emcrazyone

I was pondering about the netflix data center prior to the AWS migration. "Migration of Billing infrastructure from Netflix Data Center(DC) to AWS Cloud was part of a broader initiative."

Sorry, should have been more clear.

As a follow up. Many projects I was involved with did use Oracle replication but it was a rolling log file type that was purposely delayed to account for mistakes. Rolling replication happen across geographic locations while SAN replication dealt with the hot fail-over situations locally.

I worked at a Fortune-5 that was heavily invested in Oracle.

Oracle has a nasty licensing model where they charge you per core regardless of if that core is a physical one or not (hyper-threading). While I was there, it suites told all the engineering managers that Oracle was out and the going forward solution was Microsoft SQL which, as I understand, has more relaxed licensing model.

Another thing I'm wondering about is I would figure Netflix to be big enough to have SAN storage. Just about every large company I worked at always used SAN replication technologies instead of open source stuff. And it's not a debate about open source solution vs. commercial. It's more about support. Large companies want a throat to grab when things break bad.

"outsource the parts you don't like" This doesn't work from my personal experience and others seem to agree. Myself been apart of a few startups learned you never outsource your core competency and doing so is usually suicide no matter how good you think you are at managing.

It's easy to see when you realize your goals and your outsourcing entity have different objectives which are at odds with one another.

I can't think of much that would benefit from this except for, perhaps, headless command line type applications. The one that comes to mind is rsync. Being able to compile the latest version/protocol of rsync on a Linux machine and then running the same binary on a Windows host would be nice but fun seems to end there plus with Cygwin, this is largely a no-brainer without M$ help.

What about applications that hook to X Windows or do things like opening the frame buffer device. I've got a messaging application that can be compiled for both Windows and Linux and depending on the OS, I compile a different transport layer. Under Linux heavy use of epoll is used which is very different than how NT handles Async I/O - especially with sockets. So my application's "transport driver" is either compiling an NT code base using WinSock & OVERLAPPED IO or a Linux code base using EPOLL and pthreads.

Over all it seems like a nice to have but I'm struggling to extract any real benefit.

Can anyone offer up some real good use cases I may be overlooking?

I'm just curious. I work in the automotive sector and develop hardware and software using components that are advertised as functionally safe. I use harden RTOS from vendors who claim their RTOSes are in medical devices as well as military systems.

One such system is Disti (http://www.disti.com/)

In the automotive field, our software is MISRA compliant, static analysis is done (Klockworks - http://www.klocwork.com/) and we follow a very strict set of guidelines outlined in ISO25119 and ISO26262 for the construction and agricultural markets. Think self driving tractors and combines. For example: A tractor traveling down a field with a combine following it a few rows over separating and chopping things into a catcher all done with one person driving.

This shit can't happen where I work. Every component on our circuit boards has a MTTFd of 40 years. Hardware watchdogs can kill the system if software goes awry.

Software is written to readiness level called SRL-1, SRL-2, etc... Unit tests, peer reviews, etc... Functional safety in medical devices is covered under 510(K) (http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedur...)

I find it amazingly short sited that antivirus software is even allowed on a medical device to begin with. I can't even imagine how this system even passed the easiest audit for software readiness.

How is it you "go hoarse having the same conversations?" Do you not have to meet FDA compliance criteria? Are you in the US?

I didn't read the whole article so I'm assuming this happened in the US. For me, we sell autonomous vehicles in the European markets where functional safety seems to be a bit more aggressive there right now for vehicles. Not sure about medical devices.

I can't up vote this comment enough. Law enforcement are not your friends and they are not on your side. My very close friend's dad has been a cop for 35 years and he has told us this over the years. Want another opinion?

See this from a cop and a law professor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

FYI: It scaled perfectly fine on my Android/Galaxy S5 so while it's scalable, I can't comment on how "easily scalable" it is nor if screen readers would have a problem.

I would think screen readers would have no impact. Text is pretty much text (utf8, etc...) and the scaling is handled by your font choice not your text choice.

^^shrug^^

ha! I guess I asked too soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_tracking_(National_Bask...

I wonder what the proprietary software is. Anyone know? Based on opencv perhaps? Amazing!

Anyone know how the data is collected? Is it computer generated by some software watching the game or is there someone faithfully capturing this into some database? Does the data exist for other players.

I'm a bit amazed that this kind of data is captured and wonder how accurate it is.

anyone have links or info. on how they actually got past the security measures?

why would you tell them that? Did you have any personal guarantees to pay back or something?

HA! I'm down the road from you in Plainfield with office in Burr Ridge. The taxes in IL are killing us - have to get out. Curious, why did you incorporate in IL? I'm based out of Michigan but expanded to IL last year. However, the tax base is so high I'm looking for alternatives like office in Indiana. Just curious....

oh, I so agree with you. Their tools do SUCK! I constant lose connectivity with their probes and their paid support is atrocious and they can't even answer simple questions about their own products. Horrible, horrible experience. If you can avoid Green Hills, take it from a 20 year veteran, you should do so!

Outputting the pre-processor result is not that helpful, you're still stuck with deciphering things.

macro expansion is useless, again, for same reason you can't marry it to actual code. If you can do this now, would be at most curious (not interested) as it's evil to begin with.

A production build in the embedded world, typically means you don't have symbols. Often they are stripped to save space and unless you have a USB stick or something you carry with you with map files, you're still toast.

And there are a whole host of other reasons why they are just pure evil:

1. Global scope only. 2. Unexpected results rather than error messages - ISO25259 won't even allow you to do this if that tells you anything. 3. Can't use sizeof 4. no type checking. Every compiler I've used, including GCC, won't warn about if an int is compared to unsigned. 5. can't take the address 6. worst, substituted value need not even be legal in the context the #define is created because it is evaluated at each point it is referenced allowing to another evil problem of being able to reference objects that are not declared yet.

I could go no... and I haven't even touched on strings yet.

with so many problems, I have a hard time justifying or championing their use.

I work in the embedded space and use a compiler from Green Hills.

The preprocessor in either C or C++ is evil for the simple matter you can't debug it when the thing you're debugging is in production, symbols are stripped, and the disassemble resembles nothing you can marry up to actual C or C++ code. In simple cases, maybe, but in not so simple cases it's just evil.

A modern compiler will optimized out the global consts anyways too...

I follow the advise of Scott Meyers to prefer the compiler over the pre-processor. Pre-processor code can inject bugs that which can't be easily traced with debugging tools.

The pre-processor is pure evil and should be avoided when ever possible.

somewhat agree. In 2006, I the co-owner of a PCO (Private Cable Operator) [1]. We ran under the radar for many years using the same loop holes for "right of way" and "inside wiring" laws. There are a couple little known facts or not so well understood laws which is why I slightly disagree with you and seems relevant to the article too.

1. There is right of way in many subdivisions to which the likes of AT&T can't keep me out of. It's illegal and monopolistic. One of my business partners was a home builder which was one of the angles but not the only one.

2. When a cable company or telephone company runs cable from a pedastal to your residence, you legally own that cable run. If it's a single family home, it's your property. The same is nearly true if you live in a Condo or an apartment with the difference being the property own owns the cable from the pedestal to the building and you own what is called the "inside wiring" which is the point of entry of the apartment/condo to your rented space.

And these two laws allowed us to compete for a long time against the bigger Cable companies, including going into locations where they were well established and kicking them out in the case of Apartment complexes and Condos.

Our typical modus operandi was to go into MDUs (Multi Dwelling Units) and offer the property owner revenue share contract in exchange for exclusive rights to the property; something the incumbents don't do. This only works with MDUs not municipalities.

There are a lot of PCOs (Private Cable Operators). Maybe not enough to make a dent just yet, but I firmly believe this can continue. Comcast has good lobby power with FCC. They lobby for strict/stupid laws that attempt to create barriers to entry to try and keep the smaller PCOs from doing what we did...

[1] http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20081109/SUB01/81110033...

hahaha, I was thinking the exact same thing, literally cue cat and all too. Even funnier is my undergrad degree was, originally, applied physics before switching to EE. I follow science when I can but boy do I feel out of the loop sometimes. Reading your post gave me a nice chuckle.

I've been dabbling in the smart home stuff for a few years. Had a gig where some dudes with some VC money paid us to develop a smart home controller - this was circa 1999-2000 but they ran out of money and the project dried up.

I would love to find some hackers who would love to collaborate and do something here.

Funny story: When I was working on the smart home stuff, it was called BeAtHome and the VCs some how got national attention as an energy smart/saving device. We had an office building that was physically connected to a barber shop next door. We shared the same entrace into the building. During the prototyping phase of some of the hardware, we got permission to put a pressure sensitive mat at the front door which would trigger when someone stepped on it. A web cam was then used to snap a picture and we would email this a test account, etc... We had a lot of fun on the project. The idea was a door mat or doorbell could be used to capture pictures of who is at at the front door.

One of the VC guys had a relationship with a company called Icebox which made these under the cabinet flip down screens where you could watch TV & surf the web. We were trying to connect CCTV and WebCams to their screen.

anyway, times have changed and there are so many new technologies out there that I think Nest and Smartthings (Samsung?) is ripe for some serious competition.

As someone who grew up with a C64 and programmed them, I can totally appreciate this. The C64 had ROM basic at the same address as part of the physical RAM.

I developed software called CNet BBS back in the day, and the software, written in assembly, would constantly switch the basic ROM interpreter in and out to simulate a multi-tasking environment allowing basic programs to run along side a mini OS.

I absolutely love the sound of his keyboard!

I wonder if TempleOS could find practical applications in the embedded world as an RTOS.

I currently am working with Jacinto J6 processors which are multi-processor devices. They have two ARM A15 cores and 4 ARM M4 cores (called IPUs). My work involves running Linux & Android on the A15 cores while bringing up a hardware monitor on the M4 cores. I looked at several possibilities such as uCLinux, FreeRTOS, and a commercial product called uVelOCity by Green Hills.

Something like TempleOS might feed this need for what appears to be a market of CPUs needing a small RTOS running along side another OS.

For the interested, there is also this project: https://gdmissionsystems.com/7-31-2014-sel4-microkernal-open...

100% agree with just about everything you said except if I may expand a bit.

"If someone comes in and their range doesn't overlap with mine"

Right there is where I think both sides need to do their homework. I have interviewed many candidates over the years that had no clue what the going rate was for a given market and given area.

Example: Oracle DBAs in New York and SanFran command more than the same Oracle DBA working in Detroit at one of the big 3 automotive companies. If you don't understand these dynamics, you're pretty much at a disadvantage and that goes for both sides.

No, you never give out a number. It's like asking the person sitting across from you to show you their cards before placing a bet.

If a company is willing to pay $100K and you throw out a number, say $80K for example, then how much are you out?

If your first thought is $20K, then you'd probably be wrong. You would be correct if you stayed only one year with the company. However, every year you're with the company you're out another $20K not to mention any salary bumps or profit share that is a percentage of your salary, etc... After 5 years, you're out $100K.

You never give out your number.

When you are asked, "what's it going to take", you should always answer with something like: you're most competitive offer. I don't feel this is rude at all.

I usually recap how key points from the interview. Come back with how you believe you would add value to X and would love to work on Y and that your best competitive offer would get the ball rolling.

Your job is to find out the maximum a prospective employer is willing to pay. Likewise, a prospective employer is attempting to get the best bang for their buck.

Never show your hand. I've interviewed probably 15-20 times in my career and have never strayed from this course. Now I'm a business owner. I've interviewed 100s of people over the years and it never ceases to amaze me how many candidates flat out give me a number when I ask.

Head hunters are pain in the ass to deal with. They insist on knowing where you're at because they don't want you wasting their time. Well, tough shit! Head hunters need to figure out what the going rates are for whatever it is they are seeking candidates for. A good head hunter will let you negotiate for yourself.

Michigan - and yes, power is awful in certain parts. Especially in subdivisions where much of the power cables are above ground and strung through trees... So bad that I was considering a whole house generator at one point but eventually moved to an industrial park for expanding business.... I also run equally old Trippline UPSes. They run off 220v. Every couple years we have to replace the batteries in them and other than the batteries, they still work.

The UPSes pretty much keep things running for a couple hours - most of my mission critical hosting servers are are in data centers these days and for the office, our servers sit on the UPSes where at most we lose power maybe an hour every couple years in the office park. Much more often in a residential area.

When that large blackout of 2003 occurred we were down for couple days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

oh man, I have them so beat! I have a Slackware Linux box with similar specs. 200 MHz Pentium, 32MB of RAM, and I think I have an old 10GB barracuda 80pin SCSI drive in it connected to an Adeptec PCI SCSI card. Every so often the hard disk starts making a high pitch noise but throws no errors and the noise goes away after a few minutes. It sits on a UPS and I probably have an uptime of a few years on it now. It has been running nearly 24/7 since 1996! Only powered off when I needed to move the box from a home-office and a few rented offices over the years.

When it was in the basement of my home/office, I would sometimes hear it's disks wine as I was working out (lifting weights and such). It was even in my basement through parties in my early bootstrap years.

I originally bought it to run WinNT 4.0 for a new company a friend of mine and I bootstrapped. I would guess a couple years later is when I put Slackware on it. It's running a 2.0 linux kernel. It's not exposed to the public Internet.

It use to be a local Samba, DHCP, and DNS server for the company. I eventually upgraded to new hardware and left this server around for redundant backups. I develop software so copies of my git repositories find their way onto this box each night. It is in no way relied upon other than to call upon it out of convenience if another server is down or being upgraded, etc...

At one point the box was in the basement of my home when a small amount of water got to the basement floor and because the box sat just high enough on rubber feet, no damage. Occasionally I go back there and pull the cob webs off it.

There is no SSL on it. We still telnet into it or access the SMB shares for nostalgia. It's sort of a joke in the office these days to see how long it will last or if it will simply out last us.

agreed but what other option do you have?

I don't recite that. I have it printed on a piece of card stock about the size of a business card and I hand it to them along with my driver's license, proof of insurance, and registration. I simply tell the officer I am exercising my right to remain silent as I hand him/her these items - then I shut up.

I've only used it once and it seem to work. So I guess I can say I have one data point where it was used. My attorney friend has this printed on his business card and this is the advice he gave me - to do the same.

I'm a little surprised that Ronnie even engaged in an apparent argument or conversation with the cop. A very good friend of mine who is an attorney and has given me the following advice which I give to an officer anytime I'm stopped. It goes like this:

Officer, please understand - after I identify myself with my name and date of birth (and proof of insurance if I am driving a motor vehicle) I am refusing to answer any questions until I have a reasonable opportunity to consult with my attorney. I refuse to take any field sobriety tests including: reciting letters and counting numbers, letting you look into my eyes with or without your flashlight, or any other physical tests performed outside my vehicle until I consult with my attorney. I refuse to get out of my car unless you order me to do so. However, I still refuse all field sobriety tests. I will show you my hands at all times so that your safety will not become an issue.

I refuse to consent to the search of my vehicle, my person, my belongings, or any premises with which I have an expectation of privacy, including my residence, hotel room or any other rented room without the reasonable opportunity to consult my attorney. If you have probable cause to search you do not need my consent anyway.

If I am not under arrest but you are going to issue a traffic citation please do so immediately so that I may go about my business. If I am not under arrest and no citation is going to be issued please tell me if I am free to leave so that I may go about my business without further interference with my liberty.

If I am under arrest, please tell me immediately so that I can cooperate by submitting to your authority because I do not wish to resist or obstruct your official duties.

If I am under arrest I wish to invoke all my rights under Miranda. I want my attorney. I won't answer any questions, perform any field sobriety tests or consent to any search without a reasonable opportunity to obtain the advice of my attorney.

Then I shut up!

As I read the article, I was wondering if the GCC compiler was converting some of the code to intrinsics?

If this is the case, and I'm not a Java programmer, I was wondering if there is a way in Java to tell the JVM to do something similar and, if so, how does the JVM cope with different CPUs. Does the JVM, on x86-64 for example, know when it can use SSE instructions?

you are so fucking clueless... Tractors have a lot of technology in them. Here is a very short list of you:

RTK: Makes GPS based steering more accurate. Often a dedicated RTK transmitter is installed on the farm for the tractor to pick up and use to correct against the GPS you may be already familiar with like the one in your car or smartphone.

End of Row Guidance: A piece of software that allows you to program macros to control an orchestrated set of events for the implement you're pulling behind you. (seeder, bailer, combine). There are many repeatable events that happen when farming from lowering & raising seeders, dealing with drift, changing seeding depth based on previously collected yield data, etc...

Mesh Networks: So one guy can drive a tractor and a combine with the combine following next to the tractor.

Auto Guidance: Think self driving car. Functional safety is a huge problem for companies producing self driving tractors - see ISO26262

ISOBUS: Is a technology whereby an implement is attached to a tractor and the tractor's cabin display creates a GUI image and/or menu for that implement to control it. The display need not have any advanced knowledge of the implement. So even the implements have an on board computer too.

It really irks me to see comments like yours. You clearly don't work in this field buy your comments come off as someone with all this great knowledge about how things work. Have you even bothered to research such topics as precision farming? These tractors collect tons of data year over year in order maximize yield which is very important to farmers and their ROI.

Grow up, do your homework next time.

correct, I'm presently doing work for one of the largest tractor manufacturers developing software for them. There are all kinds of technology in these things as well as on the farm itself in the form of GPS correction (called RTK) to deal with auto guidance and improving GPS accuracy. We are also building mesh networks so a tractor and a combine can be driven by one person & having the combine follow the tractor in side-by-side fashion. I work on over the air software updates, some of the touch screens are essentially custom computers running Android. We have a number of on board modules handling steering and precision farming as it's called in the industry. All these modules are interconnected with a mix of technology (CAN, TCP/IP over Broad-R-Reach, LIN, WiFi, and GPS). Check out ISOBUS too... ISOBUS is a technology where any tractor can be connected to any tow behind implement, including 3rd party, and that implement's GUI is shown on a touch panel for the operator to control and program. In short, there's a lot there. And it's a very competitive market.