some corporations do provide "unlimited cobra" to retirees (not cobra, but effectively the same thing, allowing retirees to remain part of the group plan), as its considered a form of deferred compensation the employee is vested into.
2,292 karma · joined February 15, 2012
Large employers are usually self-insured. The insurance company just manages the plan, but the employer actually pays the medical claims out of pocket.
Offering indefinite COBRA means absorbing massive medical risk for people who no longer work for you and aren't providing value. Healthy ex-employees leave COBRA quickly for cheaper coverage, while those with heavy medical expenses stay as long as possible—so the company gets stuck paying for high-cost claims while only collecting basic premiums.
While some companies let retirees buy into a group plan, that's an earned perk to reward long tenure. Indefinite COBRA would give that same lifetime benefit to anyone, even if they worked there for only six months.
Basically both described in https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa11/tech/full_papers/... (in detail) and https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenix-atc-10/apiary-easy-... (in a "sexy" use case to try and motivate it) a few years prior. (and I get annoyed when people say "so you're saying you invented containers?" because they equate docker with containers. And I'm like no, containers existed for a long time going back to logical partition on mainframes in the late 70s/early 80s. All I claimed was a novel way of building and distributing file systems for them that made them much more useful and valuable and in apiary a novel desktop setup that made use of it to improve desktop security)
Even the original docker implementation of using a union fs (docker using aufs) was the exact same as described.
Even if docker came up with it independently (though conferences like LISA and Usenix ATC are where the papers were presented and were where companies like dotcloud/docker would advertise their wares (and in fact docker inc was an exhibitor there, so it wasn't hidden), the differences between the uniqueness of docker and what is described in the paper are minor (in my perhaps somewhat biased opinion of course), and i was clearly first.
ephemeral, instant boot strap, append only (I'm pretty sure I was the first person to use ephemeral computing this way, at the time I couldn't find anything that touched it. People used containers, ala ZFS/Zones, but they were generally meant for long term computing and not for bringing up an environment for a very small period of time and then tearing it down.)
This paper with bellovin applied it to system administration - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa09/tech/full_papers/...
though we also approached recording and forking your computation at will - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1323293.1294289 (I'm proud of coining the name), though it strongly relates to Microsoft's recall so it would probably be viewed less positively today (in fact, this might be closer in implementation to what they are doing than the above).
with that said, it was a bit more tongue in cheek than anything.
as an aside, I sort of wonder in the age of AI and the ability to reproduce anything easily, we might have to expand patents (related to comment below that got downvoted), but dont have strong thoughts on this yet.
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenix-atc-10/apiary-easy-...
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa11/tech/full_papers/...
To put a device into (or out of) law enforcement mode, can only be done over bluetooth (i.e. in proximity to device)./
decisions that lose community can be reversed, but the consequence of those decisions (losing community) might not be reversible at any cost. Which it seems to be in this case.
As an example, at the company I switched to, they no longer use redis internally (not selling redis as a service, just using it as the internal caching layer of the product and never directly exposed to users, so would be a valid free use case under the switched to license) and instead use valkey.
While these use cases might never have made Redis Inc any significant amounts of money, they were free advertising that they gave up and even with the 2nd license change, is not something they've gained back as external contributors are more interested in valkey than redis.
And that goes to the email I wrote to leadership before the decision was publicized. 1) what are we trying to accomplish 2) what would be the negative consequence of the decision 3) is there another way to accomplish #1 while minimizing #2.
It was always clear to everyone that #2 would be a fork. Everyone already knew that Amazon was managing their own internal Redis repo where they did their own internal development and then would drop changes that they would benefit from not having to carry (vs Redis Inc doing a lot of their core redis work in public vs dropping completed things)
If #1 was to prevent Amazon et al from using redis trademarks, I don't think the license had to change. If #1 was to enable more non BSD code to be part of redis, I don't think the license of the core had to change. (how this would have impacted redis naming in linux distribution that only want to ship OSS code is a semi open Q but I think solvable).
Personally, I think keeping the core as BSD but including the the non BSD source available portions could have been an effective "trojan horse" for getting the community at large to be more invested in those pieces.
Also personally, I think what caused Redis Inc leadership to go down the path they did was Amazon cloning a non bsd source available redis module that Redis Inc published (RedisJson, to the point that they cloned the entire api including "easter eggs" that weren't really meant to be used, i.e. an API alias named after a (former) executive JSON DEL vs JSON FORGET named after former sales VP Jason Forget). That was the point of Amazon no longer playing nice in a competitive friendly way on the BSD code level, but to try to undermine how Redis Inc tried to distinguish themselves from just the BSD code. That's the right, but it perhaps caused Redis Inc to make bad decisions. (and as an aside, in today's day and age of AI, I wonder what protection these source available licenses have from AI oriented cloning).
1) bundle the "source available" modules as part of redis source distribution 2) enable people who only want bsd code to be able to build a "redis_core" 3) commit to the community that the core will remain BSD licensed and that they are committed to making it the best key/value store. 4) increase the amount of source available code that until then had been kept closed (including what we called big redis/RedisOnFlash/MultiTier) 5) Require anyone using the redis trademarks in a commercial setting to ship the entire Redis (which includes the source available portions, so Amazon et al would no longer be able to use the Redis trademarks without a license deal.
Another alternative was to simply go to AGPL (which they went to anyways awhile later).
I failed to convince the leadership about this. I honestly think they squandered huge value in community engagement, but perhaps that's what they wanted. I left a bit after these changes were made as it became clear that the new US led leadership of the company wasn't particularity interested in what was the soul of redis. (previously was heavily Israeli led and a critical mass there was invested in redis as an open source product).
Funny story, the then new/current CEO used to be the head of WebEx at Cisco. We had a Q&A when he was hired and I asked, what did he learn from his time at WebEx about how to maintain market position (as they lost everything to zoom et al). His response at the time wasn't that convincing, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I feel its fair to ask if the same thing occurred again.
Or to put it slightly differently. do you believe with this knowledge now out that they didn't do their job that it will drive more voters to the? While I can't predict how much it will hurt them, I can't imagine a world where it actually helps them. They failed again.
1. dm-thin operates at 64kb block sizes, but many file systems operate at 4kb block sizes.
2. the point of skip_block_zeroing is to say if we write a 4kb fs block we don't have to zero out the rest of the 60kb dm-thin block (save performance).
why would one do this? perhaps the design was that one isn't exposing the raw block device to the container, only an ext4, xfs or the like fs. In those, the fs also knows what blocks are allocated and if you try to read an unallocated block will probably cheaply return you all 0s (why spend IO time reading something you already know is all 0s, similiar to a quick format).
Therefore, zeroing out the remaining 60kb is also just a waste of IO (ala not using quick format).
However, perhaps someone then decided to use the same provisioning mechanism to enable containers to have block devices (where one can now read the underlying content directly) and boom you have a problem.
or perhaps someone didn't realize the mismatch in dm-thin block size and page size that things are written at.
What we need (and to some extent we get in web, i.e. gmail is different based on resolution) is different UIs based on the interface one is using. a single app that can switch between UIs.
I strongly believe the lack of this is why convertibles have remained more of a gimmick than anything else, as in practice you either keep using the app the same way you always did as you switch usages or you use different apps in the the different usage scenarios because they are tailored to that specific usage scenario. Neither are things that really sell the convertible as something with strong usage.
The closest we've gotten is things like DeX on samsung and perhaps what google is rolling out with android.
But the lot behind it (which would be across the street from the first row to the sea buildings has an empty lot that actually gives a decent sea view (through some hotels, but surprisingly not that blocked). so the question is why, is this lot empty? from my research it seems its not landing site for one of the major fiber networks and is built into an underground data center for the landing. So the assumption is that this is basically about as good as one can get that the lot wont be developed (at least in the semi near future) due to the difficulty of relocating the fiber and the security implications of building a residential building on top of it. Still just a bit out of my ability (which makes me a little sad) but cest la vie.
anyways just something I learned about the fiber optic networks that connect the world in my hunt for an apartment.
booting is so quick today that its hardly a friction point as it used to be.
However, I'd bet that many people will gladly allow aliexpress to play audio as there are probably videos on the site that people want to play and listen to.
With that said, its possible that this can be only a use once permission. Even if I want to shop at aliexpress if I know they are doing this, I'll be more willing to be bothered every time I want to play a video with audio to approve it if this bothers me.
People not trusting the votes being counted properly or people being coerced paid to vote some way and this making it more valuable.
A plausible solution would be to significantly delay the distribution of the record. i.e. if every election was only printed out 2-4 years after the fact, it could give people confidence that the votes are being counted properly (as otherwise they would be found out eventually), but significantly reduce the incentive for the bad behavior (if one things this actually significantly incentivizes it) because it will be a long time before they can validate if what they were given is true.
https://metavnc.sourceforge.net/
TLDR: it leveraged a specific client that could
a) connect to multiple vnc instances b) display them in a single window c) act as the "window manager" / "desktop environment" - doing this by enumerating menu entries from each instance and creating a composed whole. Enumerating the active applications from each instance and composing them into a single "task bar"/"window switcher" interface.
this is probably close to 20 years old now.
i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners.
key is protected by a 3 of 3 keys.
1 protected by 3 of 4 (i.e. SSS the key into a 3 of 4) 1 protected by 2 of 3 (i.e. SSS the key into a 2 of 3) 1 that just is.
so you take your original key and SSS into a 3 of 3.
you take part 1 and SSS into a 3 of 4, and take part 2 and SSS into a 2 of 3.
Global "works", but remembering by series would be so much better.