amudi’s

Funny.

Go check the website for the whole awesomeness!

Because if the world ends tomorrow, you won't have to do it.

Excellent set of distributed systems rules of thumb:

o   L1 cache reference 0.5 ns

o   Branch mispredict 5 ns

o   L2 cache reference 7 ns

o   Mutex lock/unlock 25 ns

o   Main memory reference 100 ns

o   Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000 ns

o   Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network 20,000 ns

o   Read 1 MB sequentially from memory 250,000 ns

o   Round trip within same datacenter 500,000 ns

o   Disk seek 10,000,000 ns

o   Read 1 MB sequentially from disk 20,000,000 ns

o   Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA 150,000,000 ns

Zippy eh?

- Manage SVN repositories on your iPhone
- Use your iPhone to backup your SVN repositories
- Track your projects at Work, College or even on Holiday
- Edit your source code on the move
- Monitor When, Why, What and by Who changes were made to your projects.
- Ability to any Revert changes made

Yes, there's an app for that too..

The software business learned that in the early 1980s, when companies like VisiCorp showed that although the words "software" and "publisher" fit together, the underlying concepts don't. Software isn't like music or books. It's too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that's what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style.

A very interesting take on the Apple App Store approval process, by Paul Graham. You should stop whatever you are doing right now and go read the whole thing.

Best!

I have been staring at this animated gif for the last 5 minutes. Fascinating. How a Sewing Machine Works.

Did you know?

For years I have marveled at the fact that the Chinese government could be so practical. They didn't seem bogged down by the superstitions and sideshow passions that you so often see in other governments. China's leaders make decisions like engineers. For example, every time I hear someone yapping about how China harvests organs from executed criminals, all I'm thinking is That's a practical way to get spare parts.

China's leadership isn't big on religion. And apparently they don't see any upside in war. They handle their money wisely. They put a lot of energy into building infrastructure. And they care more about stability than human rights. In other words, they value efficiency over feelings. It's exactly the way you'd expect a bunch of engineers to run a country. Obviously this approach has served China well.

The bad news for China is that their up-and-coming leaders have backgrounds in law, economics, and history. In time, the lawyers will start passing lots of laws that individually make sense while collectively strangling the business sector in red tape. The economists will all disagree with each other, and the historians will be planning for the past. So China is pretty much doomed. But they had a good run.

Pretty interesting.

Sometimes math can be fun.