Empathy: A Requiem (Paul Smith)

 

It was the summer of 1977 when I drove with my fiancé’s younger brother to the Hollywood Boulevard Walk-of-Fame. Neither of us was that impressed with the famous names on the sidewalk; we were there to stand in line at Mann’s Chinese Theater for the very first Star Wars movie. These were the days when Hollywood was still a thing, and Mann’s (built in 1927) was a historic place to see a film. It also boasted of the revolutionary new THX sound system. We were blown away before the opening crawl.

That was a long time ago...

TCP Checksum Errors in Wireshark: Are They Real? How to Tell False Positives from Actual Packet Corruption

Protocol analysis is an ever changing art because of 2 significant variables:

Protocols 

Every time an application gets an update it might affect the way it interacts with protocols.  

Operating system upgrades may change the actual protocols, behavior or drivers.  

Certain applications might come with its own ‘built in protocols’ 

Tools 

Understanding Duplicate ACKs in TCP: A Wireshark Walkthrough with Chris Greer

Unlock the Mystery of Duplicate Acknowledgments in TCP

If you've ever stared at a Wireshark capture wondering why you're seeing a flood of duplicate acknowledgments, this video by networking expert Chris Greer is exactly what you need. In this focused, no-fluff tutorial, Chris breaks down one of the most commonly misunderstood behaviors in TCP/IP traffic analysis — duplicate ACKs — and explains not just what they are, but why they appear and what they're telling you about your network.

Perfect for Troubleshooters at Every Level

Beyond Ping: Using TCP Connect, Traceroute, and Response-Time Graphing to Troubleshoot Network Connectivity

Ask any network pro about which command line tool they use the most – likely ping is near the top of the list, which makes sense. Ping has stood the test of time as a quick way to validate the network path between two endpoints.

But what if it fails? What can we do next?

When a ping is successful, we quickly can validate for at least that moment, we have a working path to the target station, routing is working, and basic connectivity is established. However, it is possible to have a successful ping even when underlying layer one and two issues are there - as these problems may not impact every single frame that traverses them.

The Canonical Weekend: Rethinking the 7-Day Week in the Age of Remote Work - Paul Smith

 

A former boss of mine had a well-rehearsed response for any employee who complained they had too much work. There are twenty-one 8-hr workdays in a week, he would say; three in each of the seven 24-hour days. If you are only using five out of those twenty-one, you are clearly just lazy.

Although the 40-hour workweek would be a dream come true for many (unless you happen to live in Luxembourg) , there are few among us who could ever envision working the 168 hours suggested by this guy. The average full time US worker puts in 41.5 hours, making us a nation of slackers by my old boss’s standards. The hardest workers are found in Colombia, where the average work week is nearly 50 hours, still less than a 30% utilization of available time.