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ckozlowski commented on Carrier Landing in Top Gun for the NES   relaxing.run/blag/posts/t... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
amarant · 3 days ago
I was pretty smol when I played this game last. I don't think I've ever managed to actually land on that hangar ship. That was what my older brothers were for!
ckozlowski · 3 days ago
I didn't either!

Granted, I wasn't good at video games in general. And this one infuriated me, because I loved it. I could easily beat the first level, but then I crashed on carrier landing. This happened for years. I only ever saw the first level of this game.

Then one day, while staying at my elementary afterschool sitter's house, one of the kids there told me he played Top Gun as well. He could land, but wasn't very good at the rest of the game.

A plan was formed.

The next day, I brought the cartridge over, and we settled in. I'd play the level, then hand him the controller at which point he'd plant it on the deck. Rinse and Repeat. Top Gun and Top Gun: The Second Mission didn't have too many levels, (6 maybe?) and I don't think it took us too long to beat. Neither one of us had seen much of the game. But working together, we beat both in a matter of hours.

I still look back on that as one of the few NES games I finished without codes or a Game Genie, just the help of a friend. =D

ckozlowski commented on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash   windowscentral.com/micros... · Posted by u/thewebguyd
ckozlowski · a month ago
This Microsoft response reminds me of the 2018 Blizzcon event, where the Diablo Immortal developer challenged the audience with "Do you guys not have phones?" when the audience asked if the game was coming to PC.

Then - like now - it seemed that they couldn't understand that what they made was not what their customers wanted.

ckozlowski commented on How when AWS was down, we were not   authress.io/knowledge-bas... · Posted by u/mooreds
wparad · a month ago
Hey, I wrote that article!

I'll try to add comments and answer questions where I can.

- Warren

ckozlowski · a month ago
Hi Warren! I'm Chris, and I'm with AWS, where among other things, I work on the Well-Architected Framework. Would you be willing to talk with us? You can reach me at kozlowck@amazon.com. Thanks!

Edit: This is a fantastic write-up by the way!

ckozlowski commented on Checkout.com hacked, refuses ransom payment, donates to security labs   checkout.com/blog/protect... · Posted by u/StrangeSound
miohtama · a month ago
Not everyone gets hacked. Companies not hacked include e.g.

- Google

- Amazon

- Meta

ckozlowski · a month ago
Amazonian here. My views are my own; I do not represent my company/corporate.

That said...

We do our very best. But I don't know anyone here who would say "it can never happen". Security is never an absolute. The best processes and technology will lower the likelihood and impact towards 0, but never to 0. Viewed from that angle, it's not if Amazon will be hacked, it's when and to what extent. It is my sincere hope that if we have an incident, we rise up to the moment with transparency and humility. I believe that's what most of us are looking for during and after an incident has occurred.

To our customers: Do your best, but have a plan for what you're going to do when it happens. Incidents like this one here from checkout.com can show examples of some positive actions that can be taken.

ckozlowski commented on %CPU utilization is a lie   brendanlong.com/cpu-utili... · Posted by u/BrendanLong
tom_ · 4 months ago
Why do they need so many threads? This really feels like they just designed the cpu poorly, in that it can't extract enough parallelism out of the instruction stream already.

(Intel and AMD stopped at 2! Apparently more wasn't worth it for them. Presumably because the cpu was doing enough of the right thing already.)

ckozlowski · 4 months ago
As I recall it, Intel brought about Hyperthreading on Northwood and later Pentium 4s as a way to help with issues in it's long pipeline. As I remember it described at the time, P4 had 30+ stages in it's pipeline. Many of them did not need to be used in a given thread. Furthermore, if a branch prediction engine guessed wrong, then the pipeline needed to be cleared and started anew. For a 30+ stage pipeline, that's a lot of wasted clock cycles.

So hyper-threading was a way to recoup some of those losses. I recall reading at the time that it was a "latency hiding technique". How effective it was I leave to others. But it became standard it seems on all x86 processors in time. Core and Core 2 didn't seem to need it (much shorter pipelines) but later Intel and AMD processors got it.

This is how it was explained to me at the time anyways. I was working at an OEM from '02-'05, and I recall when this feature came out. I pulled out my copy of "Inside the Machine" by Jon Stokes which goes deep into the P4 architecture, but strangely I can only find a single mention of hyperthreading in the book. But it goes far into the P4 architecture and why branch misses are so punishing. It's a good read.

Edit: Adding that I suspect instruction pipelines are not so long that adding additional threads would help. I suspect diminishing returns past 2.

ckozlowski commented on Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death   energyvanguard.com/blog/t... · Posted by u/almuhalil
8organicbits · 5 months ago
My neighbors and I have been using the dunks and mosquitos have been significantly reduced this year in Northern Virginia.

I'd prefer not to use the dunks as I'm uncertain they only impact mosquitos, but my insect population seems healthy. I saw a stag beetle two weeks ago! There are certainly fewer spiders though.

ckozlowski · 5 months ago
Thanks for the endorsement. I'm in NoVA as well, and this piqued my interest. I have a company that does spraying monthly, but it seems to have mixed results. The technician doesn't spray my herb and vegetable gardens (or my neighbors lawns), which makes suspect that these areas just replenish my area after the insecticide goes away.

One thing this won't help with are the chiggers which also populate my yard. But I'll happily deal with less mosquitos. I'll look forward to giving this a try.

ckozlowski commented on The ChompSaw: A benchtop power tool that's safe for kids to use   core77.com/posts/137602/T... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
michaelt · 5 months ago
Are there all that many parents who want to teach their kid woodworking, but can't use the classic teaching method of taking them to the workshop and handing them a coping saw under careful supervision?

I mean, I'm sure there's a handful of parents who value woodworking skills but do no woodworking themselves - but are there enough to support a whole product category of $250 cardboard tools?

ckozlowski · 5 months ago
Depends on the age. I've had my 4yo in my garage with me at times. And while he's "helped" me with a few things, it generally consists of me holding the tool with his hands on the handle as well. His strength, dexterity, and simply small size prevents him from really getting much out of it other than a sense of participation. Valuable, but he's not learning anything.

When he's older and bigger, then using real tools will be more practical, and we can using the real thing. The risk will be more manageable then.

At this stage however, this chompsaw looks appealing. Instead of disappointing him when he wants to drive and having to diplomatically explain that he lacks the strength and coordination to use the actual tool, I can just hand him this. Give a bit of instruction, and then let him experiment. That feeling of "hey, I'm doing this myself" is exciting to him and gives him a sense of accomplishment.

Long story short, I see this as a product aimed at a younger audience who aren't old enough to take the lead (with guidance) in the workshop yet, but want the feeling of doing it themselves in a safe way. I like it.

$250 though. Ooof.

ckozlowski commented on     · Posted by u/rustoo
ckozlowski · 7 months ago
This is incorrect, though I don't blame OP as apparently it was being miscommunicated a lot on Twitter. Evergreen Intel on BlueSky says this is actually a Pakistani plane that was sold to them from the US some years ago. But many databases are out of date:

https://bsky.app/profile/vcdgf555.bsky.social/post/3lovrqupt...

ckozlowski commented on Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative   blu-ray.com/movies/Sneake... · Posted by u/bredren
psanford · 7 months ago
I was shocked when I rewatched this recently just how good the cryptography technobabble is in this movie. Specifically the scene where the professor is presenting on breaking public key cryptography. The very first thing he mentions is a number field sieve. Nice work hiring whatever cryptography consultant that got for this scene.
ckozlowski · 7 months ago
It was none other than Leonard Adleman of RSA fame.

u/ckozlowski

KarmaCake day2156May 20, 2013
About
Infrastructure/Operations geek, hockey player, and internet spaceship pilot.

I'm a Solutions Architect for Amazon Web Services. My views are my own and do not represent those of my employer. https://aws.amazon.com

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