erwan

Right now, I think that the algo is used in RAMCloud via LogCabin (https://github.com/logcabin/logcabin).

Raft is more practical (as in "well specified") than Paxos and closest to its lesser known cousin, VR (Viewstamped Replication). Beyond the academic genealogy of the project, what is interesting here is the fact that usability is a first-class concern. Clearly the fact that it was born out of a real/breathing project was a driving factor.

It wasn't just an academic being creative. To pick a notorious example, have a quick look at Leslie Lamport's paper on Paxos: you are never quite sure whether what you are reading is a distributed systems paper or a vintage edition of the Holy Bible.

So Raft had great timing too. It came after decades of clumsy (because novel!) systems research on consensus algos and from a laboratory of practitioners, hence its designers knew exactly how previous attempts were deficient with respect to their own needs. And it turns out these overlapped with a lot of people's. There is wisdom to be learnt from this.

Also, on another note I think that's funny because this narrative reads exactly like a startup-story!

Edit: Double checked, and it is - somewhat - for sure. Including "2009" in the title would be misleading.

Well, maybe within the scope of the question as defined by OP since it explicitly begs for controversy. But should you expand it to the broader What is an idea you hold that runs contrary to the common wisdom of field X? Then suddenly it becomes a lot more interesting and fruitful,

It's not that heterodox political opinions are intrinsically less interesting but few people know how to discuss them constructively, much less online. That breeds low quality discussions where everyone is at each other's throats. Broadening the question has at least the merit of being less polarizing without giving up on critical thinking, or bravery. Ultimately, the goal is the pursuit of the truth - something that breaks mimeticism (or kickstarts it).

>Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

And the answer is directly related to the fact that there is a search for contrarian-ness, a quest that is not introspective at all because that would actually require some effort rather than passive content consumption.

You choose to describe my criticism as "putting people down" as if my goal was to be mean, but I suspect you are more annoyed at what you interpret as arrogance rather than anyone's feelings. I don't mind you thinking that but I don't think that's the case.

The postulates are that we are blind, fallible, and prone to "cargo-culting". So, in that setting, the preliminary step for any inquisitive mind should be to make space for the truth to emerge.

Hopefully, if you labor the intellectual land, ruthlessly digging deep, much deeper than you would normally do, then you might find important truths trapped beneath concepts and ideas which no one questions. As it turns out, it seem that important truth hide behind simple but devastating lies. More generally, Thiel calls these truths secrets, I much prefer the term treasures, or even things that were hidden since the foundation of the world if I'm in a biblical or Girardian mood.

In the context of technology and entrepreneurship, the postulate is that business leverage these secrets are the best kind. That is the whole argument that Thiel very eloquently lays out in his book From Zero To One.

But because critical inquiry is not something that comes naturally to most people, you need to train yourself and condition your brain to be effective at it. That is, control the mind's natural inclination to reject what goes against the doxa. The first step toward this is of course to be generous with odd ideas, and then grooming yourself to put your own beliefs in danger. It is an exercise in self-deconstruction and discipline. What belief makes you uncomfortable? Why? Keep pushing until your mind collapse under its own contradiction, until you have toppled every single of the foundations which hold up the larger edifice - if you are familiar with Cartesian doubt, that is exactly what I am talking about, only more violent.

When people discuss about contrarian thinking, they immediately think of controversial ideologies and political stances. In fact, I think these are some of the least interesting spaces to explore. I am much more excited about critical inquiries that lead to insights that people are, at first, indifferent to. They grow very deep and are most fruitful.

A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves consuming pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots.

The cheap worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of "secrets" in From Zero To One as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts.

It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion.

If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.

That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.

Fifteen minutes later, the office manager joins in, interrupting, and starts hitting on me in a pretty blunt way. I enjoy female attention but that was a bit much. I tactfully hint that I'm not interested but she doesn't picks it up so I leave early, a bit salty.

The next morning I arrive to work and see an elevator about to close so I rush to catch it. She was inside! The following three minutes were the most awkward elevator ride in my life. I felt bad for her to be honest, maybe I shouldn't, but it must be so embarrassing when you sober up.

But then, how about having optional state-issued IDs (like US passports) with low req to obtain?

I'm not saying it's that easy but I want to understand what makes people think it is such an insurmountable task such that they default to the "remove the requirement" strategy. I feel like there is something interesting hiding there. Or is the thesis that these roadblocks are there on purpose to suppress votes?

After reading a bit on disparate impact and what constitute the "crux" of the issue, I get why the ID requirement can be problematic if it makes people jump through a ton of hoops. However, the common suggestion that IDing people be stripped altogether just sounds bizarre to me.

I would think a path to resolution would rather include making it easier to obtain an ID.

However, be warned that it can get lonely really fast. Even if you have your family around. I usually never mind being alone for extended period of times even though I do enjoy people's company. But that was something else entirely. It is a feeling, not unlike loneliness but more subtle and that can get crippling some of the time.

The thing is that even if you have people around, meet with your friends regularly, see your family etc. No one "gets" what you are doing and so you don't have anyone to celebrate with, share the burden of a task, brainstorm and challenging your status-quo, or licking your wound after things got tough. It's a bit harsh. After some time of independent work, I found myself longing to go back to school, which I did and I'm happier - and stronger - now.

Digressing a bit on startups: I think this experience tipped me off (for the future) that starting a solo company is making it harder on yourself than it has to be.

Granted remote work is different since you are connected to a team. Still, a word of caution feels necessary.

I currently use my own code-note management app. It's crude and is essentially like a Jupyter notebook.

I would be happy to switch over something better if I could feel safe that this extension of my brain would be safe.

    We present practical attacks against OCB2
    an ISO-standard authenticated encryption (AE) scheme. 
 
    OCB2 is a highly-efficient blockcipher mode of 
    operation. It has been extensively studied and widely
    believed to be secure thanks to the provable security 
    proofs.

    Our attacks allows the adversary to create forgeries 
    with (almost-known) single encryption query.

    143. Diversion.--Men are entrusted from infancy with the 
    care of their honour, their property, their friends, and 
    even with the property and the honour of their friends.
     
    They are overwhelmed with business, with the study of 
    languages, and with physical exercise; and they are made 
    to understand that they cannot be happy unless their 
    health, their honour, their fortune and that of their 
    friends be in good condition, and that a single thing 
    wanting will make them unhappy.

    Thus they are given cares and business which make them 
    bustle about from break of day. It is, you will 
    exclaim, a strange way to make them happy!

    What more could be done to make them miserable?
    --Indeed! what could be done? We should only have
    to relieve them from all these cares; for then they
    would see themselves: they would  reflect on what they are,
    whence they came, whither they go, and thus we cannot employ
    and divert them too much.

    And this is why, after having given them so much
    business, we advise them, if they have some time for 
    relaxation, to employ it in amusement, in play,
    and to be always fully occupied.

There was a series of dubious "upgrades" to the feed algorithm which weighted popular content on the platform more than your own preferences or those of the people you followed. Overall, the content they pushed on you was to appeal to the lowest common denominator among your category of users (e.g "following Programming languages") which of course meant that it was absolute trash.

The great takeaway here is that one should be wary of playing god with feed algos. They create a web of complex feedback loops that no one actually understands. And building a product you can't understand will ineluctably crash down on you.

Sure, that might improve engagement metrics momentarily. I'm certain that at the same time, it devastate the lifetime user value, as people will inevitably get sick of being fed off detritus.

My thesis is that lots of the experts got driven away by the Linkedin-ish, clickbaity, and self-glorifying answers being aggressively promoted by the feed algo.

It's a real shame because circa 2013/2014 I found tons of excellent content there and was happy to engage a lot.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be an easily accessible english translation. If you read French you should go for it, as it is arguably one of its most important and underrated work.

I found this companion/introduction to Bourdieu's work but I cannot vouch for it: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Power-Sociology-Pierre-Bourdi...

What do you mean by that? I know only a few Googlers, mostly new grads. They don't seem to be worked to the bone or mistreated (9-5, high comp, benefits etc.) and have excellent working conditions (ergonomic workflow, offices with natural light, mentoring, good internal tooling).

In fact, I don't know if I would enjoy it. Since I like intense environments... they have it good though.

Re-posting since I just realized that my previous submission was broken.

1. Both reviewer and reviewee are focusing on getting the best outcome possible, in good faith and with generosity.

2. The reviewer concedes that there can be equally valid approaches to a given problem or taste wrt. aesthetics. They do not try to gratuitously force their style upon the reviewee. The reciprocal must hold as well.

3.The reviewer makes practical suggestions and ideally accompany their comments with snippets of code. They involve themselves into being part of the solution.

4. The reviewer focuses on the substance of the pull request. That means putting in the time to understand the real logic, putting themselves in the shoes of the reviewee (with their help), and trying to challenge it so that the limitations of the approach are known and documented.

5. The reviewee makes an effort at slicing their request into readable and compact sub-PRs if needed. Similarly, the reviewer makes a best-effort attempt at starting their review within a reasonable time.

Those are central aspects of a productive engineering culture anyway. You only need to find someone else that shares those "values" (i.e focusing on the best outcome possible as a sort of devotion to Engineering - so to speak) to grow this attitude within your company.