this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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To be fair to Luke, in regards to the "six nines" comment in the video that a lot of people think is part of a sex joke (and how the video is framing it), in the proper context he was talking about IT infrastructure and this comment actually refers to a target for high availability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability
99.9999% availability (ie. uptime) = "six nines"
He was basically saying that they're setting a target for higher availability of their infrastructure, because it's been unstable at times, causing staff frustration and delaying certain workflows.
I can't blame a lot of average people who don't work in any sort of IT field for confusing it with the "69" sex position (wondering what the heck "six nines" means), but that's not at all what he was making reference to.
I'm not at all defending anything else in relation to this debacle besides this unfair portrayal of this particular snippet.
EDIT: Just wanted to add, I think it's pretty sad that pistol fingers and a wink these days apparently must mean you're making a sex joke (or are trying to offend people in some other way). As a kid I remember this gesture being used to "act cool". We did it all the time back then, and it was all in fun. Luke's from my generation, so maybe he thought the same, or maybe we didn't get the memo that this gesture is off-limits now.
Its an innuendo. 5 nines is basically impossible, not even FAANG can really hit it 100%.
It doesn't matter if the SLA is realistically reachable or not, it's basically a marketing meme and one of the most common target SLAs in IT ("target" doesn't mean you can actually reach it, you're aiming for it though).
See here: https://lemmy.pub/comment/1046563
LOL That number of nines is specifically referenced by an industry dominated by tech bros though. It could just as easily be 5 9s or 7 9s but for some reason it has to be 6 9s? And I know it's a recurring joke for LTT but that doesn't mean you should put it, or ANY joke into an apology video of all things?! What were they THINKING?! Besides it's a tired and souless attempt at humour that should've been retired years ago
Actually, the "nines" go all the way from "one nine" through "nine nines", exactly the way you wondered about when you said "It could just as easily be [...]". It's actually exactly that way, and the chart that shows this is found in my first post on the linked Wikipedia article. Refer to the "Percentage calculation" chart about "High availability": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability
"Six nines" is just another SLA calculation on the chart, but is one of the most commonly referenced in marketing material in the industy. That's why you see a lot more about it online than the other percentages, but you see reference to the others out there (ie. Amazon references "nine nines" in their S3 object storage marketing in terms of data durability). "Six nines" roughly corresponds to 30 seconds of downtime per year. Maybe it's used more often because that's an easy SLA to remember.
Anyway, the point is that it's not some tech bro-dominated industry inside sex joke. It's a real, valid SLA, and it's not the only one. Just the most commonly referenced.
Yeah, I'm fullly aware of all the other 9s used which is why I suggested they could just as easily say they're aiming for 7 9s or as Amazon does, 9 9s or any other basically impossible to hit asperational goal that's nice to try for but for SOME REASON the most often quoted / used one is 6 9s? Coincidence you say? Is it super important to aim for 30 seconds per year versus about 5 min per year? Why not aim for 3 seconds / year rather than 30 seconds? Because then you can't say 6 9 Nice! That's literally the only reason right?
I don't know man. It's a valid SLA target which is often and widely used in the industry at large, it's almost like muscle memory to some people to just cite it when talking about HA. And even if they regularly make "69" jokes or whatever on their channels, I personally didn't read far enough into it in this segment of the video to get the impression that they might be making a sex joke. There was no lead-up to one or anything in the original context. All he said at the end of his segment was that their goal was "six nines" plus the "act cool" pose (how I personally interpreted it). And I just felt like "Okay, so they're aiming for the usual SLA you see most big companies aiming for". Like, that's all that went through my mind personally.
If anything, maybe it's inconclusive if it was meant as an actual sex joke. I said in my original post I could see how uninformed viewers might see it differently, so I'm trying to leave some leeway for understanding of how it might have made others feel.
I'm not saying 100% it couldn't be one, but I personally didn't feel like it was. Everyone is free to interpret it how they want, I just wanted to point out that he used a real term that isn't inherently sexual (and lots of people don't know about it), so it's a possibility he actually just meant to cite a real SLA to those in-the-know.