Apr 2, 2021NY Times Review of Bill Gates Climate Book Considered HarmfulI was disappointed to read the NY Times Review of Bill Gates’ book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: the Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. It dismisses Gates as a rich geek with limited knowledge on the subject, but in trying to stick to this storyline fails…Climate Change4 min read
Oct 26, 2020Ratatouille: the complicated kindThis recipe of ratatouille is a combination of Julia Child’s and Michel Richard’s (the latter shared by Bill Buford in his book “Dirt”). It is more complicated than most people would care to make, but the idea is that cooking all vegetables separately brings out more intense flavour. I provide…Ratatouille3 min read
Aug 31, 2020We Replaced an SSD with Storage Class Memory and Here is What We LearnedThe story is here: https://engineering.mongodb.com/post/we-replaced-an-ssd-with-storage-class-memory-here-is-what-we-learned1 min read
Jan 2, 2020Grain. Water. Salt.This crispy goodness came out of my oven. There are many great breads out there. Why bother making my own? This bread was made with only three ingredients: grain, water and salt. I do not use commercial flour. I buy local grain and grind it in a small mill that…Food17 min read
Dec 19, 2019Why mmap is faster than system callsWhen I ask my colleagues why mmap is faster than system calls, the answer is inevitably “system call overhead”: the cost of crossing the boundary between the user space and the kernel. It turns out that this overhead is more nuanced than I used to think, so let’s look under…Programming8 min read
Jul 18, 2019Ketosis: A Story of Accidental LoveI’ve been hearing about ketosis for many years; first by way of the (in)famous Atkins diet, and then via other avenues. Even though I did not read about it deeply, I stayed largely skeptical. Like many others, I thought that getting into ketosis required restricting one’s diet to butter layered…Health4 min read
Feb 27, 2019“Japanese diet” in practiceTen months on “Japanese diet” improved diversity of my microbiome (from 75th percentile to 84th according to Ubiome), reduced my weight by 5kg, and generated lots of questions from my friends. This post is dedicated to answering the most common question: What do you actually eat? I write “Japanese diet”…Food3 min read
Jul 26, 2018How Google Controls Android Device VendorsOn July 18, 2018 the European Commission issued Google an unprecedented fine of €4.34 billion for allegedly illegal competitive practices. In its statement it said: “ Our case is about three types of restrictions that Google has imposed on Android device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic on…Android4 min read
Jun 1, 2018Japanese Diet and MicrobiomeMy recent interest in human microbiome led me to explore the traditional Japanese diet. Not the weight loss diet, but their way of eating. In this post I will share the few bits that I learned about these fascinating subjects. Human microbiome is the community of microbes that live inside…Health8 min read
Published in Code Like A Girl·Sep 8, 2017Treacherous shared countersWhen several threads run concurrently on the cores of a multicore processor they may need to share data. In a write-sharing mode, where one thread reads and another one writes, data needs to be protected in order to avoid race conditions, which may result in lost or corrupted data. …Programming5 min read