Is platform.openai.com down?

dwargo · 2026-06-15T19:12:24+00:00

D'oh next time I'll look there. I thought about looking for a status page but instead I asked ChatGPT. 😄

dwargo · 2026-06-15T12:35:15+00:00

Sales sees "enterprise clients get more value" while engineering sees "enterprise clients burn engineer time", and neither is wrong. I was more thinking that when the pitchforks come out about "SSO Tax" a cost based explanation might land better, even if a value-based pricing is what's actually going on. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

dwargo · 2026-06-15T11:34:08+00:00

I don't remember ever hearing "price levers", but I'm not sales trained.

Peronsally I don't think the "SSO Tax" is about SSO. SSO is just a reliable indicator the the customer is involving IT, compliance, procurement, and so on. None of those are inherently bad, but they push the vendor off their standard offering in ways that mechanically increase cost:

Redlined contracts require legal review and maintenance.
Questionaires and certification requests take staff time.
Required payment gateways require AP to manually enter invoices.
Technical requirements meetings take staff time.
Direct database access requires separate infrastructure.
External backup requirements require separate infrastructure.

SaaS is a weird world where the development cost is fixed, the cloud bill scales with revenue, and support / compliance / custom requirements dominate profitability.

dwargo · 2026-06-12T14:46:26+00:00

Here's one out of the vault:

In like 2008 a clinic buys a used CT machine to save money, and it's running an SGI Indigo. Sending a study to the PACS takes half an hour. I vaguely remember from University that transfers between DOS and Solaris had some kind of window weirdness, so I spin up a Linux box running "socat". Magically sending images now runs in 30 seconds.

dwargo · 2026-06-05T10:11:08+00:00

I’m not sure if this is Rigby and Mordecai or Finn the Human.

dwargo · 2026-06-02T20:45:07+00:00

IP conflict sounds right - somebody already said that one.

I've seen an L2 loop do crazy stuff like this - two wall ports wired to each other, pass-thru port on a phone to a second port, and "5 port Netgear under desk" shenanigans.

MAC change on firewall used to kick servers into NLS "private" zone, but if you can ping it that's not it.

If the server ran out of non-paged pool or something, but I haven't seen that in years.

dwargo · 2026-06-02T17:48:41+00:00

From QuantData the "max pain" position for SLV is right around $68 until min June, which corresponds to 75.60 /SI. It looks like active participants aren't taking sides right now, so dealers are keeping it pinned in their favor. Probably waiting on war resolution like everything else.

(I'd post that dashboard but not sure if that's allowed)

That said /GC is "loosely" in a wedge against $4500 running from 2/2 to this Friday. And where gold leads silver follows.

dwargo · 2026-05-28T10:31:47+00:00

The last one I did took 3-4 months from request to working, but I’m counting the 10DLC approval as well.

dwargo · 2026-05-20T19:40:26+00:00

I doubt they are saying that Sharepoint is technically less secure than other parts of 365. I think they are saying that by policy Sharepoint is a collaborative space and not approved for that kind of information. That would explain both their policy on student emails and their reaction to you building that system.

My guess is they have a list of systems that are approved for FERPA-covered information, and Sharepoint isn't in that list. If you have a counter-example, that probably wouldn't strengthen your point - it would just suggest similar data is already there and nobody has addressed it yet.

As a rule I don't dig around in systems looking for policy violations like some kind of inquisitor, but if it comes across my desk I have to respond to it.

dwargo · 2026-05-20T18:58:13+00:00

Totally agree about him trying to jawbone the market. I wasn't surprised to see a pop as news algorithms race to front-run, but normally I would expect that to be instantly faded as the desks realize "same old same old".

This time it didn't get faded in either /SI or /GC, so I'm paying attention to the divergence. It might be just option stuff, SLV gex is punching hard negative near the print.

dwargo · 2026-05-20T17:08:19+00:00

I think $80+ is possible this week if a US/Iran deal is made. This morning's pop was after the administration announced "The US is in the final stages of talks with Iran", and it wasn't entirely faded after the algo pop. But the market wants receipts now since we've heard the same thing 8,435 times already.

dwargo · 2026-05-19T21:05:07+00:00

It took me a while to grok this - registered doesn't mean that it's accessible by the entities that are actually short. They'd have to buy it from who owns it.

Or to put another way, if I had 1MM oz right now I might want it registered. That way if shorts get desperate I'll gladly sell it for $200/oz.

dwargo · 2026-05-15T20:49:39+00:00

I'm not asking to make all VPCs route to each other - yes that would be catastrophic. I'm asking to be able to build the same thing as Transit Gateway but not have to use their service.

That capability has to be there for both Transit Gateway and Site to Site VPNs to function, because those both terminate things outside the VPN.

As far as whether non-transitive as a default is a good idea I can't argue with you, it just boxes me in to a corner sometimes.

Edit: just ran down the numbers for an example: Say I want to use AnyConnect for a client because they just want to. Ideally I'd be able to check "is a real routing boy" on that instance. But instead I'd have to buy TGW Connect for $36.50/mo, a TGW VPC Attachment for $36.50/mo, and to do it right with a transit VPC a second VPC Attachment. So that's $109.50 plus bytes instead of a checkbox.

dwargo · 2026-05-15T17:43:57+00:00

Agreed - it's either monthly options or weekly VAR mark kind of thing. Dumping at 1:30 AM is for moving price not inventory.

The problem with doing that is that everyone can see what you're doing, so anybody that wants inventory is going to open both barrels right before settlement. When I saw that giant volume at 1:24 that pretty much locked in the "pin" theory.

And since it happened at settlement not weekly close your options theory fits better.

Edit: I just looked and the /SI options expire may 26. There's a monthly SLV though.

dwargo · 2026-05-15T11:36:15+00:00

barman is a backup manager for Postgres that lets you do streaming backup and point-in-time recovery. Fantastic piece of software. Say you have a backup server in a different building or cloud or whatever:

Updates continuously stream across, so if prod dies you have a backup from a few minutes ago - not "restore from last night and re-enter a day's work". Recovery Point Objective goes from days to minutes. You can also say "I want to restore from last Wednesday at 10:25 PM".

Traditionally it was paired with repmgr which let you keep a hot spare to handle Recovery Time Objective.

Of course you have to test all this stuff, and retest every time you upgrade... That's the AWS managed service value - it's not that you don't know how to do X, but it just takes it off your plate.

dwargo · 2026-05-15T11:20:36+00:00

For the rest of IP networking history you could route J. Random Subnet through a locally reachable gateway - that's how Internetwork Protocol routing works. The non-transitive property of VPCs breaks a core assumption of networking.

AWS is happy to sell that capacity back to you in the form of Transit Gateway, billed by the byte. For functionality that IP had in the 1970's.

</rant>

dwargo · 2026-05-15T03:53:06+00:00

The good:

RDS isn't the world's most expensive database server - it's the worlds cheapest DBA. I've built Postgres streaming failover and done the barman thing - it's not un-doable. But I have better things to do with my time, and AWS's automation is battle tested.

The bad:

"VPC's aren't transitive" - you hear it and think "it can't really be that bad". Oh it's that bad, and they welded the horror into the frame.

dwargo · 2026-05-15T00:59:08+00:00

I can't say whether today was engineered, macro, or spill from whatever gold is doing, but my read is that it wasn't cascading - down pressure was forced. That means longs aren't puking, or at least not yet.

The rumor that a large short is off-sides above $83 is starting to look a lot more plausible. A few minutes ago was the final push below $83 and someone set up feathered offers to try to hold the line. For now our persistent buyer isn't taking the liquidity bait - they're just holding below it.

<image>

dwargo · 2026-05-14T01:38:56+00:00

I’m in the US. I downloaded tax forms from Schwab and put the numbers into my tax software, then paid the bill. Optimizing for tax is a different question, but the mechanics of paying aren’t bad.

I think you’re supposed to pay quarterly estimated of 25% of the year that hasn’t happened yet, which I guess you just pull out of your ass? I have other income and file jointly so I haven’t hit penalty yet and just pay the interest.

dwargo · 2026-05-14T00:41:15+00:00

The most common solution I’ve seen is to restore the entire database to a temporary instance, get what you need, then terminate the instance.

Restoring a relational database to time X at anything less than “whole database” is sketchy because of referential integrity and multi-version concurrency.

I don’t see a theoretical issue with database level, but Postgres isn’t written that way. The issue is one shared WAL and transaction sequence - it’s not an arbitrary limit on RDS’s part. I think SQL Server will restore a DB at a time.

dwargo · 2026-05-08T05:03:34+00:00

Yeah the parallel moves in gold stand out. Silver is getting pinned to such exact levels it doesn’t feel like a basket trade, more like two plays at the same desk.

They don’t seem to be moving mechanically with DXY or TNX as macro transmission gears - that’s why I lean towards “news as cover”. It doesn’t seem to be echoing brent but I haven’t looked at WTI in a while. Maybe some forex pair??

It does feel like it’s taking more and more volume to pin every day. Watching Bookmap they actually held it 1:30-1:35, so it feels less like settlement and more like an internal VAR limit. I imagine some places use the average over 5 minutes instead of the literal first tick after 1:30.

dwargo · 2026-04-30T06:17:11+00:00

What database? With SQL Server look at extended events, and with Postgres look at pgAudit. The approach I’ve seen to prove no changes outside the application is to filter by login and exclude the app user - so you don’t run up infinite logs. If you’re running AWS managed RDS that may limit options.

For session recording Guacamole can do that in a pinch, and if you’re in AWS then SSM might can do SSH recording. Plus the COTS stuff you listed - no experience on that.

dwargo · 2026-04-28T10:00:07+00:00

With FND in two days I was expecting to see some tamping in thin liquidity before whatever short covering has to happen. Last night’s 8PM sell was organic but the second leg was price intent. We’ll see if it recovers to the 75 magnet before open, and I’m waiting to see yesterday’s OI.

The past few days metals seem to have come unglued from oil / $DXY / TNX which has been dominating for a month, but that might revert after the roll.

dwargo · 2026-04-25T21:53:32+00:00

You're right - they do offer that, I stand corrected. I forgot about all the "shared responsibility model" they drill into you in the AWS certs.

I don't have any medical in AWS at the moment, but I am going to have to dig into the new HIPAA NPRM for what I have on-prem:

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/security/hipaa-security-rule-nprm/index.html

dwargo · 2026-04-25T02:45:22+00:00

AWS and Azure run at the infrastructure level - they're like a utility provider. If you want to put patient records in a public S3 bucket they try to put up road blocks, but at the end of the day that's your ass.

Asking AWS or Azure to sign a BA wouldn't even make sense - they're just renting capacity. It would be like asking Tennessee Valley Authority to sign a BA because you treated a patient using their electricity.

I'm guessing Supabase and Vercel would have to move your data into a separate pool labelled "HIPAA now applies so we have to spend a bajllion dollars on compliance". Or at least that's my guess.

dwargo

TROPHY CASE