I debugged terrible git clone performance over the VPN at my last company. It turned out our firewall was stripping TCP window scaling by default, which included both our internal GitHub Enterprise instance hosted on AWS and github.com. I collected a bunch of packet traces (tcpdump was sufficient) and eventually got the networking folks to fix the firewall config.
This was a company of a few thousand people with programmers working from home who all must've assumed it was fine to get no more than ~1 Mbps git clone performance. After a few months of putting up with it I finally got tired of the issue and spent 30 minutes tracking down the cause. It still took a week or more of back and forth between me, and the networking and security teams. And it became an ongoing issue as they were allow-listing IP addresses, not fixing the root cause. Why are Cisco firewalls stripping TCP window scaling by default in 2026? I have no idea!
My first Linux install, best I can recall, was from a Slackware CD circa 1995? So I guess, me too. I've not used Linux as my desktop since Mac OS X in maybe 2002 but I've always had a Linux box running somewhere or being responsible for Linux boxes since then. It's only in the last few years I've gotten fed up with RPM-based distros and preferred Debian or Ubuntu. My intro to Unix was probably SunOS though.
Yeah, what happens to me is I need a thing, go to Amazon to order it, see that I already bought it 4 years ago, spend 30 minutes trying to find it, then let out a big sigh and order it again.
The 13 is the last generation of the mini and I still have mine. Good to know I'm not missing anything. Battery capacity isn't even below 80% so I can't replace it under Applecare yet.
I've always assumed his inclusion in the story was just to make the story more interesting. I wonder if anybody ever asked him about it at all.
After researching a bit, the story actually is from 1977, I found a PDF from the magazine and it does mention him, even though he wasn't famous except for those tech enthusiast circles. Maybe the story is embellished a bit, but at least it wasn't made up in internet times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-school...
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