Speeding up function calls with lru_cache in Python - <AUTHOR> https://hackeregg.github.io/2020/06/03/Speeding-up-function-calls-with-just-one-line-in-Python.html <comment><USER2> This technique is called Memoization [0]

Here is an implementation of a memoize decorator in Python that will support all inputs [1]. You'd have to modify to not use all the Pylons framework stuff.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoization)

[1] [https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/l...](https://github.com/reddit- archive/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/memoize.py)

</comment><comment><USER3> Caching the result is not speeding up function calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Sorry, If it feels misleading. I have no intention to mislead anybody. If you can suggest alternative title, I am happy to change title.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for article

Just a side note: with Fibonacci + caching it solidly become Dynamic programming problem so Time complexity reduces from quadratic to o(n), IIRC .

There is a whole class of problems where recursion + memoization(caching) = Top Down Dynamic programming , The other way to Increase performance and _actually reduce call stack_ in these class of problems including Fibonacci would be Bottom Up Dynamic Programming

Some gists I found on it [https://gist.github.com/trtg/4662449](https://gist.github.com/trtg/4662449)

<comment><USER5> Plugging my own writing, but I did a deep dive on top-down vs. bottom-up dynamic programming on my blog: [https://avikdas.com/2019/04/15/a-graphical- introduction-to-d...](https://avikdas.com/2019/04/15/a-graphical-introduction- to-dynamic-programming.html)

The follow-up posts go into even more detail on individual problems that can be solved using either form of dynamic programming, including some real-world problems like content-aware image resizing.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the link, I enjoyed the post a lot. The drawings you've done add a lot to the explanation. Do you have any other deep dives you've done in the same style that you'd recommend?

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I'm glad the drawings were helpful.

Most of my writing can be found at my blog ([https://avikdas.com/](https://avikdas.com/)), but here are some from the same dynamic programming series:

\- Deep-dive into the Chain Matrix Multiplication Problem - [https://avikdas.com/2019/04/25/dynamic-programming-deep- dive...](https://avikdas.com/2019/04/25/dynamic-programming-deep-dive-chain- matrix-multiplication.html) \- Real-world applications of DP: [https://avikdas.com/2019/05/14/real-world-dynamic- programmin...](https://avikdas.com/2019/05/14/real-world-dynamic-programming- seam-carving.html) and [https://avikdas.com/2019/07/29/improved-seam-carving- with-fo...](https://avikdas.com/2019/07/29/improved-seam-carving-with-forward- energy.html) \- Another real-world application, this time in machine learning - [https://avikdas.com/2019/06/24/dynamic-programming-for- machi...](https://avikdas.com/2019/06/24/dynamic-programming-for-machine- learning-hidden-markov-models.html)

If you look on my blog, you'll also see my recent series is on scalability, things like read-after-write consistency and queues for reliability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had worked on a open source project called 'safecache' on the similar note. As others has already commented, @lru_cache does not play well with mutable data structures. So my implementation handles for both immutable and mutable data structures as well as multi-threaded operations.

[https://github.com/Verizon/safecache](https://github.com/Verizon/safecache)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Fibonacci numbers have a closed form analytic solution that can be computed in constant time: [https://www.evanmiller.org/mathematical- hacker.html](https://www.evanmiller.org/mathematical-hacker.html))

<comment><USER10> Does this work in practice for large values of n? You will be limited by numerical error in phi.

<comment><USER11> The Fibonacci series grows so fast that for "large" values of N you'll need a arbitrary size integer implementation anyway, so at that point you might as well go for a (non-IEEE) arbitrary size float type and get all the significant digits you need.

<comment><USER10> You'll still need to compute the digits of Phi though, and then exponentiate that. My intuition is that using ints is still faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently discovered that joblib can do something similar, both on disk and in memory: [https://joblib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/memory.html](https://joblib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/memory.html)

<comment><USER13> This memoizes closures of functions, and lets them be executed on other processors? Does it support dependency tracking between memoized closures (incremental recomputation), or do I have to roll that, myself?

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately you need to roll that yourself in joblib. But it is automatic in bionic ([https://github.com/square/bionic](https://github.com/square/bionic)), assuming your workflow can be structured in the way bionic likes.

<comment><USER13> Bionic is what I'm looking for (right on their use-case page): a Make replacement that can work with intermediate computations, and not just files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > As, we can see the optimal cache size of fib function is 5. Increasing cache > size will not result in much gain in terms of speedup.

Try it with fib(35), curious what you find.

<comment><AUTHOR> After, reading your comment. I cross checked result and found out that 3 is most optimal size. I even ran fib(40) on it. with size 2, There are many misses but after 3 and on wards misses are constant(if fib(40), then misses are only 40 which emulates DP approach of O(N)).

Why 3 is optimal, because of how recursion and LRU work. I wish i can explain it using animation.

You can play with it. [https://repl.it/repls/NocturnalIroncladBytecode#main.py](https://repl.it/repls/NocturnalIroncladBytecode#main.py)

<comment><USER16> It makes sense. f(n) depends on f(n-1) and f(n-2). So if the cache is able to produce these 2 values, you basically get the linear algorithm from the article. I assume the running f(n) also takes up a cache slot, hence 3 instead of 2.

If this theory is correct, every recursive function f(n) requiring access to f(n-x) should have x+1 as maximum usefull cache size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mac-chaffee Maybe I'm abusing lru_cache but another use for it is debouncing.

We had a chatbot that polls a server and sends notifications, but due to clock skew it would sometimes send two notifications. So I just added the lru_cache decorator to the send(username, message) function to prevent that.

<comment><USER17> That sounds very interesting. Can you detail the problem a bit (I'm not sure I understand how clock skew affects python code) and how lru_cache decorator fixed it?

<comment><USER18> Essentially the OP is using the decorator to prevent the function call from ever being run more than one time. It's at most once.

<comment><USER19> More specifically, it prevents a call being repeated _in quick succession_, if there are enough calls in between repetitions it'll fall out of the cache and be reprocessed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Functools' lru_cache also has good methods for getting more info about the cache's utilisation (.cache_info() I think), which is quite helpful when found in logs.

</comment><comment><USER21> One line summary: Use lru_cache decorator

@functools.lru_cache(maxsize=31)

def fib(n):

</comment><comment><USER22> lru_cache doesn't work with lists or dicts, or indeed any non-hashable data, so it's not quite a transparent change. About half the time I use a cache I end up implementing my own.

<comment><USER23> What approach are you using to efficiently store and look up non-hashable function arguments?

<comment><USER22> Converting to tuple has mostly been enough. I want to say always, but I don't trust my memory that much, haha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is neat and I learned something new. TLDR: use the functools.lru_cache decorator to add caching to slow functions.

I must admit I was hoping for a general approach to speeding up all function calls in python. Functions are the primary mechanism for abstraction and yet calls are relatively heavy in their own right. It would be neat if python had a way to do automatic inlining or some such optimization so that I could have my abstractions but avoid the performance hit of a function call (even at the expense of more byte code).

<comment><USER25> A benefit of Python is that it removes consideration of low level type details. You can just code your problem and think at a higher level, in terms of larger custom classes etc. This is great for developer speed. But to improve performance of code, you need to micro manage your types, you need to understand details about the compiler and the processor, you need to know what the machine is doing to the data to service your particular process, and streamline it accordingly.

Is there a magic function? If one crops up, it would get baked into Python, development of which is extremely active. So magic functions trend obsolete. The main thing developers can consistently do to improve performance, is micro manage types and algorithms to improve the performance of bottlenecks. This is done with a tool like Cython, but you have to learn the discipline of coding for performance, you have to learn the details of what the machine is doing with the data in your particular piece of code. When do you want to replace linked lists with arrays? When are you doing unnecessary type conversion? How overweight are your high frequency objects? How is memory being used? Are there more efficient ways on my microarchitecture to get this calculation done... Performance coding is a discipline like application coding.

Is this a problem with Python? I don't think so, because performance comes second in the developer process. Write the code first then optimize the real bottlenecks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's the ruby equivalent of `functools` and specifically `functools.lru_cache`?

Note that `lru_cache` doesn't just do caching, it also provides convenient methods on the original function to get cache stats etc in a pythonic way.

</comment><comment><USER27> The last bit of deterministic functions is a main selling point of functional programming (and get help from compilers) or any design that promotes creating pure functions.

</comment><comment><USER28> > One line summary: Use lru_cache decorator

Okay, at least got the decency of providing a TL;DR. But if your summary is literally three words, why not put it in the title: "speed up Python function calls with functools.lru_cache"?

God I hate clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER29> Huh? He sped it up much more by rewriting as a loop . . .

</comment><comment><USER30> dvic CV function on problems

</comment><comment><USER31> Cool

</comment><comment><USER32> tl;dr – memoization.

</comment><comment><USER33> Instead of the last quote in the article, I prefer this one (got it from [0])

>"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors." – Martin Fowler

And there's plenty of similar articles, for example [1] [2]

[0] [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Naming_things](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Naming_things)

[1] [https://dbader.org/blog/python- memoization](https://dbader.org/blog/python-memoization)

[2] [https://mike.place/2016/memoization/](https://mike.place/2016/memoization/)

<comment><USER34> Even in this version, the quote still feels incomplete without someone shouting "Concurrency!" while it is delivered...

<comment><USER35> Concurrency.""There are three hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, off-by-one errors, and

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > @functools.lru_cache

Avoid these tricks if you care about thread safety.</comment>


Ask HN: What's you "topcolor", and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> #ffbb88. I thought the default looks too bright, almost red, when it's a broader swathe than the logo. This just tones it down a bit and makes it look "more like YC" to my eye.

I made this change when topcolor was first introduced and have never messed with it since.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, but what's a "topcolor"? Are we talking about this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topcolor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topcolor) ? I'm confused.

<comment><USER4> topcolor is the color of HN's menu bar, it can be changed in the settings (click on the username in the "top bar").

also, you can check [https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors](https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors) as the list of most popular topcolors.

<comment><USER5> Do low karma users not have access to this option? Don't see anything in me settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> #ff6600 because I have no karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much karma is needed for such change

<comment><USER7> it appears to be > 100 at least.

<comment><USER8> I have 121 karma as of this writing and I don't see anywhere to change the color in my settings. I didn't even know this was possible.

I have a custom CSS file using Stylish and my HN is mostly greyscale. (Topcolor is #AAAAAA.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 5DB2FF because I like the blue/ocean shade.

However setting a topcolor is a waste of time as the "Add Comment" page doesn't obey it, and the Y logo looks pretty horrible with anything but the default.

</comment><comment><USER10> Abc251

It's significantly different from the stock orange, but it complements the logo well. I only care about it because it lets me know whether I'm logged in or not.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't beat the traditional burning orange.

</comment><comment><USER12> Stock orange because I dgaf.

</comment><comment><USER13> An orange that's lighter than the default: #ffcc66

</comment><comment><USER14> dfcdfc

Cuz it's wavender. Duh.</comment>


Quantum Gravity's Time Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161201-quantum-gravitys-time-problem/ <comment><USER2> I have a question as a non physics/math person:

We assume that light speed is a constant, but we also know that speed is measured as distance/time. We know that in the presence of high gravity (or proximity to very high mass), or very high speed, we experience time dilation, and that perspective and location matters WRT actual time.

So, how do we assume that light speed is constant? Does the distance moved change relative to the proximity to mass, and the time unit vary in value as well? If not, do we just assume that the lack of proximity to mass in between galaxies doesn't change the behavior of light when we say that the proximity to black holes does?

<comment><USER3> It's constant _within a given frame of reference_.

<comment><USER2> So, really it isn't a universal constant, then? I guess the makes sense.

Sub question - if photons are light particles, moving at the speed of light, then do they actually experience time dilation themselves? i.e. from the frame of reference of the photon, is the local time for the photon ticking away in one frame, while the outside world appears to move much much faster? Or, relative to us is time on the photon moving very slowly?

<comment><USER4> It _is_ a universal constant. See above.

The photon travels at the speed of light _c_. If you look at the expression for the time dilation, you will see that it tends to infinity as _v_ approaches _c_. Remember that this relates the time experienced between two frames moving relative to each other at a constant velocity _v_. However the fact is that the expression fails when _v=c_ , since you have a division by zero. This reflects the fact that it is impossible to do a Lorentz boost that relates two frames moving relative to each other at _c_. This in turn means concept of time dilation in an object moving at the speed of light, such as a photon, is meaningless. There is no such thing as the time experienced from the point of view of the photon.

I realise I probably wasn't very clear, but it's difficult to lay it all out in a small paragraph.

<comment><USER2> That is actually a great explanation, thanks. So, photons don't experience time? Does that mean that they don't experience entropy, either? I.e. They don't lose any energy in transit, since to them "transit" is instantaneous.

Another question this raises for me is that if photons move in a timeless state between 2 points, what accounts for the period of their oscillation in the particle/wave duality? If they are tracing the fastest path through spacetime, yet to them, the time dimension is non existent, how do they have wave characteristics?

<comment><USER5> I'm on mobile and not a physicist but the key is the observer. Photons don't observe anything.

We observe them since we observe time and they do have energy changes _that we observe_ (I believe this is how colors and red shift work).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "The whole state of system-plus-clock doesn't change in time"

How is this different from the classical view of the universe as deterministic? In a Newtonian universe, all future states can be determined from the current state, so the universe can be seen as a "frozen" 4-dimensional object.

<comment><USER7> The frozen 4 dimensional object creates a projection of the other dimensions, including time and relative time. Time is hen a subsystem within the system.

Their analogy, aptly for HN, is that of computer code which is in one dimension interpreted amd executed linearly, being able to project something like a 3D game. Think something like minecraft's source code being interpreted and creating an infinite procedurally generated world that constantly evolves with an in game timer despite the source code still being static. Quantum mechanics, the mechanics governing the source code could still make it timeless and indeterministic, but output of the code (the projection), is still bound by the in game physics and timer much like time in general relativity.

<comment><USER8> But is their proposal that, like Minecraft, we can detect properties of the background execution through apparent non-determinism (or other mechanism)?

Cause Minecraft actually has two detectable, distinct notions of time: a game tick _and_ update ordering of the underlying computation.

Minecraft can even be viewed as having quantum effects caused by a universal nonlocal variable, Bohmian mechanics styles, with the apparent non-determinism resulting from that non-local hidden variable interacting woth the update engine. (The hidden variable is the ordering of the updates in real time rather than MC time.)

I always thought we should teach physics with Minecraft, but the engine sucks too much for me to seriously recommend it.

Ed:

Imgur album on detecting MC update ordering via redstone; pictures somehow got out of order.

[http://imgur.com/a/e9YKi](http://imgur.com/a/e9YKi)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading this made me think of the question of whether our universe is actually a simulation.

<comment><USER10> The universe as a simulation is one of those ideas that sound interesting at first but are actually pretty useless the longer you think about them. There is for example also solipsism, the idea that only you exist and the rest of the world is just in your mind, or Last Thursdayism, the idea that the world came into existence last Thursday with all our minds filled with fake memories of the time before last Thursday.

Those ideas put you - if you believe in them - in a spot where you can learn nothing about the world. There is nothing that allows you, even in principle, to figure out if there was a universe before last Thursday or if there is a world outside of your mind. There is not much more that would allow you to figure out whether the universe is a simulation or not.

Many people talking about that idea suggest to look for indicators of limited computing resources, rounding error or whatnot. But that is totally misguided in my opinion because it presupposes that you know what at least one of the two options, the universe or a simulation of it, looks like.

Who is to say that the laws of physics of the universe do not look like they are using floating numbers? Who is to say that a simulation of a universe may have to deal with limited resources? The outside world could be so foreign to us, time, space and laws of physics may not even be a thing there. Realistically the only way to distinguish between a real universe and simulation would be if the owner of the simulation told you in a pretty obvious way like with small serial numbers printed on all the electrons.

I kind of understand that people don't like the idea of not even seriously considering a substantial class of ideas that are not in conflict with what we see and that could therefore actually be correct. It also seems not very satisfying to throw some probabilities at them, last Thursday, unlikely, a simulation, totally reasonable thing to do, pretty likely. In the end, if it is not falsifiable, just ignore it and have one fewer things to worry about.

<comment><USER11> I don't think universe as a simulation is epistemologically equivalent to solipsism or this "Last Thursdayism" thing (love the name, by the way).

Solipsism is meaningless. What it means to say that there is nothing outside of your mind? Surely you can't predict or control what is going to happen to your experience, so how can you say that everything is "inside" your mind? what that even means? And if you are a solipsist and wanted to predict what is going to happen next, what you should be doing?

You should start to associate causation to patterns in your experience, and observe carefully that patterns. Those patterns behaviour are not decided by you, so, by definition, they are outside your mind.

"Last Thursdayism" have the same problem that all the religions: OK, maybe it's true, but.. why do you choose Thursday, why not Monday? why not one minute ago? It's totally arbitrary.

Simulation argument has serious experimental issues, but I would not discard it yet. Maybe we can think of something.

<comment><USER10> I would argue that solipsism and a universe simulation are actually very close. You observe x and it might be A or B but you have no ground truth on what A or B looks like or how to distinguish them.

In case of solipsism you experience a universe around you but there seems to be nothing you could use to decide whether you are experiencing an independent outside universe through your senses or whether your mind is just hallucinating this whole outside universe.

In case of the universe simulation you experience a universe around you but you have no a priori knowledge what a real universe and what a simulation of a universe is supposed to look like, you seem to be stuck in more or less the same place as with solipsism.

 _You should start to associate causation to patterns in your experience, and observe carefully that patterns. Those patterns behaviour are not decided by you, so, by definition, they are outside your mind._

I think mind is probably not the right word here because it has the connotation of control, brain might be the better choice because there are things going on you can not control (ignoring whether you actually have any control to begin with). It may have not been clear from my first comment, but I was especially referring to metaphysical solipsism, denying the existence of an independent outer reality.

 _Simulation argument has serious experimental issues, but I would not discard it yet. Maybe we can think of something._

Personally I just don't think about it for the moment. There is surely the possibility that we make progress one way or another, but every time I try thinking about it, it leads nowhere. Maybe one day we discover the fundamental laws of physics, logical self-consistent and the only self-consistent laws of physics possible. With mathematical proof. Do we now know that our universe is real, it is after all nothing less than the only way it could ever have been?

Or did the simulator just mess with us again? We could be using inconsistent logic all day long, writing wrong mathematical proofs and be teaching them to the next generation in our universities. But just before someone realizes the error, just after we observed the contradicting consequences of our wrong reasoning, the simulator erases the relevant memory and life goes on as if nothing happened.

Unless somebody wants you to find out, you will never find out. The potential enemy in this scenario is just so powerful, you can not win.

<comment><USER11> "I would argue that solipsism and a universe simulation are actually very close."

I agree with you that from the point of view of testability both are very similar, but, in my view, from the point of view of logic reasoning are almost the opposite.

Solipsism is just bad reasoning or, at most, a semantic trick: I define my mind as everything there is out there, so, obviously, everything is in my mind. But we have science, precisely, to try to understand what it is out there, and "out there" means outside of our minds.

On the other hand, you arrive to the simulation argument by deduction. That's what, testability apart, make it interesting. The reasoning is: if a simulation is possible, then, many are possible. If there are many simulations in the universe, what is more probable? to be in the universe or in a simulation?

I agree that we don't know what to do with that, but you have to recognize that it's a damn good trick of logic.

<comment><USER10> _I define my mind as everything there is out there, so, obviously, everything is in my mind. But we have science, precisely, to try to understand what it is out there, and "out there" means outside of our minds._

But that is the very point of solipsism - because you are experiencing the outside world only through your senses in your mind, you are unable to decide whether the outside world even exists. The two options are 1) your body with your brain and your mind exists in the usual universe and you can learn about the universe through your senses and 2) the usual universe does not exist, only your brain or your body or something along that line actually exists and the entire universe you think exists outside of your body is just something your mind made up, your mind is simulating the universe for you.

So this is not about redefining mind to mean all the universe, it is about emptying the universe until only your body or your brain or whatever remains, dreaming or hallucinating or simulating the thing we just got rid of all day long so that you can not tell the difference.

<comment><USER11> Well, obviously, we only have access to our senses.

As I have not control through introspection to my sensorial experience, surely, there is something "out there" generating it. That something is what we (or, as we are talking about solipsism, I) are trying to understand.

What is the point of saying that, what is doing it, i's "my mind"? What have we learned doing that except to mud the issue at hand?

<comment><USER10> I am actually a bit confused, maybe it is just because English is not my first language and I am misunderstanding some nuances of what you are trying to say. So let my try it from another point of view.

I personally don't dream much or at least usually do not remember much or any of it, but in principle walking along a beach and dreaming about walking along a beach should feel pretty much the same until you realize you only dreamed the latter. So more or less identical experiences to you can have two very different origins, one is rooted in some external reality, the other one is just some kind of hallucination.

You can easily inspect the world of the real beach and at least in principle, maybe by lucid dreaming or something like that, you could also inspect the world of the dreamed up beach. If you never realized you were dreaming, both scenarios might be indistinguishable for you and form the reality you are living in, but nonetheless with very different underlying realities. Does that make sense? There is the reality you are experiencing (beach) and there is the reality that is causing your experience, which may (dreamed up beach) or may not (real beach) be the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is man's fate to forever believe that the universe is a complex composite of his latest discovered technology.

</comment><comment><USER13> That sounds like one of those fake papers generated by a Markov chain that sometimes gets accepted into reputable physics journals when a researcher wants to prove that modern physics has gone a bit... silly.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just ran into an interesting theory for Gravity: Subquantum Kinetics

It's featured in Dr. Paul LaViolette's book The Secrets of Anti-gravity Propulsion, and there's a really interesting section that challenges the Standard Model in Quantum Mechanics called the Model G in Subquantum Kinetics.

The idea is that matter is born out of what's called the Ether, the origin to all energy. The positive and negative electrical energy sums a positive or negative charge with a "spin" \-- which also yields positive or negative gravity.

This is a video that simulates matter being created out of the Ether:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPLNfgxD2ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPLNfgxD2ic)

Supposedly, it's been rejected by other researchers because it goes against Einstein's theory of Relativity and the Big Bang, -- however, there's been rumors the Model G is being used by underground, black-project sites like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing (e.g. Northrop Grumman's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.)

Here's a lecture by Dr. Paul LaViolette featuring content from his book:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifEgGMFK- VU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifEgGMFK-VU) \- (warning: audio isn't great)

<comment><USER10> That is crackpottery, pseudoscience and conspiracy theory at 11. Forget about it if you are interested in any serious conversation about physics.

<comment><USER14> I think you're proving Dr. Paul LaViolette's point why the theory is not getting attention: emotional, knee-jerk reactions like this.

Seems like I have to agree with everything you say in order to have a conversation about physics with you.

<comment><USER10> It has absolutely nothing to do with what I am saying, what that guy says is inconsistent with reality and probably with itself. Science is decided by experimental facts, not by opinions. But he just ignores all the things we have learned by using scientific methods in the past centuries and now know to be true.

When you search for »subquantum kinetics«, the first result on Google for me is »Subquantum Kinetics (a nontechnical summary)« [1] and this is from the first two paragraphs.

 _One of its distinctive features is that it begins at the subquantum level for its point of departure. By comparison, conventional physics and most alternative physics theories begin with mathematically quantified observations of physical phenomena at the quantum and macrophysical level and attempt to deduce physical theories based on those observations. Since the conventional approach must take into account numerous experimental observations, the end result is a fragmented and often contradictory set of theories which must later be sewn together with mathematical acrobatics. [...] Instead of beginning with physical observations, subquantum kinetics begins by postulating a set of well-ordered reaction processes that are proposed to take place at the subquantum level._

Let me translate that. Mainstream physics does experiments and tries to explain the results with theories using math. But the resulting math is not beautiful so I postulate some nicer math ignoring physical reality altogether. Admittedly he later mentions tuning his math until it matches reality but that doesn't provide any justification for his initial choices. Nothing what he proposes makes much sense, just have a look at this comparison chart [2] linked to from the summary.

I am not even a physicist, but I understand enough about it that I could probably rip apart most of the arguments he is trying to make, at least if they make enough sense to be actually attackable. And I would do it if I were confident that it would somehow help someone, but if you are in some way interested in physics and look at theories like subquantum kinetics without becoming skeptical, then chances are unfortunately pretty slim that tearing apart such a theory using accepted knowledge will change your mind.

[1] [http://starburstfound.org/subquantum-kinetics-a- nontechnical...](http://starburstfound.org/subquantum-kinetics-a-nontechnical- summary/)

[2] [http://www.starburstfound.org/SQK/SQK-c.html](http://www.starburstfound.org/SQK/SQK-c.html)

<comment><USER14> You're not really proving or disproving anything. You're just complaining he's using another mathematical model. So what?

The worst part is you have no basis for any of your arguments, yet somehow you feel authorized to completely dismiss the theory altogether because it somehow offends your perspective of the world.

Either post real scientific data / material, or look up cognitive dissonance.

<comment><USER10> I am not going to go through all the nonsense that this guy has made up over years or decades, that is not worth the time. But if you can point to one specific idea, prediction, refutal of mainstream physics or whatever you like within his work, written in a way that can be understood by an interested layman, not longer than say 25 pages or so, then I will try to explain you why he is wrong in that instance.

<comment><USER14> Think of it this way: the Universe is continuously expanding, -- so in a way, it's like we're still experiencing the Big Bang.

So... does that mean matter is still being produced? Yes, from the Ether.

Completely agree that it does sound crazy, but I think it makes more sense than our current way of modeling the Universe. The interesting part is that it invites the possibility of spiritual connections which feels amazing to finally scientifically acknowledge.

I could be wrong, but I invite you to consider the possibility that there is more to life than we realize. I sincerely wish you the best either decision you make.

<comment><USER10> _So... does that mean matter is still being produced? Yes, from the Ether._

Where do you take this from? To the best of our knowledge the universe does not produce new matter. Space expands but that is new empty space, not space filled with some kind of matter.

<comment><USER14> It's from the Model G theory in Subquantum Kinetics, -- and it seems more believable than a finite amount of matter being made from a single blast of energy billions of years ago.

<comment><USER10> But physics is not about believing, it's about describing reality. And when we look at our universe, we are not seeing new matter being created. If the theory actually says that new matter is created while the the universe expands and the amount is not so small that it may have escaped detection, then the theory is wrong. And not because somebody believes or says something but because the theory does not match reality.

<comment><USER14> It theoretically happens very slowly, so it probably does escape detection.

<comment><USER10> The universe is old, at least according to mainstream physics, even small changes would accumulate over billions of years and cubic lightyears. And we are good at measuring things, we famously measured the g-factor to a part in a trillion, detecting gravitational waves required detecting length changes on the order 1/1000th the diameter of a proton, 0.000000000000000001 meters. A quick search reveals that we know the energy density of the universe to better than half a percent. So what are the numbers? How much new matter is generated per unit time and volume according to the theory?

<comment><USER14> I'm still researching this, but it's happening at a quantum level, so I expect it to be slow. But like you said, it will have an aggregate affect over time.

Also, it sounds like you're interested. Why not read the book or watch the video lecture?

<comment><USER10> I am not interested, I am absolutely sure that the theory is total nonsense. I just wanted to make you realize that, preferably by making you discover it yourself by hinting at problems, not by simply telling you that it is wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Connecting - Full Film - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/52861634

<comment><AUTHOR> The 18 minute "Connecting" documentary is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry's thought leaders.</comment>


Statement by EU Rep Catherine Ashton on the alleged surveillance of EU premises - <AUTHOR> https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/137672.pdf

<comment><USER2> Being in charge of the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre[1] (EEAS's intelligence unit) must be an outrageously complicated and frustrating job.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Situation_Centre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Situation_Centre)

</comment><comment><USER3> Then they came back and told us it's not true. Everything is fine now.

<comment><AUTHOR> They probably were laughing while releasing this since the sigint apparatus of the EU and the US are one and the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The EU was already fully aware of the wiretapping like it was aware of the CIA secret prisons in The EU. This whole thing is a farce , with fake outrage from politicians totally corrupt. The EU itself is an american puppet.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you create a better Electron alternative? - <AUTHOR> Everytime an Electron-based application is discussed here the same criticism comes up:<p>- High RAM usage<p>- Lower performance than native applications<p>...<p>My question is, can anybody come up with a idea for a better alternative? Ideally it would be able to:<p>- Work with JavaScript<p>- Layout the UI using HTML / CSS<p>- High performance / lower RAM usage <comment><USER2> I know that some people at Mozilla had started an electron like platform using Moz own html/css/js engines. No idea where it is at right now.

But yeah it would be great to have a platform like electron but with greater optimization. Non the less electron is still great, it simply can become better.</comment>


Revisr – Git Management for WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://revisr.io/ <comment><USER2> How does it compare to versionpress?

Here's what versionpress thought in january: [http://blog.versionpress.net/2015/01/versionpress-vs- revisr/](http://blog.versionpress.net/2015/01/versionpress-vs-revisr/)

Has there been any change since then?</comment>


A/B Testing for Publishers - <AUTHOR> http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ab-testing-for-publishers/

<comment><AUTHOR> A small addition to point #3 (Limitations of Current A/B Testing Softwares): Manual Editing does not work. The only workaround with current softwares is creating a new page for every variation and then splitting the traffic.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another one? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6231686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6231686)

<comment><AUTHOR> Both the topics are quite different, while the other posts is focused on showing how split testing can be done on Adsense, this one points out the major issues faced by publishers when using popular A/B testing tools.</comment></comment>


Good Designers, Good Clients - <AUTHOR> http://alistapart.com/column/good-designers-good-clients

<comment><USER2> I totally agree client engagement is a good learning. It teaches you a lot - to be a team player, people manager, understand requirements, good listener and above helps you deliver in different environment.

All these traits are important and many early entrepreneurs think they know everything and what they doing is right. They forget to "listen" , understand exact problem and deliver what is required. This teaches all those things and matures you to be what you want</comment>


Code Signing and What It Does To Your Freedom (in OS X) - <AUTHOR> http://waffle.wootest.net/2009/09/21/code-signing-freedom/ <comment><USER2> Apple _cannot_ make Code Signing "do anything to your freedom" without breaking the majority of applications available for the platform. Right now, the only applications which are signed are ones which specifically benefit from being signed -- most often, ones which store passwords in the Keychain. (Signing such an application makes the Keychain treat it as still the "same application" after an upgrade, rather than requiring it to be reauthorized.) So, if Apple suddenly started requiring desktop apps to be signed, everything unsigned on the market (probably 90% of applications available) would stop working. This would be an incredibly stupid decision.

Moreover, almost all existing signed applications are signed with a key that isn't in any chain of trust (and there's no currently available system for setting up specially trusted keys), and there's no scheme for encrypting signed applications. So there's nothing keeping users from either removing a signature from an application or replacing it with a copy signed with their own key.

Conclusion? Code signing is not a sinister plot to take away your freedom. It does exactly what the documentation says. Here's the docs. (These links were buried deep in the article, but they're worth reading.)

[http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2007/tn22...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2007/tn2206.html)

[http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Securit...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Security/Conceptual/CodeSigningGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html)

<comment><USER3> _and there's no currently available system for setting up specially trusted keys_

Sure there is. It's called iPhone app dev program. Speaking of which, very little freedom there and a compelling model for any platform vendor to follow if they can.

<comment><USER2> On the desktop platform, there isn't any keying system. And, as noted, they can't really start requiring one at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently it does nothing to your freedom unless Apple makes a bunch of sinister changes in the future.

 _But in a worst case scenario where everything in the bundle is considered holy, removal of the certificate from a signed app is prevented and the integrity of the code signature is checked on launch, the answer is yes. We're still far from this point in any of these three dimensions (in order: opt-in, not that I can see, nope), so there's no immediate danger._</comment>


Why This AdTech Startup Turned Down Seed Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/03/21/why-this-adtech-startup-turned-down-seed-funding/ <comment><USER2> _" "Whenever you bootstrap a business revenue becomes that much more important," says Sherman. "You become very business model focused, very sensitive to cost structures and it really does force you into a kind of diligence with regards to financial performance and managing your costs.""_

That is the key, staying focused. Seed or no seed round it doesn't matter, if you raise too much it is very common to lose focus. I once explained it so someone that its like going into the grocery store with a limited amount of money to buy enough groceries for the week, and going into a grocery with enough money to buy everything in the store. The first person gets in, gets what they need, optimizes for cost effectiveness and gets out. The other person wanders the aisles imagining all of the different meals they _could_ make, without actually deciding on a single meal _to_ make.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no reason taking seed precludes you from putting your own skin in the game. Nor does taking seed force you to not do things your way. This doesn't read like they had a choice, because their reasons don't align with why you wouldn't take seed.

Typically the companies that say "we are doing this bootstrapped" rather than taking seed, are companies that don't need money to get started, they need dev time, or they can start profiting form labor/sales right away.

You want to boot strap a HomeJoy for Llama sheering? You can buy $100 worth of software, $10 a month in hosting, $300 in graphic design, and be up and running. You'd only take money to get advertising. Why give up 25% of the company for that.

You want to build the first software capable of predicting NFL games, all you need is dev time, so you keep a part time job and code while you ignore your family and girl friend. No need to give up 25% for money so you can get it out 3 months earlier because you don't have competition.

<comment><USER4> Their reasons made very good sense to me. I read their comments less as statements of precluding or forcing and more about incentives and focus.

I'm a big fan of the "tie yourself to the mast" (Odysseus and the Sirens reference) approach to managing yourself or your team. Many times the strategy of intelligently removing future options for yourself in order to eliminate distractions and temptations pays off very well. You've removed a path that you can see may be taken in moments of weakness.

The business plan you develop because you _need_ it will be better than the one you develop because you know you should have one.

If you see people as Galts or Ubermensch or some kind of rational actor then this seems crazy to you. Why limit your choices when you can remain flexible in the face of an uncertain future?

If you acknowledge that you yourself are subject to coercion by incentives, that willpower is a depleteable personal resource, that paradox of choice type situations carry a cost? Then it makes a lot of sense.

Of course, as you pointed out, there are a lot of projects where this choice simply doesn't apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My friends company did the same thing. Probably the best way if you can, he does very well in ad-tech.

</comment><comment><USER6> best logo I have seen in a while :)</comment>


How to search text in O(n) time. (Used in GNU grep) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer%E2%80%93Moore_string_search_algorithm

<comment><USER2> Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626305></comment>


Privacy Respecting Services and Software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/privacy-respecting <comment><USER2> Under "Browsers" Tor browser is listed as an alternative to "You are the product".

I'd like to take a shot at a quick counter-argument:

1\. Tor gets money by delivering a workable privacy overlay to organizations that fund it for such a purpose. The largest funder is the U.S. government.

2\. To operate properly, Tor needs a relatively large anonymity pool.

3\. The Tor service itself-- while still certainly useful (esp. its hidden services, even for purposes that don't require anonymity)-- doesn't generate a large enough anonymity pool.

4\. Tor Browser Bundle adds to the anonymity pool by making the Tor service usable to a much wider audience of non-technical users.

5\. To actually attract such users, Tor Browser Bundle must allow Javascript by default so that sites do not "appear broken" by non-technical users who don't understand the intricacies of a low latency privacy overlay.

6\. The set of TBB users who view sites with Javascript on by default are subject to a wide variety of de-anonymization attacks which, while generally not trivial nor cheap, put them at greater risk than users who are not using Tor with a browser frontend.

7\. Either the U.S. government funds Tor with the intent to use it with a browser frontend, or they fund it for use without a browser frontend. _If_ they fund it in order to leverage the Tor service without needing the browser frontend, then congratulations! You-- the non-technical TBB user-- are the product.

What do you think?

<comment><USER3> When did Tor Browser start enabling JS by default? It was blocked by noscript by default for me, when I started using it years ago, and that was still the case the last time I installed a new workstation OS, earlier this year.

I use TBB for about 20% of my browsing, a habit that I cultivated while traveling and working overseas. Now, with all the crazy identity politics going on at the major data companies, I think that anonymity is becoming much more important for the general public.

Thank you for playing devil's advocate. The fact that the project is funded by the US govt is certainly concerning, no doubt about that. I can only hope that their motive is just to enable their own agents to operate online without being identified, profiled and social-graphed by the private sector.

<comment><USER2> > When did Tor Browser start enabling JS by default? It was blocked by > noscript by default for me, when I started using it years ago, and that was > still the case the last time I installed a new workstation OS, earlier this > year.

You sure about that?

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBJavaScriptEna...](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBJavaScriptEnabled)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why Telegram is categorized as "You are the product" there. In particular, I thought the most prominent criticisms of Telegram (including those linked to on this page) were related to engineering rather than to its business model or privacy practices.

<comment><USER3> IMO, requiring a mobile number is grounds for disqualification, because it strongly identifies a person, and can be abused quite badly. Telegram demands a mobile number, even though it does not need to place calls. Check out Wire for an alternative.

[http://wire.com/](http://wire.com/)

<comment><USER5> Signal does the exact same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried setting up a usable mastadon and distopia account, not only are the interfaces shit, but during my signup I had 0 explanation about the process (where's the FAQ and blog posts explaining stuff?).

Also, during the sign-up, both Mastadon and Distopia give me a list of instances , but close to Zero information about the instances, so after some failed google searches i just randomly picked one and was dumped into shitty web UI with no information whatsoever.

In the end I had a bunch of unanswered questions (how do i link instances, or do i have to do a seperate sign up for each one?), so i just gave up.

<comment><USER6> It's pertinent to add that this lack of documentation is recurrent in a lot of FLOSS projects. I don't think that software like linux and mastadon and distopia need to be simplified, they just need people who are good at explaining stuff to spend more time doing just that. Instead, projects geared to the lay user like ubuntu and distopia think pretty UI and graphics are what drive traffic. I wholeheartedly disagree.

What makes for a rewarding User-Experience is first and foremost getting shit done (aka challenge/reward), not the resolution of the feedback sprite or the trendiness of your color-scheme/layout.

<comment><USER6> and, so, to drive user adoption you aren't required as a rule to shorten the time-to-accomplish-distance between the two elements of the first challenge / reward, there is such thing as making it too easy, as growth / prowess also drive adoption. Instead, look to creating a clear path to accomplish the first few tasks, that is, those tasks that pretty much every user will want to do to early on "get in the game."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why even host this in Github if it's just going to be a single .md file linking to a medium post.

Seems excessive with no actual information presented

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting it on GitHub means other people can fork it and add to the list. Thus the content grows in quality with contributions.

<comment><USER8> Copy and paste works great too!

This is a stupid use of github, it's a hammer looking for nails. If you want to make a change to a single text file, just copy it.

<comment><USER9> I think the main goal is to receive pull requests in order to curate the list. This would not work by copy and paste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Notes" wasn't a category listed, but check out Standard Notes ([https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)) if you're looking for a privacy-respecting notes app. This is an open-source project I work on. It's an encrypted alternative to Evernote.

</comment><comment><USER11> Never heard of the Brave browser before. Anyone knows if it's really ok ?

<comment><USER12> Brave was founded by Brendan Eich, as his next thing after departing Mozilla. Many of us may not agree with his views on marriage equality (or at least his past actions), but I believe over the years he has demonstrated a strong commitment to online privacy.

Personally, I'm glad someone is trying to figure out how websites can derive revenue through privacy-respecting microtransactions instead of the current ad model, and I hope they can make it work.</comment></comment>


The LHC "nightmare scenario" has come true - <AUTHOR> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-lhc-nightmare-scenario-has-come-true.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Discussion from a couple of days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't the nightmare scenario that the LHC would create a black hole that would swallow the entire solar system?

The case of no new physics "just" mean that they'll have to start looking else where. Their job just got a little harder, and while I can appreciate how annoying that can be, it's hardly a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seeing this headline makes me think a black hole has been created and we're all going to die. Thankfully, this is not the case.

edit: LHC webcams, interesting: [http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc- webcams.html](http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> > We've maneuvered ourselves into a dead end by relying on aesthetic guidance > to decide which experiments are the most promising.

What other alternatives are there?

Also, i wonder , now that LHC has become "boring" , what options are there for repurposing it?

</comment><comment><USER6> I was a bit scared considering some people earnestly feared the LHC could create a black hole.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this really the "dream" scenario??

The current state is that we have evidence that the current theories are not correct which leaves a gap for new theories to fill.

Sounds like an exciting area to be working in right now if you ask me (unfortunately, I'm not!).

<comment><USER8> We know that the current theories aren't correct anyway. Or more accurately, they are correct only in low-energy conditions, and can't say anything about high-energy conditions.

This is "nightmare scenario" because we knew that the theories aren't correct, but we hoped for some results that would guide and inspire new theories. Either way we know that we aren't done yet, but the current state is like being in a featureless void, unable to know where to direct one's efforts.

Or so I have heard.

<comment><USER7> ...so we should expect a period of wild speculation in physics with some fairly interesting experimentation to prove (or falsify) those theories.

(I'm not a physicist), but is it possible to almost automate some of the discovery process to attempt to turn up new leads? (or is the search-space too large for this to be reasonable?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The true nightmare scenario will become true when advancing from plateau of scientific advancements will become too hard for human minds. Maybe it's impossible for people to comprehend or navigate in ideas located above some level of complexity, the same way most animals can't notice themselves in a mirror. So far our progress has been quite impressive, but what if there's some sort of human "Moore's Law" for science, where further advancements without AI will be close to impossible?

</comment><comment><USER10> Over the years I was slowly beginning to become convinced that the abstractions of relativistic model are just not compatible with all other models we have. Not negating the correctness of it's results, but I kinda think that it should be redefined so it conforms better with the rest of the models. Alas, it has become de facto a state religion and any attempts at discussion about it end up with being laughed at

<comment><USER11> Are you talking about special relativity or general relativity?

Special relativity and quantum mechanics were joined by Dirac in 1928 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation)

General relativity is apparently more difficult, and we don't have a quantum version yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also last month on her blog: Why the LHC is such a disappointment: A delusion by name "naturalness".

[http://backreaction.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/why-lhc-is- such-...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/why-lhc-is-such- disappointment-delusion.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER13> There are no nightmares in physics and science. There is only further intrigue.</comment>


Bob Iger to step down as Disney CEO, effective immediately - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/disney-names-bob-chapek-next-ceo.html <comment><USER2> It's strange that it's happening so fast. This feels to me like he got himself in trouble doing something the Board did not like and forced him out. I suspect there are a lot of reporters wondering what happened. We'll be reading more about this in the coming months.

<comment><USER3> It could be that he is worried about the stock market implications of Coronavirus and wants to "lock in" the incredible stock price appreciation that took place during his tenure as CEO. That is often how a CEO's performance is summarized after the fact, and "presided over a tripling of Disney's stock price" sounds better than "a 2.2x" or whatever. In any case, his desire to step down has been widely telegraphed in the press and directly to investors in presentations. He was supposed to retire a few years ago but kept being asked to stay by the board. Now that the Fox deal is done and Disney+ launched successfully, it's as good a time as any to retire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just watched the CNBC interview (~10 minutes) with the Bobs. Although sooner than expected, BI seems to just want to focus on the creative disciplines at Disney and not deal with all of the day to day ops from all of the businesses. BC plans on following the course Iger set Disney on with their current assets and work from there. Iger will still be leaving at the end of 2021. According to them, none of the recent Disney news/performances have had any impact on the timing of this decision.

</comment><comment> Aco- This happened surprisingly fast. Replacing Iger with Chapek, unfortunately makes perfect sense, and has been whispered about for a couple of years now.

Nearly every decision Chapek has made in his past leadership roles at Disney has made them significantly more profitable. At the same time, nearly every decision he's made has made the customer experience for their end users worse. It should be interesting to see how this plays out.

</comment><comment><USER5> effective immediately...to me means that in the coming days we will hear of something.</comment>


Costco's Thanksgiving Day Website Crash Cost It Nearly $11M - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestreet.com/technology/costco-thanksgiving-day-website-crash-cost-it-nearly-11million-15185344 <comment><USER2> The key part to this article is at the very end, and not addressed in the title (of course)....they extended their sales till the next day. Anyone who couldn't place an order (like me) did it later. So I'd argue it did not cost Costco $11 million...

<comment> purple-again Most likely only a small fraction of the people who were going to make a purchase heard this news and only a fraction of them decided to follow through and purchase the next day.

<comment><USER3> That's not actually true, since the website had a message saying it while suffering. I also finished my purchase the next day.

<comment><USER4> You can't really say "it's not true" since you need facts to make that kind of statement, and I doubt you have access to the data one would need to come to that conclusion.

It's very easy to postulate that people would go to another site (e.g. Amazon) immediately instead of waiting around to see if the Costco site would recover, especially since most BF deals are limited by both time and quantity. That alone makes the loss estimates feasible.

<comment><USER3> > Most likely only a small fraction of the people who were going to make a > purchase heard this news

This is the part I was referring to as "not actually true". Fact: the site itself, which was loading although not working entirely, displayed a big banner saying this during the problem periods. It was hard to miss.

The rest is indeed just speculation either way. I doubt the losses are as high as estimated, but there's no way to say without inside data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So 0.00755% of their annual revenue? Do you think they'll ever recover from the loss?

</comment><comment><USER6> Costco's site has never been a role model in fact it can hardly handle most weekend traffic. This annoys me on multiple levels since it puts a bad name to asp.net's ability to scale as well as the fact weekends are my main shopping window and I just can't use the site.

<comment><USER7> Does ASP.NET have a bad rep for poorly scaling? I'd have thought it was just the licensing/overhead costs of running Windows that turns folks off.

This should, hopefully, change for the better with .NET Core getting wider adoption.

<comment><USER8> It should not. StackOverflow.com, for example, runs on ASP.NET MVC and is one of the websites with most traffic in the world. Also blazing fast and rarely goes down. Even in Black Friday!

<comment><USER9> also, once you open a web browser with the website, it keeps an open connection to the server. Their servers handles all the open concurrent connections

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would love to see some postmortem from the tech folks @ Costco. What really got them down. Also, does anyone know if they use any cloud services or run their own DC?

<comment><USER11> Costco is an Azure customer, but I'm not sure where the site in question is hosted.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-microsoft-says- costco-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-microsoft-says-costco- recently-cho-idUSFWN1N11XX)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would bet that quite some of these people came back later. When people want Costco prices, they will come back. So prob not that harmful. Still never a good day to be an engineer and imagine there will be some difficult post- mortems.

<comment><USER13> Small sample size of my household, be we bought nearly everything we were going to buy at Costco elsewhere due to them being basically offline all of Thursday AND into Friday.

Seems like they host all of their web infrastructure in-house and need some major help on scale-ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the biggest electronic stores in Norway knew their web page couldn't handle the load, so they had some kind of queue system im front. When I checked, my spot in line was estimated to have to wait more than an hour. They got a lot of flak for it, all other web shops worked fine.

<comment><USER15> I wonder how much engineering effort went into building that queuing system, versus what it would have cost them to just fix their site so it could scale properly...

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, how much hype and commitment does it build for people who decide to sit in queue?

Maybe by the time you sit in queue for an hour, you're more likely to make more purchases than you would have otherwise. Or people feel like they're missing out by shopping on Amazon when they can claim a spot in queue.

We're not all that rational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> During one of the sudden logouts on Costco's website yesterday there was a complete stranger's email address prefilled in the login screen. Disconcerting, but at least there was no password.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was browsing Costco.com when I saw this happen and the thing I was most thankful for on Thanksgiving was not being on-call on the responsible team at Costco.

</comment><comment><USER19> $11M isn't trivial, but for a company that's got billions in turnover it's not significant either. Top brass will say "Let's fix that" and move on.

<comment><USER20> How many people do you suppose can all get a promotion off of figuring out to make Costco an extra $11M?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> $11 million based on what metric, they can't exactly quantify all the people who tried to shop when the site was down, then simply came back later to make the same order

</comment><comment><USER22> TIL: people buy stuff from costco's website.

I alwayd thought since you buy in bulk shipping would be insane or not at the value point of amazon.

<comment><USER23> Bought my mattress online from Costco and I'm not even a member...

<comment><USER22> Nice! I gotta check it out sometimes</comment></comment></comment>