I agree the valley is in a bubble, but I wouldn't agree with the self flagellation. That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance.
One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
The smell of money which distorts people's reality to carry on doing something that looks and sounds like a disaster, is too strong.
Also the "move fast, break things" motto. These people are literally incapable of slowing down to begin with, much less use that time for self-reflection.
> That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance. One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
We're talking about adults here, let's not infantilize and remove agency from them. It's not reasonable to treat as an accident the repeated disruption of regulated industries with the "old laws don't apply because I added computers" playbook. Bad behavior absolutely demands repentance and punishment. To say otherwise is a massive moral hazard that guarantees more harm, failing to counter the "smell of money" with reasonable caution.
I think it's telling how often even on HN (and linked articles) there is talk about "humans" doing this or that - when it becomes clear that the discussion is not even about everyday Americans or people from other Western countries, let alone the non-Western world - but just WASP people in Tech.
To back this up, even if the dataset is "live" unless someone has specifically made it read only, it will change. Those changes need to be stored and versioned over time.
Filesystems vary, a lot have COW, but that doesn't mean that you can export those changes as neat changesets for fast recovery. Sometimes rebuilding the filesystem from changes is more time-consuming than pointing to an older copy thats on the nearline.
Where I worked, we had a jumping off point that made the master folder arrangement, which then pointed to different folders on different servers. It meant that broken servers only affected those folders. It also meant the largest file you could have was ~120tb.
Each server was dumped to the nearline, which was a lustre cluster. The lustre cluster then drained into a tape library. This meant that we could keep about 1.5 PB "fast" with daily backups rotating into weekly drive dumps. Then when a project was finished we pruned from the nearline and the extra copies in the library.
when I was dealing with tape, LTO-6 drives were really really expensive, but LTO-5 wasn't sure you got an extra 1/3rd of space per tape, and some speed.
Right now, the list price for LTO8 is about 2/3rds the list price of LTO9. In single units, LTO9 drives are around £8k. As soon as you buy 25-40 of them and a robot, the per unit cost drops dramatically
FAcebook had a tape team, however it never really went into prod, as far as I'm aware it was shut down in 2024.
I think the issue with tape at scale is that there is a lot of mechanical stuff that needs to be overcome. You will need a custom robot to allow for the management of hundreds of thousands of slots. I think also you'll need a custom tool for identifying the individual tapes (LTO does have a few ways of ID-ing the individual tapes)
Then you'll need make sure that your data stream don't mix. that seems easy, but you are optimising for filling tapes, and minimum retrievals per object. One advantage is that ibjecst should be encrypted before they even enter the tape storage system so the risk oulling the wrong file becomes one of correctly decrpyting, rather than fine management of file paths.
This sounds like OP has had the fun of using DAT tapes as backup.
I worked in VFX and had the joy of looking after a few different tape systems.
Ranging from a single drive HP MSL4048 tape "robot" right up to various multi-rack monsters with 25 LTO6 drives.
First, you need good software, that is a critical thing. If you are making your own around tar, uts possible, but you need to test it. There are(or were) some opensource robot drivers, but they are somewhat painful to use (although LLMs are your friend here)
With big robots, the pain points are: mechanical.
THe systems I used had CCTV cameras to see what was going on. When it worked, the 25 drive monster could saturate 30gigs a second. THe issues we had were making sure the nearline had enough bandwidth to feed the library cache, and making sure the library cache was fast enough.
However the the robot used to get sad, it would drop tapes, randomly post tapes to the wrong slot, then get upset, or a drive would be sad and need vacuuming. The data was fine. But we regually pushed and pulled petabytes from it.
This maxim doesn't work for government, because they have to justify what they do because they are the ones trying to steer a country though very slack and unconnected reins.
The odd bit about the royals is that they are meant to be largely apolitical. They are supposed to be focused on charitable works, opening infrastructure and generally promoting togetherness.
This kinda worked because it meant that we don't have to pretend to like politicians. Great Britain (yes, not UK because its complex) gets to detach the pomp and circumstance from a political movement, allowing honours, events and occasions to largely be free of politics (despite honours being entirely political) This is why flag shaggers are so weird, its fine to like your country, but getting dressed up in a flag for anything other than sports or getting shitfaced is not the done thing. If you're gonna have a fight, at least do it over something tangible, like which ever football club your dad grew up near.
The bit that worked about the royals is that they were a mystery. We don't know who they really are (you rarely want to know everything about a person, because people are generally messy and ugly close up)
Frankly I don't want to know that harry and william fell out. I have no opinions on kate and megan. I am sure they are nice people, and moreover I couldnt give a fuck about what race one of them is, I'm not american, so why do I fucking care?
I just want posh grandad to say nice words to me at state occasions.
I also want that nonce andrew in jail.
ANYWAY
don't complain don't explain only works if you are only ever trying to bring people together. as soon as you trying to divide and conquer you have to explain.
However any of the midrange ones will be brighter than the equivalent consumer (they have to operate in full sun 24/7)
You will not find an oled though, because they have yet to be full duty cycle (well I've not looked, but if they do exist, they will be many monies.)
Get yourself a nice NEC 4k, you'll be happy. unless you want 8k (good luck finding a source for the 8k) or you really like the motion smoothing of poorly setup consumer TVs.
I used to work in VFX, and for our big bright displays in the office we used digital signage displays.
I started using them at home in about 2018, after my nice medium budget sony TV died in a way that I couldn't repair.
I currently have an old HD NEC 48" display attached to an apple TV, and a freeview recorder for broadcast (although 98% of TV is done via apple TV)
Pros:
the screen is bright and adjustable. You can, if you wish fiddle with the colours and brightness
The screen is designed for 24/7 duty cycle, so is built like a fucking tank
It has all the HDMI you would ever need, plus displayport compute module ports (if that floats your boat) you can also get an ethernet remote control module (never tried it so it might be shit)
Second hand, they are dirt cheap. on ebay there are a couple of them in various sizes for <£400
If you don't have a compute module, the screen isn't going to spy on you.
Cons:
they are just screens. you will need speakers
They are built like tanks, so are heavy and thick (they are not the 15mm thick OLED jobbies)
Second hand, they generally don't come with stands or remotes
On ebay at least, they are generally pickup only.
In terms of driving it, Apple TV >> anything else I have used, apart from maybe a humax. Amazon firestick is frustratingly slow/unreliable. They also break after a year or so. Yes the apple TV is probably 5x the price, but the time to playing a show is about 7 seconds, from first pressing the remote to wake everything, to navigating to the show I want.
everything else I have used is horribly slow in comparison.
One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
The smell of money which distorts people's reality to carry on doing something that looks and sounds like a disaster, is too strong.
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