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mrmondo

4,741 karma · joined June 5, 2013

Twitter: @s_mcleod Blog: https://smcleod.net IRC: @protoporpoise

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/smcleod; my proof: https://keybase.io/smcleod/sigs/MzLBpke-na7sxHWYF1JaGxDaLN1yk8ArqkF87K7DQ_o ]

———

Words are my own or somebody else’s

submissionscomments
mrmondo··on What I Do as a DevOps Consultant
Just recently I wrote a brief post about how the title of ‘DevOps Engineer’ (and similar) were irking me, especially when looking for new roles / opportunities. DevOps isn’t a job title - it’s a culture and making click-bate / hipster job titles isn’t helping recruiters or business gain the value or plug the gaps they need:

https://smcleod.net/tech/2019/08/08/camels-and-unicorns.html

mrmondo··on Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning
Hmm. Yeah just if it was like 30 (or even like 100) it’s not exactly overly valuable other than an initial indicator.
mrmondo··on Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning
Oh did I - whoops!

That quote doesn’t give the sample size (number of people studied and in each group) though?

mrmondo··on Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning
I’m not necessarily discounting the results however I found it odd that the primary source didn’t state the sample size (or maybe I missed it)? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518
mrmondo··on Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Performance on AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Would be interesting to see this on a more modern kernel, I believe this older LTS Ubuntu uses Kernel 4.15, I’m sure they’ve back ported some security fixes etc but it won’t be the same as running the current stable kernel (5.2.3), perhaps a test on the current stable Fedora release with Kernel-ml from Elrepo would be a more fair / up-to-date test.
mrmondo··on Pine64 Unleashes $200 Rockchip-Powered Pinebook Pro Linux Laptop
I was about to buy one as a spare, linux-only laptop, I was hoping they'd have 16GB-32GB RAM options (for a price of course), but they don't even have 8GB let alone 16/32... they seem to be stuck with 4GB!?

That's not going to be much good for browsing modern Javascript heavy websites and doing anything else at the same time let alone having a VM or a few apps running in the background.

I'm all for cheap laptops for kids to learn on, basic word processing and things but - this is going to struggle.

mrmondo··on Space Engine
Thanks, definitely keen on a macOS version, looks interesting I've played with Universe Sandbox which is great, but I'd love this level of detail on planetary bodies and procedural generation.
mrmondo··on Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
dd if=/dev/data | tee >(dd of=/dev/glass1) | dd of=/dev/glass2

20:20 optical replication ;)

mrmondo··on RAMBleed Attack – Reading Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them
“RAMBleed has been demonstrated on devices with DDR3 memory chips, and Rowhammer's bit flipping on DDR4 components. DDR4 supports a defensive technique called Targeted Row Refresh, but its efficacy is uncertain. "Given the closed-source nature by which TRR is implemented, it is difficult for the security community to evaluate its effectiveness," said Kwong. "While bit flips have been demonstrated on TRR before, the extent to which TRR mitigates RAMBleed remains an open question."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/11/rambleed_rowhammer_...

mrmondo··on Self-distancing can help you make better decisions
Tried to get the primary source for the study behind the graphs there, links through to a paywalled study - so I can’t find the sample size, methodologies used, how the study was controlled etc... I’m not disputing anything - I am however cautious of drawing conclusions from articles / posts without proper citations and primary source data. Paywalled study: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0035173

It is promising however that this blog as a section on logical fallacies, without going through more articles I can’t comment if they adhere to avoiding them or not, still - good to see.

mrmondo··on H.264 is magic (2016)
I’d be interested to see this same analysis with H.265 given that its the way forward and the standard on the for many devices and media.
mrmondo··on LED light can damage eyes, French health authority warns
Yes it does, I ordered 4x high CRI LED bulbs from https://www.yujiintl.com/high-cri-led-lighting.html, I placed them around my teams working pod in cheap $10 desk lamps and they work a treat, very noticeable difference in our pod / cubical to the rest of the office.
mrmondo··on Security for Elasticsearch is now free
This (while perhaps not perfect) is massive for us, it’s going to be especially useful for Kibana authentication to add readonly and write users, something we’ve wanted for a long time but haven’t been able to afford as a non-profit, charitable organisation.

I know it’s not all 100% open source, but it’s better than a nginx reverse proxy hack or similar.

Thank you Elastic for continuing to create fantastic software.

mrmondo··on Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?
If you can build the confidence - I’d recommend giving a talk about it at a local meetup group, something like a local devops / dev meetup group as long as the managers of the group think it’s appropriate for the audience.

You could go into what it makes hard for you, what situations you have experienced, what advice you’ve received (and if it worked or not if you tried it and how you did), then you could make the 2nd part of the talk taking questions from the audience.

It might make you feel uncomfortable and definitely vulnerable but in my experience if the audience is mostly respectful - I think they’ll naturally become empathetic or at least sympathetic and respond perhaps by opening up with some of their experiences and how they evolved from them.

Don’t get me wrong - I know this may well be very scary and if you have (mental) health issues I would suggest discussing it with your doctor first.

mrmondo··on Faux Rogan
Maybe it’d be interesting to try some of the conversation he has when he’s wound up or high?
mrmondo··on Faux Rogan
Yeah, there was some strange timing between sentences and words at times.
mrmondo··on Faux Rogan
Good job,

However - I guess the answer correctly with all but one - “You are much less likely to injure yourself if you do it correctly” - which I can now hear the different (or perhaps confirmation bias).

There’s something artificial about the timing with the pauses between sentences on the ML based ones that was the main giveaway for me, also while his voice is damn near spot on - there are some vocal inflections or perhaps “emotion” in a few words that also hinted to me.

Hope that helps.

mrmondo··on LED light can damage eyes, French health authority warns
LED lighting panels in our office is so bad it looks as if there is a constant haze or fog in the office.

A number of people in the office were complaining of visual fatigue and a hazing effecting especially after working 3+ hours, additionally multiple people had noted that colours seemed diluted or ‘dulled’.

The light spectrum seems to be missing parts of the visible light spectrum, to test this I acquired and installed high CRI lights and the area in inch I installed them lead to people satin to that they felt less sleep, more alert and more comfortable - of course these are all subjective results.

Subjective TLDR; LED lighting isn’t inherently bad IMO, but bad LED lighting is bad.

mrmondo··on No Python in Red Hat Linux 8?
I’m running RHEL 8 on my laptop, you can simply install Python 3 via DNF/Yum
mrmondo··on Steve Singh stepping down as Docker CEO
"... our customers are materially reducing the costs of building, sharing and running their applications and they are increasing their innovation cycles by a factor of more than 10X."

I can't stand this kind of marketing dribble, phrases like "increasing their innovation cycles by a factor of more than 10X" are not in themselves quantifiable and without that or context can be misleading.

I don't (at all) disagree that the more wide-spread adoption of containerised application deployment and related work-flows has sped up the release and application life-cycle, but I think people should not aspire to talk about such benefits with such 'greasy' wording (especially when it comes to the word 'innovation').

mrmondo··on Ask HN: Personal Library Manager?
I also highly recommend Calibre, you may find there are plugins (installable within the application) that assist with physical book cataloging.
mrmondo··on Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons
Indeed, I meant re-install the addons.
mrmondo··on Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons
The fix doesn't seem to work if you've been using Firefox Beta (67.0b16), or if you then install Stable (66.0.4) and sign in to sync - all addons are still marked as "legacy" and not enabled.

However, if you find each one in the store and (re-)install them - they work again and their data is back intact as expected.

mrmondo··on Ask HN: What is your the best hack to get things done while flying?
By flying so you mean flying an aircraft or flying as metaphor for doing your job (well)?
mrmondo··on Panic’s Next Editor
For me as an Ops and automation, it being native rather than a web-frame / JavaScript app means a lot for latency, performance and OS integration.

Hopefully it also has good PostgreSQL support and plugins / module support for languages / DSLs such as puppet, SQL, ruby etc... and decent git / GitLab integration.

mrmondo··on The Day Feynman Worked Out Black-Hole Radiation on My Blackboard
Thanks for those, I don’t think I’ve seen the TED talk :)
mrmondo··on The Day Feynman Worked Out Black-Hole Radiation on My Blackboard
You and I both, if you haven’t already - read ‘Surely you must be joking, Mr Feynman!”
mrmondo··on Withdrawing from the Microsoft MVP Program
I've seen this first hand at several conferences where Microsoft "MVP"s come on to the stage and try to make Microsoft seem all "hip" and "rad" rather than talking about real engineering and technical improvements, it was not only nauseating - so many people could clearly see right through it.
mrmondo··on Ask HN: Do you like/use Reddit's redesign?
No, it’s absolutely terrible. Overly JavaScript heavy, slow as anything, laggy UI elements, bad use of screen realestate and it seems to be generally bloated.
mrmondo··on When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too
Now that is interesting, I have a kindle oasis and mix between reading on that (which is glorious I must be honest) and on my iPhone.

If I can download a “legacy” file format - I might try that.

Thanks again for your input!

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