Fastmail opts for using its own hardware over cloud services, focusing on cost optimization and long-term planning, leveraging 25 years of experience.
They have upgraded to NVMe SSDs, enhancing performance and reliability compared to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).
Fastmail uses ZFS for storage, which offers advantages like compression and encryption, and has chosen new 2U servers with SSDs for improved input/output, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
Fastmail opts for using its own hardware over cloud services, citing cost-effectiveness for businesses with substantial hosting requirements.
The discussion between cloud and self-hosting is often clouded by misconceptions, with some cloud advocates lacking technical insight.
Fastmail's strategy underscores the feasibility of businesses managing their own systems, questioning the assumption that cloud solutions are universally superior.
The developer behind Rosetta 2 has left Apple to focus on Lean, a proof assistant and programming language, highlighting a shift towards formal reasoning and software verification.
Rosetta 2 is recognized for its technical prowess, with significant contributions from this developer before a team was established.
The transition to Lean is motivated by its potential in AI advancements, with goals to enhance scalability, usability, and proof automation.
Ancient Mesopotamian account-keeping utilized clay tablets with rows and columns, akin to modern data tables, as evidenced by a tablet from Larsa, Iraq, translated by Eleanor Robson.- The tablet, cataloged at the British Museum, resembles a payroll summary for a construction project, demonstrating organized data with headers and calculations over 3500 years ago.- This historical insight highlights that while data tables have ancient origins, their continuous use isn't guaranteed, as inventions can be lost and rediscovered over time.
The discussion emphasizes the timeless relevance of tabular data representation, despite the data table being from 2020, which is considered outdated by current standards.
Participants explore the historical significance and intuitive design of tables, noting their evolution into modern spreadsheets and databases.
The conversation also considers cultural and technical advancements in data preservation, suggesting that modern data might be preserved similarly to ancient data.
Slow deployments increase risk and lead to more meetings, while frequent, smaller deployments reduce risk and enhance value delivery.
Automated testing and infrastructure improvements can decrease the need for meetings and improve deployment efficiency, but organizations often face challenges like bureaucracy and lack of technical skills.
Encouraging non-technical staff to embrace automated testing and reducing manual processes, along with adopting microservices, can improve deployment frequency, though it requires organizational change and better governance.
HyperEssays is an online project providing modern editions of Michel de Montaigne's Essays, featuring four versions from different historical translations and updates.- The project offers tools and context for new readers, with free chapter PDFs and formatting for easy reading on various devices, covering topics like religion, friendship, and law.- HyperEssays is a continually evolving resource, welcoming contributions to maintain its accessibility and free availability.
Michel de Montaigne's essays, available online, are often likened to blogs due to their personal yet carefully crafted nature, covering diverse topics such as the acceptance of death.
A notable quote from his essay "Of Experience" emphasizes the human condition, stating that even on the highest throne, we remain human.
Modern translations and AI-assisted updates aim to make Montaigne's writings more accessible, preserving their original charm for both wealthy and ordinary readers.
The text explores methods for dividing unsigned 8-bit numbers using SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions, focusing on floating-point division and the long division algorithm.
It highlights the implementation of these methods using SSE, AVX2, and AVX-512 instructions, with performance comparisons on CPUs like Ryzen 7, Skylake-X, and IceLake.
Notably, the AVX-512 implementation of long division is the fastest on Intel CPUs, while AVX2 using approximate reciprocal is the fastest on Ryzen, with source code available on GitHub.
Division of unsigned 8-bit numbers can be optimized by using multiplication with a reciprocal, approximated by a dyadic rational, such as multiplying by 171 and right-shifting by 9 for division by 3.
This optimization is beneficial in hardware and optimizing compilers, with additional techniques like modular multiplication, lookup tables, and SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions, though each has limitations.
Some Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), like RISC-V Vector Extension, support SIMD integer division, but such support is uncommon, and various techniques, including floating-point arithmetic and micro-lookup tables, are explored for optimization.
JEP 483 proposes Ahead-of-Time (AOT) class loading and linking for Java, aiming to enhance startup times, particularly beneficial for command-line interface (CLI) applications.
The proposal focuses on caching class loading and linking data, not Just-In-Time (JIT) compiled code, which could be advantageous in serverless environments like AWS Lambda.
A trade-off exists between increased container size and improved class loading speed, which needs careful evaluation, especially for larger applications.
The Corelatus Blog delves into telecom hardware, specifically E1/T1 and SDH/SONET interfaces, and recently analyzed telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'.- The analysis identified SS5 signalling, a system used in the early 1980s, by examining audio spectrograms and comparing them to known standards like DTMF and CAS R2.- The study concluded that the audio likely originated from a real call, providing an authentic long-distance connection feel, with an extended version appearing in the song 'Young Lust'.
James Guthrie revealed that a telephone operator's voice was recorded for Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' to symbolize the isolation experienced while touring.
The recording process for the album was marked by artistic freedom, free from commercial constraints, leading to its expansive and intricate tracks.
The interview also highlighted the difficulty in deciphering the phone number used in the recording due to changes in London's area codes over the years.
SingleFile is a versatile web extension and command-line tool that enables users to save entire web pages as single HTML files, compatible with major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
It offers features like saving selected content, multiple tabs, annotations, auto-save, and integration with Google Drive and GitHub, although it has some limitations with certain domains and file name characters.
The tool is open-source, licensed under AGPL, and is utilized in projects like ArchiveBox and Zotero Connector, with contributions from various translators.
SingleFile is a web extension designed to save entire web pages as single HTML files, offering a compact saving method using UTF-16 encoding.- The extension provides an alternative by saving pages as self-extracting ZIP/HTML files, addressing limitations of standard browser save functions and enhancing PDF printing.- Privacy concerns were discussed, but the developer confirmed that SingleFile respects user privacy, making it a valuable tool for offline access and sharing.