n_t

It's a long article but I found it to be very enlightening. It not just teaches how to control anger and parenting but also the importance of story telling.

I have used rust but I think it has another year before it really shines. 2020 is the year of Rust - async/await, tool ecosystem, various crate stability, etc is happening fast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism_in_India "India is cost-effectiveness, and treatment from accredited facilities at par with developed countries at much lower cost."

Not able to edit! But i meant NOT worth the switch.

What is your definition of system programmer? If you mean closer to hardware, i’d recommend its worth the switch. Jobs are moving higher in stack and lower layers are more and more stable and abstracted away. Most companies dont need low layer developers off the shelf software is good enough for them. Exception being embedded system teams or customized hardware (network, storage, server) teams. Majority of things they do are age old techniques.

Only reason to go lower in stack is if you really ~like~ love hardware and exploring nitty gritty of how things work. In that case, pick any OS book and get ready to go down the rabbit hole :)

Here is my list, which is biased towards Linux. Almost all the books mentioned here are dated and primarily written for 2.6 based kernels. Although many concepts are still applicable and in certain subsystems, the code will be as is with minor changes. So, despite them being old they are still good references.

* Design and implementation of the FreeBSD operating system: Good and thorough deep dive in FreeBSD OS. Must have.

* FreeBSD Device Drivers: A Guide for the Intrepid: Didn't quite read it all but looks fine for FreeBSD.

* Mac OSX internals - a systems approach by Amit Singh: It was good back in days but now outdated.

* Linux Device Drivers, 3ed : Very dated but still good to grasp Linux device drivers in general. The code examples are bit silly but good enough. There are some GitHub repos which have updated code for latest kernels.

* Essential Linux Device Drivers by S Venkateswaran: It complements LDD3 book quite nicely. Has some real device examples and very exhaustive. Must have.

* Linux kernel development by Robert Love: Very good for short/quick intro. Best for preparing before interviews ;)

* Professional Linux kernel architecture by Wolfgang Mauerer: As other book, its dated but some of the explanations about interrupts, PCI, etc are good. His callgraph approach was very handy in understanding things.

* The Linux programming interface by Michael Kerrisk: Not really about OS but next thing close to it - system programming (the real system programming). Must have.

* Understanding Linux virtual memory manager by Mel Gorman: As other books, it's dated but still one of the best available to get a handle on memory management under Linux. Must have.

* Understanding the Linux kernel: Dated but still my go to book to refresh certain subsystems. Must have.

* Linux Kernel Programming by Michael Beck: Mentioned for historical reasons, else most out dated book here (2.4 based). Horrible editing and English but heck! I loved it back in the days :)

* Linux kernel networking by Rami Rosen: Never read it but quite dated.

* Understanding Linux network internals by Christian Benvenuti: A real bible of Linux networking. If nothing else, your jaw drops at the effort author made to write this book. Dated but unlike more generic Linux kernel things, network stack is still same in its core. Must have.

* The Linux kernel primer: A top-down approach for x86 and PowerPC Architecture: Very dated book but good to read from PPC perspective. Lot of things have changed since its publication.

* See MIPS Run by Dominic Sweetman: dated but gives good idea about MIPS internals and how Linux uses it.

* IA-64 Linux Kernel: Design and Implementation: Its dated not just w.r.t code but also w.r.t. hardware. Nonetheless, it gives a good insight into IA-64 architecture and Linux from non-x86 perspective.

* Definitive guide to Xen hypervisor: this is the only book on virtual machine which is not just from user perspective. While best way to learn VM is through reading architecture spec and code, this book still satisfied me w.r.t. virtual machine internals.

Every other book on amazon about Linux kernel is more or less useless. For more academic book, "Operating systems - three easy pieces" is good.

For many years it was plain text with Vim. Then started using Trello, then Zenkit for immediate actionable things. But in parallel also used Apple notes and now days Agenda.

Even I realized that every embedded system has its own workflow/build process and probably some commonality can be found, despite varying underlying hardware. Everyone is reinventing same wheel over and over. Also, since focus of such company is either hardware or a service at higher level, embedded OS team is never a priority. Usually I see mediocre talent and mindset of "just glue it together and ship".

With respect to "ops integration service", do you have some examples?

Usually grad level courses were about reading research papers. And many times the exercise is to read the paper, try to predict what next para or page will be about and even try to find faults, even though there might be none. I assume Math department does the same.

I am towards the end of wrapping my startup. There were 3 main failure reasons -

a. could not build a good team,

b. co-founder was not 100% committed,

c. picked target market in the geography which I was new to. Although it was my home country, the way to do business and lack of professional network became hindrance.

Irrespective of language and framework, if the code needs to be aware of underlying hardware then it is systems programming. ex. kernel code, user-space drivers, databases, portions of cloud or server code which need to be hardware aware, etc. What golang targets, I think, should be more of middleware or service-level programming, whether its containers or servers.

One of the reasons why India needs some kind of people authentication is rampant corruption! Corruption at a scale that most of people in Europe or US cant even imagine. Add to it the culture which celebrates corruption and eulogizes people who find loopholes in system. As soon as a policy or rule is implement, someone gets to work to find a loophole and profit. Schemes and subsidies for poor get siphoned by rich and powerful by creating fake people, less than 2% of citizen's pay taxes by just disappearing in records, billions of dollars of unnamed properties exist because owners are fake people on record, someone else appears for exam on a student.

While I still dislike citizen's database, I can also see why some kind of person authenticator is needed for country like India. I sat through UIDAI architects presentations, and from what I could tell that substantial thought was given to design. So while I maintain skepticism for such database, I also believe India needs some way authenticate various transactions (monetary or otherwise). SSN is a joke, at least Aadhaar was given substantial thought.

watch this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus) and tell me if SSN is good for even US?

Isnt that true for every system?

>> I hadn't realized until recently how India is so much like China regarding surveillance and social control

There is no comparison whatsoever. China has iron clench on its citizens, particularly over net. India has next to zero surveillance.

>> Muslims persecuted by Hindus. Women persecuted by misogynists.

This is patently BS! Please stop regurgitating this narrative! India has second largest Muslim population in the world, Hindus population has been steadily dropping while Muslims population has been increasing. There have been multiple muslim Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Chief Ministers. Infact, India's most of political parties have been accused of favoring Muslim population. India's most famous movie actors are Muslims, many cricketers (India's real religion) are muslims. Wipro and many other successful software companies are owned by Muslim. Had there been persecutions of any sort, there would have been hardly any such examples. So, please stop this BS! Most of such news are blown out of proportion by vested interests, particularly those who look for help from outside India. If you talk to an average Muslim, they would be much happier to live in India than in any of its neighboring states.

You mean something like Sensetime. The political aspect aside, here no jobs were replaced but actually created.

As you said there might be some "basic ML" involved in credit rating but that can probably replaced by mean/median/mode kind of computation easily. Although this is one area which ML can completely take over, i.e. instead of maintaining a static score, ML can predict the likelihood of an individual returning the loan based on gender/age/income/zip code and tonnes of other info.

Probably was not anywhere :) But that now that I am here, I am willing to support AMZN's competition, and Tesla's and Google's ...

"And what about the $800 billion gorilla in Seattle? “It could crush them,” Kodali says."

Great!! now this is the spirit of startup.

Yes, ~this post~ HN front page news about Nile is what prompted me to ask the question.

Yes, I'm not convinced either. They are neither startups nor appear to be competing hard. Jet.com was probably only good challenger which ran for sometime but I dont know what's their status now.

Here is a site which does pretty print of RFCs - https://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com

Also, while reading RFCs, following is handy -

MUST (absolutely required)

MUST NOT (absolutely prohibited)

SHOULD (highly recommended)

SHOULD NOT (highly not recommended)

MAY (meh)

Never knew about it. Really good for quick introduction and revision. Thanks.

Earlier, I use to admire Elon and companies like Google, FB, etc. But as I learn more and as their behaviors are being exposed, I feel they are modern villains of society. Elon particularly has been very disappointing. Anyone willing to buy a pre-owned Tesla?

I can speak only for kernel development part of question. Assuming your question is about Linux kernel -

1. You must have good systems understanding, and I assume you already know basic computer organization/architecture. Read Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development to begin with.

2. Start dabbling with small device drivers. Use Linux Driver Development, or other such books.

3. Pick a small subsystem within Linux (say, a specific driver, or filesystem, or PCI, etc) and start reading it's mailing list like a religion. Initially, it wont make sense but keep pushing - whatever you don't understand, read about it, find it's code, ask questions (usually on IRC, avoid mailing list for asking introductory questions).

There are many resources these days about kernel in general and not necessarily Linux kernel. You can read/use those. Best way, as with any other field, is to get involved - either by getting into a kernel dev team or taking up a small project.

Be aware that unlike other domains, in kernel development, significant time is spent in learning/understanding underlying system (hardware, system architecture, etc) and amount of code written in comparison to learning, is very less. Also, a decade ago, kernel team was considered as elite team in company. These days they are just sustenance team in most companies (exception may be Intel, AMD, 1 or 2 teams in Google/FB/Apple and few other companies). Also, I feel being kernel domain reduces your scope in corporate world (it's a separate topic). However, kernel devs are still quite paid well due to shortage of expertise in this domain.

For Security analyst, just like kernel dev, one needs to understand system very well. Having good grasp of system, underlying architecture in hardware or in memory, does help significantly but I dont think kernel development background is necessary.

I agree. While initial struggling days were interesting but later I had to push myself to finish the book.

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer. I found it interesting read but then could be as I was in supercomputing area and could relate to lot of things.

For me, it didn't work out due to multiple reasons. But if you have any input for others as to how to make it work, add your insights here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047340

> Can't imagine why you'd even think that would work out.

It was not by choice :)

That's why one needs to be aware of memory and other load characteristics of system, particularly if it is an enterprise system. Various process should be put in different cgroups with defined resources. cgroups also provides memory pressure notification and other goodies too. If it is an embedded system, probably it is best to turn off overcommit. Finally, for critical processes, use oom.priority so that process can be excluded from being killed.