https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/Recent content in Welcome to Rik Kisnah's Blog on Rik Kisnah - BlogHugoenSat, 20 Jun 2026 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/your-ai-strategy-is-read-only/Sat, 20 Jun 2026 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/your-ai-strategy-is-read-only/Why enterprise AI ROI sits upstream with a few model providers, and how owning the learning loop, not renting the outcome, brings that value home.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/memorial-day-leadership-ai/Mon, 25 May 2026 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/memorial-day-leadership-ai/Memorial Day, three leadership archetypes, and why AI amplifies character rather than replacing it.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/chat-is-the-product-api-is-the-contract-cli-agents-are-the-harness/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/chat-is-the-product-api-is-the-contract-cli-agents-are-the-harness/1,224 words · 7 min read Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. Image: The illustration above was generated with Gemini. I have done the slow version of AI-assisted coding: paste a failing Python traceback into Claude.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/vibe-coding-is-making-engineers-lazy-where-it-counts/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/vibe-coding-is-making-engineers-lazy-where-it-counts/1,658 words · 8 min read Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. Image: The illustration above was generated with xAI Grok. The Moment I Keep Having I keep having the same moment (deja vu over deja-vus) with vibe coding.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/beyond-the-slop-ai-writing-without-sounding-like-a-bot/Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/beyond-the-slop-ai-writing-without-sounding-like-a-bot/Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. I also used several models and Grammarly in a multi-pass workflow; the prompt pack is linked just below, with more context in the section titled “Prompt pack and tooling for this post.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/the-hand-reaching-back-kindness-after-layoffs/Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/the-hand-reaching-back-kindness-after-layoffs/Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. The Hand Reaching Back: Kindness After Layoffs The same phrases, harder math In May 2025, Microsoft cut 6,000 jobs [1]. Amazon shrank management and pushed people toward AI [2].https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/a-short-history-of-ai-from-greek-myths-to-large-language-models/Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/a-short-history-of-ai-from-greek-myths-to-large-language-models/Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. A Short History of AI: From Greek Myths to Large Language Models Humans have been dreaming up artificial beings for millennia. For example, in Greek myths, Hephaestus was at a forge, creating metal servants.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/how-to-make-agentic-coding-actually-work/Sat, 14 Mar 2026 15:31:48 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/how-to-make-agentic-coding-actually-work/Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal views and does not represent the views of my employer or my community. Caveat: This was written with research assistance from AI tools, but I curated the content, edited the draft, and cross-checked the references. Your Repository Is the Prompt: How to Make Agentic Coding Actually Work Most developers using AI coding tools are still copying code into chat windows. I don’t think that is agentic coding.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ai-pyramid-five-layers-between-hardware-and-agi/Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:33:29 -0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ai-pyramid-five-layers-between-hardware-and-agi/Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent those of my employer. This content was written with the assistance of AI language models but curated and controlled by me. Most conversations about AI focus on the model. The chatbot, the assistant, the thing that answers your question in seconds. But the model is one layer in a larger stack. Understanding the full stack changes how you think about AI strategy, investment, and what comes next.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/attention-is-all-you-need-and-all-you-need-to-know/Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/attention-is-all-you-need-and-all-you-need-to-know/The 2017 Transformer paper replaced sequential processing with parallel attention and launched the GPU infrastructure boom. The same attention problem exists in your repository. Here is how to fix it.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/debugging-is-still-a-science-even-with-ai/Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:25:02 -0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/debugging-is-still-a-science-even-with-ai/Debugging Is Science, Even When It Feels Like Art. AI Didn’t Change That. Disclaimer: This post was generated with Claude and researched with Perplexity, but the final technical judgment, edits, and conclusions are mine. I don’t think AI made debugging automatic. I see engineers paste a stack trace into a chat window, copy the patch back, watch the red line disappear, and declare it fixed. I’ve done it too. Then the bug returns two weeks later under a different name, with more pages and more pain.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/bonne-annee-moris/Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/bonne-annee-moris/Published in Le Mauricien: Download Original Article (PDF) Reflections during a disney cruise with family While on a family Disney cruise through the US and the British Virgin Islands alongside Estelle and our children, Rekha and Roy, we remarked on how similar those countries are historically, yet how different they are. Mauritius is independent, has consistent leadership, is economically strong, and has made its place in the world. As we sail into 2026, I find myself thinking about the year ahead and what we wish for our homeland.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/repos-not-built-for-ai-agents/Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/repos-not-built-for-ai-agents/Most repositories are designed for humans, not AI agents. Here’s the minimal set of repo context files and structure that makes agents reliable instead of chaotic.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ranjiv-ten-years-anniversary/Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ranjiv-ten-years-anniversary/Marking ten years since Ranjiv’s passing with poems from Rik and Dad, reflections, and memory.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/2025-top-5/Wed, 31 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/2025-top-5/Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent those of my employer. This content was generated with the assistance of AI language models but curated and controlled by me. For more of my writing, visit rikkisnah.github.io. I did not want to write another end of year list. I am writing one anyway because I kept notes (I have done so for decades - the writer and builder in me - have notes since 1993)https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/disney-cruise-2025/Sat, 27 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/disney-cruise-2025/Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent those of my employer. This content was generated with the assistance of AI language models but curated and controlled by me. For more of my writing, visit rikkisnah.github.io. Every year, without negotiation or debate, we do this. A Disney cruise. Together. It is not about novelty anymore. It is about continuity. About anchoring time to something predictable in a world that rarely is.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/markdown-is-the-new-source-code/Sun, 14 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/markdown-is-the-new-source-code/Disclaimer: This blog post was written with AI assistance using Claude Code. The ideas and perspectives are my own, refined through conversation with AI. The accompanying image was generated using AI tools. The way we write software is changing. Not just the tools—the fundamental structure of how we organize information for development. For the past two years, most of us have used AI assistants that autocomplete code and speed up boilerplate.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/mauritius-ai-jobs-evolution/Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/mauritius-ai-jobs-evolution/Published in Le Mauricien: Download Original Article (PDF) In 1984, my grandfather—Mohun Persad Kisnah—took me to see the first ATM machine at the State Bank in Port Louis. I was a boy, watching adults queue nervously before this strange metal box that dispensed cash without a teller. “Beta,” my dada said quietly, “this machine is going to replace many jobs.” I looked up at him. “What will happen to those people?https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/how-oci-works-with-oci/Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/how-oci-works-with-oci/Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal research and analysis based on publicly available information and is not representative of my employer’s official position. When you type a question into an AI assistant and receive a coherent, contextually relevant response seconds later, something remarkable happens between your keyboard and that reply. For engineers and developers building applications on top of these systems, understanding that process matters. It determines how you architect inference endpoints, allocate GPU resources, and optimize costs.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/thanksgivings-2025/Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/thanksgivings-2025/Sharmilla and Georges flew far from the cold, From Mauritius to Canada, and across oceans bold. With Isaiah beside them, smiling and bright, They landed in Seattle for warmth, food, and light. Rikesh and Estelle opened their home with grace, Where Rekha and Roy brought joy to the space. Cousins united, a family made whole; Laughter and stories that strengthen the soul. We celebrated Isaiah; his birthday, his cheer, A memory stamped into this beautiful year.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/nccl-complete-reference-guide/Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/nccl-complete-reference-guide/Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal research and analysis based on publicly available information and is not representative of my employer’s official position. Executive Summary NCCL (NVIDIA Collective Communication Library) is the cornerstone of distributed GPU computing, enabling efficient communication between GPUs in multi-node clusters. This comprehensive guide provides every NCCL command, parameter, error message, and troubleshooting technique you need for successful deployment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Table of Contents Why NCCL Exists Understanding Collective Communications NCCL Fundamentals Complete NCCL Commands Reference All NCCL Environment Variables NCCL Error Messages and Solutions OCI GPU-Specific Configurations Advanced Troubleshooting Scenarios Performance Tuning Reference Quick Reference Tables Why NCCL Exists The Distributed Training Challenge Modern AI models have grown exponentially in size and complexity.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/le-mauricien-article-2025/Tue, 04 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/le-mauricien-article-2025/Published in Le Mauricien: Download Original Article (PDF) I’m honored to share that my opinion piece on Mauritius’s AI transformation journey was published in Le Mauricien on November 5, 2025. This article reflects on our nation’s economic evolution and the urgent need to position Mauritius as Africa’s technology leader in the AI era. From Sugar Cane to Silicon “As my grandfather would say, ‘Progress waits for no one.’” My grandfather, Mohun Persad Kisnah, came from an old Indian Diaspora family rooted in sugar cane.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/rekha-fifteen-years-old-birthday/Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:11:16 -0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/rekha-fifteen-years-old-birthday/Happy 15th Birthday, Rekha Laxmi Clara Kisnah Fifteen suns have risen for you, Rekha— The princess who turned a house into a kingdom. A learner, a dreamer, a spark that won’t dim, You now stand at the edge of new roads— Eligible to drive, but already steering hearts. Your Dada once dreamt you’d be a lawyer, And Chouma (Doris) at Harvard would employ her— Books in hand, wisdom in your eyes.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/the-circle-of-three/Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:00:40 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/the-circle-of-three/A reflection on the bonds that form the foundation of a life—family, love, and the quiet strength found in togetherness. The Circle of Three In morning light he stands so still, A quiet strength, an iron will. Yet when their laughter fills the air, His heart forgets all weight and care. Rekha, the song that warms his days, Her smile, a sun through life’s long haze. Roy, his echo, bold and free, A mirror of what love can be.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/oci-nvidia-gtc-2025-ai-supercomputing/Wed, 29 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/oci-nvidia-gtc-2025-ai-supercomputing/Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal research and analysis based on publicly available information and is not representative of my employer’s official position. Highlights from NVIDIA GTC DC 2025: OCI at the Heart of the AI Revolution Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) demonstrated its central role in shaping the future of AI infrastructure at NVIDIA’s GTC conference in Washington, DC (October 28-29, 2025). The event showcased groundbreaking announcements, technical innovations, and strategic partnerships that position OCI as a cornerstone of America’s AI leadership.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/summary-gpu-oci-first-principles-blog/Sun, 26 Oct 2025 22:43:15 -0400https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/summary-gpu-oci-first-principles-blog/Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal research and analysis based on publicly available information and is not representative of my employer’s official position. In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI infrastructure, one company has quietly revolutionized how we think about GPU computing at scale. Through a series of “First Principles” engineering blogs and groundbreaking deployments, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has demonstrated that starting from fundamental physics and systems design—rather than following industry conventions—can yield extraordinary results.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/oracle-ai-world-2025/Sat, 18 Oct 2025 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/oracle-ai-world-2025/The AI Inflection Point At Oracle AI World 2025, a clear message emerged: AI isn’t just another technology trend—it’s the bridge between decades of enterprise data and the future of business innovation.1 Unlocking Enterprise Data’s True Potential Oracle founder Larry Ellison framed the opportunity succinctly: “AI offers the highest-value technology we have ever seen so far.”2 The critical insight? Most AI models train on internet data, missing the real competitive advantage: enterprise databases containing mission-critical business information.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/mauritius-summer-holidays-2025/Fri, 15 Aug 2025 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/mauritius-summer-holidays-2025/I spent three unforgettable weeks in Mauritius during July-August 2025. This trip was special in so many ways - it was about honoring family legacy, building new opportunities, and celebrating the people who matter most. 1. Baptism of Laxmi Villa - A Dream Reborn Estelle and I completed the renovation of Laxmi Villa, the house Dad and Ma built in 1999 after I left Mauritius. The three-floor structure has always held meaning for our family:https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/gb200-batam-data-plane-rollout/Sat, 15 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/gb200-batam-data-plane-rollout/Three weeks in Batam, Indonesia in March 2025. Not a vacation - something far more meaningful. I was there to help bring the NVIDIA GB200 data plane to life, working alongside some of the brightest minds at OCI and NVIDIA. This was the moment where cutting-edge technology meets real-world infrastructure, and I got to be part of making it happen. Related readings: Behind the Scenes: NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 on OCI APIs - Technical deep dive on the NVIDIA GB200 and OCI integration Supercluster: NVIDIA Blackwell Dedicated Alloy - OCI’s Supercluster offering with Blackwell GPUs Nvidia GB200 NVL72 Now Available via Oracle Cloud - Data Center Dynamics coverage of the launch The Mission: Time to Market When I arrived in Batam, the pressure was real.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-load-balancer-migration-2018/Fri, 15 Jun 2018 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-load-balancer-migration-2018/By mid-2018, AWS had three load balancers: CLB (2009), ALB (2016), NLB (2017). Millions of customers ran each type in production. The question: how do you migrate without breaking live applications? The Problem CLB users: “ALB looks nice but our app works fine.” ALB users: “NLB’s latency is seductive but we don’t need it.” Enterprise IT: “Three load balancers? Pick one.” Migrations were hard because each load balancer had different routing semantics:https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-nlb-launch-2017/Thu, 21 Sep 2017 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-nlb-launch-2017/ALB solved microservices routing. NLB solved an entirely different problem: what if you need 20M requests per second at 10 microseconds of latency? Answer: don’t use ALB. ALB’s Layer 7 inspection has overhead. NLB dropped back to Layer 4 and optimized for raw speed. The Market Gap By 2017, certain workloads were impossible on AWS: High-frequency trading: Microsecond latencies matter (literally worth $1M per millisecond) Gaming: 50M concurrent sessions, sub-100ms latency required DNS: Billions of queries/day, must be answered in <50ms Video streaming: Millions of concurrent UDP streams These needed a load balancer that didn’t inspect application data—just hashed flows and forwarded packets fast.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-alb-launch-2016/Thu, 11 Aug 2016 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/aws-alb-launch-2016/Classic Load Balancer shipped in 2009 and became a tech debt monster by 2016: 3 microservices = 3 load balancers = $150/month just for routing. ALB fixed this with Layer 7 intelligence: one load balancer could route traffic based on paths, hostnames, and HTTP headers. The Problem CLB worked fine for one big app per load balancer. But by 2016, everything was microservices: GET /api/users → User Service (port 3000) GET /api/products → Product Service (port 3001) GET /images/* → Image Cache (port 8080) GET /* → Web Frontend (port 3000) With CLB, you needed 4 separate load balancers (one per service).https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/too-young-to-die/Sun, 29 May 2016 00:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/too-young-to-die/A poem for my brother. Reflecting on life, family, and the passage of time. In Remembrance Memorial and Remembrance for Ranjiv Too Young to Die Once I was four years old, i told my mama “Pretty woman walking down the streah haha” Then she shouted at me and i said mama “You ugly woman, yacking down the stream yah” That was then and the world was smaller And everything was so simpler and life was gentler My brother and I were running down the roads in Sodnac Drinking our dad’s secret stash of cognachttps://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-wam-2015/Wed, 15 Apr 2015 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-wam-2015/WorkSpaces Application Manager solved the problem we couldn’t solve with GA: how to manage Microsoft Office updates across 1M+ workspaces without downtime. The Problem Every Enterprise Customer Hit After a year of WorkSpaces deployments, customers had thousands of workspaces. Then: Scenario: Microsoft Office patch Tuesday Old way: Download Office update Test on isolated machine (1 day) Rebuild golden image with new Office (4 hours) Terminate 5,000 workspaces Reprovision from new image (overnight) Users lose all desktop customizations 😡 Users lost a full day of productivity every month.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-ga-2014/Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-ga-2014/WorkSpaces went GA when we nailed the three things enterprises absolutely required: Active Directory integration, local printing, and compliance frameworks (HIPAA/PCI). From Preview to Production 6 months of pilot feedback told us exactly what was missing: Active Directory Integration: Enterprises didn’t want to manage separate user directories. After GA, WorkSpaces synced seamlessly with on-premises AD via AWS Directory Service. Users logged in with their corp creds; IT enforced group policies across desktops.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-launch-2013/Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/amazon-workspaces-launch-2013/Desktop-as-a-Service: rent a Windows desktop from AWS, get VPN-free remote work, no hardware to manage, pay per user per month. The Old Way vs. The New Way Traditional enterprise desktops: Buy 10,000 PCs at $1,200 each = $12M upfront IT staff spends 60% of time maintaining them (disk space, updates, broken screens) Employee leaves? Reimage the machine, ship it to next employee Someone’s laptop gets stolen in the airport—full data breach Employee works remote?https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-fire-hdx-2013/Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-fire-hdx-2013/Mayday Button + 339ppi display + Snapdragon S4 = Fire HD customers willing to spend $50–100 more for a tablet that actually felt premium. The Problem with Fire HD v1 Fire HD was cheap, but it felt cheap. Sluggish scrolling in Kindle. Games stuttered. The 7-inch screen had visible pixels. And when users hit problems? They called customer service, waited on hold, and gave up. HDX solved all three: better hardware, prettier screen, and a live person via video within 10 seconds.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-fire-hd-2012/Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-fire-hd-2012/Amazon’s $299 tablet undercut iPad by $200 and owned content delivery, shipping 3M+ units in year one despite iOS app dominance. The Strategy iPad was for content creation. Fire HD was for content consumption. We didn’t try to beat Apple at raw performance; we built a tablet for Prime members. Want to stream a movie, read a book, buy physical goods, and have it all sync? That’s Fire HD.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-paperwhite-2012/Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:00:00 -0700https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/kindle-paperwhite-2012/Front-lit e-ink solved the #1 Kindle complaint in one product, driving 50M+ units shipped and establishing Paperwhite as the flagship. The Problem Readers couldn’t use Kindles in bed without a book light. Period. That friction, stacked across millions of commuters and travelers, represented the biggest gap between e-readers and physical books. Amazon had shipped 3+ generations of Kindles; every survey said the same thing: light. How We Built It Traditional backlit screens bleed light unevenly and drain batteries.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-rokr-e1-2005/Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-rokr-e1-2005/The First iTunes Phone - A Missed Opportunity in Hindsight - 2005 Working at Motorola’s Design Center in Singapore (Ang Mo Kio), I had the opportunity to contribute to the Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola’s first phone with iTunes integration. This was a significant moment in mobile history—though we didn’t realize at the time how much it would define the path forward. The Phone: A Vision of Music Integration The ROKR E1, launched in 2005, was positioned as the answer to bringing iTunes to mobile phones:https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-razr-v3-2004/Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-razr-v3-2004/A Design Icon Reshapes Mobile Phone Industry - 2004 Working at Motorola’s Design Center in Singapore (Ang Mo Kio), I had the privilege to be part of the team that brought the Motorola RAZR V3 to life. This wasn’t just another phone—it was a cultural phenomenon that redefined what people expected from mobile devices. The Revolutionary Phone The RAZR V3 launched in 2004 and became an icon: Ultra-thin clamshell design (21.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ipod-integration-journey-2002-2003/Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/ipod-integration-journey-2002-2003/The Dream: Phone as Music Player iPod shipped May 2001. By May 2002, it was already a phenomenon. At Motorola Design Center Singapore, we asked: what if your phone was the iPod? Not “what if your phone had an MP3 player.” But: what if the form factor, the UX, the simplicity—all of it could live in a Motorola handset? Over 15 months, I learned that modular architecture beats monolithic design every time.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-v70-pebble-2003/Sun, 15 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0800https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/motorola-v70-pebble-2003/A Rugged Candybar Phone - 2003 Working at Motorola’s Design Center in Singapore (Ang Mo Kio), I had the opportunity to work on the Motorola V70, codenamed “Pebble” during development. This was one of Motorola’s rugged, business-focused candybar phones designed for durability and reliability. The Phone The V70 was positioned as a tough, weatherproof alternative to sleeker models. It featured: Ruggedized design built to withstand drops and environmental stress Compact candybar form factor Focus on durability and long battery life Business-oriented feature set My Role - Testing, QA & Embedded Systems At the Design Center in Singapore, my work on the V70 involved:https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/bluetooth-prototypes-journey-2002-2003/Tue, 11 Mar 2003 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/bluetooth-prototypes-journey-2002-2003/Wireless Phones (2002) Bluetooth standard existed since 1998. By 2002, nobody had actually shipped it in a phone. At Motorola, we saw the real opportunity: wireless headphones. No more headset cords tangled in your pocket. But standards look clean on paper. In reality? Manufacturers interpreted the spec differently. Pairing was flaky. Range was spotty. We spent months debugging why Bluetooth worked 70% of the time instead of 100%. We’d get two devices talking, then change something in our protocol stack, and suddenly they wouldn’t.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/3g-rollout-thrills/Thu, 14 Feb 2002 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/3g-rollout-thrills/Moving to Motorola In 2002, I left academia and joined Motorola Mobile Devices. The timing was perfect. Motorola was at the center of the 3G revolution—the transition from 2G networks (which enabled SMS and basic data) to 3G networks (which promised high-speed data and multimedia). The 3G Vision The promise was intoxicating. Imagine a mobile phone that could stream video, enable real-time applications, support navigation and location services. 3G would deliver megabits per second instead of kilobits.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/y2k-debugging-journey-1999-2001/Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/y2k-debugging-journey-1999-2001/The Crisis That Never Was (1999-2000) Summer 1999: The world was panicked. Every computer system would crash at midnight on Dec 31, 1999 because programmers in the 1970s had stored years as 2-digit numbers. 99 rolled to 00, and—disaster. At NTU, we treated it seriously. Every system we touched had the same problem: years stored as YY instead of YYYY. The fix was mechanical but tedious: find every date field, add validation, test like hell.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/early-linux-at-ntu/Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/early-linux-at-ntu/The Linux Revolution Reaches NTU By September 2001, Linux was transitioning from hobbyist project to legitimate alternative to proprietary Unix systems. NTU, as a forward-thinking institution, started deploying Linux in labs. After years of expensive proprietary systems, here was an free, open operating system that actually worked. For students raised on Windows, encountering Linux was revelatory. The source code was available. You could modify it. You could understand how everything worked down to the kernel level.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/java-applets-journey-2000/Tue, 21 Nov 2000 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/java-applets-journey-2000/“Write Once, Run Anywhere” (2000) Java shipped 1995. By 2000, Sun was convinced: Java applets would replace native applications. Download an applet from a website, it runs in your browser on any OS. Windows, Mac, Linux—same code everywhere. At NTU, every CS class assignment involved Java. The promise was seductive. But reality was brutal: applets were slow (multi-MB downloads!), full of security bugs, and incompatible across browsers. Try to download a file?https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/wifi-experiments-journey-1999-2000/Thu, 25 May 2000 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/wifi-experiments-journey-1999-2000/Wireless Networking (1999) IEEE 802.11 shipped in 1997. By 1999, Singapore was ahead of the curve—early 802.11b trials at universities. At NTU, we had access to experimental wireless infrastructure. The dream: no wires. Just laptops talking over the air. Reality: signal was weak, interference constant, range 20 meters on a good day. Tropical humidity killed performance. Water vapor absorbs radio waves. Our tests worked in the lab, then failed in the hallway.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/matrix-neural-net-dreams/Sat, 01 May 1999 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/posts/matrix-neural-net-dreams/Machine Learning Before It Was Cool (1999) While everyone worried about Y2K, I was playing with neural networks at NTU. Not because I thought they’d ship in products—they were academic curiosities then. But because the math was beautiful. The core insight: if you could represent a problem as matrices, you could teach a network to solve it via backpropagation. Weights → matrix multiply → gradient descent → improved weights. Repeat until convergence.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/about/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/about/About Me Welcome to my corner of the internet. I’m a technology enthusiast and professional based in the tech industry, passionate about exploring innovative solutions and sharing knowledge. Professional Background I focus on technology, infrastructure, and creative problem-solving. My experience spans multiple domains, and I’m continuously learning and adapting to new technologies and methodologies. What This Blog Is About On this blog, I share insights about technology, best practices, and interesting topics I encounter in my professional journey.https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/mcp/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/mcp/Public Blog MCP This site has a public, read-only Model Context Protocol server for published blog content. Endpoint: https://mcp.rik-kisnah.ai/mcp The endpoint is intentionally unauthenticated because it exposes only public blog content that is already available on this website. Available Tools list_posts - list published blog posts latest_posts - return the newest published posts search_posts - search published posts by title, tags, summary, and body get_post - fetch a published post by slug, including the markdown body Codex Add this to your Codex MCP config:https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/publications/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/publications/Publications & Articles A collection of my written work and articles on technology, society, and civil discourse. Featured Publications Will AI Eclipse Human Roles? A Mauritius Lens on Job Shifts and Societal Waves Le Mauricien (Forum Section) December 4, 2025 Read Blog Post | Download Original Article (PDF) Examines AI’s impact on employment through a Mauritius perspective Explores job transformation, skills development, and opportunities in Rodrigues and emerging tech sectors Zettascale Performance: OSU and NCCL Benchmarks on H100 AI Workloadshttps://www.rik-kisnah.ai/resume/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.rik-kisnah.ai/resume/Rik Kisnah Lead Principal Systems Software Engineer at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for AI/ML Infrastructure Seattle, Washington, United States In God we Trust, all others bring data Summary Experienced Engineer with domain expertise in DevOps/CICD/Testing/Automation/HPC/GPU/ML/AI in the Cloud. My passion is building teams and solving big-scale problems. Products delivered chronologically: Motorola phones, Aeroflex PXI, Amazon Kindle, AWS EC2 Windows, AWS Workspaces, AWS Load Balancers, Oracle Cloud Bare Metal, Oracle HPC/GPU.