Colin Percival
FreeBSD developer and former FreeBSD Security Officer; founder of the Tarsnap online backup service and author of the scrypt key derivation function.
Colin Percival did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
FreeBSD works well as a desktop operating system when paired with a graphical user interface.
Their wordsMost people think of FreeBSD as being a server OS which is used only via the command line, but as anyone who has attended a BSD conference can attest, it works just fine with a GUI too.
- 5 months earlier
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cybersecurityprivacycryptography
Their wordsWith requests going over TLS it is obviously less critical now, but end-to-end signing is always going to be better than transport-layer security.
↗20 Years on AWS and Never Not My Jobdaemonology.net 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsbut I still think the model of Eventually Known Consistency is the better theoretical model even if it is harder for users to reason about.
↗20 Years on AWS and Never Not My Jobdaemonology.net 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsexceptions are an inherently poor way of handling errors because they make it easier to write bugs which won't be immediately obvious on casual code inspection
↗20 Years on AWS and Never Not My Jobdaemonology.net 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 months earlier
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Our reading
Automation is a lie: every automated thing needs a human on top of it making sure it is working.
Their wordsThat's great, but I don't think it can replace a human poking at virtual machines; my experience with EC2 is that images break in all sorts of wild ways, and nothing beats a human for saying "huh, I have no idea what's going on here but something seems weird".
- 2 months earlier
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Our reading
Listening to customers is invaluable, but you should not build the thing they asked you for.
Their wordsCustomer Obsession is great, but I often see Amazonians taking this too simplistically: "Start with the customer" doesn't have to mean "ask customers what they want and then give them faster horses".
↗Thoughts on (Amazonian) Leadershipdaemonology.net 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsWhile the same does not directly apply in other fields, working with others to produce the best results for everyone will be much better in the long-term than focusing solely on what Amazon needs right now.
↗Thoughts on (Amazonian) Leadershipdaemonology.net 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Shipping a half-baked product permanently damages customer trust, even after it is later fixed.
Their wordsWhen AWS ships a service which is half-baked, it diminishes customer trust in AWS as a whole; even if the problems in that service ultimately get corrected (either by fixing them or in some cases by simply getting rid of a service which should never have existed in the first place) the memory of a failed launch will live on in customers' minds for years to come.
↗Thoughts on (Amazonian) Leadershipdaemonology.net 3rd of 3 in this piece