WR Boiled Nuclear Fsync
Posted: 14th July 2019
Going to start trying to prefix these blogs with "WR". Lets see how that goes...
Article numero-uno is one that I'd wanted to include last week but couldn't remember the link for but now I have it: John Bull (AKA @garius) on boiling frogs. I always enjoy Garius' sarcastic thoughts on history and politics (I backed his book The Brexit Tapes). Anyway this was a fun look at the state of the Tory party leadership contest as of 2 weeks ago.
With politics out of the way on to a pair of twitter threads about nuclear safety and particle physics (one linked to the other). From @annieminoff there is a thread on the AGLAE H/He accelerator. The other tweet, from @XMPPwocky, links the IAEA report on a nuclear accident in Nesvizh. I've not read the full report but it's full of fascinating pictures and diagrams (CONTENT NOTE between pages 36 & 41 there are pictures of the injuries caused by the accident).
Last but not least is this write up, by Dan Luu, of a talk he gave "Deconstruct files" which covers why safely writing a file to disk is hard. As with everything in computers its a combination of leaky abstractions; inconsistent specifications and trade-offs.