throwawaythekey

It sounds like you might be a future version of me!

We are an adtech startup in the hundreds of millions per day right now, expecting billions per day by the end of the year. Management would be happy if I said I have a plan for tens of billions.

The main difference is that we would probably lean towards the cloud version instead of self hosted (do we still need to think about clusters then??)

Does any one on here have some real world experience with scylla?

We currently make heavy use of dynamo and are interested in something cheaper/faster. The marketing material is pretty compelling but I'm unsure of how hard scylla is to operate at scale.

We used ipinfo for a while because we didn't know much about the space, they had good SEO, the data appeared to be high quality, and it was easy to use. We were pretty happy with it!

We ran into some minor problems along the way, mostly around cost, and eventually had to switch to something else. We still don't know much about the space and the main thing that stood out about our new provider is that it is cheaper but the data seems to be of lower quality.

I tend to under explain using lots of phrases like "it gets pretty mathy" as an excuse for hand waving details away. Most of the time I think I am doing the audience a favour but for the most part it seems like they actually want an explanation that they won't understand. I think lack of understanding gives them confidence that the implementation is as technical as they imagine it to be, and that I am actually engineering and not just talking bullshit.

Going forward I think I'll prefer to be more technical for the self advancement.

Took a bit of digging but I found the SEC filing [1] and the press release [2]. I'll quote from the press release because it is more easily understood. I condensed it a bit but the gist should be clear.

> In general terms, it works by imposing a significant penalty upon any person or group that acquires 15 percent or more of the shares of Common Stock without the approval of the Board.

> the rights will become exercisable if an entity, person or group acquires beneficial ownership of 15% or more... in a transaction not approved by the Board

> each right will entitle its holder (other than the person... triggering the Rights Plan, whose rights will become void...) to purchase.... additional shares of common stock

The SEC filing is a bit dense but then if you scroll down to a bit you get

> entitle the holder thereof to purchase, for the Exercise Price, a number of shares of common stock of the person engaging in the transaction having a then-current market value of twice the Exercise Price.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000119312... [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/twitter-adopts-limi...

What team size would you say this applies to?

At the moment I have flexibility in how many people I hire underneath me and would like the team to remain small enough where I can be both a force multiplier and part of the force. The goal is to be an elite small squad.

The other option is to hire a larger number of people, handle more of the project scope, and cease being an IC. However I'm new to being a formal manager and am guessing this would probably be bad for my sanity.

An open question to those advocating for poison pills as a mechanism for existing shareholders to exercise control - why don't companies have permanent poison pills?

The fact that they are enacted only in certain scenarios to me is the indicator that they are hostile and discriminatory.

The whole point of the poison pill is that the hostile shareholder is not treated equally. He would not have the opportunity to buy the discounted/newly created shares that would be triggered by him purchasing stock. In essence upon hitting the trigger he would be diluted differently to other stockholders.

I interviewed at Fast last year as an experienced startup engineer. I was given the "describe a production incident you were involved in" question.

I detailed a case where a recent deploy I had done had resulted in elevated error rates for some of our clients and how I had solved it with a quick follow up push to prod. The interviewer asked why it wasn't caught in staging and I mentioned that it could have been but as a small company we have to make velocity vs bug tradeoffs and in general it feels like we are currently at a sweet spot. The interviewer was unwilling to explore that space at all, or the concept that different companies might want to land in different places.

Later I was given feedback that I did exceptionally well in the technical interviews but the company didn't want any cowboys on their team. All of that is probably just a long way of confirming the other anecdotes in this thread that from the outside fast seemed somewhere between delivery hostile and overly cautious.

> stuck in a rut where each area of code only has one maintainer/gatekeeper.

Why do you assume it's a rut? It might be an organizational liability but it can be a great while it's working. It's common folklore that design by committee leads to poor outcomes, or at best average outcomes completed slowly.

Why assume that we need to build code by consensus or a series of interchangeable cogs?

I agree that it's very hard for consumers to understand. But to be honest how often do you need high speed usb? How many >5gbps thumb drives exist? Even if they do exist how often are you transferring enough data to care?

You're still talking about minutes at most to dump your whole phone.

Left to me feels more pro fairness but anti freedom. Either way though in most conceptualizations libertarianism/authoritarianism is usually separated from left/right

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Political_Compass_stand...

I find it fun because it prompts me to find the optimal guess (given hard mode). Playing easy mode I'm much more happy to do the first word that comes to mind and sort of fits.

To be more concrete, boilerplate != enforceable.

I'm sure Facebook had some pretty good boilerplate (probably something even more strongly worded and custom) and that didn't stop them from being GDPR slapped.

IANAL but as far as I know the existence of verbiage is not on it's own enough to make something binding. There is probably a lot of wiggle room here by jurisdiction as well.

Either way though, it seems like a very strange building block to base your business on. I assume if it were actually binding then many businesses would be hesitant to use namecheap.

Hypothetically should Americans stop paying taxes? Their government has a history of arming extremists/conflicts worldwide.

I understand the Ukrainian invasion is sickening/a travesty but I struggle to square what appears to be an underlying hypocrisy.

Or that could be the best way to start WW3. Your call!

> A private corporation is able to choose who to do business with, for any reason they want. They are not beholden to anyone but themselves and their shareholders.

Regardless of their motivations they are also beholden to the law. I don't have a lot of experience in this area but I would hope they would be in breach of contract for suspending legal/paying customers without notice.

Namecheap probably have a generic clause in their TOS that theoretically covers situations like this but these are not always enforceable.

My experience at a startup is if you get referred you get hired. We are ~50 people and about half are friends/contacts of previous employees.

Bland is forgettable. You don't want important biz comms to be forgotten. Bland doesn't spark thought in the reader. Clarity is achievable without being bland

> restrictions are justified based on the harm prevention to your neighbours

Taken to the extreme this kind of thought becomes pretty anti-human (thanos, global warming)

> mandating it could still be justified for certain activities

Yeah it could be justified for sure - I just don't think there's any way of ignoring that it's a judgement call/balance.

> When the principal danger is to oneself I think restrictions are rarely justified, but when the consequences are borne by others, I think it's more justified.

I think this point makes broad sense but needs refinement. For example if we assume there is a vaccine available that:

- Reduces personal injury - Does not prevent transmission

Using the above logic would mean that after taking the vaccine restrictions are more justified because the burden of the disease has shifted. I don't think that's what you intended and probably means that there still needs to be reference to absolute harm and taking reasonable minimization measures.

Forgive me for being an ignorant foreigner...

I see clips of train robberies in LA like this https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/01/14/train-the...

And then I have to ask myself how is that possible in modern society? Train robberies seem shocking enough that they HAVE to be indicative of a broader crime wave. Is there something about the US context that I am missing?

> if hypothetically, say, the virus had selective lethality

It might depend on how selective the lethality is! If a small population is vulnerable then I don't have a problem with them protecting themself to the best of their own abilities (no mandates). This is fairly common already with the immunocompromised etc.

If a large portion of the population is vulnerable then it becomes more grey. I'm pretty uncomfortable with there being a large amount of preventable suffering but intellectually my brain wants to take a long term view. The best possible society in the future seems like one where humans have stronger immune systems and take fewer vaccinations, not more. Is this something we can evolve towards? Is my poor knowledge of biology leading me astray? Who knows!

Given I know nothing I'm happy to fall back onto the distributed decision making apparatus (individual choice).

> We have seen how easily people are manipulated via misinformation campaigns.

I'm also not against a small amount of natural selection. People choosing their own fates helps to keep everyone happy and some Darwinism is probably a good outcome for humanity in the long term.

I'm not the parent but you have posed a funny question.

> in an alternate reality where the vaccine is super effective at reducing transmission of Omicron, and where Omicron is super deadly

If either of these were true then mandates would be far less required because people would be far more willing to take them voluntarily.

Instinctively though I do want to answer yes, I would support mandates more under higher risk scenarios. In an ideal world though I would probably prefer if communities could self select by risk tolerance i.e it's possible to live/work/party somewhere nearby with like minded people.

Google has an easier time providing targeted ads via search keywords. Facebook users spend most of their time in their feeds which is a relatively weak signal for monetization.

Note that google appears to be acting as though they are effected, you can see this in their push for FLOC/topics (but the impetus for this could be coming from android moreso than search)

> Image you were robbed and the robber suddenly asked if your issue with him could be solved if he only took half of what's in your wallet.

The pejorative robbed is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Advertising is how users pay for free services. Making the form of payment more agreeable is a worthwhile goal.

As full disclosure I earn a living in the advertising ecosystem. Any feature that means stakeholders stop asking me to invent backdoor fingerprinting and correlate against data obtained from shady brokers is a welcome step in my opinion.

About 1/3 of the covid cases in the ICU where I live [1]. No idea how that stacks up compared to total ICU capacity (I think <10% but am not sure on this).

https://twitter.com/VicGovDH/status/1486225759874486273

Thanks for the extra perspective. Without going into specifics like linearity it still seems like it could be the basis of reasonable public health advice. Forgive the tongue in cheekness but something along the lines of:

"Expect some discomfort - that lets you know the mask is working"