[HN Gopher] Open Compute Project: An Interview with Intel's Rebe...
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       Open Compute Project: An Interview with Intel's Rebecca Weekly
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2021-08-12 11:43 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com)
        
       | tunnuz wrote:
       | Anybody else feeling a bit weird at how her (massive) picture is
       | the first thing in the page, as opposed to a picture about the
       | project itself? And anybody else feeling that this is only the
       | case because she looks good, almost if her looks was more
       | important than her hard-earned Senior Principal Engineer
       | position?
        
         | hhh wrote:
         | No, it's an interview first man not a whitepaper.
        
         | IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
         | Of course the top post is misogynistic bullshit accusing her of
         | getting special treatment for her looks, even though the idea
         | is easily disproven by checking out the other 'interview" style
         | article on the site, which is two click away and also features
         | a large photo of the subject.
         | 
         | It starts with questions about the photo, and the next guy
         | piles on and characterizes the interview as "political, not
         | technical", because, apparently interviews that require
         | footnotes explaining that "an average PUE is 1.4-2.0, bad PUE
         | is 2.5+" are just too fluffy for real nerds.
         | 
         | (As to the size, which someone invokes to save this accusation,
         | below: both are scaled to the width of the content, only one
         | happens to be landscape while the other is in what's literally
         | called "portrait" format)
        
           | tunnuz wrote:
           | Sorry but I wasn't trying to say that she's getting special
           | treatment. That's not what I said or what I meant. And I'm
           | sorry that my comment was perceived as misogynistic, the
           | spirit was quite the opposite.
        
             | acomjean wrote:
             | So what was your point in posting the original post? You
             | post seems to be just a comment on the page layout and
             | speculation about it based on her appearance.
             | 
             | Its almost certainly a company stock photo of her.
             | 
             | The page layout is bad, (she's looking off the page, which
             | makes it awkward) but its the tech news web (moving ads,
             | almost unreadable without reader view...).
        
         | jsty wrote:
         | If you click through to the interview topic [0], it lists
         | another article [1] with exactly the same format of a large
         | profile shot pre-article. Makes sense to me - it follows the
         | usual style of interviews having a photo of the interviewee
         | front and centre, and after all they're interviewing a person
         | not a rack of servers.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.anandtech.com/tag/interviews
         | 
         | [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-
         | interview-...
        
         | schmorptron wrote:
         | This is a really good discussion to be had. There is an
         | argument to be made about putting traditionally
         | underrepresented groups of people front and center in articles
         | like this, but it all depends on if she requested(or was
         | explicitly in agreement with) this / chose the picture herself,
         | or if other interviews on the same site do the same thing with
         | male engineers IMO.
         | 
         | Definitely agree that >"almost if her looks was more important
         | than her hard-earned Senior Principal Engineer position" seems
         | to be a real problem for many women in the industry, and I
         | really hope we can overcome this soon.
        
           | tunnuz wrote:
           | Definitely, I know nothing of the origin of the picture.
           | 
           | I have a daughter that I am hoping will get excited about
           | STEM. I am, as I think everybody should be, very much in
           | favor of increasing the representation of underrepresented
           | groups of people. But this just seems like an odd editorial
           | choice.
           | 
           | For comparison: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-
           | anandtech-interview-... this is the picture size of a male
           | interviewee. It's less than half the size of the other one.
        
             | wtallis wrote:
             | > It's less than half the size of the other one.
             | 
             | It's the same width. The site always shows the cover image
             | at the full width of the article. If that image doesn't
             | have a fairly wide aspect ratio, then it pushes the article
             | text relatively further down.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | That is a photo off what looks like a laptop camera though,
             | if it were the same size it'd look awful. Point taken
             | though
        
             | schmorptron wrote:
             | Yeah I'm completely with you that this is a really odd
             | choice. Just wanted to think about an alternate reason why
             | they could've made that choice but your initial assessment
             | seems way more likely, sadly.
        
           | rjsw wrote:
           | I'm guessing the photo came from Intel, can't see many
           | interviews being done in person right now.
           | 
           | There was a similar presentation for another recent interview
           | [1] with an Intel person.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16608/intels-full-
           | enterprise-...
        
             | namibj wrote:
             | It was indeed done remote, you can watch/listen:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlB6tsLiY0w
        
         | tbrownaw wrote:
         | > _Anybody else feeling a bit weird at how her (massive)
         | picture is the first thing in the page, as opposed to a picture
         | about the project itself?_
         | 
         | No. Despite the value of "on the Internet, nobody knows you're
         | (a dog|not wearing pants)", it's unfortunately become fairly
         | common for even things that aren't about people to focus on
         | pictures of people.
         | 
         | > _And anybody else feeling that this is only the case because
         | she looks good, almost if her looks was more important than her
         | hard-earned Senior Principal Engineer position?_
         | 
         | No, because I haven't been living under a rock and I've noticed
         | that pictures of people are standard practice these days even
         | for tech-related things.
        
         | unixhero wrote:
         | Hot girls sell. Plain and simple. It's everywhere, thanks to
         | gender quotas on boards and in teams, you can expect more of
         | it. The hot girls and the pretty girls are picked first.
         | 
         | You may want to downvote this comment, but these are the facts
         | as I have observed them.
         | 
         | EDIT: The same story applies to guys btw.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | The interview is also more about pictures (what intel wants you
         | to see) than about reality. A lot of political talk without
         | substance. The only thing i got that they want to have a sort
         | of vendor agnostic datacenter.
        
           | trhway wrote:
           | it is just another country club style board, countless in the
           | industry, for VPs to fill their calendar and to
           | mingle/network. Tech wise - Intel is like those generals
           | fighting the last war while the world is moving forward. It
           | is a very strong contrast with the NVidia presentation of
           | their new architecture with that Grace CPU, etc. - this is
           | what near future looks like.
        
       | tbrownaw wrote:
       | https://www.opencompute.org/blog/introducing-ocp-20
       | 
       | > Optics: Lead in defining market requirements for process and
       | technology transitions for optimal convergence
       | 
       | Does this mean that in a couple years the half-dozen different
       | parameters for fiber network stuff will be standardized enough
       | for no-thought-required home use like RJ-45 / CAT6 wired ethernet
       | is today?
        
         | mmmBacon wrote:
         | Optical connectivity for short reach (distance) is pretty well
         | standardized and has been for years at least at 1G and above.
         | The biggest barrier for a home user would be familiarizing
         | oneself with the fact you can't bend fibers like you can copper
         | and you have to keep connectors clean. Other than that you
         | should be able to connect and go.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | No, this will never happen. Longer reach is more expensive but
         | the industry won't pay the highest prices for everything if
         | they don't need to.
        
         | namibj wrote:
         | Well, OM3/4 on MPO is a common thing, as is OS2 on dual-LC.
        
       | jabl wrote:
       | As hinted at in the article, the 'OCP rack' spec was narrowly
       | specified to address a specific problem facebook had, and by
       | being gratuitously incompatible with standard 19" racks they
       | really hindered adoption of OCP gear outside of hyperscalers that
       | were able and willing to go all-in on OCP.
       | 
       | Hopefully the new Open-19 thing that is now part of OCP can
       | rectify this mistake.
        
         | formerly_proven wrote:
         | What exactly is the point of Open-19? Seems like yet-another
         | type of blade enclosure, since you loose access to the back of
         | the nodes, you loose a lot of flexibility for IO.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | OCP includes plenty of 19" equipment such as Microsoft's OCS
         | and has for years. There's probably more 19" gear than 21" in
         | OCP now.
        
           | wtallis wrote:
           | And there are also a lot of OCP specs for components that
           | don't care whether they're in a 19" or 21" system. Their
           | specs for NICs and SSDs are relevant regardless of the rack
           | size.
        
         | phnofive wrote:
         | Yeah, I was trying to figure out the modern relevance of the
         | OCP mission ten years on - lost me at the chiplet discussion.
         | The nonstandard racks seemed to indicate the organization would
         | be a dog-wagging tail, but it's unclear how much that's
         | happened either.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-13 23:02 UTC)