petru.blog

A blast from the past

… except it’s in the present. An amazing video documentary about North Korea, well worth watching. I was young enough during the communist regime in Romania for this to not bring back too many memories, but I’m sure my older readers will find it terrifying.

Underneath the Covers at Google

By far, the most frustrating thing about working at Google is not being able to talk much about the technology we use internally – especially the scale of some of the things we do. I’m really glad to see that Jeff Dean gave an interesting talk at the I/O conference and that, among other things, it has numbers! There’s a video and slides, so here you go: Underneath the Covers at Google: Current Systems and Future Directions.

Who the heck is Jeff Dean?! I hear you ask. He’s a Google Fellow (I believe that’s the highest engineering distinction you can have here), and so famous that somebody built a Chuck Norris-style “Jeff Dean facts” site for last year’s April fools. Here’s 3 of my favorite facts:

During his own Google interview, Jeff Dean was asked the implications if P=NP were true. He said “P = 0 or N = 1.” Then, before the interviewer had even finished laughing, Jeff examined Google’s public certificate and wrote the private key on the whiteboard.
Compilers don’t warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers.
The rate at which Jeff Dean produces code jumped by a factor of 40 in late 2000 when he upgraded his keyboard to USB2.0.

MTV 94041

I’ve been in California for the past week and a half; things are mostly the same as last time I’ve been here, but it’s nice to meet my american coworkers in person again. Haven’t done much yet besides work and a tour at Fry’s (mandatory for every Valley visit).

I spent most of my free time last week going through old data and backups. I now have all my old email archives cleaned up and imported into Gmail. The oldest message I have is from March 1999, and reading some of them feels like taking a trip in the time machine.

If I manage to dig up old blog archives, I’ll try to import them into the current blog.

Definitii noi din DEX 2008

Infocare: transformare in foca
Ghinioane: varianta moldoveneasca pentru ardelenescul “Bine, Ioane”
Imprastiere: rezultatul procesului prin care betivii se fac prastie
Bizar: zar dublu
Macel: mac mic
Microscop: scop marunt
Inviorat: prevazut cu vioara
Lesina: pe unde merge “le tren”
Meritoriu: teritoriul ocupat de livada de meri
Rateu: pateu din carne de ratza
Scarabeu: cetatean ce locuieste la bloc, la scara a doua; din aceeasi familie de cuvinte se cunosc scaraceu si scaradeu
Tractor: actor cu mult trac
Tutun: a-a-arma de-de-de a-a-artilerie
Tzurtzur: sunetul soneriei, iarna
Batalion: fratele mai mic al plutonierului Batal Gheorghe

Post-it Google search

~~This is how Google search really works~~

Update: well, it looks like the video got taken down for some reason. It was funny while it lasted, though.

Summary

The good: hope
The bad: distance
The ugly: bitterness
The plan: carry on.

My faith is restored

It would appear that I overestimated the amount of support Romanian people give to teaching religion in schools. Noise is being made to oppose it, and an (as of right now) unknown group is starting to lobby for the teaching of astrology and alchemy in highschools (article in Romanian). Very articulate, well argumented, and poking loads of fun at the official church position. It’s been covered by at least one big media outlet, trolling a bunch of their readers. Awesome!

There’s no place like home

… where by “there’s no place like” we mean “OMG WTF is going on” and by “home” we mean “in Romania”.

Fun facts:

The Ministry of Education and Research removed evolutionist theory from the biology curriculum, starting with the 2007-2008 academic year. Along with it, the philosophy curriculum stopped covering the religious views of heathens such as Voltaire and Nietzsche
Romania is now the only EU country that doesn’t teach evolutionist theory in schools. This is in spite of EC resolution 1580 (2007) outlining the dangers of creationism in education
Religion is currently taught in schools for the first 10 years. Attendance is mandatory unless the parents submit a written request otherwise
The church is lobbying to make religion a mandatory class in high schools, too
In a poll, 73% of the 7th to 12th graders interviewed believed that god created man

This situation isn’t just some power-grabbing attempt by the church (they’re state funded, anyway) – it has significant popular support. It’s not even a case of intelligent design versus pastafarians: there’s no effort to “scientify” the creationism taught in schools, and the feeble attempts at protesting are mostly covered by press in an ironic, “look at these wannabe disturbers of our holy tradition” tone (and viciously flamed down by the general public).

A picture is worth a thousand words: DO NOT WANT

2 years of Google

Well, a bit more than that – I started on January 23, 2006, but I forgot to post on the exact anniversary.

It’s scary how quickly time passed. It’s even scarier to realize that I don’t really have a long-term plan (or a short term one or, for that matter, any plan) and thus I risk making a “10 years of Google” post sooner that I might realize.

Do I still like it? You bet. Sure, the honeymoon is long over and not everything is perfect (some people might call that an euphemism) but I have a hard time imagining a better place of employment right now. I guess the biggest challenge is trying to fit in the culture of apparent hyperproductivity: being a smart slacker just doesn’t cut it (because everybody else is just as – and usually more – smart than you).

What now? I don’t know. I guess it’s just a matter of keeping at it, and making a plan for the future. Yeah.