Random links for August 1st

With all the big issues going on nowadays, a lot of this seems pretty trivial. Still, I find things like this interesting, so I put them on my blog.

• 'We need more': Fight against Ebola virus thin on the ground

  So there must be a cast of thousands in there, deploying equipment, medications and vaccines, and dispensing advice, right?

  Wrong.

• How we treat Ebola

  When Ebola haemorrhagic fever broke out recently in Guinea, West Africa, MSF set up three specialised treatment centres in the worst-hit areas. Ebola is so infectious -- and so deadly -- that patients need to be treated in isolation by staff wearing special protective clothing. Emergency coordinator Henry Gray and logistician Pascal Piguet, both just back from Guinea, explain why, with Ebola, every little detail counts.

• NATO's Underground Roman Super-Quarry

  There is an underground Roman-era quarry in The Netherlands that, when you exit, you will find that you have crossed an invisible international border somewhere down there in the darkness, and that you are now stepping out into Belgium; or perhaps it's the other way around, that there is an underground Roman-era quarry in Belgium that, when you exit, you will find that you have crossed an invisible international border somewhere down there in the darkness, and that you are now stepping out into The Netherlands.

• Life on the Subsurface: An Interview with Penelope Boston

  Boston has worked with the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) to develop protocols for both human extraterrestrial cave habitation and for subterranean life-detection missions on Mars, life which she believes is highly likely to exist.

• Living up to Your (Business) Ideals

  If you want to live up to your business ideals, you have to take the time to authentically identify your values, the things you care about. You also have to commit to the ongoing tending and cultivation of those values in your organization. It is not a “set it and forget it” scenario.

• Being Profitable

  Maybe time is the most important factor for you. How much can everyone work? How much does everyone want to work? How much must you then charge for that time to end up with salaries you can be content with?

• git Flight Rules

  Flight Rules are the hard-earned body of knowledge recorded in manuals that list, step-by-step, what to do if X occurs, and why. Essentially, they are extremely detailed, scenario-specific standard operating procedures.

• Hybrid Logical Clocks

  Physical Time (PT) leverages on physical clocks at nodes that are synchronized using the Network Time Protocol (NTP). PT also has several drawbacks. Firstly, in a geographically distributed system obtaining precise clock synchronization is very hard; there will unavoidably be uncertainty intervals. Secondly, PT has several kinks such as leap seconds and non-monotonic updates. And, when the uncertainty intervals are overlapping, PT cannot order events and you end up with inconsistent snapshots as the one shown below.

• A Quick Introduction to CoreOS

  CoreOS, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a highly streamlined Linux distribution designed with containers, massive server deployments, and distributed systems/applications in mind.

• Touch events on the pathfinding pages

  For my pathfinding pages I wanted to support "painting" on the map to make or erase walls. When you change the map, the pathfinding algorithm updates the paths.

• Tom Brady is the loneliest quarterback on the planet

  I thought, "the three-time Super Bowl winner and one of his wide receivers trying to high-five and missing each other's hands? That's pretty funny!" Oh no. What is funnier still is Brady trying to high-five one or more of his teammates and the other players totally ignoring him. What's even funnier than that? This has happened over and over again.