My notes on information technology, technology, science and other matters, as taken from various podcasts, videos and other online flotsam, and summarized on Twitter. This month: The utility of checksums, when Netflix software gets open sourced, sensitivity with IT terminology, why scalability and efficiency don't go together, network congestion as a source of app latency, monolithic microservices software.
Tech Notes
Development
You'll frequently see a bunch of open source projects released by @Netflix, then never updated again. What you're seeing is an engineer who's about to quit passing their work to themselves as they sprint to another company.
— HydroxyCoreyQuinn (@QuinnyPig) June 3, 2020
dynamically typed languages: pic.twitter.com/h7fWwhKIZn
— Vanessa McHale (@vamchale) June 4, 2020
Transient errors are failures that "been resolved automatically and in a short period, if the remote service is invoked again, it immediately responds success," @SezginEge @hackernoon https://t.co/8Q2ICzj5pO #webdeveloper
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 9, 2020
Among other aspects, this enjoyable read from @DavidCasselTNS reinforces the importance of #checksums, which are as vital now as they were then... @thenewstack https://t.co/isS5SgNCGZ #NASA #Dev #ComputerHistory
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 16, 2020
Rope physics is the new “liquid in a bottle” for gamedevs https://t.co/HoW4EythHE
— Marcos Alonso (@malonso) June 20, 2020
"The nofollow tag is a way publishers can tell search engines not to count some of their links to other pages as 'votes' in favor of that content. " https://t.co/vB8C2WMXDk… #SEO
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 22, 2020
noindex tag: "When you don't want a search engine to index your web page in search, but you do want it to follow the links on that page -- thereby giving ranking authority to the other pages your page links to." https://t.co/1IERB374Aw #WebDev #SEO
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 22, 2020
"Some people believe that defining a static subset of HTML would benefit Web developers and users because we could build a much more efficient browser (or browser mode) for that subset. As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer, I'm skeptical." https://t.co/YhGA1WaGP5 #WebDev
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 22, 2020
#CSS has a number of new math-based functions, including “calc” for manipulating numerical variables (width, frequency, angle etc). It also has trigonometric functions, such as deriving sines and cosines. Great for animations— @syntaxfm #webdev #podcasthttps://t.co/SjIc9JClpw
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 24, 2020
The Open Application Model (#OAM)--w/ dev, app & infra operators--allows each platform to expose unique capabilities through a standard application model without being restricted to a “lowest-common-denominator” feature set -- @ryanzhang_oss https://t.co/avaiSV5sTj #microservices
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 26, 2020
"I've told people if they're looking for a new exciting project that kernels are not the future. The basics of a modern operating system were set in the 60s."-Linus Torvalds on the #Linux kernel dev community's graying problem. #OSSummit @sjvn https://t.co/PZ1Vb8s75c #OpenSource
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 29, 2020
"C++ is not a memory-safe language and no one would really pretend that it is” -- @ryan_levick, explaining why Microsoft is moving its systems programming to @rustlang, @AllThingsOpen https://t.co/iTFq1UXxcb #RustLang #Dev @thenewstack #security
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 10, 2020
Vite is a new combination dev server/build tool from @vuejs creator @youyuxi that offers a much faster response time than #BuildPack and comes with built-in hot module replacement @fullstackradio #podcast https://t.co/19LHVSOKIc #WebDev #JavaScript #VueJS
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 16, 2020
Data
Why do front-end developers eat alone? Because they don’t know how to join tables—@PeterZaitsev @AllThingsOpen 😂😂😂 https://t.co/sgHXE3NqGE #WebDev #NoSQL #SQL #DBAdmin #GeekHumor
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
It's not clear who @MongoDB's customers are beyond folks they've snookered so thoroughly that there's no valid exodus path. The only reason it's easier to leave MongoDB than Oracle is because Oracle at least doesn't randomly lose your data, rendering the problem moot.
— HydroxyCoreyQuinn (@QuinnyPig) June 3, 2020
And $550 to once again roast @GitHub. "Let me guess, you're going to talk about their ICE contracts."
— HydroxyCoreyQuinn (@QuinnyPig) June 3, 2020
Yes. I am. And we're going to keep talking about this, because "kids in cages" is a line with very clear "right" and "wrong" sides to it.
Apropos of nothing, here are the logs of all the recorded music I've listened to, on iTunes, since 2005 https://t.co/V7hgLw2Bej #DataGeek #LifeHack #Music
— CheapDJ (@DiscCheap) June 22, 2020
Operations
"Expect more from your Infrastructure"-- @lcalcote explains the true value of the #ServiceMesh: observability, traffic control, deduplication of appdev tasks, service security, uniformity, sharpening of responsibility. https://t.co/EhzigzaPu4 @layer5 @AllThingsOpen pic.twitter.com/rezX43Skil
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 1, 2020
As the new head of the @CloudNativeFdn, @pritianka brings a wealth of experience, including work on a number of CNCF projects, serving on the board of directors and acting as a liaison to end-users. @thenewstack https://t.co/JywVOwunz1 #K8s #CloudNative
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 1, 2020
"When you’re dealing with really large-scale systems, you have to have a degree of humility. Whether it’s computer science or social science, it ends up being a lot about the people you learn from, and I just clicked with them."-@pritianka @CloudNativeFdn https://t.co/lbeJ15oA35
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 6, 2020
"Everybody thinks that their layer in the stack is where the hard problems are. That every layer above them is easy. If you’re deeply entrenched in infrastructure, you don’t appreciate the ways in which that ecosystem is developing above you.” @TinaNolte https://t.co/tOwSMKkYMk
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 6, 2020
#Scalable and efficiency are seen by people as similar but they are very different: "It's extremely hard to build the systems which are very scalable and very efficient at the same time." @PeterZaitsev, @Percona @AllThingsOpenhttps://t.co/sgHXE3NqGE #CloudNative pic.twitter.com/7poKh7UUGU
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 9, 2020
Although designed to support #microservices, @IstioMesh 1.5 is deployed as a “monolithic” daemon, to ease installation/upgrades & facilitate the growing need for multi-cluster communications—@linsun_unc @infoq #podcast https://t.co/h8UQWA5CQL
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 10, 2020
In #HPC, network congestion is the single largest cause of slow applications, accounting from up to 4% of performance variance. UIUC's Saurabh Jha suggests that apps could use "topology-aware scheduling." @usenix #NSDI https://t.co/oHZ0HWq8fK pic.twitter.com/0euSg9Nhyc
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 15, 2020
With proxy servers, latency can be a more important metric than throughput. Few servers need to handle 100,000 requests/sec, but 2 ms latency per object on a page with 50 objects can really feel slow —@zwoop on the #TrafficServer @Usenix #LISAXXV https://t.co/LLgVazmbTn pic.twitter.com/6OOWJSO2WG
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 22, 2020
By introducing a set of normalizing constraints -- such as the @cloudfoundry runtime -- your developers don't have to worry so much about mechanics. They can just code. -- @cmcluck #CFSummit pic.twitter.com/2O27KfXTdW
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 24, 2020
With @awscloud, “the highest level of configuration management enlightenment is of course to use the console, and then lie about it”— @quinnypig, on the various tools he uses to manage passwords for his 40 #AWS accounts, accessed mainly through APIs https://t.co/Z5nhNyQLqa
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 30, 2020
Cultural Sensitivity in IT Terminology
Wonder how much (or little) work this would take for an operation as voluminous as @GitHub’s...
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 16, 2020
“In tech we need to be very clear in our communication because we are talking about complicated concepts. So it’s important to use metaphors, but we need to be careful about what metaphors we use." -- @MalloryKnodel @thenewstack https://t.co/XFUQbBbzV4 @jriggers
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 19, 2020
“Language evolves, we learn, we grow as a society. There’s ingrained stuff that I think just makes sense to question and challenge and change.”--@esammer on @Splunk's initiative the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" from its software. https://t.co/TXEJXpAFHA
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 19, 2020
Yes! The **entire** point of technology is to make lives better for everyone... https://t.co/djkYrxWKtX
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 13, 2020
Black Lives Matter
Why do people keep saying they're on the side of diversity. This isn't a diversity issue (that is an issue unto itself, especially in newsrooms lacking Black people.)
— Marisa Ingemi (@Marisa_Ingemi) June 1, 2020
This is a defund the police and stop endangering Black people issue. That's not "diversity" that's human rights?
After MLK was assassinated, 110 American Cities started rioting, causing $47M in damage. On the 6th day of the riots, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed.
— savannah ♥ | BLM (@queenbsav) June 1, 2020
@rashadrobinson just called me, expressing his disappointment with the call. "This is just another reminder that companies will say black lives matter, and then do a whole bunch of things to make it clear they could care less about black lives."
— Cat Zakrzewski (@Cat_Zakrzewski) June 2, 2020
Looters in #NYC yesterday “wrap themselves in the righteous indignation of Mr. Floyd’s murder” in order to do their destruction. They have different goals than the protestors. He also called out the #NYPD for not doing an effective job of stopping the looters. https://t.co/jdSInYKrlf
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 2, 2020
“When the looting starts the shooting starts” has “no history of being read as a dog whistle for vigilante supporters to take justice into their own hands,” Zuckerberg said https://t.co/VNqbBOEDZN
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
"Activism, even the batshit crazy type, actually works. Even if it doesn’t work for you personally, you’d be adding to the voices that will ultimately bring justice, at least if your cause is righteous." https://t.co/BxzM9rUNwJ #JohnBrown
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
We've paused our daily coverage on @TheNewStack today to provide more bandwidth for discussion around #GeorgeFloydProtests and #BLM, and we call on other tech sites to do the same. https://t.co/MWnIl3dJBL #blackoutuesday #BlackLivesMatter
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 2, 2020
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 4, 2020
Here at Raytheon, we believe that Black Lives Matter and implore you not to dig too deep into where your local police department got those tanks.
— Zack the Halls With Budryks of Holly (@BudrykZack) June 2, 2020
“The biggest story in the world came to your front door and you left — that to me is insane” — @ambiej, @ambiej @nytimes https://t.co/cGHGmXscyh
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 15, 2020
Security
"The #malware doesn’t just target an application, it targets the entire supply chain—from development to delivery. Instead of malicious code having to be injected into numerous events along the chain, #OctopusScanner only needs to target the top" https://t.co/ICRknwsDlX #security
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
"We're coming to a point in time now where there are lots of CA Root Certificates expiring in the next few years simply because it's been 20+ years since the encrypted Web really started up and that's the lifetime of a Root CA certificate." @Scott_Helme https://t.co/5PfOzKuFT7
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 8, 2020
A #CVSS "Base score doesn’t speak to a developer’s environment, OS, or other technologies in play. The Environmental metrics are critical to use to adjust the score for their environment. This isn’t typically done.” @vdanen https://t.co/17KhVN5Zxt #InfoSec @jlwallen @thenewstack
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 9, 2020
Sure wish @DigitalOcean offered a "click-of-a-button" all-HTTPS-for-your-site service https://t.co/XmSXG2PSoi
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 11, 2020
There’s a lot of buzz right now about a “massive DDoS attack” targeting the US, complete with scary-looking graphs (see Tweet below). While it makes for a good headline in these already dramatic times, it’s not accurate. The reality is far more boring. 1/X https://t.co/4wDIlKnfQg
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) June 15, 2020
“It’s very low overhead from an attacker perspective ... All they have to do is manage to put these repositories online and make them look legitimate enough that people will download them. And that’s it.” @PaloAltoNtwks @jadefh https://t.co/G7HyCwPXQL #Security #Monero #crypto
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 25, 2020
Information Technology
"The real measure of information is not in the symbols we send. It is in the symbols we could have sent but did not." -- Jimmy Soni/Rob Goodman, "A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age." https://t.co/65udLyMn6p
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 28, 2020
Machine Learning
A poorly written article can adversely affect its ranking within an #ML engine for choosing content to feature. Also, neutral articles fair better with audiences https://t.co/2IcL0pYVXw #AI #CMS #SentimentAnalysis #NLP #LexRank #TextRank
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
Hardware
UML ready! 😂 https://t.co/o22Dccfg3y
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 10, 2020
Every time I look down at my #iPhonePro and see it’s been taking pictures again I want to rename it the “iPhone Fussy-as-Fuck” (#iPhoneFaF) @Apple pic.twitter.com/5oKDa2FikD
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 13, 2020
Am I doing the mechanical keyboard thing right? 💕 pic.twitter.com/9LesX3S2GM
— April Speight (@vogueandcode) June 9, 2020
Mathematics
"If abstraction [which moves from the specific to the general] provides mathematicians with their objects of study, the theorems they try to prove often go the other way: from the general to the specific." -- @RichardElweshttps://t.co/jItBjXbvgQ #mathematics
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 17, 2020
Since we're re-doing America can we also get the metric system
— Christmas Cookie ChopTart🎄🍪🔪 (@KeeblerOrganElf) June 12, 2020
In 1962, John Glenn refused to go up into space until Katherine Johnson double-checked that the orbit calculations from the then-newfangled computer were correct. “If she says they’re good then I’m ready to go.” https://t.co/pQk9oUTHb0 @ScienceNews
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 27, 2020
Evolution
“At this point I think it’s the nail in the coffin of the idea that dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic world.” https://t.co/hXXTJQ7DND #evolution #dinosaur
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 28, 2020
Time
Do you see time as moving forward through you, or do you move forward through time? @AsapSCIENCE https://t.co/cQ34J7Hs3e
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 21, 2020
Culture
If we viewed men's "violent outbursts as weakness, rather than strength, perhaps we'd properly pathologize, rather than normalize, the astronomical amount of male violence across the world"--@feministabulous, on #ToxicMasculinity https://t.co/JPRKOxkilk
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 5, 2020
COVID-19
Congratulations to everyone who doesn’t understand odds. https://t.co/a8ojbnipyI
— Alex Baze (@bazecraze) June 6, 2020
“The Lord wants everybody to click on that little microphone with the red line through it...And where it says mute? Hit yes, Amen?” https://t.co/9XQyoMesaf @nbcsnl
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 3, 2020
Surveillance Capitalism
New boss same as the old boss. https://t.co/5NmJf795oo
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) June 15, 2020
More Technology Notes
