http://m.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/4/200168-why-logical-clocks-are-easy/abstract
Why Logical Clocks Are Easy
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Category Archives: General
Tesla Solar Roof
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/no-one-saw-tesla-s-solar-roof-coming
This is another example of how a shift in thinking changes things.
Most car companies who tried to make electric vehicles went for low-cost to reach a mass audience. They failed.
Tesla took a technology company approach. The latest technology is a premium product that costs more. Think about the latest phone or laptop model.
The new Tesla solar roof appears to take the same approach – mimic some of the most expensive types of roofing available so the margins can stay high.
TCP/ICN: Carrying TCP over Content Centric and Named Data Networks
TCP/ICN: Carrying TCP over Content Centric and Named Data Networks
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984357
Interesting paper. I need to catch up on NDN papers.
BBR Congestion Talk is Online
A talk describing Google’s new TCP congestion control algorithm, BBR, is now online.
Such a beautiful and simple solution to a long standing problem. This one of those situations when you have to wonder why this wasn’t done before.
On a related note, it’s interesting how BBR separates the retransmission and congestion control (rate) logic. There is a section in An Engineering Approach to Networking where the author specifically calls out that it’s easier to solve both problems if they are considered separately vs. using the retransmission window size to control the rate as most TCP congestion control solutions do. This struck me as very interesting and I’m excited to see it demonstrated by sch_fq and BBR now.
Interesting new TCP congestion control algorithm
Linux 4.8 and Skylake (Dell XPS 9550)
I’ve had a Dell XPS 9550 since around February. It’s a fantastic laptop but there definitely have been teething pains with the Skylake processor and Linux, specifically related to power management.
Today I installed Linux kernel 4.8-rc5 and got a nice surprise vs 4.7.2 which I was running.
That’s quite a bit better than observed with 4.7.2 and far, far better than 4.5.X when I first got the laptop.
A Great HN Comment
Usually, comments are not worth commenting on but this one, on a story about the Dell EMC merger, is worth pointing out:
“I’m just fascinated by the fact that in 2016 there are still huge companies like this making their money on ancient tech that is insanely overpriced to the alternatives.”
You’re not wrong.
The problem with your point of view (which I share – it is also my point of view) is that you’re operating on the wrong layer of abstraction.
These customers don’t need a server (or a network or a SAN) – they need business objectives to be met – again, at a very highly abstracted layer.
You’re thinking about technology and capabilities and features and configuration options … and maybe you’re even thinking about price … but that’s not the layer they are operating at. They need an airplane to be built. They need a mine to be dug. They don’t care about LUNs or stripe sizes or jumbo frames. They do care about contracts and legal commitments and “synergy”. And that’s why they rely on heuristics like business lunches and enterpris-ey sales guys and CIA guys giving keynotes at RSA.
I don’t like working at that layer of abstraction so I built a business that operates on the layer I like to work at.[1] But as much as I dislike the higher layers of abstraction, it would be childish of me to think they were “wrong”.
[1] You know who we are.