The Weekly Weird - 2015-08-14

Well this week's weird is extra long. This is what happens when I spend all week avoiding hanging the pot rack.

• I don't really have anything reasonable to say about Tianjin. Reading about it led me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Coleman_%28train_dispatcher%29 which is worth sharing I think.

• I guess Google is now Alphabet? Weird.

  • HN Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10037157
  • Mefi comments: https://www.metafilter.com/151985/We-go-by-G-now
  • Tyler Cowen presents some interesting links about conglomerates: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/alphabet-and-google.html
  • Matt Levine: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-11/abc-xyz-and-the-rmb
  • Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/11/9130055/google-alphabet-big-deal

• In a previous Weird I mentioned Calico, using BGP to do warehouse-scale datacenter networking. Well, if that's the Layer 3 model, here's the layer-1 alternative: Plexxi

  • I think this is the best technical intro on their page: http://www.plexxi.com/2013/09/plexxi-paths-and-topologies-part-1-let-there-be-light/
  • The tl;dr is you plug these switches into each other with a fiber ring and they have a photonic engine that lets them move waves from being terminated on one switch vs another. Because they can dwdm on a single strand the inter-switch bandwidth is insane and because the photonics engine is plugged into the switching engine it can reassign those lambdas wherever the big-ring-of-switches needs tham at super low latency. Instead of acting at a TCP-level to move load around they do it at the switch-interconnect layer. Seems clever though I wonder if latency of reorouting is that important at scale vs determining what to reroute in the first place.

• Holy hell that's a big hard drive: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/samsung-unveils-2-5-inch-16tb-ssd-the-worlds-largest-hard-drive/ (I'll take 5)

• Infosec is the funnest part of tech.

  • Dear Oracle, never change: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/11/oracle_anti_security_research_rant/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10040428 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039202 )
  • Add UEFI to the list of "low level systems that are super vulnerable" alongside IPMI: https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike2_details
  • Dear Lenovo, Please stop (existing). Sincerely, everyone: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo-used-windows-anti-theft-feature-to-install-persistent-crapware/

• Matt Levine is on fire this week:

  • $95,000 (guys) http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-11/why-not-insider-trade-on-every-company-

  • All this for $124k? http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-12/itg-hid-a-secret-trading-desk-in-its-dark-pool

  • Web Design: The First 100 Years: http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
  • I've mentioned Amazon's robots before, here's a slightly newer video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg2lcTdloIQ Apparently the big lifting robot at 1:34 is just loading pallets from trucks onto Kivas to presumably be re-packed onto the shelves you see being picked-from.
  • The US offered to buy Grenland after WWII apparently: http://www.gwern.net/Greenland
  • Yo dawg, I heard you liked cranes: http://giant.gfycat.com/EasyArcticAmericangoldfinch.gif
  • The Missile knows where it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ
  • This Fantastic Four movie is really lighting up my schadenfreude gland: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/fantastic-four-marvel-fox-review/400850/
  • How good are you at spotting someone who's drowning? http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ (good comments at https://www.metafilter.com/151719/Spot-the-Drowning-Child )
  • Sooo, AIM + paypal? https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/