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Links for 2021-05-20

  • File Descriptor Limits

    tl;dr: ‘Don’t use select() anymore in 2021.’ Select(2) on Linux has a limit of 1024 fds

    (tags: linux programming select system-calls coding libc fds)

  • Bad Machinery: Managing Interrupts Under Load

    ‘Each day, try to do either projects or interrupts, not both. If you’re oncall, don’t try to do projects, and vice versa. People aren’t machines, context switches are really expensive, and usually assumed to be free in process planning. People who are constantly interrupted end up with delayed and sloppy project work, and vice versa (people who have a lot of project work are sloppy at interrupts unless time is carved out for them). Your team’s oncall and interrupt-handling should be structured around funneling interrupts at the people who are supposed to be interrupted. If that’s too much for those people, add more people until it isn’t. “Spreading the load” by assigning items across the entire team randomly is counter-productive.’

    (tags: sre devops coding ops planning teams work on-call interrupts)

  • Was a flying killer robot used in Libya? Quite possibly – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

    Great. Lethal machine learning is now in prod:

    Last year in Libya, a Turkish-made autonomous weapon — the STM Kargu-2 drone — may have “hunted down and remotely engaged” retreating soldiers loyal to the Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, according to a recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. [….] the Kargu-2 signifies something perhaps even more globally significant: a new chapter in autonomous weapons, one in which they are used to fight and kill human beings based on artificial intelligence. The Kargu is a “loitering” drone that can use machine learning-based object classification to select and engage targets, with swarming capabilities in development to allow 20 drones to work together. The UN report calls the Kargu-2 a lethal autonomous weapon. Its maker, STM, touts the weapon’s “anti-personnel” capabilities.

    (tags: machine-learning ai kargu-2 drones war grim-meathook-future stm un)

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