352: Self Driving Disaster

Mike’s away so Chris joins Wes to discuss running your workstation from RAM, the disappointing realities of self driving cars, and handling the ups and downs of critical feedback.

Links:

• America’s Cities Are Running on Software From the ’80s — Even San Francisco’s tech chops can’t save it from relying on computers that belong in a museum.
• Intel Optane Persistent Memory starts at $850 for 128GB — The pitch is simple, in case a mission-critical system fails, whatever data was in the memory isn’t lost; and for memory intensive applications, it offers shockingly high capacity at low prices.
• How to Emulate Persistent Memory Using Dynamic Random-access Memory — If you’re a software developer who wants to get started early developing software or modifying an application to have persistent memory (PMEM) awareness, you can use emulation for development before Intel Optane DC PMMs are widely available.
• DAX: Direct Access for files — For block devices that are memory-like, the page cache pages would be unnecessary copies of the original storage. The DAX code removes the extra copy by performing reads and writes directly to the storage device. For file mappings, the storage device is mapped directly into userspace.
• Persistent Memory Wiki — These pages contain instructions, links and other information related to persistent memory in Linux.
• The kernel’s command-line parameters — The Linux Kernel documentation — See memmap=nn[KMG]!ss[KMG] section.
• Using Persistent Memory Devices with the Linux Device Mapper
• AI “adversarial attacks” can trick self-driving cars, medicine, and the military — In a recent report, Tencent’s Keen Security Lab showed how they were able to bamboozle a Tesla Model S into switching lanes so that it drives directly into oncoming traffic.
• Linux Mint's Sobering Update: A Rare Glimpse Into The Personal Struggles Developers Face — Reading the latest Monthly News update from Linux Mint leader Clement Lefebvre is a sobering experience. While users do get updated on the status of Linux Mint 19.2, a considerable portion of the update deals with feelings of defeat, uncertainty and frustration.