sbdcsierra Chapter 182 Accelerating the Advancement of Star Language
Chapter 182 Accelerating the Advancement of Star Language
At nine o'clock in the morning, the phone rang in Lingyun's office.
He answered the phone but didn't say anything.
"Forty percent of the positions have been closed out." Sophia's voice came from Singapore, the background was very quiet. "We encountered resistance last night. The Bank of Thailand is suspected of intervening in the forward exchange rate. The NDF closing price is three percent lower than the market price."
"Keep it flat," Ling Yun said. "The daily goal remains the same."
"clear."
The call ended. Ling Yun glanced at his watch; it was 9:07.
He opened his trading terminal and logged into his Singapore account. Cash balance: $1.12 billion. Over $600 million in positions awaiting liquidation.
He turned off the terminal and got up to wash up.
We arrived at Xingchen Technology at 9:30.
Carly was already waiting in the conference room on the third floor. There were three stacks of resumes on the table, about twenty in each stack.
"We're interviewing fifteen people today," Carly said, handing over the schedule. "Five sessions from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and ten sessions from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Each person will have forty-five minutes."
"Let's begin."
The first interviewee was Robert, a master's graduate in computer science from Stanford University, who had previously worked at Netscape for two years. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and immediately opened his laptop after sitting down.
"I studied the Star Language protocol stack," he said. "Your message routing algorithm is more efficient than ICQ, but your encryption layer is too simple."
"How so?" Ling Yun asked.
Robert pulled up a piece of code. "Here, we're still using DES. While it's sufficient for now, it could be cracked in the future. I suggest upgrading to AES."
"Difficulty in implementation?"
"The encryption module needs to be rewritten, but the architecture doesn't need major changes. Give me a month, and I can do it."
Carly took notes in her notebook.
The second interviewee was a Chinese-American woman named Lin Wei, a Berkeley graduate with Microsoft internship experience. She didn't bring a computer, but a whiteboard.
"The latency issue with voice chat." She drew a network topology diagram on the whiteboard. "The average latency on the public network is 300 milliseconds, which is still too high for games. I suggest implementing direct P2P connections to bypass the server relay."
How to solve NAT traversal?
"Use the STUN protocol, plus a backup relay server." Lin Wei wrote down a few formulas, "Within the local area network, it can achieve less than fifty milliseconds."
"Can you be in charge of this module?"
"Yes, but you'll need two assistants."
Third place, fourth place, fifth place...
The interviews lasted until 12:30 p.m. After the last person left, Carly organized the evaluation sheets.
"Seven of them went through," she said. "Four went to the core protocol group, and three went to the front-end group."
"We'll continue this afternoon."
The interviews continued at 1 p.m. At 3 p.m., Eric knocked on the door and came in.
"Voice chat and file transfer, the beta versions are finished." He held up a USB drive. "Want to try it out?"
Lingyun nodded to Carly, signaling a five-minute pause in the interview.
Eric logged into his Star Language test account on the computer in the conference room. There was only one account in the contact list, so he clicked the voice call button.
The bell rang. The computer on Lingyun's desk was another test account.
Answer the call.
"Can you hear me?" Eric said into the computer microphone.
The sound came from the computer speakers; it was slightly delayed, but clear—"I can hear it."
"Send me a file now." Eric selected a 10MB compressed file on his computer and dragged it into the chat window.
A window prompts: File received, download?
Lingyun clicked to download, and the progress bar started moving, with the speed stabilizing at around one megabyte per second.
"Speeds within a local area network can reach 10 Mbps," Eric said. "Public network speeds depend on bandwidth."
"How much delay?"
"Voice calls, averaged 45 milliseconds within the local area network. Public network..." Eric switched pages to display monitoring data, "Average 280 milliseconds, minimum 170, maximum 500."
"Can it be optimized?"
"If the P2P solution that Lin Wei just mentioned is implemented, the public network latency can be reduced to below 150 milliseconds."
"Let her do it," Ling Yun said. "Assign her someone else."
The test is over. The interview continues.
At 6 p.m., the last interviewee left. Carly tallied the final list: fifteen people were interviewed throughout the day, and eleven passed.
"With these eleven people, the team reaches forty-one," Carly calculated. "We still need nine more to reach full strength."
"We will fill all positions by next Monday."
"it is good."
At 7 p.m., Ling Yun returned to his office. He logged into the Xingyu backend.
The new feature was launched six hours ago.
Registered users: 107,883. More than 20,000 more than yesterday.
Voice call usage: 13,427 times.
Number of file transfers: 1892.
He opened the user feedback forum. New posts were scrolling rapidly:
"Voice chat while gaming is so much fun! Calling out enemy positions is faster than typing!"
"How's the latency?"
"My roommate and I are on the same local area network, and there's almost no latency. I tried it with a friend from out of town, and there was a slight delay, but it was acceptable."
"The file transfer speed is good. I transferred a movie, and it was done in ten minutes."
"When will the Windows version be released? My office computer can't use it."
"I also need the Windows version! I can't keep my browser open every day just to use Xingyu (a language in the game)."
"Administrator, please check us! Windows version! Windows version!"
The forum was flooded with posts about the "Windows version".
Lingyun shut down the forum and called Carly.
"Users are urging for a Windows version."
"The development schedule is for two months from now," Carly said. "We're short-staffed right now, and everyone's working on optimizing the native and web versions of the Star System."
"Adjust the priority," Ling Yun said. "Move the Windows version first. Set aside a dedicated team for it."
"Then the original version will be delayed."
"How long will it be delayed?"
"At least one month."
"Sure. But the quality of the Windows version must be guaranteed; it can't be worse than the web version."
"Understood. I'll reschedule the work."
At nine o'clock in the evening, Sofia's daily report call came in.
"We've completed 60% of our liquidation. Today we received window guidance from the Central Bank of Malaysia, requiring foreign banks to 'voluntarily' slow down their offshore RM trading. We circumvented this by using Singapore's channels, but it increased our costs by 1.5 percent."
How much is left?
"The $400 million position can be closed within three days."
"it is good."
"Also," Sofia paused, "there are rumors that Thailand may be considering temporary capital controls. The source is an official from the Thai Ministry of Finance, who said it after having a few drinks."
"Credibility?"
"Uncertain. But the market is already starting to tense."
"Speed up."
"clear."
The call ended. Ling Yun walked to the window and looked at the night view outside.
Downstairs, the lights in Xinghuo Internet Cafe were still on. Through the glass windows, you could see it was packed with people. Some were playing games, wearing headphones, and their mouths were moving—they were probably using Xingyu voice chat.
Some people are transferring files, staring at the progress bar.
Some people are typing and chatting, their fingers flying across the keyboard.
He looked at it for five minutes.
Then he turned around, turned off the light, and left the office.
On his drive home, he turned on the radio. The local news was reporting that Netscape had announced a 10% layoff due to competitive pressure from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
He turned off the radio.