Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Technology

  • Eight Years of Cloud Computing

    Amazon S3 storage was launched 8 years ago today. It’s gone from a novelty to a “why aren’t you using the cloud” thing.

    Origami Risk has been there for more than the last 5 years. It’s been such an obviously good decision. Our operations cloud expert recently said to me

    Deploying on bare metal should be a thing of the past…

    I love “bare metal” as the description of hosting your own servers. It evokes how old school the concept is. It will take a while for all business to figure this out, but not being in at least a private cloud is crazy.

    The post linked above discusses Airbnb, which has always been on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

    With 9 million customers, 1000 EC2 instances, 2 billion rows of data in RDS, and 50 terabytes of photos stored in S3, Airbnb is run by an operations team of just five people.

    Five people. Crazy.

    Well no, not crazy. That’s smart. That’s using the cloud.

  • Dolphin Stampede

    Filmed by drone…

     

    Captain Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, California, at great personal risk, has recently filmed and edited a 5-minute video that contains some of the most beautiful, jaw-dropping, footage ever taken with a drone from the air of a huge mega-pod of thousands of common dolphins stampeding off Dana Point, California, three gray whales migrating together down the coast off San Clemente, California, and heartwarming close-ups hovering over a newborn Humpback whale calf snuggling and playing with its mom as an escort whale stands guard nearby, filmed recently in Maui.

  • Perspective

    If the moon were just one pixel…

    A Tediously Accurate Map of the Solar System

    Clicking the tiny icons at the top is kind of cool.

    Courtesy of Josh Worth.

  • Apple Passes Microsoft?

    Via Daring Fireball, this post from Benedict Evans.

    Apple fans dismiss Android market share, saying most Android users aren’t using their phone the same way iPhone users are.

    That’s quite true.

    But don’t then turn around and say my 11 year old’s iTouch is equivalent to a business PC.

    That’s quite not true.

    This is why you get dismissed as “fanboys”…

  • Airbags

    Oh my, just look at the picture that accompanies this article. The driver of that car walked away…

  • Which is it?

    Weather.com this morning for Brooklyn. Note tomorrow’s snowfall forecast.

    image

    Click on the Winter Storm Warning link and you see:

    image

    I’m planning on 6…

  • 2007: Microsoft is Dead

    Courtesy of Daring Fireball, this 2007 blog post that now seems so dead on.

  • Am I Allowed to be a Dick?

    A blog post explaining the comment moderation policy of said blog had the title, “Because Flowcharts Make Everything Clearer”.

     

  • Amazon Reviews for Sugarless Gummies

    You can’t make this up…

    Wow, they don’t make my blood sugar go up at all. Pretty sure it’s because any food currently contained in my stomach is instantly liquefied, then pressurized to several thousand psi, blown out the backside with never a chance to be digested. I’m surprised these are even legal

    As I type this review, I’m on the toilet, surrounded by my dearest family and friends and a priest.

    I could quote more, but you get the idea…

  • Asleep at the Wheel

    Via Parislemon, 1/3 of taxi drivers in San Fran have bailed for Uber or another private service:

    While New York City was updating their insanely larger fleet to ensure that all could take credit cards, basically none in San Francisco would or could. It was like the city wasn’t just creating the conditions for these new car services to arise, they were almost begging for them to appear. And appear they did.