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Comment Y2K was not fake - I wish we'd let it crash (Score 3, Interesting) 114

I sat in the cube at MCI (later MCI Worldcom... later defunct and sold for scraps) next to the lead guy doing Y2K auditing of critical infrastructure code that had been "fixed."

Even after the first pass, he caught dozens of errors that would have shut down the phone and data backbone for days or weeks at Y2K, and MCI controlled 85% of the North American backbone at the time.

Several times, I helped him walk through the code, and we found bugs that would have effectively shut down vast sections of the network and made it nearly impossible to patch. Without the routing of the network, it would have isolated the very machines that needed updated software. When people tell me that Y2K was a non-event, I get visibly angry because we worked our backsides off to make sure it was a non-event, and in return, we get told there was never a problem to begin with.

It makes me almost wish we'd have let it all come crashing down because we could have leveraged that for the next ten years of over-priced salaries instead of what did happen, which was five years of some of the leanest and most brutal job markets ever.

That was our reward for a job well done: layoffs and salary cuts.

This Leigh Claire La Berge and her story aren't worth the "cow dirt" that the guy took up shoveling after his retirement (he raised cattle).

Comment Re:fuck these articles (Score 1) 129

This study showed they do something. Taking vitamins actually increases your mortality. WTH? Large long-term study too. Maybe they didn't correctly sample or normalize?

"On the contrary, mortality risk was 4% higher among multivitamin users, compared with nonusers, in the initial years of follow-up (multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02-1.07).1"

Comment Re:Back in my day... (Score 1) 74

For performance, aren't you talking about RAID? But RAID in a single form factor sounds like. Stack five disks in one so you double speed with redundancy for failure and a spare...

The last time I ran RAID it was great until the controller crapped out and all was lost. So buy two RAID arrays? :-)

On advances in capacity, I would argue CPUs have discrete jumps as you make new manufacturing fabs/processes. A few incremental increases but some significant jumps along the way as well.

Comment Back in my day... (Score 1) 74

First PC: HarCard slot-and-half 20 MB HDD in a Compaq luggable beast. I was the boss with 1 MB RAM and dual 5.25" floppies and a tiny monochrome screen.

Now literally 1,000,000 times as much storage in a little under 40 years.

That's basically doubling every 2 years, sorta like Moore's law...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FHardcard%2F

Submission + - Red Hat Addresses Source Code Policy (phoronix.com) 1

gatzke writes: Red Hat tried to clarify their stance on recent changes to their source code release policy which prohibits licensees from publicly releasing source code under threat of license revocation.

âoeSimply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. âoe

Comment Re:$100 billion share movement is silly (Score 2) 91

I lost a lot of faith in ChatGPT / AI after the examples where it made up citations.

At least with a search engine you get links that you can evaluate. I know folks play the SEO AI page spam scam, but generally you get to published pages instead of made up information.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fdsmerdon%2Fs...

Comment Re:foot (Score 2) 286

I use MobaXTerm for X windows stuff but it seems to be a bit heavy. And I think the last time I checked I had trouble finding how to modify keybaord shortcuts for tab switching to match my browser, CTRL-PgUp etc.

I found Console and I am pretty happy with it for most basic console stuff on windows.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojec...

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