mprovost

40 ms·

421.
by mprovost 6y ago
The Hesiod system [0] used at MIT in the 80s is based on DNS. It stored things like user (passwd) entries and which is the mail server for an account as DNS TXT records. You could just query the DNS server but there were also dedicated tool
422.
by mprovost 6y ago
At Weta we divided up the NFS servers into "src" and "dat" - "src" was everything made by artists, and "dat" was the output from the renderwall. We backed up "src" every night, but "dat
423.
by mprovost 6y ago
Yup. When I was renovating my 100 year old house I discovered that behind the weatherboards/clapboards was a layer of old, mostly broken asbestos panelling. I called a specialist disposal firm and they quoted two prices - one for inter
424.
by mprovost 6y ago
Roche will send you a free copy! https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_ed...
425.
by mprovost 6y ago
A more specific version of Jevon's paradox for the VFX industry is Blinn's Law [0] which states that "rendering time tends to remain constant, even as computers get faster." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w
426.
by mprovost 6y ago
You’ve just picked an arbitrary point in the development of these tools that you’re happy with and are suggesting that any progress beyond that point is wasted. I’m sure there were folks around when bash development started saying that they
427.
by mprovost 6y ago
Exactly. For the IETF, defining a draft standard (usually) requires two independent implementations first. Efforts to define standards before trying to implement them are usually disasters.
428.
by mprovost 6y ago
How different languages identify colours and how those definitions have changed over time is really interesting. Apparently using different words for blue and green is one of the last things a language develops.[0] Usually "red" i
429.
by mprovost 6y ago
“Larks' tongues. Wrens' livers. Chaffinch brains. Jaguars' earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. Dromedary pretzels, only half a denar. Tuscany-fried bats.”
430.
by mprovost 6y ago
In 2001 I had a collection of old DEC terminals from Ebay arranged on my desk, all hooked up to a FreeBSD box over serial. They were already antiquated back then but still really useful - I had email and IRC running on separate terminals an
431.
by mprovost 6y ago
But those antipodean countries are all coming out of their winter. So they got through the worst of it during the coldest part of the year, with more people indoors, and only now are getting into summer.
432.
by mprovost 6y ago
Great Britain is an island...
433.
by mprovost 6y ago
I only just realised that the character Arkady Bogdanov in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy was named after this author!
434.
by mprovost 6y ago
"Desktop" software hasn't caught up to the idea that you can have a network connection that a) goes away and b) can be expensive. What's to stop a native application from downloading a huge update as soon as you connect
435.
by mprovost 6y ago
They used to be more influential in the tech scene - in typical British tabloid fashion they nicknamed Intel's Itanium chip the "Itanic" which stuck and seemed to be how everyone ended up referring to that disaster. They! sti
436.
by mprovost 6y ago
But what if you are a minority in that community and they aren't dependent on your vote to be elected?
437.
by mprovost 6y ago
While hybrids can help reduce overall emissions, it also matters where the emissions occur. Running on batteries in the city reduces emissions (to zero) in areas that already have terrible air quality. For longer journeys outside of the cit
438.
by mprovost 6y ago
And dc (the original desk calculator) if you want RPN. I pretty much always have a terminal window with dc running for quick math. It's good for doing base conversions too.
439.
by mprovost 6y ago
After a series of accidents in coal mines in China, bosses are required to spend a certain amount of hours each year underground or they face huge fines and losing their job.
440.
by mprovost 6y ago
"I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
441.
by mprovost 6y ago
I spent a few years working at a search startup. I would say Google is ready to squash competition like a bug but really you're more like a bug getting splatted on their windscreen. Most of the time they don't even consider you to
442.
by mprovost 6y ago
Once the meatless companies scale up their supply chains and production lines, they predict that they'll be cheaper than meat. So in the future the meatless option will be the "dollar menu" and you'll have to pay a premi
443.
by mprovost 6y ago
The idea that there are already devices out there designed for a new protocol was considered an advantage of the TUBA protocol to replace IPv4 before v6 was chosen: "The reviewers generally felt that the most important thing that TUBA
444.
by mprovost 6y ago
Totally agree. Most people seem to assume that v6 is inevitable just because it's a standard. But its adoption is so low and has taken so many years that it's entirely possible that it will just become irrelevant and an evolutiona
445.
by mprovost 6y ago
Yes, in the sense that once you've worked there it's seen as proof that you're an "elite". Having a FAANG on your resume opens a lot of doors, in the same way that an Ivy League diploma does.
446.
by mprovost 6y ago
I did a talk [0] at the LISA conference back in 2013 with a narrative around the same stat "bug" and how it caused a huge outage when we were in the final days of rendering a movie. Instead of debugging I was focussing on how comp
447.
by mprovost 6y ago
I think it's just harder to get a clear signal of the value that each manager is delivering. Sure there are some headed for promotion, but deciding between an average and underperforming manager can be a tougher call. And getting rid o
448.
by mprovost 6y ago
There was a lot of work done to make X11 work better over low bandwidth/high latency links. [0] But in the end you could get most of the benefits just by forwarding your X session over SSH with compression enabled. Although X11 is old
449.
by mprovost 6y ago
At least in "corporate America", middle managers are often the first to go in layoffs because it's harder to directly attribute their work to the end product. And a higher salary puts a target on your back. It's harder t
450.
by mprovost 6y ago
It's usually pretty difficult to get hired for a management role without any experience. Most of the time you break this dependency loop by being promoted internally first.

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