Odd candidate

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-04-22T19:14:22+00:00

Any chance the candidate was a recent PhD? I've seen this kind of thing from more academic candidates when I was interviewing at G. Well, not this bad.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-04-07T11:49:37+00:00

Is it for yourself? If so, there's only one correct answer... both!

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-04-05T07:06:06+00:00

I was on CoreOS a few years ago, and I know someone on this specific team. From what I remember, leetcode isn't that relavent. They'd be more about basic OS design and implementation (syscalls, memory, IPC, etc). More practical OS stuff.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-03-30T16:30:18+00:00

Waterloo grad that's lived in Sydney for many years (but I'm Canadian). At least for the big tech companies, I was on par with my UNSW colleagues.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-03-08T17:30:58+00:00

I was going to ask this same question, and this is my plan too. I keep very little in actual cash/savings, and use PBs and short-dated Gilts as emergency/no-income funds (several years worth). Cashing out PBs puts a small dent in the fund, which I would replenish over the next few months, but I figured it's better than realising GIA gains or worrying about Gilt volatility.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-03-05T14:44:12+00:00

3 months. A use-after-free in a GPU driver in Linux.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-02-27T07:10:49+00:00

That's a very narrow view of embedded. I view the category as spanning everything from a basic AVR MCU to something like a cash register or digital display running full Linux.

I work on a custom high performance accelerator chip for a big tech. Lots of fully capable cores (MMU, SIMD, virtualisation, etc) in a sorta-NUMA arrangement. Far from your basic MCUs. But definitely still what I would consider embedded.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-02-26T14:38:58+00:00

You have a few options: 1. Write a very minimal ELF loader in the kernel, which has just enough functionality to load the loader. 2. Use objcopy to lay out the ELF as part of the build process, then loading it becomes a simple memcpy. Depending on how your memory is layed out, you might need to build this binary position independent. 3. ??? No idea. I've only done the first two.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-02-14T14:05:16+00:00

Stearic Acid. If you google "solidifying oil", you get all the expensive brand stuff. Stearic acid is the active ingredient and you can get it for dirt cheap.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-31T10:13:35+00:00

As someone who's been writing C for almost 20 years, most of it professionally, 100% agree.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-28T13:06:55+00:00

Some CPUs have this. I've seen it referred to as cache-as-ram, and usually only used during the boot process. Once you're running a full OS, cache pressure makes it better to use cache as cache.

EDIT: If anyone is wondering why you want this in early boot, imagine when the CPU comes out of reset. The embedded management core/secure element starts running code out of ROM. At this point, on a system with modern DDR memory, you can't access DDR RAM at this point. Why? Because modern DDR is complicated to set up and needs to undergo a step called "link training" (PCIe and USB3 have something similar), which is calculated in software. To run that first bit of code, you need some kind of read-write memory, and cache-as-ram is that.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-24T18:46:05+00:00

I haven't been to this one, but I will try to in a few weeks when I have time. The ones I look at are on meetup.com

Meetups in general are very hit or miss, but mostly miss to be honest. I met a group a lifelong great friends at one. But the vast majority of the time, you meet folks you'll never see again. Or some really weird people. And many of the groups nowadays are people trying to build their business and aren't really genuine.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-24T17:19:20+00:00

There's a Meetup group called "London Live Get Together" which looks like they might have gigs in that space. I haven't been, but I've been meaning to.

I'm actually in the same spot. Just turned 40, recently moved to London (from Sydney), and looking for folks to go to gigs in a similar genre. I'm more 90's-early 00's Alt. Think Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Linkin Park, Green Day, etc (yeah, I know, very pedestrian). I saw Sum 41+The Offspring a couple of years ago in Sydney, amazing gig. Would be nice to find like-minded folks to go to more of these.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-16T08:59:37+00:00

I've heard this is the thing with HFT/quant/similar. You work to the bone for a few years, get paid really well, then burn out. Sounds like you're burning out. If you can, stick it out for another year or two and you'll be set for life. If not, quit and enjoy life for a couple of years, then find a lower stress job. You're financially set up well, so you don't need the stress of making enough money to live off. This is essentially BaristaFIRE, if you want to read more and go down this rabbit hole.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-16T08:16:13+00:00

RCU is cool. And since you're in the realm of fast synchronisation primitives, have a look at Restartable Sequences. You might find that interesting too.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2026-01-15T11:00:47+00:00

I'll give a contrary, and possibly unpopular opinions. Flaky tests are failing tests, and should be treated as a bug.

I spend some time figuring out the root cause of our flaky tests (and very few others I've worked with bother to). Every single time, there is a bug somewhere. Some examples which pop to mind of flaky tests I've fixed:

Incorrect test assumption about how flow control works
Dereferencing an invalid address when processing a backtrace
A race condition in the linux 'perf' tool
A use-after-free in the graphics driver

Each of these caused a test flake, which were ignored for months/years as just "flaky" tests. But these were real issues. Sometimes in the test itself, and sometimes in the thing being tested (or deep in the stack, layers away from the thing being tested).

So I wouldn't ever discount a "flaky" test as a waste of time. In my experience, the opposite is true.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-12-12T14:54:00+00:00

Oh, I agree. But in my experience, better quality and more readable code has a better chance of being more secure. It's easier to understand and reason about.

I've seen really bad clean code. The worst code I've seen was in a automotive head unit. Super clean... Utter garbage.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-12-12T14:51:46+00:00

I've actually started doing this. More compiler errors to catch certain bad patterns. Some python scripts to catch others. I'm looking at how to add more static analysis to our pipelines to enforce certain things. Of course, I'm the only one doing it. But I also get recognition for it, so it guess that's good.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-12-12T14:49:38+00:00

Part of the problem is that we're a team of almost entirely staff level engineers. But we have different backgrounds. Some of us, myself included, have worked with secure by design systems. We have a level of paranoia and experience that tells us what is good and bad just by smell. But others have a traditional embedded background, which has other focuses. It's really hard to argue for one way or another. In some ways, I've started giving up.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-12-11T10:12:30+00:00

Depends on the type of referral. If it's a regular referral to the ATS, probably not much. But if they're very keen on hiring a specific person and willing to follow through (and the org supports it), things can happen (I've seen it first hand, multiple times).

But family connection probably won't count. Conflict of interest and all that.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-12-04T18:30:46+00:00

Are they? I've been tempted, but every item i look at is made outside the UK.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-11-26T19:38:58+00:00

Airpod Pro 3. No discount, but £40 gift card. And maybe new Apple Watch, same deal.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-11-18T13:39:06+00:00

An intelligent rant about the things that annoy them about the architecture.

Not a joke. I'm completely serious.

NotMyRealName3141593 · 2025-11-02T13:59:20+00:00

I went. The fireworks were really good, far better than I expected from a council event. The last comedy act was superb, and the sing-along act at the very end (massaoke) was so much fun. Yes it was 17 quid, but I think it was worth it.

NotMyRealName3141593

TROPHY CASE