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airpush are quite happy to support developers who want to deceive their users.
(airpush are a controversial company that creates ad software that pushes ads to the android notification bar usually used for new email and message notifications. often users don't know which app they have to uninstall to get rid of them)<p>live chat transcript:<p>me: what are your guidelines for notifying end-users about notification area ads?<p>you are now speaking with lisa of sales.<p>lisa: hello<p>me: hi<p>lisa: welcome to airpush
lisa: are you a developer or advertiser?<p>me: developer<p>lisa: great
lisa: regarding your question, you can which users will receive your ad and that too how often
lisa: adjust*<p>me: how does a user know which app is sending the ads?<p>lisa: it will be reflecting your developer's dashboard once you start listing your apps<p>me: i.e. user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?
me: i'm talking about end users here
me: not developers or advertisers<p>lisa: ok
lisa: there is an api key through which you can control the user engagements
lisa: by a push notofication ad<p>me: i don't understand how that sentence relates to my question.<p>lisa: in this case, the users will receive the ad any time an ad is pushed to a device, whether or not the user actually views the ad or not.<p>me: i asked how a user knows which app triggered an ad.<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: he will be receiving it in a push notification tray<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: just give me a moment. let me check<p>me: to repeat an earlier example - user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?<p>lisa: for each app they need to setup airpush sdk so they will get the report data in their airpush controlpanel<p>me: that doesn't answer my question. do you understand what i'm asking you?
me: imagine i am a user.
me: i install several apps and one of them contains airpush.
me: i suddenly get notification ads and want to know which app is creating them. how can i tell?
me: are you still there?<p>lisa: it depends on the app setting and cannot control that
lisa: and the ads are not labelled with the originating app name?<p>me: if a user dislikes the ads - is there any way for him to know which app caused it? i'm worried i'll get bad ratings.<p>lisa: no
lisa: the user will not know<p>me: hopefully users won't know it's my app that's doing it so they won't uninstall my app.<p>lisa: no don't worry about that.
lisa: here you can also benefit through inactive users as you can configure your settings to deliver ads to users who haven't used an app for x days<p>me: and they won't know it's me?<p>lisa: no not at all.<p>me: cool.
me: ok. you seem quite happy to support developers who knowingly spam their users. do you mind if i publish a transcript of this conversation so other people can see how little regard you have for end-users?
me: hopefully it will hasten the speed at which your nasty company goes out of business<p>lisa: surely it will not.<p>me: it's a very revealing conversation.<p>me: thank-you for being so candid.<p>lisa: but i believe we maintain our privacy<p>me: who's privacy?<p>lisa: and as long as we receive good responses, we will definitely look up to everyone's reputation<p>me: do you receive good responses from end-users?<p>lisa: yes definitely.<p>me: like all the users of apn droid who have been leaving 1 star reviews and complaints on the market?<p>lisa: anyways you can download our sdk and start listing your apps if you are happy with it.<p>----------------------
your party has left this session.
---------------------- | google needs to seriously start cleaning house in the market. given that most android phones out there can sideload, there won't even be that much of a backlash. i suspect the only reason they aren't already doing this is because they have an organisational distaste for manual screening. the sooner they fix the market, the healthier the android ecosystem. | this blows my mind, but i guess i'm naive when it comes to how sleazy people can be.i love android, and i don't want it to be known to the general public as the virus and spyware ridden os on smartphones. |
airpush are quite happy to support developers who want to deceive their users.
(airpush are a controversial company that creates ad software that pushes ads to the android notification bar usually used for new email and message notifications. often users don't know which app they have to uninstall to get rid of them)<p>live chat transcript:<p>me: what are your guidelines for notifying end-users about notification area ads?<p>you are now speaking with lisa of sales.<p>lisa: hello<p>me: hi<p>lisa: welcome to airpush
lisa: are you a developer or advertiser?<p>me: developer<p>lisa: great
lisa: regarding your question, you can which users will receive your ad and that too how often
lisa: adjust*<p>me: how does a user know which app is sending the ads?<p>lisa: it will be reflecting your developer's dashboard once you start listing your apps<p>me: i.e. user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?
me: i'm talking about end users here
me: not developers or advertisers<p>lisa: ok
lisa: there is an api key through which you can control the user engagements
lisa: by a push notofication ad<p>me: i don't understand how that sentence relates to my question.<p>lisa: in this case, the users will receive the ad any time an ad is pushed to a device, whether or not the user actually views the ad or not.<p>me: i asked how a user knows which app triggered an ad.<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: he will be receiving it in a push notification tray<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: just give me a moment. let me check<p>me: to repeat an earlier example - user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?<p>lisa: for each app they need to setup airpush sdk so they will get the report data in their airpush controlpanel<p>me: that doesn't answer my question. do you understand what i'm asking you?
me: imagine i am a user.
me: i install several apps and one of them contains airpush.
me: i suddenly get notification ads and want to know which app is creating them. how can i tell?
me: are you still there?<p>lisa: it depends on the app setting and cannot control that
lisa: and the ads are not labelled with the originating app name?<p>me: if a user dislikes the ads - is there any way for him to know which app caused it? i'm worried i'll get bad ratings.<p>lisa: no
lisa: the user will not know<p>me: hopefully users won't know it's my app that's doing it so they won't uninstall my app.<p>lisa: no don't worry about that.
lisa: here you can also benefit through inactive users as you can configure your settings to deliver ads to users who haven't used an app for x days<p>me: and they won't know it's me?<p>lisa: no not at all.<p>me: cool.
me: ok. you seem quite happy to support developers who knowingly spam their users. do you mind if i publish a transcript of this conversation so other people can see how little regard you have for end-users?
me: hopefully it will hasten the speed at which your nasty company goes out of business<p>lisa: surely it will not.<p>me: it's a very revealing conversation.<p>me: thank-you for being so candid.<p>lisa: but i believe we maintain our privacy<p>me: who's privacy?<p>lisa: and as long as we receive good responses, we will definitely look up to everyone's reputation<p>me: do you receive good responses from end-users?<p>lisa: yes definitely.<p>me: like all the users of apn droid who have been leaving 1 star reviews and complaints on the market?<p>lisa: anyways you can download our sdk and start listing your apps if you are happy with it.<p>----------------------
your party has left this session.
---------------------- | this blows my mind, but i guess i'm naive when it comes to how sleazy people can be.i love android, and i don't want it to be known to the general public as the virus and spyware ridden os on smartphones. | it's windows all over again, with apps sticking themselves in the tray unnecessarily, coming bundled with popups, and wanting updates every 3 days. google and apple need to draw hard and fast limits on every one of these common resources and also consider banning apps that abuse notifications to deliver ads.because this isn't innovation, it is exploitation. |
airpush are quite happy to support developers who want to deceive their users.
(airpush are a controversial company that creates ad software that pushes ads to the android notification bar usually used for new email and message notifications. often users don't know which app they have to uninstall to get rid of them)<p>live chat transcript:<p>me: what are your guidelines for notifying end-users about notification area ads?<p>you are now speaking with lisa of sales.<p>lisa: hello<p>me: hi<p>lisa: welcome to airpush
lisa: are you a developer or advertiser?<p>me: developer<p>lisa: great
lisa: regarding your question, you can which users will receive your ad and that too how often
lisa: adjust*<p>me: how does a user know which app is sending the ads?<p>lisa: it will be reflecting your developer's dashboard once you start listing your apps<p>me: i.e. user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?
me: i'm talking about end users here
me: not developers or advertisers<p>lisa: ok
lisa: there is an api key through which you can control the user engagements
lisa: by a push notofication ad<p>me: i don't understand how that sentence relates to my question.<p>lisa: in this case, the users will receive the ad any time an ad is pushed to a device, whether or not the user actually views the ad or not.<p>me: i asked how a user knows which app triggered an ad.<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: he will be receiving it in a push notification tray<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: just give me a moment. let me check<p>me: to repeat an earlier example - user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?<p>lisa: for each app they need to setup airpush sdk so they will get the report data in their airpush controlpanel<p>me: that doesn't answer my question. do you understand what i'm asking you?
me: imagine i am a user.
me: i install several apps and one of them contains airpush.
me: i suddenly get notification ads and want to know which app is creating them. how can i tell?
me: are you still there?<p>lisa: it depends on the app setting and cannot control that
lisa: and the ads are not labelled with the originating app name?<p>me: if a user dislikes the ads - is there any way for him to know which app caused it? i'm worried i'll get bad ratings.<p>lisa: no
lisa: the user will not know<p>me: hopefully users won't know it's my app that's doing it so they won't uninstall my app.<p>lisa: no don't worry about that.
lisa: here you can also benefit through inactive users as you can configure your settings to deliver ads to users who haven't used an app for x days<p>me: and they won't know it's me?<p>lisa: no not at all.<p>me: cool.
me: ok. you seem quite happy to support developers who knowingly spam their users. do you mind if i publish a transcript of this conversation so other people can see how little regard you have for end-users?
me: hopefully it will hasten the speed at which your nasty company goes out of business<p>lisa: surely it will not.<p>me: it's a very revealing conversation.<p>me: thank-you for being so candid.<p>lisa: but i believe we maintain our privacy<p>me: who's privacy?<p>lisa: and as long as we receive good responses, we will definitely look up to everyone's reputation<p>me: do you receive good responses from end-users?<p>lisa: yes definitely.<p>me: like all the users of apn droid who have been leaving 1 star reviews and complaints on the market?<p>lisa: anyways you can download our sdk and start listing your apps if you are happy with it.<p>----------------------
your party has left this session.
---------------------- | it's windows all over again, with apps sticking themselves in the tray unnecessarily, coming bundled with popups, and wanting updates every 3 days. google and apple need to draw hard and fast limits on every one of these common resources and also consider banning apps that abuse notifications to deliver ads.because this isn't innovation, it is exploitation. | all -- we respect your feedback and are responding.
we are releasing an emergency update which will make airpush ads opt-in by the users. users will be prompted upon install if they want to support the developer by allowing 1 ad/day in their tray.with this change, as a user would you find airpush as an acceptable monetization option for the developer? this makes it purely a user's choice.please note we have already offered a "permissions api" which many developers are using to create their own opt-in and opt-out procedures, but we are now taking the additional step of forcing it in our sdk.comments are much appreciated. |
airpush are quite happy to support developers who want to deceive their users.
(airpush are a controversial company that creates ad software that pushes ads to the android notification bar usually used for new email and message notifications. often users don't know which app they have to uninstall to get rid of them)<p>live chat transcript:<p>me: what are your guidelines for notifying end-users about notification area ads?<p>you are now speaking with lisa of sales.<p>lisa: hello<p>me: hi<p>lisa: welcome to airpush
lisa: are you a developer or advertiser?<p>me: developer<p>lisa: great
lisa: regarding your question, you can which users will receive your ad and that too how often
lisa: adjust*<p>me: how does a user know which app is sending the ads?<p>lisa: it will be reflecting your developer's dashboard once you start listing your apps<p>me: i.e. user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?
me: i'm talking about end users here
me: not developers or advertisers<p>lisa: ok
lisa: there is an api key through which you can control the user engagements
lisa: by a push notofication ad<p>me: i don't understand how that sentence relates to my question.<p>lisa: in this case, the users will receive the ad any time an ad is pushed to a device, whether or not the user actually views the ad or not.<p>me: i asked how a user knows which app triggered an ad.<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: he will be receiving it in a push notification tray<p>me: are ads labelled with the originating app name?<p>lisa: just give me a moment. let me check<p>me: to repeat an earlier example - user x updates a dozen apps and suddenly starts getting notification ads. how do they know which app is creating them?<p>lisa: for each app they need to setup airpush sdk so they will get the report data in their airpush controlpanel<p>me: that doesn't answer my question. do you understand what i'm asking you?
me: imagine i am a user.
me: i install several apps and one of them contains airpush.
me: i suddenly get notification ads and want to know which app is creating them. how can i tell?
me: are you still there?<p>lisa: it depends on the app setting and cannot control that
lisa: and the ads are not labelled with the originating app name?<p>me: if a user dislikes the ads - is there any way for him to know which app caused it? i'm worried i'll get bad ratings.<p>lisa: no
lisa: the user will not know<p>me: hopefully users won't know it's my app that's doing it so they won't uninstall my app.<p>lisa: no don't worry about that.
lisa: here you can also benefit through inactive users as you can configure your settings to deliver ads to users who haven't used an app for x days<p>me: and they won't know it's me?<p>lisa: no not at all.<p>me: cool.
me: ok. you seem quite happy to support developers who knowingly spam their users. do you mind if i publish a transcript of this conversation so other people can see how little regard you have for end-users?
me: hopefully it will hasten the speed at which your nasty company goes out of business<p>lisa: surely it will not.<p>me: it's a very revealing conversation.<p>me: thank-you for being so candid.<p>lisa: but i believe we maintain our privacy<p>me: who's privacy?<p>lisa: and as long as we receive good responses, we will definitely look up to everyone's reputation<p>me: do you receive good responses from end-users?<p>lisa: yes definitely.<p>me: like all the users of apn droid who have been leaving 1 star reviews and complaints on the market?<p>lisa: anyways you can download our sdk and start listing your apps if you are happy with it.<p>----------------------
your party has left this session.
---------------------- | all -- we respect your feedback and are responding.
we are releasing an emergency update which will make airpush ads opt-in by the users. users will be prompted upon install if they want to support the developer by allowing 1 ad/day in their tray.with this change, as a user would you find airpush as an acceptable monetization option for the developer? this makes it purely a user's choice.please note we have already offered a "permissions api" which many developers are using to create their own opt-in and opt-out procedures, but we are now taking the additional step of forcing it in our sdk.comments are much appreciated. | i'm sorry, but airpush is ridiculous, and any developer that chooses to use it is asking the community to give it's app a bad name.i also had a conversation with "matt" from airpush when this story broke on reddit.<link> to say, they've done nothing to refresh their image in the android community's eyes. |
ask hn: what side projects are you working on?
| i've been dabbling with the idea of taking awk style patterns and translating them to javascript to run in node.js (with the intent of allowing awk style programs that also allow higher-order programming constructs). at this point i've got the translation working for some simple cases.i've been pondering whether to trying to generalize the concept to work on http requests instead of just files, at which point i think a fairly elegant micro web framework could be made that applies awk style pattern / action pairs to the incoming http requests. | <link> delicious replacement that uses twitter syntax to organize stuff - i.e.: hashtags and @people. app integrates with twitter for both tweeting bookmarks that you add, and importing links you've tweeted previously as bookmarks.not at all complete (both features and fixes to be done), but solid enough that i use it every day for myself to organize links that i use for references, collect things that i'm researching, to create a "to-read" list, and so on.it was learning foray into bootstrap and jquery, and has gone pretty well.right now, its sign in through twitter only. i'll add native account creation at some point, but you're more than welcome to try it out in the meantime.edit: screengrab of linkthing in action
<link> |
ask hn: what side projects are you working on?
| <link> delicious replacement that uses twitter syntax to organize stuff - i.e.: hashtags and @people. app integrates with twitter for both tweeting bookmarks that you add, and importing links you've tweeted previously as bookmarks.not at all complete (both features and fixes to be done), but solid enough that i use it every day for myself to organize links that i use for references, collect things that i'm researching, to create a "to-read" list, and so on.it was learning foray into bootstrap and jquery, and has gone pretty well.right now, its sign in through twitter only. i'll add native account creation at some point, but you're more than welcome to try it out in the meantime.edit: screengrab of linkthing in action
<link> | i've been working on tubalr for 2 years this september. it's allows you to take advantage of all the great music content on youtube.i'm out of features for now, been improving on ui and design lately.<link> |
ask hn: what side projects are you working on?
| i've been working on tubalr for 2 years this september. it's allows you to take advantage of all the great music content on youtube.i'm out of features for now, been improving on ui and design lately.<link> | writing a program that analyzes traditional scottish music and composes new tunes in the same style. right now i'm in the careful planning phase--reading up on lstm recurrent neural networks and such, but i should be able to start coding shortly (at the very least i can do all the software engineering parts while i figure out what the best algorithm to use is).i'm not deluding myself about its long-term non-profitability...i'm just doing it because i find it fascinating. at least there's no hosting cost--i already have a laptop running sbcl and emacs, which is all i need. |
ask hn: what side projects are you working on?
| writing a program that analyzes traditional scottish music and composes new tunes in the same style. right now i'm in the careful planning phase--reading up on lstm recurrent neural networks and such, but i should be able to start coding shortly (at the very least i can do all the software engineering parts while i figure out what the best algorithm to use is).i'm not deluding myself about its long-term non-profitability...i'm just doing it because i find it fascinating. at least there's no hosting cost--i already have a laptop running sbcl and emacs, which is all i need. | in my free time i'm writing an alternative firmware for chumby devices (and possibly similar devices, if i ever get my hands on a raspberry pi or alike) that focuses solely on streaming radio services (ones which have usable open apis) with no dependence on the chumby backend servers.all of the app layer is written in go with a custom widget set and pure go rendering right out to an mmaped /dev/fb (the rest of the firmware is a lightly customized openembedded build).this won't make any money but it is teaching me a lot of go. |
“accounts merged and now my files are gone”
| i think the problem here is with google's multi sign in[1], which makes it look like all accounts that are loged in are related, when in fact they are not, it just gives you an "easy" way of switching between accounts across google services.both molly and amy (in the ot) have gotten confused and assumed that the accounts had been merged indefinitely (who can blame them? this is as much pebkac as horrible ui) so they attempted to "unmerge" them, ending up deleting one of the accounts.the way to "unmerge" them is to log out of google. then, next time somebody logs in, there will only be one account.this ui is horrible, i had a similar uncomfortable moment trying to log one account but not the other, even though i knew that they had not gotten merged, it sure seemed like it. the intention was good, the execution lacking (my guess is that there were lots of technical reasons this couldn't be done cleaner).as soon as chrome introduced multiple users[2], i started using that and it's much better, with less mental overhead to check which account is loged in (i use a black theme for one account, a white theme for the other). for other people/accounts, i just use incognito mode. for most end users, this is still too much overhead for them, but in that case the only solution i could see is autologout, which has its own problems.1: <link> <link> | i'd encourage people to think of this less as "wow, she misinterpreted a series of options and got progressively father from her goal state until it was unrecoverable; sucks to be her" to "this is computers as perceived by people who do not make a living making computers work, and we should anticipate them not always understanding our applications and design them to facilitate understanding when possible and make correction easy when not, to the maximum extent possible." |
“accounts merged and now my files are gone”
| i'd encourage people to think of this less as "wow, she misinterpreted a series of options and got progressively father from her goal state until it was unrecoverable; sucks to be her" to "this is computers as perceived by people who do not make a living making computers work, and we should anticipate them not always understanding our applications and design them to facilitate understanding when possible and make correction easy when not, to the maximum extent possible." | jesus, this is the top of the front page?not only did this user not merge their account (because that doesn't happen, as many people here have noted), deleting your account is a pain and a decent amount of work that is difficult to do accidentally (see this walkthrough[1] about how explicit the process is: you have to click a checkbox for each product you currently use), and there is an account restore procedure after deletion[2].now, it is possible this user was confused and did all these things, then waited too long to try to restore their account, but there's not much else you can do for a person like this. you don't want a deleted account to be restorable for too long. they ask about drive documents, but a mainstream and obvious backup for that does exist (not sure what it does if your account is deleted, though). maybe make multiple sign-in disabled by default so that people won't accidentally do it? that's just going to annoy a different class of users...regardless, if people are going to reflexively vote up every bad user story in the google product forums (and why stop there? there are help forums all over the internet!), the front page is going to be...not very interesting.[1] <link>[2] <link> |
“accounts merged and now my files are gone”
| jesus, this is the top of the front page?not only did this user not merge their account (because that doesn't happen, as many people here have noted), deleting your account is a pain and a decent amount of work that is difficult to do accidentally (see this walkthrough[1] about how explicit the process is: you have to click a checkbox for each product you currently use), and there is an account restore procedure after deletion[2].now, it is possible this user was confused and did all these things, then waited too long to try to restore their account, but there's not much else you can do for a person like this. you don't want a deleted account to be restorable for too long. they ask about drive documents, but a mainstream and obvious backup for that does exist (not sure what it does if your account is deleted, though). maybe make multiple sign-in disabled by default so that people won't accidentally do it? that's just going to annoy a different class of users...regardless, if people are going to reflexively vote up every bad user story in the google product forums (and why stop there? there are help forums all over the internet!), the front page is going to be...not very interesting.[1] <link>[2] <link> | well hindsight is always 20/20, but i don't think it's fair to just say "should have done x" at this point. it happened. it's done. now where do you go from here?this is the one thing in facebook's favor (you can criticize privacy, but it's still a good feature imo). there's an "undo" for deletes available for a short period.also, i have a habit of keeping a secondary email where i forward a copy of all incoming messages. it's a bit of a hassle, but that's another free provider so in the unlikely event one gets nuked, i can quickly grab my things via pop on the secondary (and leave a copy there). so that's 3 places i keep attachments etc... for the future.you always sacrifice independence and self-sufficiency for a bit of convenience, whether it's accounts or milk. not quite ready to keep my own cow yet, but i'm counting on my neighbor's one for my daily supply for now. |
“accounts merged and now my files are gone”
| well hindsight is always 20/20, but i don't think it's fair to just say "should have done x" at this point. it happened. it's done. now where do you go from here?this is the one thing in facebook's favor (you can criticize privacy, but it's still a good feature imo). there's an "undo" for deletes available for a short period.also, i have a habit of keeping a secondary email where i forward a copy of all incoming messages. it's a bit of a hassle, but that's another free provider so in the unlikely event one gets nuked, i can quickly grab my things via pop on the secondary (and leave a copy there). so that's 3 places i keep attachments etc... for the future.you always sacrifice independence and self-sufficiency for a bit of convenience, whether it's accounts or milk. not quite ready to keep my own cow yet, but i'm counting on my neighbor's one for my daily supply for now. | i don't really understand how this process works. i use multiple accounts from the same machine every day. i'm usually signed into more than one at the same time. but there's no indication that the accounts have been "merged" to any degree, or there being a primary account.can someone shed some more light? |
continued sad state of php development
| this just in: the php developers have an ad hoc approach to problem solving and it shows in everything about php, from core language features to the standard library (all 3000, or so, functions in the default namespace). i'm all astonishment. | if you're using php you've already subscribed to the idea that using a real programming language doesn't matter, so this kind of thing is par for the course. |
continued sad state of php development
| if you're using php you've already subscribed to the idea that using a real programming language doesn't matter, so this kind of thing is par for the course. | i don't understand everyones problem with php. if you don't like it, don't use it. plenty of interesting and useful apps have been built on php. |
continued sad state of php development
| i don't understand everyones problem with php. if you don't like it, don't use it. plenty of interesting and useful apps have been built on php. | actually, php 5 with all its object orientation and reflection features is quite liveable despite being filled with kludges around every corner. |
continued sad state of php development
| actually, php 5 with all its object orientation and reflection features is quite liveable despite being filled with kludges around every corner. | php is still one of the best when it comes to web development. |
css variables in firefox nightly
| please note that css variables are not like sass/less variables. they're actually custom properties that obey inheritance.they're scoped to document rather than stylesheet, so you can override them in parts of the document just like you can override any css property.example from the spec: :root { var-color: blue; }
div { var-color: green; }
#alert { var-color: red; }
* { color: var(color); }
<p>i inherited blue from the root element!</p>
<div>i got green set directly on me!</div>
<div id='alert'>
while i got red set directly on me!
<p>i’m red too, because of inheritance!</p>
</div> | w3c strikes again. they are uniquely gifted at creating ungainly and ugly standards even in the face of widespread industry practices are already commonly used (less, sass). i really want to know who thought `var-` prefix was a banging idea. |
css variables in firefox nightly
| w3c strikes again. they are uniquely gifted at creating ungainly and ugly standards even in the face of widespread industry practices are already commonly used (less, sass). i really want to know who thought `var-` prefix was a banging idea. | css variables are the only reason i started using sass and less in the first place. but although these preprocessors come with other interesting features, i never managed to truly incorporate them in my workflow.the way i ended up solving the css variables issue (i.e. replacing the same property/value combination in multiple locations) was to actually regroup selectors.for example, i'd have: #title,
.nav a,
.post-title em {
color: #db4e44;
}
the only annoying thing is that it can result in a long list of selectors (although i'd put them on one line anyway). but one thing i truly appreciate with this approach is that you can edit any value with your browser's inspector, and see it instantly update all instances at once. it's great to test out new colors for example.the other option would be to have a specific class that would apply this style. but then, you'd move the styling from the css to the html, and i've always tried to prevent myself from breaking this golden rule. |
css variables in firefox nightly
| css variables are the only reason i started using sass and less in the first place. but although these preprocessors come with other interesting features, i never managed to truly incorporate them in my workflow.the way i ended up solving the css variables issue (i.e. replacing the same property/value combination in multiple locations) was to actually regroup selectors.for example, i'd have: #title,
.nav a,
.post-title em {
color: #db4e44;
}
the only annoying thing is that it can result in a long list of selectors (although i'd put them on one line anyway). but one thing i truly appreciate with this approach is that you can edit any value with your browser's inspector, and see it instantly update all instances at once. it's great to test out new colors for example.the other option would be to have a specific class that would apply this style. but then, you'd move the styling from the css to the html, and i've always tried to prevent myself from breaking this golden rule. | really ugly syntax. var-* ????
who thought this would be a good idea? |
css variables in firefox nightly
| really ugly syntax. var-* ????
who thought this would be a good idea? | does anyone know if there's a polyfill for css variables out there? possibly a library that creates plain old css out of the one that uses variables. it would be useful until this is rolled out to other browsers. |
a northwest pipeline to silicon valley
| it's funny, because it seems to me that a lot of the talent coming out of uw cse isn't going to make it into the valley in any meaningful way.uw cse is still entirely focused on grades. there's literally no way to include anything but grades in your admission application -- not even recommendation letters. i've talked to some of the admissions faculty, and their argument is that it's unfair to people who are totally new to computer science to deny them on the basis of a lack of prior experience. i totally disagree with this, however -- you're not going to get into a music or acting program without any prior experience, why should you get into a cs program?from what i've seen, a lot of uw graduates end up getting recruited into a big company (google, facebook, microsoft, intel, etc). it's by all means a great program, but it seems like they're never going to have someone they can point to as a success like, for example, harvard, stanford, or mit. i think that's the reason why their reputation is a lot more quiet.fwiw, my co-founder and i have both been rejected from uw cse (me with an overall 3.8 gpa and several conference papers published as first author while i was still in high school). | this article focuses more on potential employees graduating from uw, but seattle is a great place to found a startup. in the valley, everything is pretty crowded, and if you can find real estate, it's not going to be cheap.in seattle, it's a buyers market and you can grab some office space or a hacker house for a lot less.there are more startup resources in the valley (accelerators/angels/vcs), but that doesn't mean there is a good amount in the emerald city. one of them, madrona venture group (<link>, just raised $300m to be invested in startups. there are also a few hacker spaces popping up, such as surf incubator (<link> you want a good place to start your company with less competition and more rain, move to seattle. |
a northwest pipeline to silicon valley
| this article focuses more on potential employees graduating from uw, but seattle is a great place to found a startup. in the valley, everything is pretty crowded, and if you can find real estate, it's not going to be cheap.in seattle, it's a buyers market and you can grab some office space or a hacker house for a lot less.there are more startup resources in the valley (accelerators/angels/vcs), but that doesn't mean there is a good amount in the emerald city. one of them, madrona venture group (<link>, just raised $300m to be invested in startups. there are also a few hacker spaces popping up, such as surf incubator (<link> you want a good place to start your company with less competition and more rain, move to seattle. | 2 although stanford is considered the hogwarts of techdom, u.w. has quietly established itself as the other west coast nexus of the information economy.odd line given that berkeley is also on the west coast and is ranked as high as stanford. |
a northwest pipeline to silicon valley
| 2 although stanford is considered the hogwarts of techdom, u.w. has quietly established itself as the other west coast nexus of the information economy.odd line given that berkeley is also on the west coast and is ranked as high as stanford. | is it still the case that you need straight as in math and physics to get into cs at uw? it's insane that they crank out psych and english majors by the thousands but keep a lid on cs. |
a northwest pipeline to silicon valley
| is it still the case that you need straight as in math and physics to get into cs at uw? it's insane that they crank out psych and english majors by the thousands but keep a lid on cs. | sorry pacific northwest: the nyt technology section found you. expect some really weird and disconnected articles about how you have pull in "the it sector" or "big data" or whatever analysts from obscure hedge funds think is the next thing. hopefully we can stem the damage before they notice austin or boston. |
elaine wherry: why i now believe the glass ceiling is real
| there's no evidence at all that she hit a gender-related glass ceiling. the story strongly points to the problem being her, not her gender. the only suggestion of discrimination on the part of the hire comes from a third party speculating about it. the glass ceiling may well be real, but this anecdote doesn't demonstrate it.edit:it's also a bit ridiculous that the author's "coach", who tells her this is a case of gender discrimination, does so (according to the author) using assumptions about the hire based on his gender, age and geographical origin. so the (unsupported) claim of discrimination is itself based on explicit discrimination. | the author also posted the following follow up, also worth a read:<link> |
elaine wherry: why i now believe the glass ceiling is real
| the author also posted the following follow up, also worth a read:<link> | previous discussion --> <link> |
elaine wherry: why i now believe the glass ceiling is real
| previous discussion --> <link> | is it just me or is there a gaping logical hole in this story.the guy who supposedly refused to work for her because of her gender must have realized that she is a woman long before signing the contract. ie - if he really had problem reporting to a woman, why go through the process if the information was readily available that it wasn't for him?occam's razor (as opposed to her coach) would posit that certain events changed his mind, as per his explanation to her.however - the phenomenon that is real is her uncertainty as to whether her gender was a factor. ie - it would not occur to a man to question that. unfortunately that's life. |
elaine wherry: why i now believe the glass ceiling is real
| is it just me or is there a gaping logical hole in this story.the guy who supposedly refused to work for her because of her gender must have realized that she is a woman long before signing the contract. ie - if he really had problem reporting to a woman, why go through the process if the information was readily available that it wasn't for him?occam's razor (as opposed to her coach) would posit that certain events changed his mind, as per his explanation to her.however - the phenomenon that is real is her uncertainty as to whether her gender was a factor. ie - it would not occur to a man to question that. unfortunately that's life. | the money quote: "the glass ceiling exists; it’s just higher than i’d realized." |
ask hn: how can i easily but securely encrypt my laptop & emails?
| on a mac:get up to very most recent os x. a dot release in os x disabled firewire while the machine was sleeping, which is important because firewire is basically a thin veneer around direct dma access to system memory.enable filevault. unlike the feature that used to be called filevault, modern filevault is block-level aes-xts encryption. (before filevault, my recommendation would have been to buy pgp wde).tell the system to forget its key during sleep; the most recent rubber chicken to wave for this appears to be "sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25".power down your machine whenever you can; don't just shut the lid.buy knox.app from agilebits, which is a nice ui on top of the vfs-level block aes encryption os x does. create virtual disk drives for each of your clients, or each of your projects, or whatever. create another for your mail; create another for personal documents. give each a separate key (you'll rarely have all of them unlocked or need to use all of them). do not store the keys in the keychain.copy ~/library/mail's contents to the virtual disk you made for mail and then replace ~/library/mail with a link to that disk; now, you'll need to have that virtual disk unlocked to read your mail.disable sharing; make sure every box in "sharing" under preferences is unchecked.enable the firewall and block all incoming connections; preferences->security->firewall, enable, options->block all incoming connections.get gpgtools and gpgmail (the most recent official build supports mt. lion nicely). install them, and use gpg, from your mac only, to send mail.do not supply your gpg private key to any service, ever.uninstall dropbox. sorry. dropbox is fantastic. we ban it wholesale.though we can't use it for a variety of contractual reasons, i highly recommend colin percival's tarsnap for backup. | - use an open-source os like linux. ubuntu is user-friendly. windows isn't safe: <link> install the os with full-disk encryption.- if you use a service like dropbox, use encfs to encrypt everything in the cloud.- for email, you'll need to start using a mail user agent like mutt or thunderbird with pgp/gnupg. and then the problem will be that none of your friends use encryption anyway. personally i'm telling everyone about using bitmessage instead of email: <link> |
ask hn: how can i easily but securely encrypt my laptop & emails?
| - use an open-source os like linux. ubuntu is user-friendly. windows isn't safe: <link> install the os with full-disk encryption.- if you use a service like dropbox, use encfs to encrypt everything in the cloud.- for email, you'll need to start using a mail user agent like mutt or thunderbird with pgp/gnupg. and then the problem will be that none of your friends use encryption anyway. personally i'm telling everyone about using bitmessage instead of email: <link> | do we know what is secure against the likes of the nsa / what encryption they can break today?i understand this is almost impossible for us to accurately answer, just curious if we have any clues regarding their codebreaking capabilities in this regard. |
ask hn: how can i easily but securely encrypt my laptop & emails?
| do we know what is secure against the likes of the nsa / what encryption they can break today?i understand this is almost impossible for us to accurately answer, just curious if we have any clues regarding their codebreaking capabilities in this regard. | you cannot encrypt emails. even if you'll satisfy your urge for privacy - the originator of email or addressee of email will still contain unencrypted copies. so forget about it.the presence of encryption will raise more suspicion and cause further investigation in your activities.
so forget about it. |
ask hn: how can i easily but securely encrypt my laptop & emails?
| you cannot encrypt emails. even if you'll satisfy your urge for privacy - the originator of email or addressee of email will still contain unencrypted copies. so forget about it.the presence of encryption will raise more suspicion and cause further investigation in your activities.
so forget about it. | truecrypt for the laptop, and gnupg for emails. |
mozilla, otoy, autodesk work to deliver high performance games and apps on web
| it's an idea tried and failed many times over (gpu hosted games in the cloud, onlive, gaikai, etc). the round-trip lag from the time you press a button until the time you see a change on the screen is just unacceptable for most twitch oriented games. the js/web implementation doesn't change anything about the fundamentals. i don't know why mozilla is bothering with this approach vs the emscript/asm.js which would fair much better (but still not likely to succeed for aaa games)you have people complaining about touch-lag on android devices, which is on the order of 100ms, and you're telling me you're going to send a packet with a controller movement, render a frame, compress a frame, ship it back, and display it with something <100ms? the demo shown is a non-interactive cut-scene, so no one's going to notice the input lag. onlive, when latency was actually measured, came out around 150ms, totally unacceptable.th true test would be running something like cod, bf4, or a sf2 tournament and get pro gamers to evaluate the system.the aaa titles are never going to be run this like economically. i'm playing battlefield 4 right now, a huge huge game that brings my current pc rig to its knees. why would anyone want to suffer this with 150ms lag and compression artifacts? | so, instead of demo videos on youtube, where can i try this hype in my browser? |
mozilla, otoy, autodesk work to deliver high performance games and apps on web
| so, instead of demo videos on youtube, where can i try this hype in my browser? | don't get me wrong because this is a cool technological achievement if it can deliver as promised.however, when they originally announced this in may, my impression was that this was going to be open sourced and a part of firefox. i found that to be really exciting.it turns out, it's just another business trying to show us the future. nothing wrong with that but it doesn't excite me as much.also, brendan eich is an advisor to otoy, the company behind orbx.js. is it just me or does anyone else think that it's a conflict of interest for him to market a for-profit service/product via mozilla? it's not clear what exactly mozilla's involvement is in this project and what do they get out of it besides a broader web ecosystem? |
mozilla, otoy, autodesk work to deliver high performance games and apps on web
| don't get me wrong because this is a cool technological achievement if it can deliver as promised.however, when they originally announced this in may, my impression was that this was going to be open sourced and a part of firefox. i found that to be really exciting.it turns out, it's just another business trying to show us the future. nothing wrong with that but it doesn't excite me as much.also, brendan eich is an advisor to otoy, the company behind orbx.js. is it just me or does anyone else think that it's a conflict of interest for him to market a for-profit service/product via mozilla? it's not clear what exactly mozilla's involvement is in this project and what do they get out of it besides a broader web ecosystem? | this sort of stuff is just not very exciting to me. latency is very important in gaming. unless the servers are in the next room the latency will be probably be crappy. companies have enough issues launching aaa titles these days without streaming them. it'll be like the sim city launch every time.the only really exciting thing going on in gaming (for me) is the oculus rift.
outside of gaming maybe there are other use cases. given how powerful and cheap hardware is, i just have a hard time believing it'll take off. |
mozilla, otoy, autodesk work to deliver high performance games and apps on web
| this sort of stuff is just not very exciting to me. latency is very important in gaming. unless the servers are in the next room the latency will be probably be crappy. companies have enough issues launching aaa titles these days without streaming them. it'll be like the sim city launch every time.the only really exciting thing going on in gaming (for me) is the oculus rift.
outside of gaming maybe there are other use cases. given how powerful and cheap hardware is, i just have a hard time believing it'll take off. | has anyone actually had any luck getting this working? seems like such a revolutionary idea that i'm dying to try it, but no luck so far.it took me a few tries (and a couple hours) to get one of their preconfigured amis provisioned, excruciatingly extract the guid from win2k8 (people actually work this way?), but now their weird http bouncer endpoint doesn't seem to be connecting at all.. |
brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over manhattan
| oh look. its the system actually working for a change. a guy did a stupid thing that might have endangered someone else with his property. he was arrested and may be charged for a crime that if convicted would lead to a fine large enough to deter him and others from doing something this stupid again.seems like a perfectly rational reaction to me despite the overhyped news story. (slow news day no that there's no 'shutdown' to breathlessly go on about?) | seems he was arrested for crashing it near a pedestrian, not simply for flying it. he was charged with reckless endanderment for is inability to control the device. |
brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over manhattan
| seems he was arrested for crashing it near a pedestrian, not simply for flying it. he was charged with reckless endanderment for is inability to control the device. | i don't really agree with calling an rc helicopter a drone. it sounds way more malicious that way. but then again, "local man found to be bad at flying rc helicopter" isn't nearly as attention-grabbing. |
brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over manhattan
| i don't really agree with calling an rc helicopter a drone. it sounds way more malicious that way. but then again, "local man found to be bad at flying rc helicopter" isn't nearly as attention-grabbing. | there are things you should do differently in densely populated areas like nyc. flying consumer drones around without any permission or training is just not a good idea. |
brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over manhattan
| there are things you should do differently in densely populated areas like nyc. flying consumer drones around without any permission or training is just not a good idea. | i used to fly remote control planes. there are rules for where you can fly them, because many of them (the ones with turbine engines) are capable of 200+ mph (actually faster, but it's hard to keep track of them) and can weight 10-50 pounds (some of the bigger propeller-powered ones are 100-200+ pounds, though much slower). they are dangerous in the wrong hands, and require quite a bit of training to fly properly and safely.this guy broke the law, did something dangerous, and deserves a fine. period. |
show hn: my saturday project. for when your co-founders can't 'draw something'.
| funny, i wrote a script for my girlfriend a week ago too. i just grabbed my word list from /usr/share/dict/words though.<link> | real awesome tool, great job steve.on a side note though, anyone who seriously uses this tool to play 'draw something' is missing out on the concept of the game, which is to use your creativity to draw up something that users can then guess.if you're using a tool to help you guess a word the correct word, then you're doing the "drawer" a disservice by basically saying to them that their drawing is good enough, when it really isn't... seeing as you couldn't guess what it was.it's like funding a start up that you know is destined to fail and you keep telling them to keep on keeping on with the doomed idea; or in this case, their crappy drawings that you can't guess! |
show hn: my saturday project. for when your co-founders can't 'draw something'.
| real awesome tool, great job steve.on a side note though, anyone who seriously uses this tool to play 'draw something' is missing out on the concept of the game, which is to use your creativity to draw up something that users can then guess.if you're using a tool to help you guess a word the correct word, then you're doing the "drawer" a disservice by basically saying to them that their drawing is good enough, when it really isn't... seeing as you couldn't guess what it was.it's like funding a start up that you know is destined to fail and you keep telling them to keep on keeping on with the doomed idea; or in this case, their crappy drawings that you can't guess! | it would be nice if you made the text "draw something" in the subtitle link to the app. i didn't know what draw something was, but clicked the link anyway, assuming i could figure it out by analogy to hangman and pictionary by looking at your site's interface. i couldn't; i had to look it up.possible link destinations:<link> |
show hn: my saturday project. for when your co-founders can't 'draw something'.
| it would be nice if you made the text "draw something" in the subtitle link to the app. i didn't know what draw something was, but clicked the link anyway, assuming i could figure it out by analogy to hangman and pictionary by looking at your site's interface. i couldn't; i had to look it up.possible link destinations:<link> | this is just a quick project i threw together this saturday. it simply finds all possible words that meet the criteria you specify and ranks them according to their english frequency. |
show hn: my saturday project. for when your co-founders can't 'draw something'.
| this is just a quick project i threw together this saturday. it simply finds all possible words that meet the criteria you specify and ranks them according to their english frequency. | i tried the word 'parallelogram'. the web page keeps changing 13 letters to 12 letters in the number of letters box then saying it can't find a word.i've never heard of 'draw something' as a game before so perhaps i'm using a word that isn't allowed or something.stuff like this is handy in teaching especially if it works on a mobile phone (blackberry for teenagers, iphone for colleagues :-) |
counting votes is hard
| neither the blog post kindly submitted here nor the comments (so far) nor the wikipedia article mentioned in one comment mention the impossibility theorem proved by kenneth arrow,[1] which shows that we can't build a perfect voting system to take into account preferences among three or more candidates. as a voter in a state with as many as ten candidates on the ballot in a typical presidential election, and some amazingly close three-way statewide elections,[2] i'm surprised that the arrow paradox (arrow impossibility theorem) isn't more widely known. i learned about it in an article in scientific american back in the 1970s. my state has three "major parties" that have automatic ballot access for nominated candidates, and i expect that this year we may add one more political party to the list of major parties by the rules established in state law. if voters have more than two choices, odd results can happen in elections.after edit: a comment posted while i was typing the first version of this comment mentions "range voting" as a response to the arrow paradox. a commentary by an economist[3] and a problem set by a mathematician[4] may suggest to thoughtful readers here some issues to ponder while discussing whether or not range voting provides better trade-offs than our current voting system, and whether it indeed escapes the theorem proved by arrow.[1] <link>'s_impossibility_theorem<link>[2] <link>[3] <link>[4] <link> | i've always thought that descriptions of condorcet methods are harder than they need to be. even the wikipedia page describes them badly.the condorcet criteria itself is easy. if a candidate would beat every other candidate in a one-on-one matchup, that candidate should be the winner. there, that's it.that's really how it should be described. and then as a next step, we can then describe "tiebreakers". instead, wikipedia (and others) describe condorcet only in terms of their tiebreakers, making condorcet methods themselves appear flawed[1].you see, loops are possible. in a vote, it's possible that a would always beat b, b would always beat c, and c would always beat a. and the various condorcet tiebreakers (like schulz) are ways to resolve those situations.but the point is, if that happens, the vote really is accurately uncovering an indecisiveness that actually exists in the voting population. so it makes sense that a "tiebreaker" would be non-ideal in some sense. and they all are in some way. the problem is not with the tiebreaking methods. the problem is with the voting population.i've always thought a good voting system would be the following:first, rank the votes. if a condorcet winner exists, the election is over. if not, restrict the candidate pool to the schwartz set, and start a new round of campaigning so the voting population can research more and better educate themselves.[1]. yes, we can argue that the condorcet criteria is "perfect" if a condorcet winner exists, with one caveat: it implies the value that all votes have equal value. if you have that value, it's a logical implication that the condorcet winner (if it exists) should be the winner. but other values are possible, such as a utilitarian mindset of wanting to meet greatest social utility, such as some voters being far more passionate or educated than others. following those implications bring up other tricky problems, though. |
counting votes is hard
| i've always thought that descriptions of condorcet methods are harder than they need to be. even the wikipedia page describes them badly.the condorcet criteria itself is easy. if a candidate would beat every other candidate in a one-on-one matchup, that candidate should be the winner. there, that's it.that's really how it should be described. and then as a next step, we can then describe "tiebreakers". instead, wikipedia (and others) describe condorcet only in terms of their tiebreakers, making condorcet methods themselves appear flawed[1].you see, loops are possible. in a vote, it's possible that a would always beat b, b would always beat c, and c would always beat a. and the various condorcet tiebreakers (like schulz) are ways to resolve those situations.but the point is, if that happens, the vote really is accurately uncovering an indecisiveness that actually exists in the voting population. so it makes sense that a "tiebreaker" would be non-ideal in some sense. and they all are in some way. the problem is not with the tiebreaking methods. the problem is with the voting population.i've always thought a good voting system would be the following:first, rank the votes. if a condorcet winner exists, the election is over. if not, restrict the candidate pool to the schwartz set, and start a new round of campaigning so the voting population can research more and better educate themselves.[1]. yes, we can argue that the condorcet criteria is "perfect" if a condorcet winner exists, with one caveat: it implies the value that all votes have equal value. if you have that value, it's a logical implication that the condorcet winner (if it exists) should be the winner. but other values are possible, such as a utilitarian mindset of wanting to meet greatest social utility, such as some voters being far more passionate or educated than others. following those implications bring up other tricky problems, though. | funny how the website authors failed to do research on voting systems _before_ writing the website. |
counting votes is hard
| funny how the website authors failed to do research on voting systems _before_ writing the website. | heh, it always sounds easier in a meeting, "bill, set up some sort of simple voting system, should be a cinch, by the end of the week should be plenty of time." |
counting votes is hard
| heh, it always sounds easier in a meeting, "bill, set up some sort of simple voting system, should be a cinch, by the end of the week should be plenty of time." | i don't do a lot of this kind of work, but as an interested party with sunday spare time, i think the problem here is that you're scoring anything other than the first picks.if you just look at first picks, newbie hbase wins 3 to 1. if for some reason newbie hbase was in a 2/2 split with mapreduce and kir (flip james's top 2 votes), you then take into account 2nd rankings, which in this case means newbie hbase wins again.i don't believe you ever want to take into account someone's griefer vote, too much potential to game the system with no benefit to the group as a whole. |
be specific (especially during pg's office hours)
| it's easier to ask someone else to be specific, though, than it is to be specific oneself. sometimes people have something real, but it's instinctive and they haven't yet sharpened or polished it. under such conditions it's good to evoke it out of them rather than challenging them on lack of specificity.that may not apply as much to an investor-founder conversation, because a founder should perhaps be expected to say what they mean unambiguously. but in normal conversation, i think it applies a lot.even in the founder situation, there are genuinely talented people who lack full articulacy as of yet. distinguishing those from the clueless requires discernment, and maybe even kindness. i bet the earlier stage you go, the more of an issue this is. | this stood out to me: "i whispered audibly enough for a few nearby people to hear, 'be specific! be specific!'" because it also applies to writing. i'm a grad student in english lit and teach undergrads. their writing is filled with generalities about the work and/or author; very few have the training or discipline to talk specifically about the work and to examine particular sentences. so i spend a lot of time doing that in class.actually, most people are like this with books or movies or other things in their lives; they'll be able to say if they liked a book, or could "relate" to it (whatever that means), but beyond that they won't have much concrete (another synonym for "specific). which is okay, since they're not trying to be professional writers or critics. but if you are trying to a be professional x (writer, critic, startup), you'd better be willing to look at details, since details are everything.the older i get, the more i believe details are everything. well, maybe not quite everything, but certainly 95% of the thing. |
be specific (especially during pg's office hours)
| this stood out to me: "i whispered audibly enough for a few nearby people to hear, 'be specific! be specific!'" because it also applies to writing. i'm a grad student in english lit and teach undergrads. their writing is filled with generalities about the work and/or author; very few have the training or discipline to talk specifically about the work and to examine particular sentences. so i spend a lot of time doing that in class.actually, most people are like this with books or movies or other things in their lives; they'll be able to say if they liked a book, or could "relate" to it (whatever that means), but beyond that they won't have much concrete (another synonym for "specific). which is okay, since they're not trying to be professional writers or critics. but if you are trying to a be professional x (writer, critic, startup), you'd better be willing to look at details, since details are everything.the older i get, the more i believe details are everything. well, maybe not quite everything, but certainly 95% of the thing. | a submission by eliezer yudkowsky name-dropping pg and referencing yc right in the thick of yc application season--has any submission ever been so perfectly crafted for hn before? |
be specific (especially during pg's office hours)
| a submission by eliezer yudkowsky name-dropping pg and referencing yc right in the thick of yc application season--has any submission ever been so perfectly crafted for hn before? | this is a very valuable post for people who are applying to yc. in particular, i think business people who haven't done as much implementation work are particularly susceptible to this specificity problem. i certainly was (and sometimes still am).one concept helped me catch myself making this mistake... i read somewhere that a good explanation gives a peer the understanding required to reconstruct / implement the idea themselves.however, some people have success describing ideas broadly in certain instances. for example, i have some friends who have had success selling "vision" to investors, even though after they pitched me i wasn't able to explain how their product worked at all. |
be specific (especially during pg's office hours)
| this is a very valuable post for people who are applying to yc. in particular, i think business people who haven't done as much implementation work are particularly susceptible to this specificity problem. i certainly was (and sometimes still am).one concept helped me catch myself making this mistake... i read somewhere that a good explanation gives a peer the understanding required to reconstruct / implement the idea themselves.however, some people have success describing ideas broadly in certain instances. for example, i have some friends who have had success selling "vision" to investors, even though after they pitched me i wasn't able to explain how their product worked at all. | 22 for your brain to stop thinking about an unfinished task, you must (1) know and trust that an external system will remind you to perform that task when it is time to perform it, and (2) have chosen the next action taken at a sufficiently concrete level that your brain is no longer trying to plan it out in the background.wow, i do this instinctively all the time, but to be frank i feared it was just a stupid obsession of mine and suspected it could be detrimental, that it made me less efficient. i'm relieved to know this is an advised method of managing your mind, even if there isn't of course much science behind it. anecdotally, this does help with my concentration. |
ask hn: review our startup: mugasha - a better way to listen to electronic dance music
| this is sad.i actually love electronic dance music.but.. i clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz i had no idea what the point was. so as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. i x'd it. | why do you slap me in the face with a full page sign up form, without giving me any clear benefits to signing up? |
ask hn: review our startup: mugasha - a better way to listen to electronic dance music
| why do you slap me in the face with a full page sign up form, without giving me any clear benefits to signing up? | i don't know whether this is a usability issue or not. but, i really don't like the extra long input text area:this issue is quite critical on acquiring new users. a good read on designing sign up form.<link> |
ask hn: review our startup: mugasha - a better way to listen to electronic dance music
| i don't know whether this is a usability issue or not. but, i really don't like the extra long input text area:this issue is quite critical on acquiring new users. a good read on designing sign up form.<link> | i don't get what it does after reading your front page and about page. why should i sign up? |
ask hn: review our startup: mugasha - a better way to listen to electronic dance music
| i don't get what it does after reading your front page and about page. why should i sign up? | i wish you could browse the available sets and djs without signing up for an account. to force me to do that is a bit of a pain. i'd rather go back to doing some "real work" than to go through the trouble of signing up so i can explore your new site quickly. |
benford's law
| "benford's law can be used to show that binary is the best base for doing floating point math."<link> | >in the united states, evidence based on benford's law has been admitted in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.this, to me, is the most interesting part of the article. |
benford's law
| >in the united states, evidence based on benford's law has been admitted in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.this, to me, is the most interesting part of the article. | it is very surprising that distributions such as fibonacci and the powers of two follow this law. some number sequences that don't are numbers like pi and e. these numbers are said to be normal numbers, meaning they have an equal distribution amongst all digits. however, this hasn't been rigorously proven and is still an open problem.[1]<link> |
benford's law
| it is very surprising that distributions such as fibonacci and the powers of two follow this law. some number sequences that don't are numbers like pi and e. these numbers are said to be normal numbers, meaning they have an equal distribution amongst all digits. however, this hasn't been rigorously proven and is still an open problem.[1]<link> | i worked at a hedge fund and we used this to figure out whether other funds were falsifying their returns or not. the most notable deviation was bernie madoff's. |
benford's law
| i worked at a hedge fund and we used this to figure out whether other funds were falsifying their returns or not. the most notable deviation was bernie madoff's. | benford's law is so well known today, that many a "forger" will evade it easily. one way is to create random numbers and find a solution that fits both your goal and benford's law.i think this is what the german adac did when they falsified test results around a general "idea" what they wanted to see. |
us tech firms make eleventh-hour attempt to halt tax avoidance reforms
| since this became such a public debate issue in europe, i've actually more or less landed on the idea that maybe corporate taxes (taxing profits) are a lost battle. the only way to really combat it is for different countries to collude and perhaps sanction tax havens. even then, i doubt they will be able to raise much tax.modern tax systems are diverse by design: sales tax/vat. excise/sin taxes, income taxes, cgt, employer taxes, etc. the mix is designed to reduce volatility. it's also designed to max out tax revenue while avoid damaging the economy by discouraging things like labour, savings, or other important activities too much. the effective maximum revenue for a country to collect in taxes appears to be somewhere in the 35%-45% of gdp range. after that diminishing returns on taxes kick in. most euro countries are taxing (or rather spending) near that max. so, they can't afford to let corporate taxes.problem is that corporate tax is unavoidably problematic. large multinationals can arrange their activities (not just their paperwork) depending on taxes. i doubt an single country want to create a tax the ensures large companies avoid setting up local subsidiaries within their borders. the end result is a different set of rules for the large and/or sophisticated that is more lenient than the rules on small companies.personally, i would rather see corporate tax abolished than see it applied in such a way that it discriminates against small companies. | wealth is meant for people. all of a company's wealth is ultimately destined for somebody's pocket. why can't we just tax it when it gets there, and abolish corporate taxes?naturally i'd assume in that case that dividends would be taxed at the same rate as earned income, and that both would have to rise somewhat at the higher brackets to cover the lost income. but given that is the case, i honestly don't see any downside. can anyone help? |
us tech firms make eleventh-hour attempt to halt tax avoidance reforms
| wealth is meant for people. all of a company's wealth is ultimately destined for somebody's pocket. why can't we just tax it when it gets there, and abolish corporate taxes?naturally i'd assume in that case that dividends would be taxed at the same rate as earned income, and that both would have to rise somewhat at the higher brackets to cover the lost income. but given that is the case, i honestly don't see any downside. can anyone help? | > suggesting that any leakage of tax revenues flowing from the complex corporate structures of digital groups is merely coincidental, the digital economy group says: "enterprises that employ digital communications models do not organise their business operations differently as a legal or tax matter."hell of a coincidence, mate. they're incorporated in ireland purely by accident, they would never threaten to leave at the slightest mention of "corporate tax increase", and what they really wanted to do all along was to move to the scandinavian countries. they should all band together and get a stand-up comedy act going. |
us tech firms make eleventh-hour attempt to halt tax avoidance reforms
| > suggesting that any leakage of tax revenues flowing from the complex corporate structures of digital groups is merely coincidental, the digital economy group says: "enterprises that employ digital communications models do not organise their business operations differently as a legal or tax matter."hell of a coincidence, mate. they're incorporated in ireland purely by accident, they would never threaten to leave at the slightest mention of "corporate tax increase", and what they really wanted to do all along was to move to the scandinavian countries. they should all band together and get a stand-up comedy act going. | society has decided that companies should pay a corporate tax rates of 20% (uk), 35% (us), etc on profits.finally governments have noticed that these companies are shuffling money around (between countries normally) and are not paying anywhere close to those rates.it's very sad that these companies do have a slim chance of fighting this kind of reform. ideally they should just pull their heads in and concentrate on building wealth under a new slightly more sensible tax regime. |
us tech firms make eleventh-hour attempt to halt tax avoidance reforms
| society has decided that companies should pay a corporate tax rates of 20% (uk), 35% (us), etc on profits.finally governments have noticed that these companies are shuffling money around (between countries normally) and are not paying anywhere close to those rates.it's very sad that these companies do have a slim chance of fighting this kind of reform. ideally they should just pull their heads in and concentrate on building wealth under a new slightly more sensible tax regime. | personally, i'd rather that google keep as much of their money as possible and continue to spend it as they see fit.i believe that society benefits far more from a company like google having and spending the money than any federal government. |
digital ocean droplets manager for os x
| neat. i'd love something like this that supported all the major cloud providers (perhaps via libcloud <link> | this is very cool. i made the rackspace and slicehost apps back in the day and i always wanted to make a tool like this to manage rackspace servers. unfortunately i never got around to it. |
digital ocean droplets manager for os x
| this is very cool. i made the rackspace and slicehost apps back in the day and i always wanted to make a tool like this to manage rackspace servers. unfortunately i never got around to it. | neat but do people really play with their vms often enough for things like this to have value. i rarely touch any once they're up. |
digital ocean droplets manager for os x
| neat but do people really play with their vms often enough for things like this to have value. i rarely touch any once they're up. | "this application requires os x 10.9 or later". looks awesome though. i'd definitely use it if it ever gets 10.8.5 support. |
digital ocean droplets manager for os x
| "this application requires os x 10.9 or later". looks awesome though. i'd definitely use it if it ever gets 10.8.5 support. | thanks! was wondering who would make this first. |
want to learn python. should i take udacity's cs101?
i am a programmer wanting to learn python. does it make sense to take the udacity cs101 class from sebastian thrun and david evans? or would that not be the best way since i am already a programmer?<p>as a side note, any recommendations for solid python books/tutorials? is the official python tutorial the way to go? | i think it will be a good start. the lectures won't take long at all since you'll already be familiar with computation.i've been learning programming with k 8 r. i enrolled in cs 101 as a supplement and found i was able to quickly transfer my knowledge of c over to python as a result.it is basic, but you'll be able to move through it quickly. | book recommendation: <link> |
want to learn python. should i take udacity's cs101?
i am a programmer wanting to learn python. does it make sense to take the udacity cs101 class from sebastian thrun and david evans? or would that not be the best way since i am already a programmer?<p>as a side note, any recommendations for solid python books/tutorials? is the official python tutorial the way to go? | book recommendation: <link> | enthought regularly holds python courses for people who already know how to program in other languages. <link> - i work for enthought and occasionally teach the python course. |
want to learn python. should i take udacity's cs101?
i am a programmer wanting to learn python. does it make sense to take the udacity cs101 class from sebastian thrun and david evans? or would that not be the best way since i am already a programmer?<p>as a side note, any recommendations for solid python books/tutorials? is the official python tutorial the way to go? | enthought regularly holds python courses for people who already know how to program in other languages. <link> - i work for enthought and occasionally teach the python course. | the udacity class will prob be too basic for you. |
want to learn python. should i take udacity's cs101?
i am a programmer wanting to learn python. does it make sense to take the udacity cs101 class from sebastian thrun and david evans? or would that not be the best way since i am already a programmer?<p>as a side note, any recommendations for solid python books/tutorials? is the official python tutorial the way to go? | the udacity class will prob be too basic for you. | sure... take the course. can't hurt. in the meantime, pick up the tutorial and run through it. i picked up python in 5 days, but i have extensive experience in numerous other object oriented language.imho, from a scripting perspective, it's much easier than shell script, more robust than php, and better supported than c/c++ from a community standpoint. |
httpfox: the firefox add-on you can't live without
| how does this compare to firebug's similar feature? | when i just want to see the requests sent to a website, this works fine for me:tcpdump host thedomain -a -s10000 | grep -eo "(get|post).*$"more info here:<link> |
httpfox: the firefox add-on you can't live without
| when i just want to see the requests sent to a website, this works fine for me:tcpdump host thedomain -a -s10000 | grep -eo "(get|post).*$"more info here:<link> | the tamper data add-on is quite similar but also allows you to interrupt/drop requests and change header values and post parameters on the fly. |
httpfox: the firefox add-on you can't live without
| the tamper data add-on is quite similar but also allows you to interrupt/drop requests and change header values and post parameters on the fly. | another alternative to look at is live http headers:
<link> |
httpfox: the firefox add-on you can't live without
| another alternative to look at is live http headers:
<link> | if you work in an ie world, fiddler is a nice tool. |
everything you wanted to know about caching
| you should add the word "web" to the title. there are many other kinds of caching. | it's still a nice resource, but it's been posted many times before.<link> |
everything you wanted to know about caching
| it's still a nice resource, but it's been posted many times before.<link> | this is good, but somewhat outdated. i haven't used iplanet since 1999.
also ssl/https is a whole different world. |
everything you wanted to know about caching
| this is good, but somewhat outdated. i haven't used iplanet since 1999.
also ssl/https is a whole different world. | in the scripts section he says "generate content-length response headers. it’s easy to do, and it will allow the response of your script to be used in a persistent connection. this allows clients to request multiple representations on one tcp/ip connection, instead of setting up a connection for every request. it makes your site seem much faster."does he mean, for example, when serving up a dynamic php page, where the content might change for each request, you should still generate a content-length header before outputing the content? |
everything you wanted to know about caching
| in the scripts section he says "generate content-length response headers. it’s easy to do, and it will allow the response of your script to be used in a persistent connection. this allows clients to request multiple representations on one tcp/ip connection, instead of setting up a connection for every request. it makes your site seem much faster."does he mean, for example, when serving up a dynamic php page, where the content might change for each request, you should still generate a content-length header before outputing the content? | great primer on web caching. |
how to read a book
| the gist of what he is saying for people he'd most likely want to reach but can't for the very same reason he's adressing with his lengthy post:
when reading a long, carefully arranged cohesive body of (text)work, it does not help to be distracted. with ubiquitous access to seemingly useful resources, it is very easy to give into such and deviate from the intended reading material. book publishers don't seem to get this when devising their solutions for the declining book readership problem.another note by me: good writing is very similar to good programming/programming language design/engineering: a system/text does not get better by adding more to it, but when you can't remove anything from it anymore without changing your intent/its purpose.petzold could have done with a shorter post ;) | one of the best books i ever read was "how to read a book", written by mortimer adler. i think it was written in the 60's or so. i read it in high school and it immediately made me a significantly better reader, and the impact wasn't short lived. |
how to read a book
| one of the best books i ever read was "how to read a book", written by mortimer adler. i think it was written in the 60's or so. i read it in high school and it immediately made me a significantly better reader, and the impact wasn't short lived. | i have to agree with him to some extent. it easy for the mind to wander, and yes, i think thats true for even good books. having a distraction free environment is a good idea regardless of what you are reading, further, having the ability to write while reading is also important.having said that, i have no issues with electronic format of books (except they make my eyes hurt). sitting at a computer reading a good book works just as well as reading a paper book. if you are that enticed by the web, unplug your ethernet cable.on a side note, has anyone read "code: the hidden language of computer hardware and software" by the same author. i am halfway through it, and i think its a phenomenal book. |
how to read a book
| i have to agree with him to some extent. it easy for the mind to wander, and yes, i think thats true for even good books. having a distraction free environment is a good idea regardless of what you are reading, further, having the ability to write while reading is also important.having said that, i have no issues with electronic format of books (except they make my eyes hurt). sitting at a computer reading a good book works just as well as reading a paper book. if you are that enticed by the web, unplug your ethernet cable.on a side note, has anyone read "code: the hidden language of computer hardware and software" by the same author. i am halfway through it, and i think its a phenomenal book. | the moment i open a novel by neil gaiman and a display ad pops out either asking me to punch the monkey or telling me that i might be interested in something ghostwritten by tom clancy is the moment i become a luddite. |
how to read a book
| the moment i open a novel by neil gaiman and a display ad pops out either asking me to punch the monkey or telling me that i might be interested in something ghostwritten by tom clancy is the moment i become a luddite. | i used to sponsor 3m by keeping a pile of postit notes beside me when reading, but paperclips are just as good once you recognise that the smaller inner part of the clip can indicate which side of the page you are marking. |
mozilla towtruck – real-time collaboration on any site
| i feel like mozilla is currently what google was once upon a time (around 2005). | mozilla are on a roll, aren't they :) |
mozilla towtruck – real-time collaboration on any site
| mozilla are on a roll, aren't they :) | i am very curious to see what happens with this issue: <link> mozilla's profile and resources, maybe they'll come up with a novel solution! |
mozilla towtruck – real-time collaboration on any site
| i am very curious to see what happens with this issue: <link> mozilla's profile and resources, maybe they'll come up with a novel solution! | we provide a similar service here at firefly: <link> except our stuff is definitely production-grade software, works across all browsers, and supports dynamic dom changes.good to see some big names taking their own spin on co-browsing. |
mozilla towtruck – real-time collaboration on any site
| we provide a similar service here at firefly: <link> except our stuff is definitely production-grade software, works across all browsers, and supports dynamic dom changes.good to see some big names taking their own spin on co-browsing. | interesting. it seems this may be one of mozilla's first(?) forays into a potentially paid service: hosted towtruck accounts.since it runs on a central server, that server will either be mozilla's or yours. i know i don't want to deal with that hassle -- i'd much rather pay someone else to run the service -- and i can't imagine mozilla's going to do it for free at scale.mozilla hasn't yet pulled a reader, as far as i know, but i would be worried about their dedication to a hosted service like this. |
show hn: chapp is topic-based chat
| thanks for sharing! here are my comments, mostly critiques but please note i really think you have a great start here.nice clean interface, reasonably quick to use.doesn't work with 1password.https isn't the default, and when requested gives a cert failure (representing *.onmodulus.net)email notification should be opt-in? also should have a toggle for product notifications.when i click on someone like <link> the profile link takes me to my profile instead of theirs.all in all, i'm looking forward to watching this service grow! (p.s. i suggest looking into postgresql 9.3 as a backup plan to mongo) | hehe, cool to see #63 implemented :)<link>'m sure that that did not serve as inspiration (and i'm definitely not trying to claim anything here) but it's super nice to see this one come to life. best of luck to you with this, it's always been one of my favourites. |
show hn: chapp is topic-based chat
| hehe, cool to see #63 implemented :)<link>'m sure that that did not serve as inspiration (and i'm definitely not trying to claim anything here) but it's super nice to see this one come to life. best of luck to you with this, it's always been one of my favourites. | curious how you see chapp compared to reddit. is chapp meant for real-time discussions as opposed to the more message-board pace of reddit? is it aiming to solve a different problem? for example, you mention discussing game of thrones or the stanley cup playoffs. what advantage would chapp have over following the discussions on r/gameofthrones or r/nhl? |
show hn: chapp is topic-based chat
| curious how you see chapp compared to reddit. is chapp meant for real-time discussions as opposed to the more message-board pace of reddit? is it aiming to solve a different problem? for example, you mention discussing game of thrones or the stanley cup playoffs. what advantage would chapp have over following the discussions on r/gameofthrones or r/nhl? | i like the idea, but another minor complaint: scrolling is painfully slow, at least in firefox. each movement of the mouse wheel only moves me a few pixels (it takes ~30 seconds of scrolling to go up a single screen), and other scrolling methods (cursor keys, page up/down, middle-click) don't seem to be supported. |
show hn: chapp is topic-based chat
| i like the idea, but another minor complaint: scrolling is painfully slow, at least in firefox. each movement of the mouse wheel only moves me a few pixels (it takes ~30 seconds of scrolling to go up a single screen), and other scrolling methods (cursor keys, page up/down, middle-click) don't seem to be supported. | why not just use the irc? |
yahoo, yahoo mail, and flickr hit with temporary service interruption
| it makes me feel uneasy how reliant on yahoo i have become and basically everyone else i know. | somewhere, a network engineer is testing his/her internet connection by doing a ping on yahoo.com and it isn't returning.// seems to be an age thing on who you ping |
yahoo, yahoo mail, and flickr hit with temporary service interruption
| somewhere, a network engineer is testing his/her internet connection by doing a ping on yahoo.com and it isn't returning.// seems to be an age thing on who you ping | it is up now in bucharest! |
yahoo, yahoo mail, and flickr hit with temporary service interruption
| it is up now in bucharest! | and it is backup! |
yahoo, yahoo mail, and flickr hit with temporary service interruption
| and it is backup! | noooo! now how will i learn how babby is formed? |
roshi: a crdt system for timestamped events
| > the tl;dr on crdts is that by constraining your operations to only those which are associative, commutative, and idempotent.interesting. we have an event stream database implemented in haskell, and this looks like an excellent way to index it. especially associative, commutative and idempotent can (probably) all be encoded in the type system! | so i am a little unsure about where all the data is. am i right in thinking that a user has a cached merge of all their follower's events. so when they first read they get an inconsistent view which can be populated in the background on demand. the massive data gains being: most people don't read all their data so you waste a lot of time on fan-out writing data that is never used.the read view just has to be caught up from when it was last accessed. you don't do this all the time, only when a user requests their timeline. so still an individual cdrt set still has to be persisted for each individual user a bit like an out-of-date inbox. you don't create the whole inbox from scratch each request or do you? maybe you do because you only need recent events??----------------
edit.i think i worked it out ... the inboxes are created dynamically. this is what was meant by stateless. all the time series data is able to fit into one server's memory, so the io overhead of assemblage is low |
roshi: a crdt system for timestamped events
| so i am a little unsure about where all the data is. am i right in thinking that a user has a cached merge of all their follower's events. so when they first read they get an inconsistent view which can be populated in the background on demand. the massive data gains being: most people don't read all their data so you waste a lot of time on fan-out writing data that is never used.the read view just has to be caught up from when it was last accessed. you don't do this all the time, only when a user requests their timeline. so still an individual cdrt set still has to be persisted for each individual user a bit like an out-of-date inbox. you don't create the whole inbox from scratch each request or do you? maybe you do because you only need recent events??----------------
edit.i think i worked it out ... the inboxes are created dynamically. this is what was meant by stateless. all the time series data is able to fit into one server's memory, so the io overhead of assemblage is low | i'm trying to understand crdts, and roshi provides an implementation of how crdts can be put to use in real-world applications. i've assess the documentation on roshi and would like assent or clarification if i'm wrong.after glossing over the readme of github.com/soundcloud/roshi i came away with the impression that roshi's lww-element-set implementation does not strictly adhere to the qualities of a crdt, mainly that operations must be commutative.roshi documents two uses-cases:if first we apply an add operation to the set, then apply a remove operation with the same tuple, the resulting set will ignore the remove operation:
a(a,1) r() + remove(a,1) = a(a,1) r()if we apply the remove operation, then next the add operation, the resulting set will ignore the add operation:
a() r(a,1) + add(a,1) = a() r(a,1)this means the resulting state of the set depends on the order of operations, which violates the commutative property of crdts.as a consequence, if we assume this crdt is replicated on each redis node in a roshi cluster, then there is a case (admittedly rare and short-lived) where a roshi cluster cannot be eventually consistent:given no more future operations on a set with key k, if,
node 1 contains a key k with set a(a,1) r(), and
node 2 contains a key k with set a() r(a,1), then the system cannot be eventually consistent.roshi seems to have implemented a weak form of crdt, which under rare and short-lived situations impedes eventual consistent. but given the operational realities, this is totally acceptable. |
roshi: a crdt system for timestamped events
| i'm trying to understand crdts, and roshi provides an implementation of how crdts can be put to use in real-world applications. i've assess the documentation on roshi and would like assent or clarification if i'm wrong.after glossing over the readme of github.com/soundcloud/roshi i came away with the impression that roshi's lww-element-set implementation does not strictly adhere to the qualities of a crdt, mainly that operations must be commutative.roshi documents two uses-cases:if first we apply an add operation to the set, then apply a remove operation with the same tuple, the resulting set will ignore the remove operation:
a(a,1) r() + remove(a,1) = a(a,1) r()if we apply the remove operation, then next the add operation, the resulting set will ignore the add operation:
a() r(a,1) + add(a,1) = a() r(a,1)this means the resulting state of the set depends on the order of operations, which violates the commutative property of crdts.as a consequence, if we assume this crdt is replicated on each redis node in a roshi cluster, then there is a case (admittedly rare and short-lived) where a roshi cluster cannot be eventually consistent:given no more future operations on a set with key k, if,
node 1 contains a key k with set a(a,1) r(), and
node 2 contains a key k with set a() r(a,1), then the system cannot be eventually consistent.roshi seems to have implemented a weak form of crdt, which under rare and short-lived situations impedes eventual consistent. but given the operational realities, this is totally acceptable. | great stuff, but:> of course, reads are difficult. if you follow thousands of users, making thousands of simultaneous reads, time-sorting, merging, and cutting within a typical request-response deadline isn't trivial.even within a "typical request-response deadline" blasting through some thousands of "events" does sound kind of trivial? (which i suppose is reflected in the relative simplicity and elegance of this solution :-)now, if you absolutely need the inboxes of user a and user b who follow the same thousand users to end up identical if they are accessed in a similar time-frame, then things do indeed sound a bit hairy -- but do you really need that? (or even demand that both a and b see x re-sharing track n, before user y re-shared track m -- if the sharing events are within the threshold of clock-skew internal to your systems)?i suppose it's great to be able to say that these guarantees will hold, but i'm not sure i see them as needed for (all of) soundcloud's events? |
roshi: a crdt system for timestamped events
| great stuff, but:> of course, reads are difficult. if you follow thousands of users, making thousands of simultaneous reads, time-sorting, merging, and cutting within a typical request-response deadline isn't trivial.even within a "typical request-response deadline" blasting through some thousands of "events" does sound kind of trivial? (which i suppose is reflected in the relative simplicity and elegance of this solution :-)now, if you absolutely need the inboxes of user a and user b who follow the same thousand users to end up identical if they are accessed in a similar time-frame, then things do indeed sound a bit hairy -- but do you really need that? (or even demand that both a and b see x re-sharing track n, before user y re-shared track m -- if the sharing events are within the threshold of clock-skew internal to your systems)?i suppose it's great to be able to say that these guarantees will hold, but i'm not sure i see them as needed for (all of) soundcloud's events? | something i learned working in engineering at formspring (which also used cassandra to solve a similar problem) was that fan out is expensive (both in terms of necessary horizontally scaled infrastructure and in terms of working with the complexity.) |
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