The problem with standardisation

Standards are a double-edged swordSubbu Allamaraju, CTO Expedia, https://m.subbu.org/lessons-from-2019-5beb64e63bc7 TL;DR: Standardisation reduces the dimensionality of a problem space thus eliminating possibilities for optimisation. Standards reduce the number dimensions of a problem space Consolidation initiatives aim at reducing the number of domains in a problem space in order to make problem handling easier: reduce the number … Continue reading The problem with standardisation →

2019 reading list

It's been a while since my first (and so far only) reading list (2016) [1], but this decade shall not end without another one. Rules for the 2019 reading list: The content must have been interesting throughout the year; sources with only a few notable publications of an otherwise unremarkable output don't qualifyI overcame my … Continue reading 2019 reading list →

Resetting a PCI device

The Wi-Fi adapter on my VivoBook 17 has been acting up under Ubuntu 18.04 LTS insofar that at a random point in time, possibly accelerated by power saving features, the Wi-Fi will stop working with suspicious syslog entries: ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: failed to wake target for read32 at 0x0003a028: -110 The usual tricks (suspend/resume, reload driver, … Continue reading Resetting a PCI device →

Fixing random sound drops with Ubuntu; only sound device is “Dummy Output”

The title says it all; at some point Ubuntu 18.04 stops playing sound and the only available sound device is "Dummy Output". Apart from rebooting (which fixes the issue) this command executed from the terminal fixes the issue: pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload Contributed by user Kim, source: https://superuser.com/questions/17312/restart-ubuntu-sound-processes-via-command-line

A crazy server recovery

If you're a seasoned server administrator then this post will boring beyond oblivion to you; the ingredients: a headless server (no screen, keyboard)years of personal backups on a linux software RAIDa botched system upgradehappy ending The pretext Several years ago I bought an HP Proliant microserver on discount and set up a NAS with Ubuntu … Continue reading A crazy server recovery →

AWS diaries: serving HTML from lambda

AWS lambda is a neat feature that runs code in response to requests and transforms the code's output into some response. Requests can be an event occurring in the AWS platform such as an S3 modification or an HTTP request. The response is an MVC-style model which needs to pass through some network component, like … Continue reading AWS diaries: serving HTML from lambda →

Goodhart’s law

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. Goodhart's law (source Wikipedia) Or, in other words, once you tell people "improve that KPI or else", that KPI will be abused to the point of becoming useless: the KPI will improve, but the overall quality/speed/cost (pick a … Continue reading Goodhart’s law →

How to improve conversion rates

I watched Kevin Hale's presentation [1] "how to improve conversion rates" (with your UI) and liked his get-to-the-point style. I highly recommend watching the video and am summarizing the content here. I omitted a few parts of Hale's talk (eg. knowledge point and one push button) which, while encyclopedic and interesting, imho didn't advance the … Continue reading How to improve conversion rates →

Digitalisation vs. Automation: it is about capabilities

A pre-digital organisation focuses on efficient processes implementation; a digital organisation focuses on capabilities.