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myrandomcomment

3,841 karma · joined March 27, 2012

Networking & Technology geek in Silicon Valley (The real place not the show, however sometimes it’s hard to tell).
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myrandomcomment··on Show HN: Connecting an IBM 3151 terminal to a mainframe [video]
So NT from VMS is not true as pointed out above. However a funning one that is suppose to be true is from the 2001 Space Odyssey series. The name of the insane AI was H.A.L.

H>I

A>B

L>M

myrandomcomment··on Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
I linked this to my team and got back "I had almost identical experience with some candidates though no one admitted faking" and "One candidate just disconnected and was never heard back from after being asked to remove virtual background".

Interviewing is hard. Over the years the one thing I have learned is that for a technical role you want to interview people for how they THINK and REASON. This is hard and requires a time investment in the interview.

Back in the day when interviewing people for roles in networking, data center design, etc. I used to start by saying I am going to ask you a question and unless you have seen this very specific issue before you will NOT know the answer and I do not want you to guess - what I care about is can you reason about it and ask questions that lead down a path that allows you to get closer to an answer - this is the only technical question I will be asking and you have the full interview time to work thought it. I have people with 4+ CCIE family certs (this is back when they were the gold standard) and 10 year experience have no idea how to even reason about the issue. The candidates that could reason and work the problem logically became very successful.

For coding at my company now we take the same approach. We give candidates a problem with a set of conditions and goal and ask them to work through their approach, how they would go about testing it, and then have them code it in a shared environment of their choosing. The complexity of the problem depends on the level the candidate is interviewing for. For higher level engineerings besides the coding, we include a system architecture interview, presenting a requirement, taking the time to answer any questions, and then asking the candidate how they would implement it. At the end we do not care if it complies, what we care about is did the candidate approach the problem reasonably. Did they make sure to ask questions and clarifications when needed. Did their solution look reasonable? Could they reason on how to test it? Did their solution show that they thought about the question - IE, did they take the time to consider and understand before jumping in.

Anyone can learn to code (for the most part). Being able to think on the other hands seems to be something that is in short supply.

myrandomcomment··on Show HN: Connecting an IBM 3151 terminal to a mainframe [video]
Dave Cutler, the head of the NT project came from DEC where he did VMS. Big lawsuit when MS hired him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler

myrandomcomment··on Microsoft is testing ReFS for new Windows 11 installs
IIRC, because I am old, NT 3.1/3.51 supported HPFS from OS/2. Now get off my lawn.
myrandomcomment··on Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US
31.78% Trump 30.84% Harris 1.06% third party 36.32% did not vote

This is hacker news. Respect the data.

myrandomcomment··on AI-designed chips are so weird that 'humans cannot understand them'
All the way at the bottom after all the amazing claims "many of the designs produced by the algorithm did not work."
myrandomcomment··on Oral History of Andy Bechtolsheim (2015) [pdf]
I have met a ton of very smart people in my time in the valley. In general I have found there to be various degrees of arrogance that goes along with the success and wealth. I can say 100% that Andy is one of the smartest people on the planet but is at the same time humble. It was my experience that he treated everyone with courtesy and respect. Furthermore he was greatly indulgent with his time for even the most junior engineer.
myrandomcomment··on iOS 18.3 disables Apple Intelligence notification summaries for select apps
Let me know when the command "Siri, turn on lights, set them to red at 30%" works. Until then I do not care.
myrandomcomment··on Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free, but raising the price of Workspace
I clicked the button to turn the forced AI crap off today in Gsuite. It has been on for a day (unasked, forced my google). The engineering team responded with a unanimous thumbs up when I told them. Winner of best response was:

"oh god! now i have to type complete senten..... zzzzzzzz"

myrandomcomment··on 2k-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past
OMG! The only question is did anyone try it?
myrandomcomment··on James Thomson on the Origins of the macOS Dock
I want the NextStep style menus and shelf back. The dock sucks. :)
myrandomcomment··on Who killed the rave? Late-night dancing falls into global decline
Thanks for sharing this. I have a similar wife it seems. Does not like most EDM, but Downtempo, ambient house & deep house she loves to dance to. That with a bit of Molly can be a ton of fun.

If you have SiriusXM their Chill station plays this type of music.

One of my favorite DJs is Nora En Pure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_En_Pure

It is amusing to me that she was born after I graduated high school.

myrandomcomment··on Passengers Say Turkish Airlines Flights Have Unwelcome Guests: Bedbugs
Agreed. JAL for the win.
myrandomcomment··on New Mac Mini with M4
Honestly I am going to say skip 4K and just go to 5K. They are not that much more. I have 2x5K setup and it is great. The main monitor is normal orientation and the other is mounted on the left at a 90 rotation centered on the side of the first. I keep my work on the main and all the documentation, chat, etc. on the vertical one. I hope to be able to ditch the 2 monitor setup next year and go to a single 8K display.
myrandomcomment··on Apple Passwords’ generated strong password format
I remember this. I had enough funds with them at the time (and I am also in tech so I insisted on a technical explanation) that I was able to speak with their security team about the reason for the limit and when it would be fixed. It has been fixed and they require 2FA now (however they require a very specific app for it). Overall my experience with them over the last 10 years has been good.

TLDR; limit on older mainframe system, however password were properly hashed & they plan to remove the limit in the next year, which they did.

myrandomcomment··on Boeing workers vote to strike
One bit of clarification, I am counting the flight both ways. On average I would fly to Japan from SFO one a month, sometime twice. I would always have some work in Japan then half the time I would need to also fly to Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia, NZ, etc.

1. The remote calls have gotten better but 15+ years ago not so much. 2. Timezone and remote calls are hard. 3. Face to face is very important to be able to build understanding and also judgement (you need to read the room, which you cannot do over a call). 4. Building relationships requires time not in a meeting, dinner or drinks with a client. 5. Having a relationship with your local team requires the same. 6. In Asia the foreigner flying moves the needle. It is a sign of respect for the customers that you value and will support them. 7. Languages. Unless you are fluent in the local language remote meetings are difficult. 8. Nature of the company. Im my case all 3 companies were startups. They are a risk for the customer. Your willingness to be there helps them feel more comfortable with the risk.

Durning the pandemic there was no flying of course and it was great to be home. I now have a new startup and we just started doing business in Japan at the start of this year. I have hired the same local team that I have worked with at 3 companies. They are amazing! However by the end of this year I will have visited 6 times. Reestablishing the connections lost durning the pandemic has already moved the needle enough that it will materially affect the success of my startup. To be fair, come next year I do not feel I will need to visit every month, but once a quarter is going to be required.

For me cutting flights times in 1/2 is a major win.

As to first class, yes the novelty goes away. It is just another segment of a very long day.

myrandomcomment··on Boeing workers vote to strike
In this case, yes, upgraded with miles to first. I have made this fight ~500 times over the last 15 years, in coach, premium, business and first. While first is nice, the hours back are still worth more.
myrandomcomment··on Boeing workers vote to strike
As I am currently sitting on a flight from Tokyo to SFO I would greatly appreciate the flight taking half the time. Boom should be as efficient current aircraft. They will operate at 60K feet where the drag is much less and fly for less time. Their engines are being designed to run on 80% biofuels. But let's see how it turns out in the end.
myrandomcomment··on Malaysia started mandating ISPs to redirect DNS queries to local servers
OMG, they very much do. It is not on 100% of the traffic but at any given time a more then smaller % is subject to DPI.
myrandomcomment··on Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models
Okay, in looking at tear downs I agree. The point about the on die memory controller is still valid. Cheers!
myrandomcomment··on Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models
Both the memory controllers and RAM on the Mx are on die components. The number of controllers (binned) count here. I should have been more specific in what I was saying.

"The 14-core M3 Max only enables 24 out of the 32 controllers, therefore it has 300 GB/sec vs. the 400 GB/sec for all models of the M1 and M2 Max, while the 16-core M3 Max has the same 400 GB/sec as the prior M1 and M2 Max models."

myrandomcomment··on Apple to upgrade base Macs to 16GB RAM, starting from Apple M4 models
This is likely a function of yields of the process. The better the yields, less the need to bin chips by what works. Likely the M4 yields are quite good at this point. Just a WAG.
myrandomcomment··on Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?
The use of jumbo frames is NOT normal and is only used in very specific setups. In general something like a storage system that is isolated to its own layer2 network. At some point your jumbo network has to hit the reset of the network and packet fragmentation is done in software via the CPU which is very expensive and not linerate. The normal outcome is you break your network.
myrandomcomment··on Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?
Too expensive to do in an ASIC. There is a reason the MAC table is bigger than the routing table on a chip, because it is cheaper. Think of an ASIC as a box that can be divided up in to smaller boxes that are an index. The total number of boxes is limited by the size of the ASIC. The bigger chip, the more box and greater the cost. To do MAC forwarding it takes 2 boxes. To do routing it takes 5. To do an ACL match it takes 14. This is the reason OpenFlow never really worked on switches at scale. What you are asking for is someone simpler to MPLS and that is an expensive feature die size wise. I have highly oversimplified this post, but it is mostly correct at a 1000ft level.
myrandomcomment··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
So I went Slashdot, Digg, Reddit. I stopped spending any time on Reddit 5 years ago. Not worth it.
myrandomcomment··on Panic at the Job Market
There are a ton of true statements in this however their existence does not support the reality of the world of technology as a whole as portrayed by the author. This reads like someone that is angry at the world.
myrandomcomment··on [dead]
No one can auth for Minecraft, etc.
myrandomcomment··on The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
Yup! I had 2 x SUN GDM-20E20 hooked up to my desktop in 1990-something. They were Sony screens and they were so clear & bright. They weighed a ton however and even broke a cheap desk I had.
myrandomcomment··on Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia
Viagra = standing at attention pretty much no matter what is going on. Cialis = you have to have the mind/stimulus.
myrandomcomment··on I spoke with a Google worker fired for protesting $1.2B Israel contract
All your words seem reasonable with the exception that I do not believe they expect to fired. I have been doing this valley tech thing since before the .bomb and I can tell you I have never seen a more self entitled class of workers in my time here.
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