al_biglan

No. No. No. Dates are to Integers as Date+Time is to Floating Point. You (we) -want- to compare them, but you need something akin to a language level specification for these. Otherwise, it is all what you are trying to do/what problem you are solving. Excel (where I suspect 60% or more of this nonsense lives) at least has a clear definition (both are floats, so you can do the comparison). Otherwise, "Down the Wat-hole" for what to expect.

Ah recruiters. Several years ago I recall the story of one of the creators of a programming language who was asked how many years of experience they had with the language and the response "all of them" was perfect. I can't recall if this was Gosling/Java or Van Rossum/Python (or someone else entirely).

caveat: I'm in the storage/file system industry.

Everyone in the industry is looking at this. There is a great graph out there by one drive manufacturer that overlays $/GB for different HDDs and SSD technologies. For example, 15K and 10K RPM drives no longer are cost effective to produce. You are better going with SSDs. 7.2K will be next and some of the "lower end SSDs" are encroaching on that. 5.4K will likely live a longer time and if you keep "HDD as archive" you might project these drives to be alive in the foreseeable future (then factor in SMR, HAMR, then SMR plus HAMR.... and $/GB gets pretty cheap). After all, if you aren't keeping 100% of your data "in flight" keeping it at rest on a cheaper medium seems a sane thing. (Tape backup systems are _still_ for sale and in use...)

Another interesting back of the envelope to do is look at Fab capacity for SSDs and compare it against HDD capacity sold. How much Fab capacity has to be available to serve the total storage demand? If there is a shortage of Fab plants, then a price premium for SSDs is easier to maintain (and may benefit some flash manufacturers in the short term to keep the price premium in place). Looking at the economics of building enough Fab capacity gets interesting quick.

Looks great... just needs 10GbE instead of 1Gb. Add an SFP port and a RJ45 if all you got is a 1Gb or want to try your hand at getting 10GBASE-T working.

This seems a perfect candidate to test with some well known test games.

Fischer's 17 ... Be6, for example in the Game of the Century

Or 15 ...Nf2 (again Fischer and Byrne) http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008419&kpage=1

It might be interesting to see how many blunders this identifies compared with traditional analysis. (Looking at the "surprising bad move" vs "surprising good move")

In any case, very interesting work. Others have some good ideas for additional checks/considerations, and it would be interesting to see how this evolves!

Indeed. Almost as many characters as in the google.com page source.

I think part of this is due to selecting "50 areas" to divide the country into. They mention that in the article and even say "it has a math basis" but don't explain why. If they chose 60 (for example) some of these areas might naturally divide. It might be a very interesting thing to look at deciding how many boundaries come about by applying limits to either economy or population to try to balance each.

The market forces around laptops would seem to be a ripe area for serious academic study. I honestly can't find a laptop I _want_ to buy only ones I weigh silly trade-offs. (to be fair: my biggest complaint is around the lack of keyboard choices). It seems that the market desires either can't drive laptop options, or the market is vastly different than I perceive. For example: Why did it take so long for 720 screens to die as an option? For $50 more you get a 1080. I watched this for 6 years (2009 to 2014) and really can't fathom it.

Now... this is for Windows based machines, and I'm sure the forces are different for Apple, but it would be lovely to read a serious study on this. I suspect there is something along the lines of cost and supply chain factors dominating the "refresh cycle" but this used to be handled by different product lines with wildly different configurations. (it still kinda is... Alienware vs Inspiron vs Yoga vs T vs P series but Apple seems to buck this trend completely) Anyway... I just need the cathartic release of posting (venting) with these laptop articles.

I was going to say something along these lines (tho more of a "cautionary tale" than absolute "no company can") Having worked for Nokia when they absolutely dominated the supply chain for their phones, this indeed gets you to the position of "top 10 brand in the world" but it isn't enough to keep you there.

That said, I think Apple it much better positioned than Nokia and much more focused on continual disrupting their own position (ipad to phone to tablet to watch is an interesting morph away from single product). So long as they can keep innovating and dominate the supply chain, I believe they will have some long legs.

I may not understand the impact of this, but this sounds like "there is a limit to Google-scale solutions and we have hit it"? I know this is a gross over-simplification, but I'd appreciate if someone might offer more depth to this? FWIW: I have liked the duckduckgo approach of separating the "space" of the search, but I always figured this was a stop-gap until Google could grok the context from your situation (e.g. 4 searches in a row related to motorcycles and the 5th for AMA shouldn't give me anything on the American Medical Society, but instead prefer American Motorcycle Association)

Now I'm wondering if there may be some limit to Google's ability to hit this in a timely manner with the amount of content available. Insights very much appreciated.

True, and we are getting cleaner production methods. The early production was incredibly inefficient and produced way more pollution than now. I can say _that_ with some certainty, but I can't say that they produced x% of the current production back then and were N times more polluting. Plus, it isn't clear how the atmosphere absorbs/reacts to the pollutants. (is there a lag? why the spike in 1970s? did the levels really fall off so quickly? I thought once steel left the US production it got much "dirtier" to produce?) Lots of questions, I'm mostly asking to show me a bit of the range that is clearly outside the definition of "preindustrial"

"preindustrial" being tagged at 1900 seems more than a bit off. Steel boomed in the 1880's (starting in 1850's with Bessemer). I would think a better data set would be to look back to 1850 or better 1800 to be sure to capture a decent number of years that show the "preindustrial" time period.

All that said. It is nice to see the trend over the past 30 years!

This is a great way to teach math. Model something that is interesting but only needs to rely on some basic principles (geometry, series and limits in this case). Best quote of the piece: "Britney found it interesting to realise that when we fold a piece of paper, we are actually finding a solution to a quadratic equation!"

This. One other thing I might suggest is some sort of variable cost model where every person gets 1 unit of water per day for free and then consumption above that scales up. Most people will consume more than the bare minimum to survive (lets say the unit is 2 liters). Doing this raises the base for everyone to be able to contribute to society yet still collects money needed for infrastructure costs, etc. ) One we have some of the utilities under this system, things like health care would be nice follow-ons.

Panasas - www.panasas.com | Pittsburgh, PA | full time | ONSITE

Positions : Build and Release Engineer/Architect

Product : Parallel file system with HW and SW components. We are building the next generation of product and are looking to transition away from much of our legacy infrastructure and tools. This is a senior level position in the organization and will be responsible for working both as an individual contributor as well as strategically identifying, planning and deploying significant changes to the existing infrastructure.

If you are interested: email careers@panasas.com

Interviewing process: HR will screen then on to me then on to a phone screen (with me) to determine to bring you in for the 4-6 hrs meeting with other Engineers and Architects putting you through technical competency assessment. There will be a practical assessment (hands on a laptop in the interview) process that requires no prep (other than 5-10 years of experience).

Was going to reply along the same lines. Much better is asking questions like "Why did you choose this shade of blue?" Which leads to improved understanding from both parties: The color may be more important than the original selection merited, or the selection was chosen specifically for reasons that the Manager wasn't aware. In general phrasing this as a dialog where the Manager (expert or no) and the Do-er both work to educate each other. "Did you consider X2?" becomes a valuable question if you think the implementation selection of X1 is "incorrect" or "sub-optimal"

Agreed this is arbitrary. Why not divide into 2*pi units and divide from there. Been a long time since I touched orbital stuff, but maybe add a "normalization" that factors in the Kepler area carved out by an object in orbit around the galactic center (tho... I'm not sure how well Kepler works in the galactic rotation sense... but something similar perhap?) In any case, if the orbit isn't circular, something would need to adjust for the change in relative angular rotation.

Also... may want to standardize on reporting this in terms of "seconds" and dropping "days" and other locally referenced time measures :-)

Interesting, but Tesla is both just getting started and "feeling the space" in the auto industry. They have taken pride in taking a different approach to traditional car companies and I imagine some of the wording around the Extended Warranty is simply being new and not copy-pasting examples from other companies.

Also, Tesla isn't making cars for everyone (yet) but instead focusing on expensive/luxury cars. Rather than compare against GM/Honda/etc. How do they compare against Maserati/Aston Martin/etc.?

Finally, as a young company, it may indeed be their _goal_ to build cars that last forever, but the first few generations they are still pushing the envelope of (their) understanding. In this case, bringing ell cars back to their repair centers may be the "right" way to build this experience into their future automobiles.

So... "yeah, they aren't making cars that will last more than N years unless you, as an owner, are prepared to sink a bunch of cash into achieving this" It may be more interesting to watch the auto that replaces the Model S. Both in terms of their timeframe for introducing new models (beyond expanding into different classes of vehicles) as well as how they adopt what they learn into more fundamental design changes. Thank you to all those cutting edge people willing to buy Teslas now. I'll wait 5-10 years till they get mainstream and keep my Honda and Toyota on the road for 250k miles :-)

This. Tho I may complain about companies (Capcom, etc.) who would try to extract "more money that they are worth" it would indeed be lovely to see them offer a reasonably priced arcade bundle with some of their games.

Sadly tho, I don't think that this was a gating issue at all for the companies :-(

Very nice job to the team at Mamedev tho! Congrats on what must have been a long and tiresome journey to get to this point!

I work for the company that provided the storage for this. Our product is not a collection of commodity components but instead something very much more like an "appliance" that provides the performance at scale that NOAA needs. In general, one of the trends we see/fight is the "Hey, we can get components ourselves and use Lustre to build what we need" And.... they are spot on right. What you need to consider doing this is the amount of maintaining and administering that comes with this solution. The trade-off we see is that some groups, "Academia" for example, will prefer the cheaper solution because they have Grad Students, Post Docs and Undergrad research folks to help make the people cost free. Others, who just want to buy something that works in their infrastructure without adding the people costs would prefer to buy something ready made that "just works"

Bottom line: If you are using your system to get work done, the trend is to spend the money for reliability and availability. If you want to save money, it comes at a price (but is certainly do-able)

Related: Look at Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft... they are large enough to build their custom systems themselves. Not everyone operates at this scale. Individuals can buy a cheap PC and build a NAS... or they can buy one from Netgear, Buffalo, QNAP that "jsut works" at a price premium.

Huge pet peeve of Google... Develop a great little application/product that pulls you in and develops a decent user base only to have it disappear. I get that in a normal company, the finances might in fact dictate that the company can no longer support the user base with the revenue collected. With Google.. these free services seem to disappear with little warning. (to be fair: 4 years of not updating the official Blog was a big clue...)

All that said... just as I was getting used to Wave... poof

Just as I was getting used to GOOG-411... poof

Google Talk...

Don't mind the innovation, but it seems that rather than releasing new versions of existing products to introduce new features and help folks migrate, you get an entire new product to learn/adopt. I can't believe I'm saying this but... I prefer Microsoft's approach to improving their product lines. (sigh)

A huge amen to this...

The universe needs

4 size formats (11, 13, 15 and 17 inch) 3 screen resolutions (1920x1200, 2560x1600, 3840x2400 (17inch only) all 16:10) 2 keyboard options on 15 and 17 inch models (with or without keypad) 4 RAM options (8, 12, 16, and 32 GB) 7 drive options (128, 256, 512 or 1TB SSD, 500GB or 1TB hybrid, 2TB HDD) 4 GPU options (Embedded, High end gaming, Mid gaming, Stable/Workstation (K620, for example)) Touchscreen or not option Removable batteries (except in thin and light and cheapest possible which have integrated batteries)

3-6 body types 1) thin and light (only 11/13/15inch) 11hr battery life, no discrete video, SSD only 2a) middle of the road plastic (13/15/17inch) 6hr or 9hr battery 2b) middle of the road metal (13/15/17inch) 6hr or 9hr battery 3a) rugged/thick/workstation (15/17inch) 4hr or 6hr battery, option slot for either BlurRay RW or 2nrd drive or 2nd video card or secondary battery 3b) thick/gaming (15/17inch) 4hr or 6hr battery, option slot for either BlurRay RW or 2nrd drive or 2nd video card or secondary battery Optional) cheapest possible (15inch) no discrete video, 6hr battery

Not sure why OEM’s can’t get this straight. Also not sure why 1366x768 is still a thing nor why keyboard options aren’t a thing.

Came here to say the same thing. Will also add: If LEO does get polluted, there are options to put (more expensive) satellites into MEO. At this point, it becomes an economic argument to "clean" or "push upwards"

Along the same lines: 1) Govt asks: Have you ever committed a crime? and waits for your response 2) Then asks: Have you ever jaywalked/gone faster than posted speed/etc? (any other "common" crime)

If you answered "no" to 1) and "yes" to 2) then, congrats! You've committed a felony (perjury) in the US. Even if you've done nothing else wrong, you can go to jail.

Also: Always take the 5th... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc (especially in light of infractions against the 4th)

We threw out a firewall appliance that had the admin page only able to run in IE6 (I think it did an explicit check for browser verion) Didn't replace it till we got tired of the P4/XP/IE6 box in the corner. We are tiny (<10ppl) and I can imagine tons of others in similar situations. The 90's was not a good time for browser code bases.

They also said the data was taken "in the past 2 weeks". Assuming that Blue Toad's data changes daily or so, getting a 98% match to their "current" data seems reasonable. If the data changes "real time" then it might be impossible to find the exact time when the data matches 100%.

This is the same argument aimed at Microsoft in the 90's. next big tech company will get the same thing in 20 years. Meh.

Black bar?

"agile vs. Agile" you mix the cases in this :-) I wasn't "there" in 2001, but it seems to me that Agile (the proper noun) is nothing more or less than :

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Where do sprints and iterations fit into this?

I think way too much has been made from the Agile ideal. Many things try to codify Agile into practice, Iterations are great, but why timebox them? Is timeboxing an Agile pattern? Then does a process like Scrumban fail out of being Agile? Does this differentiation help us as practitioners?

IMHO: an Agile organization is one where all the members agree to the Agile Manifesto and use it to help guide their methodology and process selection and optimization.

I agree that the policy is odd, but I actually like the fairness of it. They have a working Financial Aid system that awards discounts/financial help based on -need- which (IMHO) is the right way to do it.