Giving Ruby a bad name: Women as Job Perks, Again - <AUTHOR> http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com/post/55595533099/women-as-job-perks-again

<comment><USER2> Maybe they were trying to appeal to me. Knowing that I'd be working with women and people from different cultures holds great appeal to someone who is sick of and uncomfortable in 100% bro environments. I lean towards thinking that was actually their intention, due to the mention of "frontend/ _backend_ " making sure that we know that the women they have are not all designers.

Of course, it's as inappropriate to advertise explicitly as "we have three blacks, and two hispanics!" would be. How do you advertise and get credit for creating a diverse workplace? Maybe a collaborative blog w/pictures above every blogpost? A tiny company can't get away with sponsoring "cultural" events, like the large ones do.

<comment><USER3> Oh please. You signal that by saying "we have a fun and diverse team", not "Which do you want, beer at your desk or your own team of European women?"

<comment><USER4> The phrase "we have a fun and diverse team" contains so much recruiting hyperbole as to not have an actual meaning.

<comment><USER5> So add more details. If you actually have a fun and diverse team, you should have some stories, right? So tell them!

"We love to hear S's stories about growing up in France." "W has the yummiest recipes to share." "One time we were struggling with this issue and J had this insight that we never would have thought of because we were so used to looking at it from such-and-such perspective." "At lunch last week, D taught us this great game she used to play as a kid; we've been having so much fun with it since then and P told us it reminded him of this other game so now they're working on remix together and they won't tell us anything about it until it's done."

I was in an interview yesterday and my interviewers were telling me about how they bring their kids in to the office sometimes, and how they have tomato plants growing on the roof and how they take Good Friday off because "I grew up Roman Catholic, so it's a holy day for me. I need it to bake cookies!" Those kinds of things don't appeal to everyone of course, but they're right up my alley. They made me even more interested in the job than before.

<comment><USER4> This seems to fall victim to the same "sin" as the original post - calling out the women in a way which could be easily misconstrued as a Playboy centerfold biography.

<comment><USER5> I didn't mean to give the impression that all the stories would be about women. I think it would work best if you had several stories about a variety of people; the goal is to illustrate the diversity you have instead of going with the banal "we value diversity" claim with nothing to back it up. Of course having a team that actually is fun and diverse is a prerequisite to this strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Notice which of those things is not like the others? That's right, number > eight appears to be placing female employees on roughly the same level a jar > of chocolate eclairs.

Well - no.

You could interpret it as signaling that it is a fun and diverse work place. But that wouldn't make for good Two Minutes Hate.

<comment><USER7> Interpreting this to mean that it's a "fun and diverse work place" is pretty tortured exegesis.

The reason this is a problem is that it's alienating to women to describe them as job perks. Like, look. Empathize a little. What if you're a straight lady dev looking for a job? Why would "female" devs be a job perk? Many women take being massive issue with being described as "female." Further, describing them by nationality has an element of exoticizing them. More fundamentally though, the line signals that this environment is a male environment. Its boys club signaling, even if you don't want it to be. Even if it doesn't bother you personally.

<comment><USER6> _What if you 're a straight lady dev looking for a job?_

Are you suggesting that women don't like with other women?

Most tech shops have much less men then women, which is boring. This ad wanted to highlight that this place has more diversity.

As with all language, the wording is a little ambiguous. The article (and many commenters) choose to interpret the line in the worst possible way and think the company is a misogynist hellhole and probably think that the four women working there are kept on leashes.

<comment><USER5> I doubt that Richard Green had any malicious intentions in his comments; it was probably an innocent mistake. If you look at the literal meaning of what he wrote, you can see that he probably wanted to highlight the diversity. But I don't think you can deny that the wording he chose has unfortunate connotations and I think it's worth pointing that out because those connotations, while subtle and subjective, are real and they can be harmful. I think at the very least we can agree that they have harmed the image of evvnt, which is the opposite of what he intended.

No one is suggesting that women don't like to work together. It's that we don't want to work in a place where the men subconsciously think of us as a temptation, a reward, a decoration, or a commodity. That's the impression that Green's post gives, even though I'm sure that's not what he intended. Does that make sense? I can try to explain better if you have questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As always, it's how it's presented that matters.

I always ask for general demographic information when I interview with a company. It isn't about being sexist (well maybe it is against men)... I just don't want to work with a bunch of mid-20s white males. Not enough diversity of thought.

Disclosure: I'm a mid-20s white male.

<comment><USER9> I love laughing at self righteous people like you. You see the world as though people of different sexes and skin colors all think differently but at the same time think all white males think exactly the same without even realizing how ridiculous that is. What, do all white males in their mid 20s grow up in expensive suburbs? Get over yourself already. You're like that white guy that goes to Bubble Tea places and acts like he's into "ethnic" food.

<comment><USER3> This is an unnecessary personal attack.

Like it or not, women and minorities often have different life experiences than white men. There is a range of experiences within each group, and there is overlap, and economics play a big role, but it's a leap to assume that someone looking for a diverse workplace is self righteous or clueless.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't replying to the OP. The person I replied to had to put a Disclaimer in their post to inform everyone that he is a white male in his mid 20s. If you don't see the ridiculousness in that then I can't help you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aanand Prasad's excellent response to Richard Green's apology: [http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/0091...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/009141.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> No, it's giving tech a bad name. Maybe as part of the whole "mentoring" thing angles and VCs give a start up, making sure the CEO doesn't post dumb sh*t like this in the first place (12+ experience need not apply) would go a long ways to helping the company not become a laughing stock. I mean, really, who is going to work at these companies?

<comment><USER12> Richard Green isn't tech. He's MBA - we already know what their schtick is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The apology and aggressively calling out people criticizing them in blog/asrticle comments is particularly egregious as well - from both a "doing the right thing" perspective and from "stop digging the hole deeper" perspective.

Apology here: [http://evvnt.com/2013/07/i-love-ruby-an-equal-opportunity- em...](http://evvnt.com/2013/07/i-love-ruby-an-equal-opportunity-employer/)

<comment><USER13> That actually looks like a good apology. He starts by taking personal responsibility, clarifies the actual culture of the company, and throws in a legal disclaimer at the end.

<comment><USER3> It's a terrible apology. See this response for an excellent explanation of why:

[http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/0091...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/009141.html)

<comment><USER13> I don't like it. The questions seem more like rhetorical accusations instead of a conversation. I really don't like point 4 since the guy takes personal responsibility at the beginning of the letter (which this reply says he doesn't). And I think the invitation to talk follows the advice in this post to the letter: [http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/on-sexual- harassme...](http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/on-sexual-harassment- at-conventions-elise-matheson-speaks-out/) That is, making it as easy as possible to report harmful behavior.

And point 3 is just pointing out that he's getting defensive. Well of course he's defensive, you're attacking him!

Edit: OK I had to read the link from point 2 twice but I think I understand it now. However I don't see how it's relevant since it says "I didn't intend for you to feel that way, so if you do feel that way, don't blame me! My intent magically inoculates me from responsibility for what I actually said and how it was received!" But the apology specifically says "I got it wrong" and never claims that people shouldn't be offended. The whole reply is just wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I wonder if all this shit directed towards Rubyists is actually caused by asshole MBAs. Richard Green isn't a developer.

Business Development Global Partnership Sales & Marketing Strategist Business Analyst European Sales

Besides, his entire fuck post smells of asshole MBA.

</comment><comment><USER14> This has got nothing to do with ruby other than the fact that they are looking for ruby developers on its mailing list . The title seems link baity IMHO.

But I am against adding women as a job perk.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, if you read the whole thing he seems a little frustrated that his efforts to get the attention of ruby developers haven't been working. That's my impression at least: [http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/0090...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/009095.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Their [evvnt's] responses are even more confusing than the original post ([http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women- offered-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women-offered- perks-job-ad#comment-964234122)). It almost seems like there is some sort of english language issue here. I can't even be sure what they were trying to accomplish. Whatever it was they got it so very wrong.

Another reply: [http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women- offered-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women-offered- perks-job-ad#comment-964196339)

Edit: After reading their confounding responses it almost seems as if they were _literally asking_ people what "perks" where most important to them. Kind of the way social media marketers suggest you word Facebook posts as questions to prompt engagement. I honestly can't imagine how someone can be this naive.

Their ongoing response to criticism on Twitter is mindblowing. I really am at a loss to understand how anyone can be this foolish.

[https://twitter.com/evvnt/status/357120127113773056](https://twitter.com/evvnt/status/357120127113773056)

Also this is the original article: [http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women- offered-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women-offered- perks-job-ad)

<comment><USER5> Here's the full text of the original post: [http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/0090...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/009095.html)

You're right about it being a literal question; it looks like he was hoping people would respond with the ones that appealed to them the most (i.e. "I'd be most interested in 1, 3, and 10").

"Ruby developers have quality banter and like to squish themselves in to tiny pubs, drink lots of beer and chat projects and code. More of point 3 required.

So in the art of snaring a ruby developer in the next 6 weeks, what temps these rare creatures out of their natural habit to venture to pastures new...

Let me know which of the following would tempt you from you desk...

[...]

I'm looking for your best number or a combination of up to 3..."

So I guess it's all hypothetical; it seems like he was fishing around to figure out what would attract attention or interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't get it. Of course having women coworkers is a positive signal in a field dominated by males, and can certainly factor into a job decision.

<comment><USER13> You need to think of this from the point of view of the women. How would you feel if someone put you up as a perk, based only on your gender? I would feel like meat.

Edit: I'm not saying this was intended. Maybe they were actually trying to appeal to women (or men) who didn't want to work in a "bro environment", as pessimizer put it. Lots of explanations but they need an actual apology for messing up so bad.

<comment><USER17> One job description contained this

> Young and dedicated colleagues

Now I am being put up as a perk because I am 24 only because of my age? And is that discrimination?

<comment><USER13> It's probably agist. At least adding "dedicated" is better than just saying "young." But what was the context? Was that just a description of the work environment, or was it in a list of perks?

<comment><USER17> > Was that just a description of the work environment, or was it in a list of > perks?

Oh right, I see the difference now. It was of course a description of the work environment, and not a list of perks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a case of unfortunate wording that leaves the wrong impression. My take on that "perk" is that the meaning that was intended is something like: "we have a gender diverse work place and have hired 4 awesome woman engineers! this is a great perk because these women kick ass and its a privilege to work with them."

but of course, those words weren't used. they probably should have been rather than the words that did appear.

<comment><USER10> Based on the non-apology (where this could have been clarified) and the comments on news articles and elsewhere, I really don't think this is the case, or it could have been clarified and apologized for.

Also, people that put women programmers in lists of "tempting perks" and then when called out on misogyny say, "but dudes, I have a wife and daughter!" doesn't exactly give me much room to really believe that you are committed enough to addressing the problem of sexism in tech enough that you would write "we have a gender-diverse and multinational workplace!" in the same place where you are talking about beer-at-your-desk

<comment><USER13> He's a non-technical cofounder. He probably isn't steeped in the troubles of gender in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a misunderstanding to me. People saying that it's comparing women to eclairs need to read the rest of the list. If that's the case they're also comparing "commission from online sales" to eclairs and "30 days paid holiday" to a coffee machine.

There are serious gender inequality issues in our industry that need to be addressed. This isn't it.

<comment><USER20> Women listed as perks of a job, almost as "employment benefits," is thoroughly degrading. This is definitely the kind of issue that needs to be addressed in the community, and it not suitable to disregard smaller occurrences of sexism because we can pointer to more serious cases that we "have to deal with first." All instances of sexism are issues and deserve our the same contempt.

<comment><USER13> _All instances of sexism are issues and deserve our the same contempt._

This is a problem I'm having with some of the responses. Accidentally offensive things are not as bad as people intentionally degrading women. There _are_ shades of gray and I think something as small as this should only require an apology to be done with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For everyone trying to gloss this as a flawed attempt to establish a diverse workplace, here's how to do it:

1\. Take it out of the list that is captioned "Let me know which of the following would tempt you from you desk…"

2\. Instead, try something like "We are committed to a diverse workplace sharing in the strengths of many points of view."

<comment><USER22> > "We are committed to a diverse workplace sharing in the strengths of many > points of view."

Ugh... do we really have to talk like politicians to avoid offending people?

Maybe something more like "We don't discriminate against women - 4 of our developers are female"

I don't see why it should necessarily be taken out of "perks". I imagine a lot of female developers in particular would be tempted to move jobs to somewhere with more women.

<comment><USER21> "We don't discriminate against blacks - 4 of our developers are black"

If that doesn't make you cringe, I'm not sure how else to get it across to you.

<comment><USER22> "We are committed to a diverse workplace sharing in the strengths of many points of view."

And that doesn't make you cringe?

Admittedly mine wasn't great but there has to be some middle ground

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The way I understand it, he was trying to state (in a clumsy way) what kind of team they have. Indicating that it's technical staff does not consist only of men.

<comment><USER24> When you include the women as a perk in an effort to tempt engineering talent, it's easy to interpret the mindset of the author of using women as objects. Even if the author ISN'T authoring the list that way, they are not being cognizant of the pervasive problem of viewing women as objects and acting to prevent it.

Everything else on the list is proffered as transactional compensations of talented engineers renting their labor to the CEO. Highlighting the youth of these engineers while including them on a list of perks implies specific things about how they are valued.

If he had separately described the work environment, and had included these engineers in that description, and had not focused SOLELY on the young female engineers, then this wouldn't be a story.

<comment><USER23> I could never have written the ad in such a thoughtless manner myself (neither could I have written your own well-reasoned post, for that matter).

But I do think it is just clumsyness - I don't think he thinks of women as objects, he is probably just happy to have them around for what they add as a person.

Or am I being naive?

<comment><USER24> Objectifying women is rarely an act that people embrace with a conscious perspective or decision. It's a way of behaving that most people engage in because the culture they occupy and learned in showed it as an acceptable behavior. They continue the behavior which reinforces their privileged position in society (again, often not consciously).

The intent and perspective of the author do not make the problem go away any more than a hunter realizing he accidentally shot someone in the wilderness that he mistook for a deer makes the victim's bullet wound close.

Part of the concern is that the youth and gender are highlighted prominently for these engineers, and ONLY the young woman engineers are listed as perks. I absolutely value the contribution women engineers bring to my work environments, they are valuable additions to our team, but some of them aren't young.

Again, IF the engineering team was described separately, OR if other engineers were included as 'perks', e.g. "We have a senior Rails contributor on staff whom you can learn with", OR if the perk wasn't specifically calling out their youth and gender (we have a multinational team of many races and genders), then this would be a non-story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I responded on the mailing list.

[http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/0091...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat- lrug.org/2013-July/009141.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> The linked post does not even suggest that Ruby name or the Ruby community is in any way the issue here. It just happened on a Ruby mailing list. Period.

So why is this posted under this title?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not a big fan of this title - while this is an ugly, immature job posting, I certainly hope it doesn't reflect at all on the Ruby community.

<comment><USER12> I hope so as well given it wasn't made by a developer.

<comment><USER28> _I hope so as well given it wasn 't made by a developer._

But so what if it was? Even in that case it would reflect poorly on _that_ developer. Not on everyone who coincidentally also uses Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ah, this is really cute. Lamenting lack of acknowledgement of women in tech, but (crazy internet lady) DAMNED IF ANYBODY DARES TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE WORKING WITH WOMEN IS A DESIRABLE SITUATION!

Above all, these "perks" sound a bit like they are addressed more at attracting potential female employees.

<comment><USER10> Why don't you do a little test. Find about 10-20 women working developers. Show them this job ad. Tell me the percentage that feel that the ad is welcoming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there some kind of elaborate joke going on in here? Or are you people incapable of reading a simple text?

You don't advertise a diverse environment with "4X female french, italian and spanish junior". It can be stupidity or a lack of understanding of the English language (if you're feeling like justifying it) or just plain gender discrimination and a really sexist statement to make.

Anyway, not much more can be expected from a job posting that seems targeted to 12 year olds.

</comment><comment><USER31> Overreact much?

The tone of the post is informal and is intended to be humorous. If there is a good balance of male/female coders there, there's a good chance one of the women saw it and thought it was funny. One of them might have even written it.

For many programmers, I'm sure it is a perk to be around more women. They work in a completely male dominated field. The changes of meeting a potential partner who shares your interests at work is low.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure their existing female developers enjoy being objectified like that, no doubt a horrid place to work...

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sure why a startup CEO making a sexist job post looking for Ruby devs in a Ruby forum should give _Ruby_ a bad name, more than, say, (in decreasing order of relevance), the particular CEO, the company, tech startup CEOs, and tech startup culture more generally.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't CEOs ever run things by PR? This sounds like a rookie mistake of accidentally forgetting to cc the person in charge of making sure the company doesn't blow itself up in the press.

</comment><comment><USER34> Maybe they are trying to appeal to the 20 something virgin engineers that live in Man Jose and have never had a sexy girlfriend? Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER34> So when is someone going to start the site progammersbeingcunts.tumblr.com?

</comment><comment><USER35> i think articles like this are the actual problem. Stop playing the woman card, get a job and shut your mouth. If you don't think you will be treated well because you're a woman, don't work there. I honestly am shocked that women care. This job is saying that there are already women here, which means you have a high chance of getting hired. The more women there, the less sexual harassment in the work place. I'm a white male, so I don't have any cards to play which is good because the game is stupid and i would have folded a long time ago anyway.

</comment><comment><USER34> Who wouldn't enjoy working alongside a sexy French or Italian girl (or guy, no homo). Considering most engineers are men it makes sense to appeal to them in this fashion. Sex sells, duh.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm sure the females in question had this ran by them and thought it would be a fun joke to play along with

This is a stupid story

<comment><USER15> Read further, there aren't actually any females french or otherwise, in question. This whole thing is insanity piled on insanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Expresso

people still do this?

</comment><comment><USER38> Seriously, 'programmers being dicks' gets upvoted to front page?

Someone might as well start 'programmers being cunts' with the first post discussing 'women and programming - one small step for productivity, one giant leap for drama and bullshit'

<comment><USER12> He's not a programmer, he's what I would probably describe as; an MBA.

Dev community does has it share of issues, we don't need to fuel it with more crap from people like him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> A fine ad. I don't see a crime here. Except the sensational title maybe...

 _Oh noooes! Ruby sucks! How dare they!!! Sexist community!_

</comment><comment><USER40> I think that women that get upset on this AD are those whose companies were not proud of having them in the team - they are jealous. The type of women who are wearing generous decolletages, but they feel insulted when someone admires their boobs. The type of women who like their eyes to be complimented, but again, they feel insulted when a man compliments their ass.

I think we, as men, try too much to understand them, and they try too much to keep themselves mysterious.</comment>


Bitcoinica hacked. ~$100k USD stolen. - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinica.com/ Bitcoinia's officially statement: http://bitcoinica.blogspot.com <comment><USER2> This is now the 2nd, 3rd time that Bitcoinica has been hacked?

People warned of this when it was first announced—a financial platform created by a lone teenager in China [1] is obvious going to be a target for high profile attacks. The site owner's comments [2] make it clear that he's not ready to do security on a large-scale financial system.

The idea that they were holding even 100K of Bitcoins is mind-boggling.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973301> [2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973732>

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2975010>

Could it be that he had the same kind of breach GH had?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To balance out the critique I would like to point out that this has nothing to do with an inherent insecurity or fault in the bitcoin currency, but with the way the current marketplaces handle their security.

It is however a PR nightmare for an up and coming currency that the bitcoin 'user community' will have to handle better to have a chance to be mainstream recognized as a 'real' currency.

<comment><USER5> This is very important to point out. For those who aren't very familiar with the system a story like this says: "bitcoins aren't safe" when the message they should get is: "bitcoin exchanges don't have a great track record for security"

Once again, if you want real safety in trading bitcoin, do it "over-the- counter" on irc. The "low-tech" solution can sometimes prove to be the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Occasionally you'll see a story about a dramatic months long heist take place in Eve Online [1] - the in game currency of Eve is loosely convertible to real world USD currency and the amounts 'stolen' (this is a tricky point because it happens in game) are real world significant: tens of thousands of dollars.

Bitcoin strikes me as similar, it has a weird quasi real feel to it, there are markets that trade between BC and USD and spot prices and everything, but I have a hard time thinking how/if a prosecution could occur with it.

[1] - [http://gamergaia.com/pc/1724-eve-online-space-heist-one- tril...](http://gamergaia.com/pc/1724-eve-online-space-heist-one-trillion- isk.html)

<comment><USER7> This is an intriguing parallel. I'm only personally familiar with World of Warcraft gold farmers, but have read about Eve, Star Wars, even Everquest folks trading goods/gold for real $$.

So computationally, I wonder what the cost to 'mine' a bitcoin is, vs the cost to 'generate 1000 gold' in an MMO that sells for an equivalent amount? I will definitely have to add this to my never ending book project.

<comment><USER6> I was referring to more of a cultural feel and my own reactions, I never made the link of computation to computation, we need an economist to weigh in on this.

Also, if you find this sort of thing intriguing you might enjoy Charles Stross's Halting State - <http://www.amazon.com/Halting-State- ebook/dp/B000W9180A/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to snark, but bitcoin seems to be turning into something of a bad joke. How long will it be before the net volume of bitcoins stolen exceeds that of those spent?

<comment><USER9> Everything about Bitcoin seems silly to me. What exactly was "stolen" here? What if they just restore from yesterday's backup? Is there a bitcoin equivalent of the ink packets regular banks use to track stolen cash?

<comment><USER10> _What if they just restore from yesterday's backup?_

If _every Bitcoin user_ rolled back the block chain by a day then the theft essentially didn't happen. But you can't get everyone to agree to do that.

 _Is there a bitcoin equivalent of the ink packets regular banks use to track stolen cash?_

All Bitcoin transactions are public, so it's possible to trace thefts. But when a transaction has both tainted and untainted inputs the output ends up partially tainted and you end up with a lot of innocent people holding BTC that's lightly tainted (sort of like having 100 $1 bills of which two were marked by police — what is the probability that you're a criminal?).

[http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin- is-...](http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not- anonymous.html) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2800790> <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56170.0> <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67609.0> [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/is-there- any...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/is-there-any-way-the- bitcoin-network-could-resist-a-viral-tainted-coin-tagging-s)

<comment><USER11> > But you can't get everyone to agree to do that.

Bitcoin is essentially a network of mutual trust, right? It is _possible_ to get enough machines on the network to vote to void the transaction. It is even possible to set up some kind of body or bodies that investigate thefts, and make recommendations about which transactions the community should void. Of course, now we're inching towards a central bank, and so whether such a step would be "in the spirit of Bitcoin" I don't know, but it's probably a requirement if Bitcoin is to be taken seriously as a safe medium of exchange for business purposes. Of course, perhaps it doesn't want to be used as such, which is fine.

> sort of like having 100 $1 bills of which two were marked by police — what > is the probability that you're a criminal?

The convention in the real world is that you are deprived of the stolen property you've received even if you did not know that they were stolen. This may seem undesirable, but it does incentivize ordinary people to perform some basic checks that they are not purchasing stolen goods. Allowing innocent people to keep stolen goods may seem like a fair course of action, but it also can increase the market for stolen goods, and incentivize for thievery, ultimately leading to an escalating situation.

<comment><USER10> _The convention in the real world is that you are deprived of the stolen property you've received even if you did not know that they were stolen._

The problem with applying that standard to Bitcoin is that Bitcoins get mixed together, so depriving people of money that's only partially tainted is a disproportionate punishment.

<comment><USER12> Voiding transactions is a poor technical solution to a social problem. A better solution is to track down the recipients, prosecute them, and have a court order them to pay back a certain number of Bitcoins, just like you would with cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> the transaction in question: [http://blockchain.info/tx- index/5416502/7a22917744aa9ed740fa...](http://blockchain.info/tx- index/5416502/7a22917744aa9ed740faf3068a2f895424ed816ed1a04012b47df7a493f056e8)

it's like having cctv access to a robbery but being able to do nothing about it

<comment><USER14> Can you track where the bitcoins eventually end up and then get the thieves that way? If someone takes that money and buys some pizza then wouldn't it be trackable?

I suppose that it is probably going to just be cashed out for other bitcoins or cash and laundered some other way which would make this kind of pointless.

<comment><USER15> It actually looks like the coins in question haven't moved anywhere yet.

<http://blockchain.info/tree/5416502>

<comment><USER15> * They have started moving now.. couple of 2600BTC transactions and a lot of others. I got bored at following the chain when it scrolled off the right side of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> He's from Singapore and they were not holding 100k in a hot wallet. More like 18K which is still too much. JP Morgan lost $2B US due to some idiot traders. <http://goo.gl/fqN3S> Shit happens.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know much about bitcoins, can someone who does explain why one would want to keep the coins in a wallet on a server somewhere instead of e.g. your home computer, or a USB stick or something? Aren't they supposed to be roughly equivalent to cash? Storing it on Bitcoinica seems like taking a briefcase full of cash and storing it in a public locker.

<comment><USER18> This is exactly right. It is not a flaw in bitcoin rather irresponsibility with large amounts of digital cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is why bitcoins will never gain mainstream use. It seems that every few months a high profile bitcoin site gets hacked.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I know a lot of people who start to flirt with the notion of using Bitcoin, only to have their dreams smashed when they learn how frequently these companies and their accounts are hacked.

It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.

<comment><USER21> > It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.

Would you mind clarifying what you're meaning by 'it' and 'secure'? To me, the (in-)security of a particular bitcoin site is orthogonal to the security of Bitcoin as a protocol/currency, though the security of bitcoin sites does have a huge impact on mainstream use.

<comment><USER20> Sorry, should have been more clear. By "it" I meant the sites where bitcoins are being traded. And yes, seeing these sites getting hacked frequently makes mainstream acceptance a lot harder. Which in turn makes changing the paradigm take a lot longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Note: security is hard. The typical highly competent programmer isn't quite competent at computer security.

<comment><USER23> Which directly implies that financial systems that require massive investments of new software infrastructure to make them useful to the public are especially risky.

<comment><USER22> I should think that depends on if the massive investment is for paying hordes of typical competent programmers, or for paying fewer guys more like you.

<comment><USER23> My sense of the whole industry right now is that the demand for competent software security far, far outstrips the supply; Bank of America could _want_ to build a gigantic new transaction processing infrastructure in a few years, but logistically would probably not be able to retain the talent required to secure it.

The major security advantage our legacy infrastructure has is that it's old, and its failings are well-understood and (from a risk management / loss mitigation perspective) mostly mitigated.

Bitcoin (or _any other_ online currency or transaction infrastructure) has none of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the official statement: <http://bitcoinica.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER24> There are some very solid reasons for all the banking regulation, and we're seeing them played out here. People are treating these places like banks, storing hundreds of thousands of dollars with them, but they have none of the regulations, security requirements or insurance and so they are great easy prey for hackers and people keep getting robbed blind.

I hate to say it but what did people expect treating Joe Website like a bank, and this is also what the deregulation camp can expect to happen if they keep pushing for bank and market deregulation.

<comment><USER25> Most regulations aren't about security but that what kinds of business a bank can engage in. This is more akin to giving your money to the protection of your hapless, dimwitted cousin who promises not to let his pitbull eat it.

<comment><USER24> And yet where are the stories of the banks loosing your savings account? Usually it's credit card fraud, not the banks fault but some other site that was storing it and got hacked, and then insurance steps in and pays it and you still aren't out any money.

There are some pretty strict regulations about bank and credit card cyber security and I presume they pay some pretty hefty insurance premiums for our benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "The database was most likely compromised."

> "Bitcoinica uses the most stringent best practices for password security.*"

> "For the technically inclined, we salt and encrypt passwords with bcrypt."

</comment><comment><USER27> The irony of having a centralized banking institution compromised, and having currency, designed to be decentralized and controlled by the individuals and not organizations, stolen from them--is too much.

It's like the GitHub users who cry when GitHub is down saying "How are we going to do work?!", not realizing that Git was designed to be completely decentralized and not dependent on one single repository.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is bitcoinica still solvent? They've now lost $100K + $215K in BTC in published hacks.

</comment><comment><USER29> This was inevitable. I remember when bitcoinica was first announced her a while back and commenters warned this would happen.

I'd be curious as to how the breach occurred and how it could have been prevented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Were they warned in a general sense? Or were they specifically targeted?

<comment><USER10> A financial company run by one inexperienced person is pretty much a big "hack me" sign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The site is down.

Here is a better source of info.

<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81045.0>

</comment><comment><USER31> If one does a cursory glance of the history of money, one will see many different currencies having a debasement period similar to this. While others will take the bait and parrot someone else's opinion that bitcoin is not a safe place to put money, I'll be investing even more in the currency. Always buy to the sound of cannons/scandal.

</comment><comment><USER32> you guys don't get it. if such a high profile hacks happens - it means it worth a lot!

<comment><USER33> No, it just means there was a monetary gain to be made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hacked, or the guy who created the site just stole customers money? There's really no way to tell.

</comment><comment><USER35> Who would do such a thing? Who would want to give a bad name to bitcoins? Who would not want them to gain popularity? Who would want to keep the people in the dark about things like bitcoin? Okay... I will stop.</comment>


UK to lose £1tn of financial assets to Europe due to Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/016171be-4a74-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f50d <comment><USER2> In Europe they call it BargainHuntIt</comment>


Sharefest - p2p file sharing web app - <AUTHOR> http://peer5.com/sharefest-me-lifes-too-short-to-wait-for-your-files-to-upload-to-a-server/

<comment><USER2> Direct sharing is going to be the real internet revolution... we've just scratched the surface of what's going to happen when everyone directly collaborates. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> votes up please

</comment><comment><USER4> looks great!</comment>


Want to Startup America, fund Mega Projects and R&D not more web apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/02/03/want-to-startup-america-fund-mega-projects-and-rd-not-more-web-apps/ <comment><USER2> >>>The most beneficial action government can take to support long term growth of startup ecosystems throughout the nation are large Research and Development projects.

Unfortunately the government can't magically create resources. The only thing the government can do is reallocate funds from one area to another which is inefficient. The most efficient form of allocating resources is the market, not central planning.

When the market allocates resources there is a much greater chance of the resources being put to good use because they are seeking to generate a profit. In order to generate a profit people must not only want something, but find the price reasonable.

When the government allocates funds it takes money away from entrepreneurs. More often than not what the government invests in would not be bought by citizens for how much resources they actually put into it. This is completely inefficient, as we are putting in let's say 100,000$ to get something that is worth 10,000$ to the people using it. If this were a business, they would be operating at a huge loss and go out of business. But since it is the government they don't go out of business and continue to misallocate resources.

In the off chance that the government uses these resources efficiently, it is certainly not because of any magical "gift" the government has. In this case, the same exact thing could have been accomplished by entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs are incentivized to seek out these opportunities because there is profit involved.

The only investments we need the "gift" of government to pursue are those that we get less value out of than we put into. It's hard to argue that these are good investments.

<comment><USER3> _In this case, the same exact thing could have been accomplished by entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs are incentivized to seek out these opportunities because there is profit involved._

The first assertion is not true, and in fact the second assertion is the reason. Entrepreneurs _are_ incentivized, but it is an incentive to get rich quick. If I as a VC can make 10x my investment in 2 years by investing in a 'Hot or Not' web app, I'll do that rather than invest in a fundamental technology that produces a 10x return in 15 years. The market is very focused on web apps now because there are great opportunities for viral growth at the expense of existing businesses. This is cannibalization, not real wealth creation. We should really stop referring to web businesses as tech companies: few of them produce any more real technology than your average McDonalds.

Government plays a valuable role precisely because it invests in technologies that are unlikely to produce a return but nonetheless could provide the basis for new businesses that can in the future. The Internet itself is a good example.

<comment><USER2> Is getting rich a bad incentive? In order to get rich you must provide people with goods/services that they want at a price they can afford. It's win/win.

If the general public wants Hot or Not apps that is what they will get. Who are you to decide that their money/resources should instead be used on something that you want?

<comment><USER4> _Is getting rich a bad incentive?_

Is advancing the technology of a civilization a worthy goal?

If yes, then getting rich only accidentally contributes to advancing knowledge and technology.

It could accidentally (because the goal is to get rich, not anything else) make a huge contribution. It could also contribute almost nothing. Plenty of people have gotten rich by finding a slightly cheaper way to either make or distribute (or both) a commodity. We can look at webapps as a kind of commodity.

The general public almost never wants the early or even medium term benefits or a world changing technology. So if you only ever advance by what the public wants today, you would not get very far.

This is why R&D has always been a long bet.

Over time fewer large corporations have decided to make this kind of long bet (you can even think of it a long trading position) and more R&D has moved to public institutions like universities and government labs.

Government is just plain terrible at most of the things it does, but when it pours a ton of $ on R&D there are results.

It may not be the most efficient use use of $. I am certain startups quickly iterating over business plans can do A LOT more with a lot less. But I am also equally certain there are a lot of high tech things which require far more $ over farm more time then startups usually have.

But then again how much $ constitutes a startup is changing.

The recent Y combinator deal where you simply throw $150K at _everybody_ is fascinating. This could be a way for Y combinator to fund biotech startups.

<comment><USER2> I am not saying that I think hot or not apps are more important than advancing the technology of a civilization, but I do think that these decisions should be made by the market.

If someone makes money it is because they provided the rest of us with something that we value. It isn't our business to tell them exactly how to spend that money, it is theirs.

I may have different priorities than other people, but it is wrong to tax away their money that they could have spent on what they value, and to spend it on what I value.

I agree a lot of the companies VC's invest in are pretty stupid. However, the reason they are investing in a lot of these companies is because companies like Google are willing to pay large sums of money for them. Given this, it makes sense for them to invest in these companies.

Most of these acquisitions of web companies for millions of dollars are by most standards a complete waste of money. But it is not my place to tell Google or anyone else that they should not be offering to buy companies like Path for a rumored $100m because I have a better use for their money.

Google can afford to make these acquisitions at a loss though because they provide people with other things that are of value.

I'm not saying I disagree with your priorities, but I think it is wrong to tax others to pursue them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its insane to me how much leverage a first-approximation model of economic activity, developed more than a century ago, has amongst even highly intelligent people.

As soon as you leave the limit of omniscient investors with infinite capital you will quickly see why government investment is necessary for large projects with long-term impacts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a tiered system of ideas. At the bottom I have the easiest and cheapest to deploy (aka web based), and as I move up the tiers the ideas become more expensive and require more capital than I have right now -- these costs are prohibitive in my execution.</comment>


Heroku Isn't for Idiots: developer time and comparative advantage - <AUTHOR> http://rdegges.com/heroku-isnt-for-idiots <comment><USER4> Inaka has two clients (of many), that are particularly comparable. One used a very "cloudy" Heroku stack with SimpleDB, Ruby, Rails, and Redis. It a number of scalability problems mostly related to the different components not performing predictably under load.

A lot of time spent debugging this custom stack that was supposed to be seamless.

Another client was (boxes running on a hosted server provider),using Erlang, Riak, some Rails, deployed w/Puppet. Comparable data volume; similar "Rails w/Dynamo" architecture, but -- much, much less magic. Much smaller operations bill, less time spent working around cloud platform issues, like inconsistent IO, expensive Amazon charges, lack of visibility into what is happening behind the scenes, etc.

In some cases, Heroku is great; for us, particularly prototyping. But it's not always so clear when it's better to just boot some boxes and deploy some puppet or chef.

</comment><comment><USER5> > 512MB of RAM, 1GB of swap. Total = 1.5GB RAM

What!? Swap is considered equivalent to RAM?

From my experience, a single Heroku dyno performs better than a micro EC2 instance (613 RAM) but significantly worse than a small EC2 instance (1.7GB RAM). The first Heroku dyno is free, making it ideal for small sites, but as soon as you want to add anything outside of Heroku's sandbox, the prices are extremely inflated compared to AWS. For instance, adding an SSL cert to a Heroku app is $20. A small EC2 instance costs as little as $17.69 a month with 3 year buy-in (this is the average monthly cost with a 3 year heavy utilization reserved instance). Even if you pay monthly for an on-demand instance ($57.60/m) it's still much cheaper than Heroku considering you can comfortably run several services such as Redis, PostgreSQL, and Resque workers alongside your app. Each of those services will cost extra on Heroku.

Of course, the trade off is the relative ease of deployment. Heroku is the easiest place to deploy, until your app grows more complicated. AWS is 2nd easiest, until you need even more control over hardware configurations. The most difficult deployment is on your own hardware, but it should also be the cheapest option.

<comment><USER6> Also these numbers are not accurate.

I was consistently hitting the 512MB "limit" immediately, even with lightweight processes (not sure how tbh), and I frequently would see processes complaining that they were at 450% or more of their memory usage.

I'm pretty confident that Heroku virtualizes EC2 instances which potentially makes them more resource strapped than they appear.

<comment><USER7> They do; if you look at Herou's "dedicated" database instances the RAM numbers correlate perfectly with EC2 instance sizes. Even a "dedicated" Heroku database instance runs on shared EC2 hardware, making both its latency and throughput very unpredictable under any kind of serious workload.

Combined with limitations in how their dyno instances work, like the inability to have more than one slug version deployed at once to take advantage of Heroku's routing fabric for hot-deployment, I only recommend Heroku for early- stage systems. Thankfully it's not very hard to migrate off of and still offers an awesome time savings in the early stages - it's just not something to build out on IMO.

<comment><USER6> Those are not database instances that the specs are listed for

<comment><USER8> Why did I read that in Obi-Wan's voice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Disclaimer: I work at one of the companies in this list).

In the interest of choice and healthy competition (and also in my own selfish interest, per the disclaimer above), I will point out that the arguments in this article apply to _all_ good PaaS providers, of which there are plenty. As an insider in this particular crowd of vendors, I can tell you that the competition is fierce and it is entirely focused on delighting hackers - <USER2> trend which everyone here should be excited about.

\- cloudfoundry.com/appfog/stackato/tier3 are competing deployments of the cloudfoundry open-source project by VMWare

\- phpfog, pagodabox, orchestra: php-only

\- engine yard: ruby-only, also the leader in revenue, probably by a wide margin ($28m)

\- dotCloud: first multi-language paas, with a bunch of database services as well

\- Openshift: previously Makara, now part of Red Hat. Also available open- source

\- Djangozoom: django-only

\- Nodejitsu, nodester, no.de: nodejs-only

\- Cloudbees: Java only

\- Azure: solid .Net stack, impressive database service. Didn't use it directly but I've heard it's a great product.

\- AppHarbor: an alternate .Net provider

\- App Engine: much more restrictive than the others, but super cohesive and a great product if you don't mind the straightjacket

<comment><USER10> sykes works at dotcloud..

phpfog is now appfog, and is cloudfoundry based. djangozoom is now appsembler also cloudfoundry based.

all of the cloudfoundry based systems are multi-language, multi-db capable.

openshift has no makara code remaining. its a fresh impl. its basically a simpler version of cloudfoundry. also multi-language, multi-db pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My only real complaint with Heroku is that once you grow out of a basic no frills app, prices really rack up. For example I was looking to move an app I'm currently developing on a VPS to Heroku, but I use a ~200MB Redis database and just that will set me back $110/month.

Heroku is great if you can fit your app within the free tier and great if you're happy to spend a few hundred bucks a month, but in between those two I'm often better off with on or two $20/month 1GB VPS.

<comment><USER12> I feel exactly the same. I do a few hobby sites and I can't use heroku for this reason. People often reply that it's not meant for hobby sites, but I'll always bet on bottom up technologies, and cutting out hobby sites is not bottom up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note my bias: I am the founder of AppFog.com which deploys CloudFoundry to public clouds as a service.

"Heroku is Just Unix"

No. Heroku is not "Just Unix". This statement is completely 100% wrong. To claim that what Heroku or any other PaaS does is "just VPS" or "just Unix" is so far off. People vastly underestimate how difficult it is to run a PaaS and how much technology it takes to pull it off at scale.

I speak from experience, having built one PaaS from scratch and having used CloudFoundry to build a second one. The technology to get "just unix" into a fully managed, n-tier, scalable system is incredibly complex.

I have heard people complain that CloudFoundry is overly complex, but these people judge a piece of open source code that does something that for so long has been hidden behind the curtains. Heroku is at least as complex if not more so, you just never see that part of the equation because you don't have to.

<comment><USER14> Heya! It's extremely awesome to see a comment from you. I've actually been wanting to play around with appfog since I first saw it several months back.

Anyhow--you're totally right. Heroku is definitely not 'just unix'. I really meant this in a different way than it may seem in the article. I was trying to get the point across that there's really no vendor lock-in, you can easily port your code back and fourth from a physical box or vps to Heroku, with almost no delay.

Thanks again! Incredibly awesome to actually talk with you ^^

<comment><USER9> I think the expression "just unix" is right - at the end of the day platforms like Heroku, CloudFoundry and dotCloud (since we're all plugging our respective platforms) expose an API to spawn and manage unix processes - <USER3> way EC2 exposes an API to spawn and manage servers.

It all boils down to the metaphor, and the language that supports it:

PaaS borrows from the Unix metaphor of deployment with primitives like processes, executables, virtual filesystems, sockets and stdout/stderr.

IaaS borrows from the hardware metaphor of deployment with primitives like images, block devices, OS installs, firewalling rules and load-balancers.

The premise of PaaS is that, in a large and growing number of cases, as a developer the Unix metaphor requires less of my time, it maps my day-to-day experience better (As fdr pointed out, the remote platform behaves the same, roughly, as my laptop), and I don't actually need control over the underlying hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, I'm just a guy who makes video games. A one man operation. I'm mostly interested in interface and game design, I don't know, and don't really want to know anything about running the back end. Just the minimum to get the game running.

Right now I'm running my games on Google App Engine and hosting is about 10% of gross. (Don't know if that's good but it's fine by me). For me, scaling means going from 3 or 4 instances to 20 or 30 in busy times. This all "just works" and I don't have to really do anything.

I've been looking at Heroku because I've been working a little in node and there are some significant advantages to having js on the client and server. (rather than python on GAE)

I was under the impression Heroku would just work too. I may not be an Idiot, but I sure am a n00b.

Is Heroku not for me? Should I stick with App Engine?

<comment><USER16> Rather focus on optimizing your GAE setup. It's a known entity and it's working for you, now just improve. There are almost always improvements that will reduce costs pretty significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> my suggestion:

1\. Rent a cheap box at <http://hetzner.com> (32GB RAM/59€ per month; 64GB RAM/109€ per month) or <http://OVH.ca/>.

2\. Install Proxmox VE 2.0 from <http://proxmox.com/products/proxmox-ve> Create virtual instances via RESTful API on demand: <http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_VE_API>

3\. use chef or puppet.

=> unbeatable price/value and it's up to you if/how you lock into technologies/abstractions/dynos/...

<comment><USER18> Yeah, but for that price your storage is backed by 7200RPM SATA disks...

If you need speed it will cost you more for 15K SAS disks w/ a sizable battery backed RAID controller, but it will be worth every cent.

You don't want to put too many VMs on them or you'll quickly go through your IO bandwidth.

This is the problem so many devs don't understand. You run out of IOPS for your DB and your app is going nowhere. Managing storage in a reliable, fast and cost effective manner isn't easy.

Consumer SSDs are starting to change that, but you will be still struggling to find many dedicated server offerings backed with SSD storage, and there are still questions about long term reliability (4 years or so) which is typically the period your leaving hardware provisioned for to pay it off.

<comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure that's why he mentioned RAM. Performance and cost. Flushing is cheap if it's done once in a while.

<comment><USER18> RAM buffers work well for large readonly workloads, but write heavy workloads will perform pretty poorly with that kind of configuration.

Mind you its all a compromise, if you know that disk IO isn't a factor for your application then servers like that are ideal. I just won't run a large database on it without something like MySQL Cluster using a Memory table. It would require 2 servers, but REALLY good performance, good reliability (just get 2 dual PSU servers in different cabinets).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really Heroku is a fine product but your paying a substantial cost for the service to manage _some_ of the systems work. I say some because everyone using services like this should have a strategy to exit should some major event happen (prices raise, service becomes unreliable, company is acquired / folds)

Most of the arguments against running a dedicated server was a straw man argument. YES High Availability is expensive if your talking an app that fits on a single server, but once you can get most services running with a N+1 reliability making it substantially cheaper.

>His harddrive / memory / NIC / etc fails?

Most dedicated hosting providers have an SLA to replace. Rackspace is 1 hour. If this SLA isn't suitable you setup a cluster.

>He accidentally runs OS updates, and breaks versions of his packages?

Welcome to backups... you should have them. Yes its expensive, yes its a pain in the arse... but you should have them anyway even if your on heroku. Lets be professionals here.

> He wants to instantly rollback to a previous release of his codebase?

Welcome to code deployment tools... Just because your not on heroku doesn't mean you can't have them

>He wants to add another server to handle incoming HTTP requests?

Its called resource planning... You know what those pretty little graphs are for. Again you should be doing this regardless of the service you are on.

> He needs to spin up a database read slave to handle a high amount of read > requests?

See capacity planning.

> His load balancer fails?

Fail to wire modules, Clustered load balancers, virtual load balancers on a cluster... many options

> His Fabric script stops working because he renamed his project or > reorganizes his application directory tree?

Testing... read about it... It really helps. You can also mess up any codebase by messing with the directory structure and not testing.

> Or one of an infinite amount of other possible problems?

Ok... and Heroku has a bunch of other problems.

edit: fixed typos and Load balancer quote

<comment><USER20> All of that is obviously possible (wonderful even!) to learn. But the thing is, it takes time. And on a small team, you really have to pick your battles.

I don't know shit about load balancers. It's a hole in my knowledge. Eventually, I'm sure I'll get there. But I'm really glad I don't _have_ to learn it right now. Because honestly I have my hands full putting out other fires without having to think about it.

<comment><USER21> So you've never done any systems engineering or architecture, apart from the heroku mold (nail <= hammer)... Given that, don't you think your post was a teeny bit venomous?

<comment><USER22> Seems that rdegges wrote the article, not erikpukinskis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What people are waiting for is a set of tools that lets them run their own "mini Heroku" across multiple IaaS providers.

I should be able to glue together my own cloud-based load balancer, deploying my app to webservers on different continents, with a monitored master-slave database set up -- all with freely available open-source software tools.

<comment><USER24> <https://openshift.redhat.com/app/>

OpenShift is Redhat's open sorce PaaS. Ruby, node, python, java, php, etc. They run a free service on top of AWS, and you can deploy it on top of AWS, rackspace, hp, or anywhere on top of fedora or RHEL 6.2.

<comment><USER25> I looked at OpenShifts codebase and I would throw this away after 15 minutes of code review. Looks like they wrote it in Rails because it was cool at the time, but had no idea how to build Rails apps.

<comment><USER26> Would you mind adding more specifics? I'm curious about what bad Rails practices you found in the OpenShift codebase. (I've never worked on it, used it, or looked at the code, so my question comes from simple curiosity.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Heroku gets you into big trouble when their abstraction starts leaking and you need to dig deeper. If you never get to that point, this article makes sense, but when you turn that corner, expect a lot of pain.

<comment><USER28> Can you share a specific example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, this is awesome, so I must be an idiot. I've been playing around with Heroku with a simple NodeJS app that I don't care about the performance of for the last week. I've been scouring their website for information exactly like this and I couldn't find anything this comprehensive. Thanks so much for figuring this stuff out. Just answering the simple question of "Is the 750hr's free for each app or is it per account?" is golden.

Anyone have an example of a simple NodeJS worker dyno? The web one is easy, now I'd like to see the other. I've been searching around and haven't found any good examples. Thx.

<comment><USER30> It took me a while to realize that it was 750 hrs _per app_. That was a good day.

<comment><USER14> This is one of the things I actually quite enjoy about Heroku--not to mention that with their new heroku-postgresql:dev plan, you can have up to 30 (yes, 30!) free databases PER APP!

You can have like, 5 masters, with 5 readslaves each, etc. It's super awesome.

<comment><USER31> Two quick points.

First, please don't abuse the free databases. Second, the free "dev" plan does not support fork or follow, nor do we plan to support those features on that plan in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder where he got that great picture of Adam Wiggins.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Yah--it isn't very hard to spin up some simple infrastructure services using Chef--pretty much anyone with a couple hours of free time can figure that out."

This person has obviously never touched Chef. Chef's learning curve is steeeeeep.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have my own server that I keep in a colo for a reasonable fee; I run small sites for family members and my email off of it. However for things that actually get traffic I go to Heroku or AWS, I don't need the headaches that come with a traffic spike on my server it's just not worth the hassle.

git push heroku master FTW!

</comment><comment><USER35> Thanks, but no thanks! I am happy with the control an EC2 instance gives me in return for little more complexity in handling.

</comment><comment><USER36> We make a similar product to Heroku: Continuous Integration as a service (<https://circleci.com>). I'm amazed at how many developers think their time is free.

"I can just set up Jenkins" is the CI equivalent of the behaviour the OP rants against. And you're right, if your time is free. But it isn't free, and just like Heroku handles your security, scalability and lets you get back to work, so too does hosted CI handle machine setup, test speed, optimization and parallelization, without having to manage it all yourself.

Long story short, developers significantly undervalue their time (and sometimes their bosses do too).

</comment><comment><USER37> It's why it's the goto for hackathons these days.</comment>


Amazon CloudFront Adds Default Root Object Capability - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/08/05/cloudfront-adds-default-root-object-capability/ <comment><USER2> I honestly wasn't expecting this announcement for a long time. Many people had requested this functionality, including additions to the base S3 APIs, and I knew that the easy solution was to extend only CloudFront functionality without breaking the S3 API's backward compatibility. I spent some shower-time recently trying to think of workarounds for future clients. :)

My guess had been that Amazon was stalling to prevent a flood of low-volume AWS accounts simply to host dirt cheap static websites.

Now, if your website doesn't require server side scripting, you can literally go from paying a few bucks a month for cheap hosting to spending only pennies using Amazon S3 and CloudFront to host your entire site - reliably and quickly. I'm not familiar with other cloud file providers, so if this was possible before Amazon's latest announcement, I'd love to know.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love this, now you can finally host static sites on S3. Awesome.

<comment><USER4> Only cloudfront, not regular S3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly Cloudfront still won't gzip intelligently, which for a static site means you're stuck either with excess load times or with hacky JS workarounds. If and when they sort this out I'll switch from Rackspace's Cloudfiles in an instant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now I can finally make a cool easter egg for anyone who tries to access the roots of my asset domains. I've always wanted to do that. Thanks Amazon!

</comment><comment><USER7> woot! this is going to cut down my page load latency by at least another 40ms.

<comment><USER8> I guess I missed something. Can you explain?

<comment><USER9> So far, Cloudfront's origin servers were hardcoded to be your S3 bucket. So if you used Amazon as an extra service to serve static files of your website from a CDN, you'd have to do trickery to set up your website as the S3 bucket's origin. I assume this is what he was talking about, not having to copy his file to S3 so the CDN edge location can pull it from S3.

<comment><USER10> No thats not the case. You still have to use S3 as the origin.

This is talking about allowing you to assign a default root document, e.g. a index.html so that requests to (e.g.) <http://cache.mydomain.com/> will return something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stock Options an afterthought in Canada? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/on-stock-options

<comment><USER2> Well there another well known problem of stock options = upper management, when granted buckets of options starts seeking short-term way to pump-up the value of their options, and they do not really care about long-term consequences. So Canada as usual, boring but prudent.</comment>


Why functional programming? Why Haskell? - <AUTHOR> http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/why-functional-programming-why-haskell.html

<comment><USER2> Haskell is badly designed language in many respects which promotes ugly code. I think, it won't be mainstream statically typed functional language in any time.

Here is my list of bad language features:

1\. It doesn't support dot notation for records.

2\. Record names can't be overloaded.

3\. Monads might lead to messy code due to verbose syntax. For example, instead of writing c <\- openDbConnection (readConfigData), I have to write ugly code

      do
        conf <- readConfigData
        c <- openDbConnection

The situation becomes worse, the more side effecting parameters you need for a function call.

5\. Many extensions, essential for productive development are out of the language standard. For example, multi param type classes, existential types. Haskell' standard is in progress for a very long time, and still isn't finished.

<comment><USER3> I do think 2 is a real problem, but it seems Haskell people couldn't agree on the solution. Simon Peyton Jones (Haskell 98 standard editor) proposed a change but many people didn't like it.

[http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/haskell- prime/wiki/TypeDirectedN...](http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/haskell- prime/wiki/TypeDirectedNameResolution)

<comment><USER4> FWIW, there is currently a GSoC project supervised by SPJ that is working on making overloadable fields available in GHC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Since pure code has no dealings with the outside world, and the data it > works with is never modified, the kinds of nasty surprise in which one piece > of code invisibly corrupts data used by another are very rare.

If you're trying to sell me on Haskell, right there you just made me think "uh, ok, guys, but _my_ code does not live in an ivory tower, and very much needs to deal with the real world, messy data, users, and so on".

I realize that Haskell can handle that, too, but in terms of copy writing, it leaves something to be desired.

They subsequently go on to write much more interesting reasons why you might consider Haskell, including examples of companies using it in the real world, but they should not lead with talk of 'purity'.

<comment><USER6> The power of Haskell is that it acknowledges the fact that it's a messy world and deals with it with the help of Monads.

You could turn it around and say that non-haskell programs live in an ivory tower and ignore the messy world below :)

<comment><USER7> I downvoted you because you're putting Monads on a pedestal and misrepresenting their purpose. When you mean IO (or perhaps ST and State) please don't say "Monads". Remember that [] is an instance of Monad too, and it has nothing at all to do with dealing with the messy world. A monad is just a typeclass with two operators that behave according to certain identity and associativity laws, and a _lot_ of types fulfil them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're not quite ready to whole hog on the functional purity aspect, I'd suggest you take a look at OCaml. OCaml supports many modern programming amenities, such as Garbage Collection, Higher-order Functions, Static Type- Checking, Generics, Immutable Data Structures, Algebraic Data Types and Pattern Matching, Automatic Type Inference while still allowing for imperative programming when you need it.

I'd recommend taking a look at the Real World OCaml book: [https://realworldocaml.org](https://realworldocaml.org)

<comment><USER9> Doesn't Scala support the exact same features? I know OCaml is based on ML and is mostly structural, while Scala more of a Java-like curly brace lang that is nominal, but your feature list makes them sound the same.

<comment><USER10> Things Scala lacks which OCaml has:

1\. Tail call elimination 2\. A full-featured module system 3\. Functors (functions at the module level) 4\. First-class modules 5\. GADTs 6\. Polymorphic variants 7\. A decidable type system 8\. ... more?

Things OCaml lacks which Scala has:

1\. Traits 2\. Implicits 3\. Trivial Java FFI 4\. Seamless syntactic macros (c.f. camlp4) 5\. ... more?

<comment><USER9> Scala has 1, 5, and 6.

It lacks 7, and about 2/3, which are basically the same, where scala at least supports mixin constructions (which you can also get from class-parameter ised functors, though maybe not in Ocamel).

<comment><USER10> Could you elaborate on Scala's TCO support? I was under the impression that only self-tail calls are eliminated and only if the stack trace would be provably unused. Doesn't the JVM require stack traces? Can you use CPS in Scala?

I see now that Scala can encode GADTs in case classes. What mechanism is available to encode polymorphic variants? Particularly, I am interested in writing matches over unions of polymorphic variant types.

I disagree that 2 and 3 are the same (structural module subtyping, nesting, inclusion differs from applicative functors). I believe you can achieve mixins with OCaml through the object system but it's not clear to me that this addresses functor signature checking.

Another Scala bonus: 5\. Objects can implicitly be null.

<comment><USER9> Scala has TCO support, but maybe not as advanced as Ocaml, being limited by the JVM and all. CPS is heavily used in scala these days, as far as I can tell by reading Ingo Meir's work.

I was confused about polymorphic variants. Scala doesn't seem to have that.

I did a lot of work with units (dr. scheme-style functors) before, and when I moved to scala for my postdoc, I found all my patterns expressible using mixins and nominal types...I didn't miss the modules (1st class or otherwise).

Scala has a non-null-ability option, but most programmers I think would find null damn convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having programmed at least 10k locs in all major paradigms, I've come to the conclusion that relational programming (prolog and sql) are the best. Haskell talks a good game and a lot of OO procedural code has been written, but for programming succinct, elegant code, which also happens to be the most lucrative - sql databases underlying most business - the relational paradigm cannot be beat.

It's the most beautiful invention of computer science, Programming in prolog, especially, is the closest a programmer can come to achieving a state of nirvana. A place where the mind is at one with the problem at hand.

<comment><USER12> Good luck controlling your ABS system using prolog.

Having programmed more than I care to remember (since we're establishing credibility by tossing unverifiable facts in there) I think it takes the right tool for the right job. Sometimes that's prolog, sometimes that's assembly and sometimes it's something else entirely.

Every language that is in use today has a niche, no single language manages to span more than a few such niches and the larger the impedance mismatch between the problem and the language the more work you have to do.

<comment><USER11> Prolog can be used in embedded systems [http://www.hercsmusicsystems.com/](http://www.hercsmusicsystems.com/)

<comment><USER12> Embedded and hard real time are not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Why Haskell matters" is a way better explanation than this, i think.

<comment><USER14> Also "Why Functional Programming Matters"

[http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.pd...](http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> People about to hate on haskell...go

<comment><USER9> Hate is a feeling I reserve for corrupt politicians, taxi drivers who ignore me, the guy who whistles in my open office, and...C++.

Everything else is either interesting or not. I think Haskell is interesting from an academic research perspective, but I'm not interested in using it to write programs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your favourite React plugins/components? - <AUTHOR> Currently I make good use of:<p>* React Bootstrap (https://react-bootstrap.github.io/introduction.html) - allows use of ready-to-go Bootstrap components such as tabs without having to deal with any of the JQuery initialisation normally required, and makes them feel like first-class citizens in React.<p>* tcomb-form (https://gcanti.github.io/tcomb-form/) - allows you to quickly build forms that can validate themselves with set client side rules, and server responses using a simple object.<p>Are there any other great React plugins/components/tools etc. that make developing a React project easier? <comment><USER2> I use React-Router, a couple of "Reactified" Semantic UI components (Accordian, Tooltip, Modals, Sticky, etc), and NuclearJS for the Flux implementation. I also use Semantic UI CSS.

That seems to do the job pretty well for me.</comment>


The magic of conditional operator - <AUTHOR> http://stas-blogspot.blogspot.com/2011/12/java-conditional-operator-magic.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StasBlog+%28Stas%27s+blog%29 <comment><AUTHOR> On thought on reading this: Should programs be puzzles?</comment>


CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild: 2019 rebuilding of the original NeXT web browser - <AUTHOR> https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/ <comment><AUTHOR> Funny how well HN works in this compared to, say, google.com.</comment>