Hacker News Reader

edddon Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

So 2.5$/year per user, I am not sure if that is a lot. How much does facebook spent on their infra per user basis?

edddon Peter Thiel won’t be involved in YC’s work with the ACLU

tl; dr. Thiel won't be involved in ACLU because he's is not a active member of the YC.

edddon Snapchat reportedly hit 160M daily users and $400M revenue in 2016

20% per year is not impressing to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I admire them as a company, but the grow rate is too slow, to compete with top social platforms.

edddon Paper is the real 'killer app'

Designing data storage for countries is not easy, but it is easier to store a Peta Byte of data digitally than on paper.

Nice documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs

edddon Paper is the real 'killer app'

I think it is called a positive selection bias.

Some of paper lasted for hundreds of years. How much of information didn't survive during that time period?

Information on s3 might not last for hundreds of years, but AFAIK the Voyager satellite didn't ship the information about our specie on paper.

edddon Paper is the real 'killer app'

Paper is not only bad for but also harmful.

You actually have to cut a tree to make a notepad. I hope in 100 years people will look at the "paper age" as we do see the era when people carving information in stones.

Why paper is worse:

* you cannot easily edit/alter information that has been already created

* it is hard to replicate and distribute

* version control is non existent (except book keeping)

* due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)

* collaboration is hard and not possible over the long distance

* security it terrible (even with all the stamps and hand signatures)

I know that paper might sound tempting sometimes, but I blame the schooling system which enforces kids to use it. We are trained to use paper first that's why it might seems easier. To learn how not to use paper (I don't use it at all for over 3 years) is really hard, it requires to change the workflows, mindset and attitude towards the information. But at the end of the day, it is really worth it.

edddon Google requires money to remove Holocaust deniers from top of search results

Re: Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen.

The most compelling evidence for the holocaust being a lie is the fact there were survivors, period.

https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t553062/?postcount=6#post62...

No words can express the look of my face while reading this.

edddon Bottled Water – Real-Time Integration of PostgreSQL and Kafka

MySQL has its own solution as well. https://github.com/zendesk/maxwell

edddon Ask HN: What will happen when ads won't be profitable no more?

ad networks won't work, but 'internal' networks will thrive. FB exchange, Google Exchange even Twitter, they make a lot of money since they control the entire RTB stack.

edddon Should I Comment My Code? The Case Against Code Comments

1. Comments should be subject for tests (for example: https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html)

2. They should describe the purpose of the code in general not the quirks in the code

3. The exception rule is when the code can't be self-explanatory. Hacks are undesirable, but in real life you have implement them sometimes anyway - then comments are necessary

4. Docstrings in everything are wrong, the code itself is a documentation.

edddon Announcing Azure Command-Line Interface 2.0 Preview

Python is a good fit for CLI tools, but it doesnt differ that much from node when it comes to complex backends.

Type annotations in py3 might change that, but lets be honest - py3 is still far from broad adoption.

edddon How Dropbox securely stores your passwords

too little, too late. Once you loose trust, you never gain it again.

edddon Reasons not to use Firebase

I learn swift and ios development for a couple weeks now. I am backend engineer and devops for 5yrs and firebase looks very attractive.

I know how hard and time consuming it is to build backend properly and firebase looks like a big shortcut.

Do you know some applied design patterns in swift for quick firebase replacement?

edddon Why People Should Learn Python

It really depends on the type of project that you are working on. For backend services that don't require much data processing (OCR, some complex matrix calculations) I'd recommend erlang or elixir. Here is why:

* type annotation + awesome tool for analysing code (dialyzer)

* immutability, list cannot become a dict out of nowhere

* great support for concurrency

* concept of application (OTP) gives out ability to run many loosely coupled apps on one VM. I believe "microservices" is the buzzword that matches the concept.

* distribution by design.

* great monitoring tools

* I could go on... really.

edddon Why People Should Learn Python

Yeah, I created an issue on github about the lack of support for pex on uwsgi. Proposed solution (https://github.com/unbit/uwsgi/pull/1297#issuecomment-240200...) will work, but again, this is not standardised at all. This is one big hack comparing to the way how Erlang boots up their apps. Erlang here is a good comparison, because it is much more complex and harder to learn, but it is complete in terms of release process. You don't have to hack your way out to production, just read the docs and you know what to do. Python wasn't designed to run this way, so everyone tries to create their on standard.

edddon Why People Should Learn Python

I use python on daily basis for 5 years now. It's a really cool language, but:

* Packaging is horrible

* Releasing python code is a non-standarised nightmare. Every solution has it's own flaws

* Big and complex projects in python are really hard to reason about

* Poor support for concurrency (fixed in py3)

Don't get me wrong, python is really cool as a proof-of-concept scripting language. But for mature and complex stuff, I'd recommend something with type checking and better support for release process.

edddon Almost 80% of Private Day Traders Lose Money

Afaik 98% of forex day traders loose money. You can't compete with scalpers with 10ms advantage.

edddon Less stress, more productivity: working fewer hours is good for you and your boss

I had this problem until I realised, most of my work is being done while doing something else less brain challenging. I have awesome ideas on the shower, while walking, running, throwing out trash. Smoking really helps here as well (but I am not so proud of it). Just because I am not starring at the screen it doesn't mean I am not working on the problem. If my brain finds something interesting, it is working on it subconsciously.

edddon Why Are New York City’s Streets Always Under Construction?

I just wonder, why do people in NYC bother to use cars? Bikes, subway and taxis are not enough?

edddon [dead]

Big plus for elm. It is a great language for FP beginners. It's like functional programming LOGO.

edddon “It's The Future”

Making sort of funny articles about Docker doesn't change the fact that circleci's support for docker is horrible. I don't use it on prod (and I probably won't) but since circleci forces me to use ubuntu 12.04 which is not something I use on prod I want a docker container which looks like my production host. Having said that - circle really tries to support docker, but It doesn't.

I have to use ECS for caching (I am not happy about it)

Builds might fail due to the custom docker version/compilation

You can mock docker, but people are using it in one way or another and you should support it properly.

edddon Startups in 13 Sentences (2009)

> 8. Spend little.

I think, no one gets this right. What's missing here: for software startups, hardware (servers) should be the main cost of running the business. Increasing load due to the growing user base is a very nice to have problem.

edddon Ask HN: 8 years working, now 3-4 months off to learn. Looking for advice

> I want to stop contracting and apply to a company solving real problems after this process, google, facebook, zalando, amazon, etc..

The bigger the company, the smaller the feeling of doing something 'real'. Just my experience.

edddon Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

Last year (I'm 28), I tried to read Enders Game for the for the first time since 15 years. I was disappointed, it's really cool, but for younger generations.

edddon Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?

Zero to One by P. Thiel (cheezy for HN, I know)

Meltdown by T. Woods (cool guy, Austrian Economy)

The Witcher by A. Sapkowski (Fantasy, but It reads well only in polish language)

edddon An unexpected journey, a Postgres DBA's tale

I lifted both of my eyebrows while reading that sentence.

edddon Volkswagen's U.S. diesel emissions settlement to cost $15B

Anyone knows if this 15B is treated as the "cost" of the business? In that way effective income tax would be lower for VW.

edddon Coconut – Pythonic functional programming language

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

edddon Elixir v1.3 released

> Compared to? Perspective matters a lot.

That's why a pasted http://www.slideshare.net/BrianTroutwine1/erlang-lfe-elixir-... - slide 96 (I can't find a direct link). Elixir sits above golang but way below Java or C++. Maintainers are doing pretty good work at simplifying things as language matures - for example merging Dicts and Maps together.

> I wouldn't personally call it a big pile.

Touche.

edddon Elixir v1.3 released

My concern is not about the macros themselves (I don't want to start war on macros and DSLs here) but the amount of them - especially in phoenix.

Hard to grasps at first - later it is a huge benefit.