Andrew Khalin

Why do we have some freedoms but not others? See how freedoms are an important aspect in complex systems: https://lnkd.in/grjbxxsX

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I believe it is critical to admit when we're wrong. And folks, I was wrong in this post: https://lnkd.in/gGWhWwDW Today I had the opportunity to chat with Andrew Regenscheid from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) about NIST SP800-63B rev4 draft, and specifically the guidance on synced passkeys. During our chat I shared my understanding of the NIST guidance based on my reading of the document. Andrew helped clarify the intent, which was not how I and others read the draft guidance. Per our discussion, credential service providers (CSPs) should consider synced passkeys as AAL2 compatible credentials. We talked about how I and others arrived at the conclusion that synced passkeys did not all meet this bar, and I shared thoughts on how NIST can clarify their writing to establish a common understanding of the guidance. Thank you Andrew for taking the time to chat, helping me understand NIST's perspective, and being open to constructive feedback.

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This looks like a great project from my friend Haig Douzdjian. I hope that once he finishes the overview he posts some more details about how he processes the implicit feedback (without giving away all the jewels, of course!). Human-in-the-loop feedback is a critical need for #LLM-based systems, but just like with traditional tabular #ML it's really hard to get enough feedback (aka labelled data). Building models on the side, to watch a conversation with an LLM and evaluate the success of each prompt interaction, seems like a great idea. I have to wonder how to cut through the noisiness of the #data well enough to make it valuable to the model. Hmmmmm!

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Check out this fascinating interview with Daniela Miao, CTO at #gomomento, where my colleagues Dave Neary and Aaron Williams dive deep into a discussion about caching to reduce service time, pubsub, tail latencies and more. In the interview, Daniela shares her experiences in porting and optimizing on #Ampere. "the portability was really amazing – we didn’t have to do much, and it just worked." Don't miss this insightful conversation about #cloudnative technology!

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In building robust, scalable distributed systems, it’s tempting to lean on events as a primary abstraction. But are they really the best approach? In this blog post I explore why events often fall short for complex systems and how a reimagined abstraction can simplify development and reduce failures: 👉 Covered topics * The pitfalls of an event-driven approach. * How durable execution offers a better path for distributed architectures. * Why this rethink could simplify and improve your distributed system. If you’re working with distributed systems, this article might just offer the perspective shift you need. #DistributedSystems #SoftwareArchitecture #EDA #Temporal #Rethink

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Many businesses claim to be tech companies—but are they really? 💡 In my latest Substack post, I delve into: The true definition of a tech company. Heuristics to determine if your organization fits the bill: Do you use data to drive decisions? Are you constantly automating processes to improve operations? Are technologists making strategic decisions at the highest levels? Drawing from my experiences at Carvana, we explore what sets genuine tech companies apart from those that simply use technology. #techindustry #innovation #leadership #datadriven #automation #techleadership #carvana

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In other news today, Delta Lake UniForm is now Generally Available. No more data silos, interoperability FTW! UniForm allows you to use a single table format for your lakehouse, getting the top-of-the-line performance and features of Databricks and Delta Lake, but being able to access the data using *any* engine that supports *any* of the common lakehouse formats Delta Lake, Iceberg, or Hudi.

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If you’re looking for a better way to plan military operations without all the friction of general purpose tools, learn more about what we are bulding at Onebrief below.

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My #1 management rule that I’ve seen even very senior people get wrong - people’s actions will mostly mirror how you treat them: If you treat devs like children with blinders on they will act like children. If you hide costs from devs they won’t care what things cost. If you don’t have devs on the hook for when things break they won’t care so much about when they break. If you treat office workers as untrustworthy they will act untrustworthy. If you force RTO to keep an eye on people they will waste more time in the office. The tighter you squeeze your fist the more falls through. Thats not to say there aren’t exceptions to this but it’s true in the general case.

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Breadcrumbing goes beyond the realm of dating and emerges as a significant issue in the workplace, leading to a breakdown in trust among employees when leaders dangle future prospects that fail to come to fruition. The modern workforce, particularly the younger cohorts, is quick to seek new opportunities elsewhere if they sense their advancement is being hindered by false promises. Betterworks Chief Marketing Officer, John Schneider, sheds light on this issue: “The practice of breadcrumbing—merely doing the bare minimum to keep an employee from leaving—is diametrically opposed to fostering genuine avenues for growth. The absence of a visible route forward not only breeds disappointment but can also make employees feel profoundly betrayed by their employers.” With the aid of performance management solutions like Betterworks, executives have the opportunity to create well-defined, transparent paths for career progression that not only motivate employees but also demonstrate an organization's commitment to supporting their professional development. It’s time we leave behind the practice of breadcrumbing and turn career advancement into a tangible goal. https://gag.gl/m7x3ed

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Big news today... FOSSA free plan just got a major upgrade! We want to make it ridiculously easy for development teams to start securing their software and drive comprehensive Open Source Compliance, Security and Quality -- for FREE. That's why we have now launched a new free forever plan -- built for complete workflows around the lifecycle of managing open source such as: - Open source security - SBOM management - License compliance - Quality / Obsolescence No vendor evals, no sales convos, no zoom meetings. Just sign up, start doing -- and come back if you need to scale. Let's get folks off the dev team's back and ship compliant, secure and high quality software with OSS. Check out the link to the full announcement in the comments.

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Markdown to... command line app - wat? That's the topic for today's unsolicited face time. A single Pipedown pipeline can be used in numerous contexts thanks to the way it consistently accepts inputs and produces outputs. I waffled about my love of pipelines a while back: https://lnkd.in/gERrAsvA Though it's much handier to see in action! https://lnkd.in/giR-KVDT Let me know your thoughts 🚀

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Want to supercharge your database performance? Actian Zen has you covered with its latest enhancements. Discover how these updates can benefit your business in Actian's newest blog post.

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It’s another Sunday, so let’s write some more databass! Join me at 1:30pm CDT. Reminder, I’ve moved my stream to YouTube. Follow this link to catch today’s session: https://lnkd.in/eFnqnrNQ In your time zone: https://lnkd.in/eVUxXh7x #RustLang #Databases #LSMTree

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Imagine this - you're onboarding a new engineer onto a codebase, and they hit every error/exception after every CLI command. They're trapped in the proverbial "config hell". Then a security vulnerability for their toolchain comes out, and they have to go through "config hell" all over again! And then when it's finally working, they realize they need more compute, load their application onto some beefy cloud hardware --- but forget to turn it off ($$$!!) Multiply this problem by the number of engineers you're onboarding/supporting and this is the nightmare scenario of wasted time and money for Enterprise CTOs/CIOs. Coder solves these problems with it's Cloud IDE -- getting engineers to their 'flow state' faster. Thrilled to enable developer productivity with the Coder team.

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This is a great video about how our personal ideology impacts the way we process data and information. For me, it shows the importance of fighting against populism and "framing" in the media and teaching our children in critical thinking. https://lnkd.in/eXQdB4fR

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I recently read Tilde's blog post, it's a great deep dive into the cutting edge of sparse autoencoder research! They delve into the balance between interpretability and reconstruction accuracy, addressing issues like the "infinite width codebook" and "feature oversplitting" that often hinder robust feature learning. They also explore the Top-𝑘 activation function through the lens of Information Bottleneck theory, showing how it can improve robustness under noisy conditions. If you're interested in mechanistic interpretability or the theoretical foundations of machine learning models, I highly recommend checking it out! https://lnkd.in/eupt7JTs

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Video from my September DevOpsDays DC Ignite talk on "Strategically Handling Tech Debt in Your Platform" is live, along with videos from all the other talks. https://lnkd.in/enEXXxz4

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Turning dreams into reality just got easier! 💡 Meet AI Assistant Fynn, the latest innovation from FINSYNC. This isn’t just an AI tool; it’s a partner for small business owners, connecting them to resources, mentors, and actionable plans to grow their businesses. Check it out: https://bit.ly/3D3OjEG

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