[HN Gopher] How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]
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How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]
Author : pabs3
Score : 226 points
Date : 2024-10-01 23:05 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kernel-recipes.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kernel-recipes.org)
| maybeben wrote:
| i mean, they also have one of the largest ceph deployments.
| anything is scalable with no budget.
| pas wrote:
| slide 22 states that the cost is 1 CHF/TB/month (on 10+2
| erasure coded disks), though it would be interesting to do a
| breakdown of costs (development, hardware, maintenance,
| datacenter, servicing, management, etc..)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| 1 CHF/TB/month is a bit expensive for storage at that scale,
| so it would definitely be interesting to see what they're
| spending the money on and what they are (and aren't) counting
| in that price.
| hackernewds wrote:
| No budget often tags along with no accountability
| rob_c wrote:
| Tape backup, accessibility, networking, availability... At
| 1CHF/TB that's a lot better than my local university still
| charging >100x that for such services internally
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Economies of scale in storage are significant. Also, I
| don't know why you put up with your university charging
| 100x that when you can store things on AWS for
| $5-10/TB/month (or less). That comes with all the
| guarantees (or more) of durability and availability you
| get from the university.
| lnauta wrote:
| Don't forget bandwidth costs at this scale are
| significant to say the least.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| They probably consume Panasas, IBM, DDN, and BeeGFS gear and
| licensing too.
| adev_ wrote:
| Nop.
|
| Most internal data is spread between Ceph and home-made
| distributed storage system named EOS (https://indico.cern.ch/
| event/138478/contributions/149912/att...) running over
| commodity hardware.
|
| The only commerical-backed storage system is the long term
| storage tape system. Still it has an home-made overlay API
| over it to interface with the rest of the systems.
| rob_c wrote:
| Good god no. Nowhere near anything so crass. CEPH and EOS all
| the way
| dark-star wrote:
| All their important "administrative" stuff (think Active
| Directory/LDAP user database, mail and other essential
| services) run on proprietary storage systems from a
| commercial vendor (not IBM though), with enterprise support
| and all.
|
| At least that was the case a few years ago when we last
| talked to one of the heads of IT at CERN, but I guess it
| hasn't drastically changed
| renewiltord wrote:
| Most of the magic is in https://eos-web.web.cern.ch/eos-web/
| apparently
| synicalx wrote:
| 1EB with only 30k users, thats a wild TB-per-user ratio. My frame
| of reference; the largest storage platform I've ever worked on
| was a combined ~60PB (give or take) and that had hundreds of
| millions of users.
| hackernewds wrote:
| That's the scale of the universe, compared to data generated by
| humans
| shric wrote:
| My frame of reference; the largest storage platform I've ever
| worked on was a combined ~tens of EB (give or take) and that
| had over a billion users.
| chipdart wrote:
| Most humans don't handle sensor and simulation data for a
| living, though. CERN just so happens to employ thousands who do
| that for a living.
| lmihaig wrote:
| When experiments are running the sensors generate about 1PB of
| data per second. They have to do multiple (I think four?)
| layers of filtering, including hardware level to get to actual
| manageable numbers.
| elashri wrote:
| It depends on which experiment. We call it trigger system.
| And it varies according to each experiment requirements and
| physics of interest. For example LHCb is doing now full
| trigger system on a software side (No hardware FPGA
| triggering) and mainly utilizing GPUs for that. That would be
| hare to achieve with the harsher conditions and requirements
| of CMS and ATLAS.
|
| But yes at LHCb we discard about 97% of the data generated
| during collisions.
|
| Disclaimer: I work on LHCb trigger system
| a-dub wrote:
| does modern fuse still context switch too much or does it now use
| io_uring or similar?
| Dwedit wrote:
| Last I read about FUSE, adding a 128KB read-ahead buffer
| drastically reduced context switching.
| mappu wrote:
| FUSE over io_uring is still WIP:
| https://lwn.net/Articles/988186/
|
| FUSE Passthrough landed in kernel 6.9, which also reduces
| context switching in some cases:
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-FUSE-Passthrough . The
| benchmarks in this article are pretty damning for regular FUSE.
| a-dub wrote:
| yeah but still not great for metadata operations, no?
|
| i remember it was really not great for large sets of search
| paths because it defeated the kernel's built-in metadata
| caches with excessive context switching?
| Dwedit wrote:
| FUSE Passthrough is only useful for filesystems that wrap an
| existing filesystem, such as union mounts. Otherwise, you
| don't have an open file to hand over.
| qwertox wrote:
| IIRC I had issues with inotify when I was editing files on a
| remote machine via SSHFS, when these files were being used inside
| a Docker container. inotify inside the container did not trigger
| the notifications, whereas it did, when editing a file with an
| editor directly on that host.
|
| I think this was related to FUSE, that Docker just didn't get
| notified.
| z3t4 wrote:
| The inotify signals might work if you add -v a whole directory
| udev4096 wrote:
| This is fascinating. How are they managing or even taking backup
| for this gigantic storage?
| ephimetheus wrote:
| For experiment data, there is a layer on top of all of this
| that distributes datasets across the computing grid. That
| system has a way to handle replicate at the dataset level.
| rob_c wrote:
| Tape and off-site replicas at globally distributed data centres
| for science. Of the 1EB a huge amount of that is probably in
| automated recall and replication with "users" running staged
| processing of the data at different sites ultimately with data
| being reduced to "manageable" GB-TB level for scientists to do
| science
| fnands wrote:
| Yup, lots of tape for stuff in cold storage, and then some
| subset of that on disk spread out over several sites.
|
| It's kinda interesting to watch anything by Alberto Pace, the
| head of storage at CERN to get an understanding of the
| challenges and constraints:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym2am-FumXQ
|
| I was basically on the helpdesk for the system for a few
| years so had to spend a fair amount of time helping people
| replicate data from one place to another, or from tape onto
| disk.
| JBorrow wrote:
| They use a distributed data management tool called RUCIO:
| https://rucio.cern.ch to distribute data on the grid.
| tantalor wrote:
| _What is Rucio?
|
| Rucio enables centralized management of large volumes of data
| backed by many heterogeneous storage backends.
|
| Data is physically distributed over a large number of storage
| servers, potentially each relying on different storage
| technologies (SSD/Disk/Tape/Object storage) and, frequently,
| managed by different teams of system administrators.
|
| Rucio builds on top of this heterogeneous infrastructure and
| provides an interface which allows users to interact with the
| storage backends in a unified way. The smallest operational
| unit in Rucio is a file. Rucio enables users to upload,
| download, and declaratively manage groups of such files._
|
| https://rucio.cern.ch/documentation/started/what_is_rucio
| lnauta wrote:
| At some tier 1 sites in the grid there is no backup for the
| tapes as its costly and you only lose some statistics when a
| tape is lost.
| niemandhier wrote:
| People here keep claiming "Anything is possible with unlimited
| budget".
|
| Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro, 50 million Euro for all IT
| infrastructure.
|
| https://cds.cern.ch/record/2888205/files/English.pdf#page18
|
| It's not the money, it's the people. Update: Added source.
| lokimedes wrote:
| Also, the in-kind contributions from hundreds of institutes
| around the world. Much can, and has, been said about physicist
| code, but CERN is the center of a massive community of "pre-
| dropout" geniuses. I can't count the number of former students
| that later joined Google and the likes. Many are frequenting
| HN.
| adev_ wrote:
| CERN was a good example of how much can be done with how little
| when you have the right people.
|
| For a long time, the entire Linux distribution (Scientific
| Linux) used for ~15K collaborators, the infra and the grid
| computing was managed by a team of around 4-5 people.
|
| The teams managing the network access (LanDB), the distributed
| computing system, the scientific framework (ROOT) and the
| storage are also small, dedicated skilled teams.
|
| And the result speaks for itself.
|
| Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when
| they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft
| fanboy/girl coming from outside of the scientific environment.
| The first thing he/she did was to force Microsoft bloatware
| everywhere to replace existing working OSS solutions.
| wuming2 wrote:
| > Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently
| when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft
| fanboy(girl?) coming from outside of the scientific
| environment.
|
| Painful to read so I did a short check. From a news post I
| don't want to link here, but easily found searching "CERN,
| the famous scientific lab where the web was born, tells us
| why it's ditching Microsoft and helping others do the same",
| direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite. I am not
| sure how current head of IT at CERN, Enrica Porcari, fits in
| to the story. Insider info will be appreciated.
| adev_ wrote:
| > direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite
|
| The head of IT changed in 2021 if it answers your question.
| wuming2 wrote:
| Don't see any previous experience at Microsoft [2]. Just
| a self taught fan then?
|
| Edit: "Partnership is the art of understanding shared
| value. In WFP we have a number of partnerships, not many,
| but the ones that we have are deep, are sustained, are
| long-term. And definitely UNICC is one of them. Enrica
| Porcari, Chief Information Officer and Director
| Technology Division at the WFP" [1]
|
| United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) is
| a Microsoft shop. Legit to assume, if OP statement holds
| true, she got the business sponsorship going while CIO at
| the World Food Program (WFP).
|
| This kind of attempted executive takeover is always the
| strategy of a team. Who sponsored and voted for her at
| CERN is the real person of interest.
|
| 1. https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/
|
| 2. https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-
| porcari-...
| wuming2 wrote:
| Joachim Mnich, Director for Research and Computing and
| her boss [4], holds the position also since January 2021
| [1]. Mike Lamont, Director for Accelerators and
| Technology, also got the job at the same time [2].
| Finally Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General, in 2019
| extended her tenure for a second term "to start on 1st
| January 2021" [3].
|
| So in 2019 the initiative to remove Microsoft began. With
| renewal and promotions taking in to effect it stopped.
| Interesting. Feeling a strong Microsoft US vs Munich DE
| vibe. With a twitch of IT.
|
| 1. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-
| people/biographies/jo...
|
| 2. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-
| people/biographies/mi...
|
| 3. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-
| people/biographies/fa...
|
| 4. https://german-
| dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...
| wuming2 wrote:
| "newly created CERN Venture Connect programme (CVC),
| launched in 2023 [...] In establishing CVC, CERN's
| Entrepreneurship team entered discussions with Microsoft,
| with the aim to better leverage the Microsoft for
| Startups Founders Hub" [1].
|
| Under the purview of Christopher Hartley, Director of
| Industry, Procurement & Knowledge Transfer (IPT) [2],
| Microsoft is gaining more footholds at CERN. Won't be too
| far fetched to consider Mr Hartley and Ms Porcari as
| working together to achieve some sort of common good.
|
| 1. https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/journey-
| cern-e...
|
| 2. https://german-
| dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...
| dguest wrote:
| There was a huge initiative at CERN to move to non-MS
| products.
|
| It was great actually: suddenly we were leaving behind a
| bunch of bloated MS cruft and working with nice stuff. As
| someone working at CERN I was really inspired, not just
| by the support for open source but by how well it all
| worked.
|
| Then next thing I knew we were doubling down on MS stuff.
| I don't know what happened. It was sad though, and the
| user experience did not improve in the end.
|
| I'm not close enough to CERN-IT to know the details. But
| for what it's worth, no one I knew in IT could think of a
| good reason for going back.
| notabee wrote:
| Considering how massively in bed with the U.S. government
| and other governments that Microsoft is, and said
| government has been known for keeping tabs even on
| allies(1), I'm sure that certain parties have a keen
| interest in keeping up with what's going on at CERN
| that's not just scientific curiosity. Strangely these
| Microsoft evangelists manage to pop up in organizations
| all the time to reverse any open source initiatives.
| Could just be a coincidence though.
|
| 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/nat
| ional-...
| axus wrote:
| I think the majority of the Scientific Linux software came
| from Fedora/Red Hat and the Linux kernel. Planning and
| managing the CERN computing infrastructure is a lot of work,
| then updating and releasing a famous distro on top of that
| was impressive.
| jimbat wrote:
| Scientific Linux was originally a product of Fermilab, with
| contributions from CERN.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yes, but that still covers infrastructure (cables) and a lot of
| equipment for the experiments including but not limited to
| massive storage and tape backup, distributed local compute, and
| local cluster management all with users busy trying to pummel
| it with the latest and greatest ideas of how they can use it
| faster and better... Not to mention specialist software and
| licences. 50M doesn't go that far when you factor all of this
| in
| atoav wrote:
| That kind of place can draw a certain kind of employee. This
| finding is hard to transfer to commercial projects. Sure
| employees will always claim to be really motivated, especially
| in the marketing material, but are they we-are-nerds-working-
| on-the-bleeding-edge-of-human-knowledge-motivated?
|
| Probably not, but there is surely some manager out there who
| made themselves believe they can motivate their employees to
| show the same devotion for the self-made hardships of some
| mostely pointless SaaS product. If you want to grab that kind
| of spirit, what you do needs to fundamentally make sense beyond
| just making somebody money.
| quailfarmer wrote:
| That's a great observation, and I think generally correct,
| but there are private companies where that sort of motivation
| exists, for basically the same reason
| guappa wrote:
| Then they get bought by some megacorp which kills the
| motivation.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Or they _are_ the megacorp that killed it (Google,
| Xerox?)
| sligor wrote:
| That's exactly how we were able to go to the moon in 55 years
| ago. And why it's complicated today. It was of course lot of
| money. But it was mostly a lot of highly skilled, motivated
| devoted people doing for an ultimate common goal. Money would
| not have been sufficient by itself.
| wvh wrote:
| In other words, if you permit, pure capitalism isn't a
| sufficiently good motive to get something significant done.
| But of course most of us don't work towards an ultimate
| common goal - and neither did most people in those times.
| One wonders if there is enough meaning left these days to
| go 'round and ensure most of us feel passionate about the
| stuff we (have to) do. Maybe we really need a god or war or
| common enemy to unite all strands into a strong rope.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Since then, a LOT of the smart motivated people have been
| lured into either banking or adtech. The pay is good and
| the technical problems can be pretty interesting but the
| end result lacks that "wow factor".
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| Fingers crossed that next century we'll look at our
| current banking and adtech and go: Wow - that was
| unbelievably sad and dumb.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I also read that nowadays we are more risk averse and many
| people/manager/companies are mostly administrators of
| status quo. Pair that with lack of vision and public
| engagement for current challenges to humanity.
| jedrek wrote:
| Also, CERN does not have a profit motive.
|
| How much good work have the people reading this thread had to
| trash because it didn't align with Q3 OKRs? How much time and
| energy did they put into garbage solutions because they had
| to hit a KPI by the last day of June?
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Also, CERN does not have a profit motive.
|
| This is a great point. We work with CERN on a project, and
| we're all volunteers, but we work on something we need, and
| contribute back to it wholeheartedly.
|
| At the end of the day, CERN wants to give away project
| governance to someone else in the group, because they don't
| want to be the BDFL of anything they help creating. It
| allows them to pursue new and shiny things and build them.
|
| There's an air consisting of "it's done when it's done",
| and "we need this, so we should build this without watering
| it down", so projects move at a steady pace, but the code
| and product is always as high quality as possible.
| niemandhier wrote:
| CERN buddy of mine suggested that exposing a colony of
| physicists to elevated ambient levels of helium would trigger
| excessive infrastructure building behavior.
| amelius wrote:
| > Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro
|
| Kind of weird that a company like Uber has a valuation of $150
| billion Euro.
| yccs27 wrote:
| Apples to oranges. Budget is per year, valuation is total.
|
| A better comparison would be Uber's revenue of $37 billion in
| 2023.
| amelius wrote:
| I don't see why it's Apples to oranges. Uber could pay for
| 150 CERN-years.
| chmod775 wrote:
| No, they could not.
|
| Valuation is not money in the bank. It does not even
| represent an amount that is convertible to an equal
| amount of liquid currency.
|
| It's a number that is hardly useful for anything and I'm
| tired of people cooking up all sorts of nonsense with it.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, maybe it's 75 CERN years or maybe even 10. The point
| still stands.
|
| PS: Sorry if you got tired, but I'm tired of people
| explaining what valuation isn't when we're just talking
| orders of magnitude.
| exe34 wrote:
| it's only useful for getting loans that you'll pay back
| with a bigger loan. it's how rich people are always cash-
| poor but wealthy and live wealthy lifestyles.
| gwervc wrote:
| How many people ordering a meal (often out of laziness) per
| day vs thinking and searching the mysteries of universe?
| Economically it makes sense that Uber generates a lot more of
| cash.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| I think you misinterpreted that there shall be a
| correlation between _valuation_ and _earnings_. Ubers
| _first_ ever positive year was 2013, after 15 years in
| business [1] . Uber may be generating cash, but it's also
| loosing (lost) cash a lot faster than it was generating it.
| By taking 2013 as reference (~2 billion), it needs another
| 5 of those years just to recover from its losses in 2012 (9
| billion). I understand the economics behind it, but its
| valuation is way out of reality.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/8/24065999/uber-
| earnings-pro...
| dguest wrote:
| Most of the people who make CERN work aren't working for
| CERN. The IT department is under CERN, but there are many
| thousands of "users" who don't get payed by CERN at all.
| Quite a lot of the fabrication and most of the physics
| analysis is done by national labs and universities around the
| world.
| elashri wrote:
| CERN budget on experiment level is being paid mostly by
| contributions from the institutions that is part of this
| experiment. I am talking about operation, R&D and this
| would also include personnel contributions to different
| aspect. There is also service work that each one of the
| users must do beside doing physics. I am for example work
| on software development stack beside my current physics
| analysis. Some of my colleagues working on hardware.
|
| Then there are country level contributions that pays for
| CERN infrastructure and maintenance (and inter experiment
| stuff) and direct employees salaries.
| dguest wrote:
| The important point here is that (I believe) the 1.4
| billion above doesn't account for all the work done
| directly by institutes. Institutes pay CERN, but they
| also channel government grants to fund a huge amount of
| work directly.
|
| Most of the people I know who "worked at" CERN never got
| a pay check that said CERN on it.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Good hiring managers can find the hidden gems. These are
| typically people who don't have the resume to join FAANG
| immediately, due to lacking the pedigree, but who have lots of
| potential. Also these same people typically don't last long
| because they do eventually move on.
|
| Also it helps that Europe is so behind in tech that if you want
| to do some cutting edge tech you are almost forced to join a
| public institution because private ones are not doing anything
| exciting.
| guappa wrote:
| Because doing the millionth CRUD in USA is very exciting?
| wvh wrote:
| One wonders if things win because they really are better,
| or because there's sufficient financial momentum behind
| them. I have worked in the public sector for some years,
| and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the budgets
| are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot of people
| in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going to need
| money, and lots of it. For all that's good and bad about
| it, most of that excess is concentrated in the US, in a few
| hotspots. No need to get distracted and put a flag on
| somebody like a Zuckerberg or Jobs or Gates though.
| sofixa wrote:
| > and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the
| budgets are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot
| of people in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going
| to need money, and lots of it
|
| And the initial market you have is quite a bit smaller.
| Germany is the biggest EU country by population at 84
| million, compared to 333 million in the US. Moving into
| another EU country means translating into a different
| language, verifying what laws apply to you, how taxes
| work, etc. Sometimes it's easy (just a translation),
| sometimes you might have to redo everything almost from
| scratch (e.g. Doctolib which schedule healthcare
| appointments, do meetings online with doctors, can be
| used to share test results, prescriptions - each new
| country they enter will have _a lot_ of regulations on
| healthcare data that will need to be applied).
|
| But it's mostly the budgets.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Also it helps that Europe is so behind in tech that if you
| want to do some cutting edge tech you are almost forced to
| join a public institution because private ones are not doing
| anything exciting.
|
| This is genuinely cringeworthy. Do you think that companies
| in the EU all use COBOL on mainframes and nothing newer than
| 10 years old is allowed? Airlines and banks here(!) are
| rewriting their apps to be Kubernetes native... And have been
| doing so for years. Amadeus (top 2 airline booking software
| in the world) were a top Kubernetes contributor already a
| decade ago.
|
| The tech problems being solved at Criteo, Revolut, Thales,
| BackMarket, Airbus, Amadeus (to name a few fun ones off the
| top of my head) are no less challenging and bleeding edge
| than... "the Uber of X" app number 831813 in the US. Or
| fucking Juicero or Theranos or any of the other scams.
| anthk wrote:
| A lot of teleco hardware comes from Europe. Without that, you
| would using your hardware as doorstoppers.
| anthk wrote:
| >Also it helps that Europe is so behind in tec
|
| How's Boeing doing?
| hkwerf wrote:
| That being said, though, members contribute more than money. A
| lot of the work done at CERN is not done on CERN budgets, but
| on the budgets of member institutes.
| lmihaig wrote:
| People get this very wrong, CERN is extremely underfunded.
| People really don't understand how expensive running the
| accelerators is and most of the budget goes to that. Last years
| they even had to run for less months than expected because they
| couldn't afford the rising energy prices.
|
| The buildings are old, the offices suck, you don't even get
| free coffee and they pay less than the norm in Switzerland. But
| they have some of the top minds working on very specific and
| interesting systems, dealing with problems you'd never
| encounter anywhere else.
|
| I would like to yap more about the current management and their
| push/reliance on enterprise solutions but to cut it short I
| really do think cern is a net contributor to open science and
| they deserve more funding.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The things you can build when everyone is a rockstar :D
| jgalt212 wrote:
| I'm convinced CERN could greatly benefit from "middle out".
| vfclists wrote:
| Re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41716523,
|
| > over the years what discoveries have been made at CERN that
| have had practical social and economic benefits to humanity as a
| whole?
|
| Some responders to the question believe I was criticizing a
| supposed wastefulness of the research. Not knowing the benefits
| of the discoveries in high energy physics, ie the stuff the
| accelerators are actually built to discover, doesn't mean I was
| criticizing it.
|
| Responses referenced the contributions the development of the
| infrastructure supporting the basic research itself have made,
| which is fine, but not the benefits of high energy physics
| discoveries.
|
| So to rephrase the question - What are the practical social and
| economic benefits to society that the discoveries in high-energy
| particle physics at institutions like CERN have made over the
| years?
|
| This is not just in relation to CERN, but world wide, such those
| experiments which create pools of water deep underground to study
| cosmic rays etc.
| deelowe wrote:
| You're probably getting replies like that because it's a bit of
| an odd question. Academic research isn't really done to achieve
| a particular purpose or goal. The piratical benefit literally
| _is_ academic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's also one of the first questions from people that very
| much are criticizing, so even if it was an sincere question
| it will be lumped together. Not recognizing/addressing this
| when posing the question does nothing to prevent it from the
| lumping.
| superhuzza wrote:
| The piratical benefit may be particle cannons? Yarrgh!
| coherentpony wrote:
| > Responses referenced the contributions the development of the
| infrastructure supporting the basic research itself have made,
| which is fine, but not the benefits of high energy physics
| discoveries.
|
| I was one of those responders.
|
| There were two very deliberate reasons I specifically avoided
| talking about particle physics:
|
| 1. I interpreted the tone of the original question to be
| extremely highly cynical of any scientific contribution
| particle physics has made, so I instead went for
| 'consequential' things. More excitement around education,
| outreach, and other adjacent aspects that are beneficial to
| humans. I did this to potentially avoid, "How has discovering a
| new Boson made my rent cheaper?" types of arguments that are
| only ever made in bad faith, but have been made to me a
| disheartening number of times in my career; and
|
| 2. I am scientist and I have collaborators and colleagues at
| CERN, but I'm not a particle physicist and so I didn't feel
| adequately qualified to highlight them. I was expecting someone
| with more expertise would jump in and simply do a better job
| than I ever could.
|
| If I interpreted the tone of your question incorrectly, please
| understand that it wasn't an intentional sleight on you, and
| simply an artefact of a) plain text being an incredibly poor
| medium for communicating nuance; b) a defensive measure that I
| have had the displeasure of dealing with in the past. And if
| you were genuinely curious, that's wonderful, and I'm sorry
| that I didn't offer you more grace in my response.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Somewhat off topic, but CERN has a fantastic science museum
| attached to it that I had the privilege of visiting last summer.
| There is of course Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT workstation, but also
| so much more. It is also the only science museum I've visited
| that addresses topics in cyberinfrastructure such as serving out
| massive amounts of data. (I personally get interested when I see
| old StorageTek tapes lol.) The more traditional science displays
| are also great. Check it out if you are ever in the Geneva area.
| It is an easy bus ride to get out there.
| zrules wrote:
| Don't forget to visit the gift shop too. They don't have an
| online store so it's the only place to get CERN 'gears'. You
| can easily overspend there for gifts your friends and family
| will appreciate (if they know and like about CERN and its
| missions).
| QuietWatchtower wrote:
| What's funny is that I just visited the museum a few months
| ago, and am coincidentally wearing a CERN hat I got there
| while reading the post and comments. I also highly recommend
| checking out the museum!
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