinary stuff you just want to reduce the rate of 'bad product' below the rate of installer fuckups. If 9 times out of 10 the reason is failed it because someone fucked it up and 1 out of 10 is because you shipped a defective unit, no one cares.

You might go, well what about safety critical things. Well it's still true. Just at a much lower level of failure.

And here are a list of Byzantine generals

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Byzantine_generals

Arguably, bitcoin network is an example of a practical and widely deployed BFT protocol (although underlying assumptions are a bit different compared to the classical BFT setting). So the field is not dead yet.

It is covered by the example that broadcasts 16 gagilluon messages (because it is not optimized down to the 14 gagiliion case).

Blockchain systems are a funny case in that they don’t really need much network traffic for consensus, but they do need a whole lot of messages. All the “traffic” in a [proof of work] blockchain system consists of messages the nodes generate internally, and then discard because they’re not ‘convincing enough’ as a proof of their leadership. But yeah, if you count all those “attempted and discarded” messages up, there’s roughly a gajillion of them.

Mossad going to do Mossad things. I like reading his stuff.

Can someone explain why it was Keanu who was used as an example? Isn't he supposed to be a likeable actor?

Likable, yes. But for the longest time he had a reputation for rather wooden acting.

I don't think he's shirked that reputation. He's just taken on roles that utilize that. See Matrix trilogy and the john wick movies. You don't need to have incredible acting chops to play a fairly stoic killer/Superman.

Point Break Live! took advantage of exactly that and recruited an audience member every night to read Johnny Utah’s lines. Little old ladies saying Sir, I take the skin off chicken.

According to Wikipedia, he's received praise from critics for some smaller roles that don't fit the typecast, though.

2013.

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