Month: November 2019

Against File systems

File systems unfit as distributed storage backends

Breaking the assumption that a distributed storage backend should clearly be layered on top of a local file system allowed Ceph to introduce a new storage backend called BlueStore with much better performance and predictability, and the ability to support the changing storage hardware landscape.

Omurice

Omurice is a cross between an omelette and Japanese fried rice. The eggs are cooked until they’ve thickened, draped over rice, and then covered with a filling, which can vary from chicken to onions or anything at all, really. The scramble is wholesome, creamy, cooked until it’s not quite set. It is nearly as thin as a crêpe and is served with savory sauce to give it flair. You can ladle some tomato sauce over the eggs, or you can set it on the side. Or, if you’d like something heartier, a demi-glace works. Or a creamy mushroom gravy. Or, if you’re lucky, the chef will blanket your omurice with sliced yellow cheese.

Paris in 1900

Thanks to incredible archives restored and fully colorized, this film presents a previously unseen journey through time and space. Discover, Paris in 1900 at the time of the Exposition Universelle and the very beginning of modern art and cinema. The City of Lights became a showcase city, displaying the latest technical and scientific inventions, and also boasting avant-garde art galleries, lively cabarets, the ultimate in high fashion, and… the Parisiennes. The myth of “La Belle Epoque” reigned supreme.

NYT on data brokers

Sift knew, for example, that I’d used my iPhone to order chicken tikka masala, vegetable samosas and garlic naan on a Saturday night in April 3 years ago. It knew I used my Apple laptop to sign into Coinbase in January 2017 to change my password. Sift knew about a nightmare Thanksgiving I had in California’s wine country, as captured in my messages to the Airbnb host of a rental called “Cloud 9.”

Disco Elysium

a detective RPG of improbable depth. It’s part Planescape: Torment, part police procedural, part psychodrama. Your fatally hungover detective peels himself off the carpet, naked except for a pair of soiled underpants, and begins the laborious process of piecing his broken mind back together, while simultaneously attempting to solve a gruesome murder on the wrong side of the tracks.

Design Roast

The design website Core77 has a weekly feature called Design Roast, devoted to making fun of bad industrial design. My “favorite” this time around is a portable leather chess board with rubber pieces that you are meant to wrap around stones you gather before you can play. This is a leather chess board that comes with silicone bands delineating the pieces; you’re meant to find and gather rocks to tie the bands around, in order to complete the pieces (I’m not kidding). I’d like to see a Checkers variant of this–it would come with the board, a sausage, a zucchini, and a chef’s knife.

River cleaning

While countries and companies try to make more fundamental changes—like reusable and refillable packaging, single-use packaging bans, and recycling systems that actually work—it’s clear that tackling the problem in rivers is one part of the short-term solution. When it comes to cleanup, it’s also far more effective to start on beaches and on rivers rather than trying to tackle the problem in the middle of the ocean. The Ocean Conservancy, which conducts beach cleanups, is also beginning work on a river cleanup system in Vietnam.