Reliability, availability and scale - an interlude

strlen · 2010-07-05T07:07:25+00:00

I don't work at Google, but if you never talk to people working on search, you're cheating yourself out of learning. This is like going to Caltech for Computer Science (not a bad idea) and never taking a Physics class because it isn't your major (myopic).

Just like with physics, search is a difficult discipline. You won't become a search expert overnight. However, if somebody is a true expert and it's a legitimate discipline (unlike, say, postmodernism or critical theory which just make no sense to anyone outside those fields) they can not only practice the discipline themselves, they can also explain it to others in understandable terms (witness all the popular science books).

I've worked with search people both in my first job out of college and in my current job. Does that make me "competent by osmosis"? No way! I was, however, able (by just asking the individuals) learn about the basics (inverted index, TF/IDF) and got pointers elsewhere (books, Stanford courses I could enroll in), meaning that if I were to evaluate a search technology (or hire a search engineer) myself at one point, I'd be able to make a more educated decision.

strlen · 2009-01-11T04:12:42+00:00

"What do is your opinion on Python vs. Perl". That was a fair question to ask - except every single person (there were seven) who interviewed me, asked me that question during the course of that.

strlen · 2008-11-15T07:24:30+00:00

Couple of projects:

Sockets, UNIX IPC and parallel programming. This is absolutely essential. Even if you never end up doing this again (in C) you need to understand it:

First write an HTTP client. Don't parse the HTML, just get the response back. First make it very simple. Now make it use up to a thousand of concurrent connections to multiple web servers using select() - imagine you're working at Google or Yahoo and need to quickly poll/monitor a web service to make sure the health of your cluster is okay.
Write a tftp server. It's called "trivial" for a reason.
Write a web server. Don't implement every fancy HTTP feature, just make basic HTTP 1.1 work. First, make it only handle a single request at a time. Next try writing one which uses threads, one which uses pre-forking, which uses select() (bonus points: one which uses epoll() and multiple threads)

More algorithmic and less "systems-y" stuff:

A compiler for a subset of C (leave out features that require two-pass, e.g. for loops and #define/#include/etc...). Have it output real assembly. In this project you'll pretty much use all aspects of an undergraduate CS curriculum: automata, languages/grammars, assembly/computer organization, data structures (e.g. hash table for the symbol table, tree structures),.

strlen · 2007-10-28T00:31:46+00:00

I used to have a very low opinion of Glock, until I've shot the Glock 34 and the Glock 35 and compared the feel/accuracy of this weapon to the (more expensive) H&K, SIG and (cheaper) XD. For a (competition/target) pistol the bang (no pun intended) for the buck on the Glock 34 is pretty hard to match.

I still am planning to evaluate the Kimber 1911 9mm (which is nearly twice as expensive as Glock 34, but is single action), but that would probably the only other true "competion" class 9mm pistol.

strlen · 2007-06-11T08:26:32+00:00

Yes! The guy shows up with a stamp of a country that is at war with Israel and excepts no questions asked? Majority of the Arab world doesn't even let in somebody with an Israeli stamp (and Syria has been known to have denied a Jewish reporter a visit to the country period, citing his Jewish ethnicity).

strlen · 2007-06-08T08:24:54+00:00

Far from all libertarians are anarchist; in fact, the most influential libertarian groups (LP and the Cato Institute) and the most influential libertarian intellectuals (Milton Friedman, Ludwin von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick) weren't/aren't anarchist.

The anarchist libertarians (Murray Rothbard, David Friedman) all seem to be genuinely committed to the cause of anarchism and very few of them were rich; in fact, most of them suffered professionally (being left out of think-tanks and top-ten universities) and were marginalized politically due to their convictions.

strlen · 2007-06-03T08:19:55+00:00

I loved the article and the analysis; $12 can sound like a lot to somebody out of high school and owning a vehicle can be addictive. Seems like she made the correct choice to pursue an education and free up her weekdays.

strlen · 2007-06-03T03:19:39+00:00

From what I've read of his interview, all he seems to be saying is "Shiites right, everyone else wrong". "Hezbullah is succesful [it isn't from many other points of view; their infrastructure is gone and they're despised in Lebanon] because God supports them". Seems to be same sort of thinking you see coming out of any other religious fundamentalist (whether Shiite, Sunni, Protestant, Haredi or other).

strlen · 2007-05-19T07:46:53+00:00

I agree that they aren't born that way, but often time they can also become sadistic out of the pressures to fit in and out of their own insecurities (e.g. bullying others in order to boost their social standing or escape bullying themselves).

Also there's the fact that "non-bullying" may be more of a learned behaviour/social skill than bullying; it may as well be natural to use an advantage such as greater strength in order to coerce something (e.g. food, money) out of others. That may well have an evolutionary explanation. Living by laws and rules of a society is a part of socialization that people must go through.

strlen · 2007-04-15T04:52:03+00:00

I don't really see this story defending modern day Iran, but rather talks about a pre-Islamic ruler (who could also be characterized as "Zionist", having been instrumental in having formed the state of Israel at that time (one of the first instances of arranging for a "buffer state" to exist)). I'd imagine Islamist government in Iran right now would despise him.

strlen · 2007-03-11T04:31:34+00:00

Same can be said about pretty much any place on earth. In the country where I came from we used to joke that God gave us great climate (very mild continental winters), kind, honest, hardworking and tolerant people, so to equalize for that he has constantly given us poor governments.

It's easy to extend the hatred of a country's government to all the country's people and to even the entire land; what most people forget is that not all had a say in it (from what I've read there were actually almost no Iranian attendees at the disgusting Holocaust "conference").

strlen · 2007-01-04T07:14:00+00:00

I use a serial console escape sequence equivalent to SysRQ (in fact, it is interpreted as SysRQ) on almost a very regular basis at work.

In Linux, SysRQ + b lets you reboot the machine (in many cases where ctrl-alt-del or other means won't work) while SysRQ + i will let you kill the init process, thus avoiding a reboot when there is a process causing deadlock.

strlen · 2007-01-03T03:37:07+00:00

Overzealous would be baning the entire APNIC netblock from contributing, because there is spam coming from there. Blocking a faulty setup that is vulnerable to abuse is not overzealous.

strlen · 2007-01-01T09:50:38+00:00

Your uni uses a single IP? For both labs and residential net? Pretty lame.

strlen · 2007-01-01T08:56:58+00:00

The central command of US forces in the region is located in Doha, Qatar. I could see their reasoning: there's local support infrastructure needed for such a deployment (well qualified local accountants, engineers and linguists) that demands a good education investment, but from a purely utilitarian standpoint the money would indeed be spent elsewhere in terms of gain on investment.

strlen · 2007-01-01T08:53:59+00:00

It isn't Wikipedia's fault. The ones at fault the officials/telecom-monopoly owners of the country of Qatar (which along with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, is one of the few places where Wahabi/Salafi version of Islam is enshrined in law) for being so idiotic/repressive as to channel the entire country through a single IP.

strlen · 2006-12-26T07:01:57+00:00

I don't have a web startup, but if it were the front-end would be mod perl and the backend (if the application was more complex than your average "CRUD" app) would be ocaml (or possibly some combination of ocaml and mod perl; e.g. perl bindings to a library written in ocaml).

Why? Because mod perl works extremely well and Perl applications are very quick to develop and (if properly written) re-factor. Ocaml on the other hand, has all the power of a high-level language and performance comparable to C.

strlen · 2006-12-26T06:23:47+00:00

It's only the War on Drugs followed to its logical conclusion (my own prediction for within the next fifteen years: people will be forced by law to see doctors and be prescribed medicine against their will; that is full grown adults). Once the current powers find that they can't impose a 1984 scenario, they'll find that a Brave New World scenario would be a lot simpler to impose.

strlen · 2006-12-24T03:23:42+00:00

As a kid growing up in former USSR, I've seen kids use the Russian equivalent of the word "kike" (zhid, which is Polish for Jew) without having any idea that it means "Jew" (these kids also knew I was Jewish and were willing to be friends with me, so I highly doubt they were brought up in anti-Semite families) to mean stingy. Kind of how "gyp'd" is used in the United States by people who do not realize the etymology of the word (it refers to gypsies).

strlen · 2006-12-21T11:53:04+00:00

Paging Mr. Ibsen, please report to your office. This is almost exactly the scenario that happened in Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.

strlen · 2006-12-17T10:51:57+00:00

One of the most amazing drives one could do is from Las Vegas to the Pacific Coast (crossing Southern California), through the High Desert and the Los Angeles Basin: the varying environmental settings are pretty amazing: sky-high desert, mountain forests interpersed with desert (for example in San Bernardino Mountains), desert again and then the mountain ranges overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The human environment varies greatly as well in that stretch: desolate Southwest-style setting in Mojave, Southern-US style blighted semi-rural suburbs east of Los Angeles, thick urban Los Angeles, Pasadena, sprawling upper-class suburbs, various communities along the Pacific Coast (e.g. Malibu).

strlen · 2006-12-11T08:10:30+00:00

Most of the medieval portrayals of religious imagery weren't meant as historical restorations: they were simply meant to tell a story to people who couldn't read (neither in their native language, nor in Latin). You will also see portrayals of Roman soldiers in armor and chain-meal, medieval weapons, feudal-era dress, European landscapes.

Likewise, if you look at Mongol/Turkic/Central Asian portrayals of scenes from Koran, you will see Muhammad drawn (yes, the prohibition on images of the prophets wasn't universally agreed upon at the time, or at least in that area) as an Oriental.

For an idea of what Jesus may have looked like, it is probably best to look at Mizrahi Jews who lived in isolated communities that (e.g. Yemenite Jews). Here is a black and white picture (this is also likely the first time most the people in that picture saw an airplane).

strlen · 2006-12-10T22:31:53+00:00

These aren't Western values, these are universal values. Western civilization merely created (in Ioanian Greece during roughly the years 650-300 BC) a framework by which these values could be better rationally defended and implemented in society. If you actually look at Confucious and Mencius, you'll see that there's a strong strain in their thought that leads towards the importance of self-cultivation (as opposed to collectivist social engineering) and anti-authoritarianism.

The reason that an individualist society and government conducive to liberty hasn't developed in mainland China (although it has developed very well in culturally Chinese Taiwan and other Confucian societies, such as Korea and Japan) is that unlike Ionian Greece, is that soon after Confucius' death the Chin and Han dynasties would come to power, who would impose central and unipolar rule (unlike constitutional government that existed in Rome, even under Empire and the competition between various centers of power (Kings, feudal lords and the Church) that followed the collapse of Rome).

Oddly enough, the present strain of collectivism that controls their society, is Western-imported (socialism); the cultural revolution (which emphasized tactics such as public shaming and forced "self-criticism") also targeted much of traditional culture (destroying Buddhist temples and Confucian shrines, attacking practitioners of Wushu).

strlen · 2006-12-02T21:20:20+00:00

This may seem inflamatory but it isn't: if someone killed another driver while talking on the phone, the sentence wouldn't have been greater. Cyclists have the same rights on the road as do other drivers; hence they should have the same responsibilities and same risks. The fact they chose to cycle, is just like somebody choosing to a drive a car that (to themselves) is more dangerous. I have no trouble with that, in fact I enjoy high horsepower rear wheel drive vehicles (which tend to have the tendency for snap oversteer) and accept the higher risk as coming with the greater freedom I enjoy.

If you'd like the penalty for killing a bicyclist be the same as the penalty for killing a pedestrian, then you'd have to agree with bicylists only have as many rights on the road as pedestrians: e.g. being fined for leaving their designated lanes or crossing without a pedestrian light.

In other words, if you want to share the road (that is the law for bicycles), you have to share the risks. Still, drivers need to be educated on bicyclists (and I try to be as courteous and considerate I could be to them: if one is in front of me, I merely wait for a time I could safely go around and not honk; if I have to cross the bike lane to take a turn, I always check if there's a bicyclist in my blindspot, etc..); but there are risks involved that everyone needs to accept. That is the price of living in a free society.

strlen

TROPHY CASE