ROTI, GitLab, VPN, Email Flood, UDP vs TCP, Deep Web, Compact Fusion Reactor

Post date: May 21, 2017 4:30:12 AM

• I've been thinking about traveling and meetings. What's the ROTI for those. Payback time or Return On Investment (ROI) is one way to say it. But Return On Time Invested (ROTI) is one way to see it. Is it really worth of traveling to meetings, how much time would be saved if that wouldn't happen. Often meetings do not provide such extra value to make it worthwhile. I've also mentioned several times that if there are problems with project, customers want to have meetings to discuss and dig in to the reasons. But if the problems are caused by lack of resources, every additional explanation and or meeting just reduces resources available for actually solving the issues. This is also why I don't like ambiguous meetings and or meeting agendas. Clear background data and decision / action lists is the right way to get it done. Usually that alone is enough to make the actual meeting unnecessary.
• A new own platform for GitLab? Very nice article about all the consideration which goes into running your own hardware versus using the cloud platform(s). They say it once again, running on cloud is very expensive. As soon as you reach some reasonable scale.
• Tested three VPN providers: Ivacy, PureVPN and Private Internet Access (PIA). Got all three working with Linux without any problems. My use is quite rare and very random. All of the providers got VPN gateways at several of the locations I prefer. Support for five parallel devices is of course a nice feature as well as unlimited bandwidth. Also these are very cheap with year subscription. From logging and privacy part it's hard to say, each of these providers 'promise' privacy, but who knows. Like I've written in one earlier post, I'm sure that privacy is limited, if you keep pushing the boundaries. You just need to push hard enough, and it's all an illusion.
• One loopy (buggy) system sent over 10 emails / second for a weekend. It seems that some email service providers aren't quite happy about receiving over one million emails to a free account users. Ha ha. The email servers even got huge backlogs of that mails, when the final destination server started tar pitting etc. I gave them permission just to delete the email backlog so the load from their email relays will be alleviated.
• Watched Deep Web documentary. Nothing to add to this discussion, it's complex topic and I don't have any kind of right opinion about it.
• Nvidia drivers again, so much crap. I've been thinking about replacing the display adapter. But maybe it's not worth of that. I'm not watching many movies anyway. So maybe it just doesn't matter so much I would care enough.
• UDP vs TCP - An age old discussion. TCP is simple and easy, UDP can be real pain. Use it only if required.
• Read a long document about 5 GHz Wi-Fi / WLAN & Weather Radar C-Band co-existence issues. Also checked which WiFi channels overlap with the publicly announced weather radars in the area. Interestingly OPERA RADAR database doesn't contain Helsinki Kumpula weather radar. FMI Radars are listed. There has been some examples how badly configured 5G WiFi practically render weather radars useless.
• Something bit different? Checked out Lockheed Martin Compact Fusion Reactor. Getting compact fusion reactors with reasonable costs would change a lot of things. 1 gram of deuterium provides as much power as 10 tons of coal and provides around 18 Megawatt hours of power and can power one household for more than a year. Also the temperature differences inside the reactor are amazing. Superconducting magnets are kept near zero kelvin and the plasma is around 100 million kelvins. Think about the insulation required. This subjects was so awesome that I had to watch a few hours of lessons about it. - Will compact fusion reactors work? And if they do work, it's pretty much guaranteed to change the world. Many people talk about coal, gas, oil, peat power. But what's a fact, those are all just thermal power plants using burning to generate heat energy aka power to run turbines. If the heat source is compact and safe enough, any existing thermal power plant can be easily converted to nuclear plant. Or how about Planet Nine from outer space?