There's a corollary to that question: why would China choose not to block Mullvad? We know every large nation with a capable online force maintains a fleet of ORBs, so maybe they consider Mullvad more useful for them as a functioning system?
Some of their own contractors may well depend on Mullvad. Perhaps as long as the overall "civilian" volume and user count remains acceptably low, the cost-benefit estimate may well be in favour of letting it slip by. (And for the civilians that do use a working variant, subject their connections to fine-grained traffic analysis.)
Photoshop was basically done at CS6 (which was less than 15 years ago), so why not? I know the copy I'm keeping around to avoid Adobe rent-seeking is eventually goong to stop working on new OS versions.
Worked with some of the teams making the first iPhone and bringing the Internet to everyone in a pocket sized slab was way more than a job it was a dream. Didn't turn out quite as expected, but this idea that work is only that is in my opinion dangerous. Millions are made selling sugar water and there is a famous multimillionaire with warehouses full of nickles, but business can be much more than that and it is up to all participants to build, man, and steer the boats.
> All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowledge (Americans tend to lag behind in the latter compared to all international students). What mattered was passion. The way to become successful in mathematics, like almost every endeavor, is to care about it, to love it, to obsess over it.
This is the most important point from the article. My theory is that if you are not obsessed with something, you won’t be good enough with it, wether it’s a math, coding, business or something else… Thats how most of us got started in tech from the early ages.
It depends on what you mean by “good enough”. Most developers today aren’t particularly passionate about it, and certainly not obsessed, but the demand for them is high enough so they still are “good enough” to have relatively cushy jobs.
That's a good point, but it can also be that the employer is satisfied with the "good enough" results.
While it is true that the current high demand on a job market allows many to have "good enough" skills for employment, I would argue that passion, curiosity, and obsession are the driving forces that lead to better outcomes both for individuals and the industry as a whole. These qualities inspire deeper engagement and lead to more quality work. For routine tasks, basic competence might suffice. However, for solving complex problems, it won't...
Passion/curiosity/obsession often leads to voluntary, extensive practice and learning. This typically results in faster skill acquisition and a deeper understanding of the subject matter. While becoming competent without any of these is possible, the path is often slower and limited.
Also, both the tech industry and the job market are evolving rapidly. Passionate/curious/obsessed developers are more likely to keep up with new technologies and methodologies, potentially leading to better long-term career prospects and adaptability. The pace of change in our industry demands a continuous hunger for knowledge and a relentless pursuit of excellence.
In the end, if you don't want to be a mediocre developer with a mediocre career, such stuff matters.
Awesome! I love seeing kids play around with code. Curiosity is very important at any age.
That’s how I started too. Back in the days of Internet Explorer, I used to click View -> Source and mess around with the HTML in Notepad. I’d change the content, blocks, colors...
About 25 years later, I’m still coding, but right now I’m deploying the data transformation pipeline (T in the ELT) on production server to calculate business KPIs.
Very true. There’s a huge difference developing in a well known vs. new domain. My mantra is that you have to first be experienced in a domain to be able to craft a good solution.
Right now I am pouring most of my time in a fairly new domain, just to get an experience. I sit next to the domain experts (my decision) to quickly accumulate the needed knowledge.
Software developer and aspiring 7th generation winemaker from Georgia (Republic of) here.
We're proud of Georgia being one of the oldest wine producing regions. In fact, it is called Cradle of Wine for a reason. Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine#History):
> The earliest known traces of wine are from Georgia (c. 6000 BCE).
Also, traditional Georgian winemaking is something worth exploring if you're a wine enthusiast: wine being made in the large clay pots (Qvevri) buried in the ground. Long maceration/skin-contact, 500+ endemic grape varieties, etc...
Awesome that your family has resumed traditional methods with what I imagine to be traditional grape varieties. The subject fascinates me.
On a similar note, there are a handful of wine producing countries whose products are very hard to find in the west. I suppose that they would be less special if one could buy them everywhere but still... lots to discover. Santé!
The problem with wine products being available on the US market is very complex. The main issue is US laws, taxes, and procedures.
As a small producer, to make my wines available on the US market, I need to find a licensed alcohol importer (~35% added margin). Alcohol importer is eligible to only sell wines to the licensed alcohol distributors (another ~35% added margin). Alcohol distributors are qualified to only sell to licensed retailers (another ~35% added margin). Add production and transportation costs to the US, and the price gets very high. Even if the market can bear such high prices, the procedures are so complex and out of producers' control that it's very unattractive market. Add the complexity of state laws and taxes. Each state has different requirements.
Several years ago, I imported a test batch of my wines to the US. Some bottles might still be available in the shops (3 shops in Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey). Imagine you need an excellent importer/distributor willing to go the extra mile for your product. In that case, it takes a lot of work to find success. You may have a fascinating wine but may get stuck in these bureaucracies.
I was thinking of going D2C via an online store. However, most of the states don't allow shipping out of state. Besides, you still have to go through all those procedures mentioned above.
I can't speak for the US since I don't live there although I admit it is a very big market...
In wine producing countries in general, and the US is one, one will encounter a lot of 'non tariff barriers to trade' (i.e., administrative challenges) that make the import of foreign wines difficult. To be frank, and despite the expense that you correctly underline, I can only imagine doing so with the help of an enthusiastic importer.
I know a retailer in Switzerland who would probably love to import Georgian wines (and many others, as long as they fit his taste) but the quantities would be so small to not even be worth your time.
Anyway, I do hope to visit Georgia one day and your cave.
This leads us to another problem: you cannot easily sell niche products on a large market (Georgian wine and amber wine is one), mainstream customers want mainstream wines.
So, you are left with several options:
1) Do a mainstream wines - beyond my values;
2) Build a brand, which is very, very hard…
3) Do an exceptional wine, “so good they can’t ignore you”… that’s my long term goal. That’s why I am experimenting a lot, which I believe will lead me to a great results. Right now my wine could be ranked as top 5-10%, but my goal is to make it in top 1-2%. Check back in a few years :))
The 2021 vintage was very good, but the recent ones are even better. Sadly, we only produce experimental wines (new varieties, blends, different techniques) right now. Last year, we made 12 various experiments. Out of them, we will blend some more, and we will receive 20+ different wines.
My current goal is not to rush into the markets and start selling. I prefer to do experiments for several years, hear knowledgeable people's feedback, and then select the winners.
If you are in the SF Bay Area, Piala in Sebastopol and Healdsburg imports and sells Georgian wine.
They may ship to you in other parts of the US too (but I would not recommend it — natural wine degrades quite fast when shipped with traditional couriers)
> natural wine degrades quite fast when shipped with traditional couriers
It's sporadic to achieve and maintain the needed natural sulfur level in the wine. In most cases, you must add some sulfur to maintain wine stability for shipment. Many natural wine brands refuse to use any SO2 at all.
Imagine you're a small winery, poured your heart and did your best to make a great wine. Now it's time to ship overseas... by NOT adding any sulfur, you risk your product getting damaged. A small amount of sulfur is a small compromise you make to make your wine more stable and ready to be shipped overseas.
Almost all of them. Only few varieties are hybrid or manually breeded.
Out of those 500+ varieties, around 50 are in production. The rest are either very rare to find, are grown in a small quantities or are kept in the vine nurseries as a collection varieties.
Saperavi (red) and Rkatsiteli (white) are amongst the most popular, though there are other ones that are really good: Mtsvane, Chinuri, Kisi, Tsitska, Aleksandrouli, Shavkapito and my personal favourite - Usakhelauri (once I opened a bottle at home and within a hour aromas were spread across the whole house like a premium fragrance).
Loads of over-engineering decisions would be avoided if devs understood how to read EXPLAIN/ANALYZE results and do the proper indexing/query optimization.
Log queries, filter our the ones that are very frequent or take loads of time to execute, cache the frequent ones, optimize the fat ones, do this systematically and your system will be healthier.
Things that help massively from my experience:
- APM
- slow query log
- DB read/write replicas
- partitioning and sharding
Simply understanding how to read explain output can be quite a task in itself though, databases are a whole other thing, especially if you barely do any SQL yourself.
Tools like https://explainmysql.com that make it clearer what you actually need to optimise are an easier system for Devs with enough database knowledge to set stuff up, but not enough to understand how it's used.
I assume someone's already working on an AI system that takes schema and logs and returns the SQL needed to magically improve things. Not sure I'd trust that, but I'd bet many companies would rather use that then get a full DBA.
Understanding explain output is usually very simple. 1 Look for any occurrence of “table scan”. 2. Add index on those queried fields or limit the query by filtering on another already indexed field.
This should unclog the most low hanging fruit. Then there is of course more advanced scenarios, especially with joins.
That’s not to say that the UX for explaining (hah) this doesn’t have a lot of room for improvement.
Do you know of any good resources to understand sql explain plan. In my current project, we are facing a lot of issues related to query performance on MS SQL server. Do we need to always specify index hint with queries. Sometimes index exists but query does not seem to be using the index. I am thinking using sql execution plan could help us understand this issue better. tia.
Can't even count how many "next Gen architecture" sessions I've been at which certainly could've been replaced with due diligence on the current implementation.
You don't fix bad coding with a new architecture. That just puts the problem off by some time.
So, login without mullvad, turn it on after that and it should work.