@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

HalvarFlake

@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social

I do math. And was once asked by R. Morris Sr. : "For whom?"

Accidental two-time founder. Mathematician by education. Infosec luminary (has-been?).

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

I don't like airports, but if I need to fly, provincial airports in their off-season are my favorites.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Be nice to each other.

The person you are talking to is trapped on a small planet in environmental crisis, with 8 billion vicious, stressed, destructive, murderous and angry monkeys.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

A quick thread on the intensity of Israel's invasion of Gaza. Language about "precision strikes" can distract from understanding just how intense the aerial campaign was.

Strategic bombing of civilian infrastructure was a staple of the Allied WW2 strategy. The estimated death toll among the civilian population was 350k-500k, on a population of 80m, so about 0.4-0.6% over a period of 3 years.

If the Gaza death toll is ballpark accurate, 8000 deaths on 2m inhabitants is 0.4% in three weeks.

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Even if you were to discount the official death toll by half we are still speaking about a devastation that took years of bombing in WW2 in 3 weeks.

This is a reminder that there are no precision strikes in a densely populated city. While I appreciate Israel's efforts (lawyers overseeing strikes etc), the truth is: If the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2 were terrible, this is the same terrible, at a faster rate.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

The number of transistors on a high end GPU need to double twice more until you can buy more transistors in one GPU than Commodore sold in all Amigas ever sold.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

If the average stock picker underperforms Index tracking, why not use a portfolio of stock pickers, short them while going long the index for market neutral return?

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

@druid with all due respect, this is entirely beside the point, and a bit of a cliché cryptobro reply: "I haven't bothered to think about the question, but my answer is fiat bad crypto good."

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

@druid I've followed BTC since 2010 and have remained unconvinced of the utility of it.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

At the risk of sounding like I took a deep bong hit: Can a gravitational waves be surfed? It doesn't seem like it because while it travels outward from it's origin, it pulls instead of pushing?

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Good read by a former MI6 chief:

Israel must know that destroying Hamas is beyond its reach - https://on.ft.com/45MJYyz via @ftworldnews

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Israel and the lessons of 9/11 - https://on.ft.com/3MccGBS via @ft

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

This will read as very conceited, but sometimes when reading other people's work, I feel like for 90% of the IT industry, I wouldn't hire them.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

East-central europe lacked clearly defined ethnic settlement areas prior to WW2.

It was the rise of nationalism in the 19th century that created the idea of ethnicity-based settlement, and "population transfers", what's nowadays properly called "ethnic cleansing". A lot of that stuff happened in the years up to 1950.

It's worth reading the history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Settlement_Commission
With the advance of the Soviets, about 7m people were expelled from these territories; ...

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

.. about 100 years prior, 300k of them had been intentionally settled in Polish territories to "remove" Polish people.

East-central europe used to be a mess of epic proportions.

My own family history mixes Prussian nobility and Huguenot immigrants on my father's side, a German and Polish miners and engineer branch on my mother's.

Ethnic cleansers, people fleeing religious persecution, and both sides in conflicts that killed each other and tried to ethnically cleanse each other.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Given that Bibi is the single most culpable person for both the victims of Hamas and the civilian victims in Gaza it is stunning that he intends to blame it on his security chiefs.

Entirely within character, though.

What a despicable excuse for a person, I have nothing but contempt for him.

Benjamin Netanyahu won’t say sorry - https://on.ft.com/3Mb5825 via @ft

danluu, (edited ) to random
@danluu@mastodon.social avatar

Am I missing something, or is cost saving work systematically undervalued?

Pricing cost savings as breakeven at 25x seems high, but it's a common sentiment. Before joining Twitter, I had a "sell" call with the then-CTO who said the same thing: if a senior eng saves $10M/yr (25:1), that would be considered poor performance and should be a no hire.

That's incredible! Twitter had maybe 2k eng at the time. If each made $10M/yr at the margin, the company would increase its profit by $20B/yr/yr.

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

@danluu I agree about the systematic undervaluation of cost-saving work.

Part of this is that we were in a market regime (low-interest) where "margins didn't matter, only growth did". Uber, WeWork etc. optimized for topline growth, not bottomline growth.

We had a slide in our optimyze sales deck plotting gross margins vs. revenue multiple for SaaS companies in public markets, and going from 60% gross margin to 70% gross margin meant adding an extra 2.5x ARR to company valuation.

HalvarFlake,
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

@danluu I should re-do that plot given that we are now in a high-interest rate environment, I'd expect the multiple to be higher.

Optimyze initially (prior to embarking on building a product) tried to do cut-of-savings consulting, but that ran into corporate obstacles (even though the business case is a no-brainer).

Ever since, I've kicked around the idea of having a team of folks like us partner with a PE firm, and buy SaaS businesses, fix their stack, and then sell them for more.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

"Trade Bibi for the hostages" - a sign held by a protester in Tel Aviv, and probably the most sensible policy proposal I've seen in a while.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

Attack surface reduction only implies attack volume reduction if your software retains the same shape through the process…

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

I am Kung Fu Panda, I eat when I am sad.

HalvarFlake, to random
@HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

As a working parent who cares for 2 kids alone during the week, I could really use a word for the longing to feel well-reated, physically fit, stretched, and relaxed.

grrrr_shark, to random
@grrrr_shark@supervolcano.angryshark.eu avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    HalvarFlake,
    @HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

    @grrrr_shark truth

    HalvarFlake,
    @HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

    @grrrr_shark I was lucky that the school had a teacher in charge of absences that was ok with me attending ~50% of the time provided I did well on my exams.

    That said: The trend in recent decades has been the erosion of any autonomy granted to the teachers or schools to use individual judgement.

    HalvarFlake, to random
    @HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

    About to head to the house I grew up in to spend a few days sorting through my late mother's affairs.

    Just came off of a campylobacter infection followed by a really bad cold.

    I could really use a higher energy level.

    HalvarFlake, to random
    @HalvarFlake@mastodon.social avatar

    The amount of big company execs that show very overt disdain for their customers is always baffling to me.

    Sometimes I think senior management should largely recruit out of the pool of people that have successfully built a product and shipped it (ex-founders).

    So many people with opinions that have never undoubtedly demonstrated the worth of these opinions.

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