HackerNews Summary (2023-05-27 04PM)

Source: Unbounded memory usage by TCP for receive buffers, and how we fixed it

Summary
Cloudflare noticed excessive memory allocation for TCP sessions which triggered TCP collapse processing, “OFO” pruning, and dropping of newly arriving packets. This blog post describes the root cause and solution.

Fact

📈 Linux autotuning doesn’t permit large buffers for sessions, but some sessions had skmem_r and skmem_rb values of 256MiB, which is the system-wide maximum value.

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Source: 8-Bit Wolf – Remembering The NES Game Teaching Kids To Conquer Wall Street

Summary
Wall Street Kid is a classic NES game where you have to make a million dollars to buy a starter home after your wealthy uncle leaves you $600 billion estate, and it is set in the stock market. The game is somewhat satirical, with tongue-in-cheek commentary, which makes it a bit weird to play now.

Fact

🎮 Wall Street Kid is a game for NES that is set in the stock market.

💰 At the beginning of the game, the player receives $500,000, intending to prove money management prowess in stock market investment and earn $1 million to buy a decent house.

🏰 After purchasing a fixer-upper home and completing several other major purchases, the endgame is to buy back the family castle.

📊 Each day of in-game time in Wall Street Kid begins with a newspaper stock report, letting you know which types of stocks are doing well and a few hot investments.

💸 The game is satirical with tongue-in-cheek commentary, but as a player, you can’t escape the feeling that the entire economy is about doubling money to buy a fancy home.

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Source: COLOR: disabling ANSI color output in various Unix commands

Summary
Software should check for the NO_COLOR environment variable to prevent ANSI color codes being outputted by default. This feature allows users to export NO_COLOR=1 to their shell’s environment to disable colour in all supported software.

Fact

🎨 By adopting the NO_COLOR standard, users can easily disable coloured text output.

💻 Software should check for the NO_COLOR environment variable to prevent default ANSI color output.

🚀 This feature allows users to export NO_COLOR=1 to their shell’s environment to disable colour in all supported software.

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Source: State Farm to stop accepting homeowners insurance applications in California due to wildfires, construction costs

Summary
State Farm General Insurance Company has announced that it will halt the acceptance of new homeowners insurance applications in California as the state faces growing wildfire risks. The decision is said to be an attempt to manage risk and improve the company’s financial strength.

Fact

🏠 State Farm General Insurance Company will no longer accept new homeowners insurance applications in California.

🌲 The company cites “rapidly growing” catastrophe risks from wildfires as the reason for this change.

🏗️ “Historic increases” in construction costs and a challenging reinsurance market have also contributed to the company’s decision.

💼 State Farm will continue to serve existing customers through independent contractor agents.

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