raghava

Most down-detectors are down due to their dependency on CF.

Cloudflare Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad edge-nodes also unable to serve content.

x.com down.

Few quick-commerce apps are acting up at times.

Interesting set of points; the intent to move beyond sterile dashboards and engage in deeper, more meaningful conversations about system health is very welcome, especially in a time when most leaders don't bother to read about Goodhart's law on metrics.

But still, I spot a few points of concern.

- While experienced engineers develop valuable intuition, this can also be a source of significant bias. An engineer's "feeling" might be influenced by their personal comfort with a particular technology, their resistance to change, or their own role in creating the system in question (the "IKEA effect"). Over-relying on intuition can lead to subjective decision-making that isn't backed by evidence.

- What is "simple" for a senior engineer with years of context might be overwhelmingly complex for a new team member. Furthermore, some business domains are inherently complex, and attempting to impose a simplistic model can lead to a system that fails to capture the necessary nuance and ultimately creates more problems.

- Informal discussions can be dominated by the loudest voices, the most senior people in the room, or those with the most social capital. Junior engineers or those with dissenting opinions may not feel comfortable speaking up, leading to a skewed and incomplete picture of the system's health. A more formal "safe space" approach might help here, to increase psychological safety perception of participants, for a better discussion.

- For large, legacy systems that have been in production for years, questions like "Can we explain the system's responsibility in plain English, within 5 minutes?" or "Do simple modifications you expect in hours, take many days?" can be demoralizing rather than constructive. They might highlight known, intractable problems without offering a clear path forward, leading to shame, anxiety and frustration.

Disaster stemming from the deadly combo of Dunning Kruger effect + network effect + recommendation algorithms floating similar BS up top.

Most who post absolute BS on such "professional" forums as a way to gain a larger "network" easily attract similar ones with relatable mediocrity index. The network effect kicks in and mediocrity gets amplified.

Everyone thus gets forced to either to act insanely ridiculous or just GTFO to retain whatever little sanity they have left in them.

Most corporate jobs are just mediocrity-maxxing absolutely BS jobs. It is only natural that the most popular corporate SM amplifies and promotes BS and mediocrity at scale.

just came across this. am not the author/dev behind this. sounds like a very cool project.

I don't think that is the case even now.

Don't know much about LatAm now but can comment on conditions in Asia.

In fact, internationalization and local language input (especially for Indic content) is much more neater and simpler in Linux as I have seen. And in India/Indonesia/Philippines especially, most SMEs/startups/mid-or-small-banks simply use English itself and get the job done. Except for some PR related stuff, all content and data that they manage is almost always in English only.

I wonder how the 8K to 6K reduction happened.

As said, most of their workloads were on cheap VPSs before. Moved some to 'scale-to-zero' solutions, reduced the bloat in VMs, fixed some buggy IaC, also moved some stuff to the serverless scene. That got a decent ~20% reduction.

Points to be noted.

1. It took the end of ZIRP era for people to realize the undue complexity of many fancy tools/frameworks. The shitshow would have continued unabated as long as cheap money was in circulation.

2. Most seasoned engineers know for the fact that any abstractions around the basic blocks like compute, storage, memory and network come with their own leaky parts. And that knowledge and wisdom helps them make the suitable trade-offs. Those who don't grok them, shoot themselves in the foot.

Anecdote on this. A small sized startup doing B2B SaaS was initially running all their workloads on cheap VPSs incurring a monthly bill of around $8K. The team of 4 engineers that managed the infrastructure cost about $10K per month. Total cost:$8K. They made a move to 'cloud native' scene to minimize costs. While the infra costs did come down to about $6K per month, the team needed new bunch of experts who added about another $5K to the team cost, making the total monthly cost $21K ($6K + $10K + $5K). That plus a dent to the developer velocity and the release velocity, along with long windows of uncertainty with regards to debugging complex stuff and challenges. The original team quit after incurring extreme fatigue and just the team cost has now gone up to about $18K per month. All in all, net loss plus undue burden.

Engineers must be tuned towards understanding the total cost of ownership over a longer period of time in relation to the real dollar value achieved. Unfortunately, that's not a quality quite commonly seen among tech-savvy engineers.

Being tech-savvy is good. Being value-savvy is way better.

Once a capable AI that can make a "Two Brothers" trailer like this one below comes up, humanity has some serious issues to tackle, other than climate change ofc! :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBUUoyZoja4

there is a great opportunity to help businesses manage their software supply chain

Yes, very much. There are so many layers, components, and their intricate relations that goes totally ignored today at least in most places. Because, doing so is insane amounts of work. Only BigCos can afford to have dedicated teams for 's/w supply chain management', considering the cost-parity-with-returns. However, the solution on this end that works for BigCo doesn't necessarily work for SMEs & startups. That gap isn't small, if am right.

Another product that is often requested is a visual DAG debugger. When a pipeline break, you want to know why, and staring at your CI logs is definitely not the best experience for that. With a web UI, there's a lot we can do there.

Yes. This definitely helps. But more than a viz DAG element, people look for an early-warning of a failure. Most common build-failure reasons (other than failed tests) -> expired creds used somewhere in the pipeline, provisioning failed/time-out, problem at some other dependent module totally outside org's control (some OSS/dep). People seem to be bothered equally about how to squash'em rather than just where to squash. Locating the part where pipeline broke is just half the part. Actionable insights as to how that pipeline can be healed is the hard part. And considering the diversity of the ecosystem, that's gonna be a wild ride.

BTW, are you folks hiring? "DevOps OS for enterprises" seems very very enthralling, esp for an old toolmaker.

Yes, I understand that BITB+MITM is a huge risk. But my point was that most who want to run BITB won't typically have the means to run an MITM along with it. (unless 'MITM within a browser' becomes a reality!)

I was trying to say that the dynamic security element helps in filtering at least the most common kind of attack, which otherwise leaves consumers to bear a very large risk.

Didn't get your concern. I was saying that BITB actors typically won't be running a proxy within the network.

Yes. That's why a cluster of elements for a "secret identity theme", instead of just one image. (After all, infosec/security is finally just a game of making reward-to-effort ratio too impractical for most threat-actors & thus achieve reasonable 'sense of security', in a world where exploits exist for almost every ring in the stack - including ring 0)

I feel BITB mostly gets used by those who may not really be having access to lob a proxy attack at the intended target as well, which filters a good set, among potential victims.

Possible mitigation measure:

1. If identity providers start offering a dynamic, trusted element within the critical pages (login, password prompt, 2FA/OTP verification etc)

2. if such dynamic element is from a known range/set of customer/trusted-party supplied identity elements.

Ex. During my account creation, say I am prompted to select some "secret identity themes", and I choose { batman, bike, carrots }

At the login/password/OTP prompt, I am shown a 3x3 grid of pics / words / hints, which have at least 3 (or whatever configurable number, in my account preferences) that are somehow connected to my "secret identity theme". This way, I know I can trust this page. The grid also has many unrelated ones acting as decoys elements, so that any malicious spoofing party cannot really figure them out.

I believe you get the general idea.

Do y'all feel this can possibly help, in mitigating this very serious & very harmful threat?

I intend to write a short post on this soon.

IMO, this belief system comes close to one that mentions to find one's sweet spot between rage & serenity, for real focus & bliss.

https://sarahmjamieson.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/true-focus-l...

Had read this above linked post long time ago, on the topic.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mp-student-gets-bl...

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"A member of the team, Dr Vivek Sathe, frisked the student and found a mobile phone in the inner pocket of his trouser. The phone was switched on and connected to a Bluetooth device, Dr Dixit said. However, the team did not find a Bluetooth device on the student.

On sustained questioning, the student confessed that an ENT surgeon had fitted a skin coloured micro Bluetooth device in his ear.

The squad also found another student with a small SIM-powered device and a micro Bluetooth device, but the student informed the squad that it was not inserted surgically and can be removed with a pin.

The devices have been sent to an internal examination committee, which will decide whether a police case for using unfair means in an exam should be filed, Thakur said.

Dr Anand Rai, the whistleblower in the so-called Vyapam scam, where various competitive exams were rigged, said: “It is very easy to get Bluetooth fitted in the ears. It is attached to the ear temporarily and can be removed. Such a technique was used by a Vyapam scam accused too to clear his medical exam eight years ago.”

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Many here take that high-risk path, even though they know that clearing the entrance is just step 0, and there are tougher exams further. Such is the mindlessness at display.

> Where I live, that sentence would usually turn out to be something like "Naale inda lockdown, vahanagaLu yavdu Ache barubaaradu".

Mass media has gone bonkers my friend.

If you haven't been following, they even had a headline "first night curfew, hegirutte gottaa!?" with "first night" in a different color.

It's all about masala headlines. Nobody bothers about textbook Kannada anymore, except of course students and hapless Kannada teachers.

Media out here are total sellouts who are just busy peddling absolute BS to their viewers, anything and everything for TRPs

Kannadiga* here.

very interesting theory.

Although I haven't come across many Kannadigas who choose en_CA due to KA and CA sounding similar, this is an angle for sure.

But OP's guess (en_CA alphabetically above en_GB / en_US) is a more possible reality.

Another trivia: Kannada-English dialect is called "Kanglish" here. Ex: "ಲಾಕ್-ಡವ್ನ್ ! ಬಸ್ಸು ಕಾರು ಎಲ್ಲಾ ರೋಡಿಂದಾ ಬ್ಯಾನ್!" [phonetic: 'lockdown! baSSu, kaaru ellaa road-indaa byaan!'] Though the sentence is accepted to be Kannada, only true Kannada word there is "ellaa" (=> all)

Kanglish is the norm here, and textbook Kannada isn't getting good love from many. The onslaught of Sankrit on pure classical Kannada is a different topic altogether, for another day!

*people from Karnataka who speak Kannada.

Many out here are saying that "the system has collapsed".

They are _SO_ wrong. We never _had_ a system to begin with, in the first place!

Our "system" is only _EXPOSED_ now, to the entire world.

What's seen and exposed now, is what had been operational for the last 30 odd years. Everything needs some strings to be pulled and some hands made warm with a stash of notes.

A nation full of mostly meek, timid, inherently corrupt people all of a sudden wondering that "our system has failed! uiuiuiui!"

Indian nation had a grand opportunity at getting better. The Indian public just shat on it and smeared cowdung listening to the right wing propaganda. Now, let them drown in cow-urine / dung.

Many of the older core banking systems were keyboard only, because it made the tellers work a lot faster.

I know because I had been on some of those unfortunate teams that transitioned to GUI that required to use the mouse and the teller's productivity decreased terribly - something that took 30 seconds ended up taking almost 4 minutes, and seeing this, the banks refused to transition to the "new and advanced" versions, until the old charmode UI was slapped on it again.

All that goodness limited by networking troubles of WSL2 while on a VPN.

Wonder why it is never seen by WSL devs! Most of those trying to use WSL are running Windows, in a corp network, where a VPN is there by default.

- May work for situations where the buyer is the user

- Doesn't work for B2B/enterprisey products/SaaS, where often buyers and users are separated by many levels of corporate hierarchies.

The Opposition at all levels is just crushed to suit the populist narrative. In a world powered by fake news, the populist and majoritarian belief and narrative becomes the truth, and this drives the nation and society further towards right-wing mindset, and any opposition/contrarian views just keep diminishing - out of fear, delegitimacy and ignorance as they now form just a real minute segment of the whole.

Dragon's Egg

TIL!

Oh, looks like this movie "Evolution" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(2001_film) ) was also on those lines then!

"Before" is dated 2019.

All the diff is to be atrributed to this blast? Am I missing anything obvious here?

Same deal here in India. Maybe Trump administration got inspired by the theater that happened around TikTok here in India, and the political undertones.

TikTok had some of the rad and most creative memes that splendidly ridiculed the failures of the current government (and their principles, policies [demonetization, GST, bank busts, GDP/growth/economy crash, election theater, ultra-right-religious-discourse, absolute capitulation of mainstream media and their subservience to ruling members, lies around border conflicts, failure of central and federal systems, failure of judiciary, handling of the pandemic, the whole "light lamps and bang plates to ward off virus" etc - everything!) and also their associated right wing organizations). The ban was dressed up as "ban on Chinese products". Meanwhile, the BCCI (a sports body - whose budgets rival GDP of few nations), which is now having the son of India's Home Minister as one of the top shots in management, continues their deal with a Chinese sponsor.

Now, some local app with a lot of "censoring" is what's being touted as India's answer, while it has always been control and power to shape and keep public opinion under check -as defined by Ministry of Truth here.

Many birds with one shot!

Summary: "We see you have a good business here, funny if something might happen to it! You know, bad things happen around these days a lot! But we can help, ya'see!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Shah

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retai...

The average man always wants cheaper goods and services, even if that is the result of misery/suffering of some people, few of which will be known to him.

In a resource-constrained, cut-throat competetive economy where everything is seen as a zero-sum deal, the average man will never hesitate to root for less-for-others if it guarantees more-for-me.

Where people's measure of worth is what one owns rather than what one does or how one lives, such a decadence is but a mere natural happenstance.

The eastern scriptures depict this in an allegorical way - a time in the world where there's no evil (satya yuga, pure and natural), followed by a time where the world is deviating towards order (treta yuga), followed by a time in the world where the balance of dharma (righteousness) tilts slightly towards adharma (wickedness or everything opposite of righteous) which was Dwaparayuga, followed by the age where righteousness is nowhere to be found (Kali yuga which is where we are now) This being a cycle and the cycle continues forever and ever. A refresh will happen - how soon or later, nobody seems to know!

Cause, they ... can?

Why would a nation choose to go to the moon, or build something otherworldy?

Jeff Bezos himself isn't spared from Jio tax[1], what chance does a measly entrepreneur stand against Ambani and Jio!

[1]https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/23/amazon-reportedly-in-talks...

Not judging, IMO but MAGAF* can really afford to pump money into enhancing RISC-V - individually or via a consortium, and stand to benefit together, while developing the whole ecosystem too. The early days of Apple and MS were sorta on these lines anyway - which caused an explosion of growth and wealth. Not able to reason why this isn't happening now!

*Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, FB

[Edit 1]: A quick search throws up that Google, IBM, SONY etc are already members of RISC-V foundation.

Also, https://riscv.org/2018/08/eet-asia-article-microsoft-and-goo...

Yes, they are 100% lying about this. Any time you see an article about skills shortage, it's complete bullshit. It is cheap for them to create the illusion of a skills shortage via articles and blog spam. What they really want is people to spend their own money on training vs. them training their own talent. Then, once you've spent your money on training, you'll still run similar gauntlets in interviews that developers like to complain about.

This is so true. It is now common with most undergrads in India now, that they cannot even apply for a fresher job without such additional courses/certificates.

Training, learning and skill development budgets mobilized by CXOs for "other purposes"(may be for their vacation in the Swiss Alps that they promised to their spouse).