Ask HN: What web technology stack should I learn - <AUTHOR>

I'm a physicist by training, with most of my work being done in C++ and python.  However I'm interested in toying around with creating interfaces for play projects.
Since this is 2015, this means a web page: with javascript/css/html on the front end, and something on the backend for database access or generating pages.
The question is, what should I learn?  It seems there are a multitude of JS frameworks (and frameworks that compile to JS) (jquery, react?, elm, angular...), and a multitude of backends (django, rails, yesod, sinatra, etc.).
I don't need something that can host facebook, I just need something that is simple enough to use that I can hack together a site in a few hours (after I learn), and maybe put it up on AWS.
Any recomendations? <comment><USER2> You should learn Rails. Why? The Hartl tutorial[1]. It's the best tutorial I have ever read, far surpassing anything else.

Not only does it cover the various features of Rails, in it you build a real life app: a simple Twitter clone. Once you've finished the Hartl tutorial, you'll know how to build an app in Rails, how to write tests, how to use version control and how to deploy it to Heroku. It covers everything to build a web app with nothing missing. All in all, if you don't know much about software development (as opposed to programming, which I know you're experienced at) then I can't put enough emphasis on how great this tutorial is.

Others have suggested Django (a great framework that I've used too and love) as you know Python. That does make sense. If you're really confident in Python, perhaps you should pick Django. But Ruby won't take long to pick up either and I can assure you - the tutorial is worth it.

Finally, there are lots of other new frameworks, including client-side frameworks, that might be helpful too. I'd wait though for a bit. For the moment, you just can't go wrong with Rails. Years later, there's still just as much a demand as ever for Rails developers and it's a solid base that, once learnt, should serve you well for many years, whether you're building small projects for fun or large projects professionally.

[1] [https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

</comment><comment><USER3> Given that you've worked in python, I think Django is a very easy framework choice here.

If that weren't the case, I'd say it's just a "pick one" out of Rails/Django/Node (or some other JS framework, I'm not overly familiar with them).

I'd go Heroku if you don't have much linux experience, or Digital Ocean if you don't mind setting up & maintaining a machine. AWS is fine as well, I'm sure, I just don't have any experience with it personally.

</comment><comment><USER4> First I'll make some assumptions about your requirement based on your post, correct me if I am wrong:

a. all the potential web sites in your mind have fairly straight forward server side operations, things like getting data into/out of databases, basic user management, etc.,

b. the front end web pages will have some medium to advanced level graphics/animations/interactive features, and you would like to use JS/CSS/HTML for them,

c. you are going to code both front and back end all by yourself, at least for a while,

d. all of the sites will not have heavy traffic, at least no for quite a long time,

If these are true, then it's best to 1. choose a simple and easy to learn server side framework, so you "can hack together a site in a few hours", 2. and then so you can focus your effort on learning and practice front end technologies(JS/CSS/HTML).

For 1, do yourself a favor, choose a PHP framework (Laravel/Lumen, Silex, Slim, Fat Free, etc.), don't choose python's frameworks just because you know some Python, especially do not choose Django. Definitely not rails (huge monolithic framework, plus a new language Ruby for you); For 2, start with JQuery/Bootstrap, you cannot avoid them, they are everywhere.

You don't actually need the big advantages of Rails/Django (their gazillions of extensions/addons, scalability, feature sets that covers every problems under the sun from one man shop to enterprise-y projects, etc.).

And next time when someone laughs at PHP, just smile, and silently remind yourself that Facebook started with PHP (and PHP is behind majority of all web sites today).

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a bunch of frameworks out there and picking one can be overwhelming.

The answer depends.

For the backend:

Are you looking to create one-off throwaway projects which you'll code once and never touch again? In that case you can go for the quick-n-dirty approach and pick whatever language offers you the smallest learning curve (for example, you may choose Node.js since you plan to learn javascript for the frontend anyways)

Do you expect to make updates to your site over time? In the latter scenario you'll want to invest in a framework where you can learn the best practices online.

For the frontend:

Start off with just plain vanilla javascript (to get the feel for it). Then just pick either React or Angular. Flip a coin if you have to - at your level it won't matter which one you choose. Later on you can dive into the differences between the two, but after learning one it'll be easier to learn the other. Have you done any research to see what might be a best fit?

In fact, depending on how throwaway you want your projects to be you might not even need to worry about a frontend framework at all and just do all the work in the backend.

Send me a message @ZainRzv if you want to talk about it in more detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, now I've gotten recommendations for all three of the big backends. :)

Node.js, does make sense: I would like to screw around with D3 eventually, so knowing js sounds useful.

Do you know any tutorials for Node?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You work in Python & you want simple web interfaces?

Flask. Check out the docs, it's about as simple and pythonic as it's possible for "respond to this URL by executing that python function" to be.

[http://flask.pocoo.org](http://flask.pocoo.org)

Talking to relational databases is mostly handled through Flask-SQLAlchemy, which isn't much more complicated to get started with, but SQLAlchemy is very open-ceiling in terms of power and utility.

[http://flask-sqlalchemy.pocoo.org/2.0/](http://flask- sqlalchemy.pocoo.org/2.0/)

Miguel Grinberg's tutorial is solid for a broader view of common app features, and will likely cover more than you'll need any time soon.

[http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega- tutorial-...](http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial- part-i-hello-world)

If you want to integrate JavaScript stuff, whether full apps or jQuery or D3.js or what have you, worry about that later - it might not be necessary, but it's fairly easy to bolt on if needed.

\</comment><comment>---

JavaScript & CSS assets:

I use Gulp, which is a JavaScript build tool, to build my JavaScript & CSS assets. This isn't something you can pip and done, but it's probably worth the effort if you get to the point of having extensive JavaScript & CSS files. If that sounds like a hassle, use Flask-Assets.

Why? The JavaScript tools for dealing with JavaScript are much less of a hassle, and for whatever reason they also tend to have less fussy CSS asset builders. But this is mostly a "set up the script once & forget about it outside of letting it run" problem, so it's not really a hassle to use in place of native tools.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a personal preference of course.

The irony of modern software development is that it is hard to learn how to do things the easy way. What I mean by that is that the easiest and most powerful ways of doing development often require a significant base level of learning and knowledge to understand. You can take a faster route to getting something up and running but the price is that it will be harder to work with. Someone has thought of an easier way, but first you must understand it.

All of that means that your choices are to get something quick and easy up and running but not really have any valuable long term understanding of the best way to do things. Or you can go through a painful period of "learning the easy way".

I recently did this and invested significant effort in learning react.js for the browser, and Python Falcon server for the back end, with Python Sqlalchemy for database access.

Here's an overview to get you started on the browser side: [http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-incredibly- bri...](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-incredibly-brief- introduction-to.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> What size of "play projects" are these?

When they are very small you would like to look at platforms who provide the least coding and the most plug & play capability. There are a bunch out there I won't go into the detail, so long story short this should be WordPress + PHP.

There are tons of tutorials and zillions of free plugins, resources etc. If somebody has not done what you are trying to do may be it shouldn't exist in the first place :)

With your C knowledge you wont be alienated to PHP.

If you want one of them go big and provide a solid base for that, and grow the company, hire somebody else to do that etc - learn RoR (Ruby on Rails) . It is an intuitive language and you can develop stuff really fast. Plus, it will be easier to find devs if you want to enlarge your project.

</comment><comment><USER9> I suggest you to know "Meteor" framework. It provides the complete stack for developing application quickly. The learning curve is also very less. I just evaluated Meteor for a day. I got a very high opinion on the framework. Now I am looking what the framework can offer in-order to develop application with high standards. One additional feature it offers is, you can covert the web application to Android and iOS application as well. Cool...

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn one of the "basic" MVC frameworks:

Rails Django Etc.

Get some MVC working and then think about the new hotness on top of that. Shoot me an email if you wanna talk more about this kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really enjoy working with meteor. It's easy to get started and gives you an easy way to bind your UI and data model together easily.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So it sounds like I should learn Django or Rails.

Anyone know a good tutorial for Django? I figure I'll look at both until one becomes an obvious choice.

Thanks!

<comment><USER12> This one was posted on HN just a few days ago. Looks good.

[http://www.marinamele.com/taskbuster-django- tutorial](http://www.marinamele.com/taskbuster-django-tutorial)</comment></comment>


Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2019/07/17/amazon-accidentally-sold-13000-camera-gear-for-100-on-prime-day/ <comment><USER2> It's kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement.

If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. On the other hand, if the matter is reversed, Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss — even if the purchase was made in bad faith (ie- knowing Amazon mis-priced it but purchasing it anyways.)

I'm not going to entertain any counter arguments that Amazon deserves this because they treat workers poorly or don't pay taxes or whatever, those arguments are orthogonal. The same behavior would happen with a company with better public trust and respect. And it's not like anyone is selling those cameras to donate money to a warehouse worker in need.

I just think it's amazing how frail people's morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met.

<comment><USER3> > It's kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and > entitlement.

First, there is an asymmetry in power too. Amazon can afford to double check or triple check everything if it makes economic sense.

Secondly, companies does not have morals. If you allow big corporations to change prices as they see fit because there is a "mistake". Companies will exploit that to their advantage with psychopathic precision.

You will get your package at home and then you will be informed that the price "was a mistake" and was 10% more expensive. They will print prices in adverts and then say that it was a mistake when people gets to the shop.

Companies are not human beings, as other comments already have said, to involve morality in this issue makes no sense whatsoever.

The real question is: is this an efficient way of improving the consumers well being? If this rules avoid companies of abusing price changes and labeling anything as being a "mistake" and at the same time it encourages better quality on price setting and the "punishment" is not big enough to send all companies to foreclosure. Then it seems a very good deal.

It makes economic sense.

<comment><USER4> > First, there is an asymmetry in power too. Amazon can afford to double check > or triple check everything if it makes economic sense.

There's an asymmetry because Amazon can "afford" to double check everything? How? They lists millions of items. You're only in the market for a few. They're good at inventory management, but the scale is crazy which is why this mispricing is happening. Besides, I don't see why them "being able to afford" checking has to do with someone exploiting a mispricing, from a moral sense. Are you punishing them for not doing so and creating a financial incentive to be more prudent? Seems like a stretch.

> You will get your package at home and then you will be informed that the > price "was a mistake" and was 10% more expensive. They will print prices in > adverts and then say that it was a mistake when people gets to the shop.

It's ironic that many people still believe the narrative that corporations are evil and would screw over their customers at any chance while at the same time living through the greatest upheaval of popular consumer brands in history. Amazon wouldn't do that not because of benevolence or legal reasons, but because its not in their interest to upset and screw over repeat customers for 10% and the operational headache of somehow retrieving your item. Also considering that Amazon receives billions from Prime and that would likely drive down subscriptions. Some companies practice deceptive advertising, but these are the companies that are primarily losing favor to new more honest competitors due to the competition.

<comment><USER5> Repeat after me: Amazon is not a person. Why aren't you arguing against the daily electrocution of toasters?

<comment><USER4> Amazon is a corporation, essentially a legal structure meant to encompass a group of investors. Investors range from its founder Jeff Bezos to small investors holding Amazon shares in pension funds and 401ks. You too can buy one share of Amazon for ~$2000 or invest in a low cost ETF that would own Amazon. The value of the stock is driven partly by expectation of future earnings. If Amazon were to lose future earnings relative to what investors believe they will receive, the stock price will likely go down.

On the extreme lets say that Amazon stock goes to $0, it would reduce the wealth of the world by about $1 trillion in stock valuation. That means that $1 trillion disappears from people's accounts (with ~$100 billion disappearing from Bezos' account). This would be wealth destruction no different from simultaneously reaching into every person's wallet and removing some amount of cash and burning it.

The whole "[corp] is not a person so [immoral act] is okay" is not productive.

<comment><USER6> >This would be wealth destruction no different from simultaneously reaching into every person's wallet and removing some amount of cash and burning it.

Unrealised profits are very much different than physical cash.

<comment><USER4> I own the stock and can sell it for $2000. If the value of the stock drops to $0 and I can no longer get $2000 for the stock, it would be no different than me losing $2000 cash

<comment><USER7> If I have $0.50 cash and someone reaches into my wallet and takes it, is that any different to if I've got a lottery ticket with an expected value of $0.50, and the draw occurs and its value drops to $0 when it doesn't win?

Some would say that in the first case it's morally wrong to steal my cash, whereas in the latter case I consented to the risk of my ticket losing when I purchased it; and therefore performing a lottery draw is not an immoral act.

<comment><USER4> Yes, if the Amazon model doesn't work out and you lose value, that's not immoral. It just happened like your lottery. If the value decreases from people stealing from Amazon then it is the same as going in your wallet and taking the cash.

<comment><USER8> How is this "stealing", if Amazon advertised the price they sold the product at?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I got in on this! I got a Sony A7R II and a 24-70 2.8 II I'd always wanted but could never justify the purchase of. ($~3k value for $200)

A few observations:

\- Despite the extraordinary deal we got, my friends (who also made a purchase) and I all have our joy offset by a feeling of regret that we didn't order more. Greed!

\- Despite the fact that I couldn't justify the purchase before I owned them, I now definitely don't want to sell the gear. A clear cut case of the Endowment Effect in action [0]

\- A lot of people saying the orders are going to be cancelled -- seeing as I currently have both body and lens in possession, I find that unlikely.

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

<comment><USER10> In the Netherlands this also happened some times on webshops.

And everytime a judge ruled people had to bring the goods back or should pay the full amount.

The reason is that it is very clear for the buyer it is a mistake. And almost all webshops have a legal notice about wrong or false prices.

<comment><USER11> If I remember correctly, in these cases (bunk beds and televisions) the orders were never fulfilled. The court ruled that a sales contract is not binding if the buyer can reasonably suspect that the price shown is so absurdly low that an error on the side of the seller is apparent.

That is, you can try to order the item, but the seller has no legal obligation of fulfilling it if they can proof beyond reasonable doubt that a mistake was made, and can return the money instead.

<comment><USER12> > The court ruled that a sales contract is not binding if the buyer can > reasonably suspect that the price shown is so absurdly low that an error on > the side of the seller is apparent.

How can you prove something like that in court in this camera case?

For example, let's say you were just getting into photography and were window shopping by browsing around Amazon's site.

You run into a camera that has a 4.7 average rating with 3,000+ reviews and the example pictures that people were posting look great to you. You have no idea about camera specs but you see it for $149, so you buy it. That doesn't seem too unrealistic, especially not when phones cost $1,000. You could totally think "oh, well $150 for just a camera sounds about right".

<comment><USER13> >How can you prove something like that in court in this camera case?

Go look at the screenshots in the article it shows the prime savings at checkout:

>Prime Savings -$1,204.52

That is a pretty clear indication that "wow, this is astronomically discounted" which should reasonably clue any adult with their full mental faculties in to "something strange is going on here".

<comment><USER7> I have Steam sales offering me games with 90% off, Groupon offering me 88% off a gym membership, and a local perpetually-going-out-of-business menswear shop offering me 90% off everything. Amazon themselves advertise used books priced from £0.01!

Admittedly, many camera enthusiasts probably knew the market rate for this sort of equipment - but the fact something has a 90% discount doesn't automatically prove it's mispriced.

<comment><USER13> Software which is infinitely reproducible for (effectively) free once it is made, is a lot different than high end lenses and very complicated cameras with costly electronics and worked optical glass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds to me like someone at Amazon is good at marketing. Let a few things go for an insane deal, knowing it will hit the front page of every blog. Then reap the rush of next years prime day with people scouring the site for pricing "errors". Pretty cheap and effective marketing.

Kind of like a raffle but without having to get all the lawyers involved to make sure you comply with raffle laws.

<comment><USER15> Even when literally losing thousands of dollars to honor a price advertised to customers, HN manages to spin's Amazon's actions as somehow duplicitous.

<comment><USER16> Oh no, Amazon's profit margin!

Being less flip: it's a massive corporation, which by default don't really care about consumers happiness directly, just that which is necessary for us to part with our many. I find it hard to have sympathy for said corporation -- especially considering the power that they now wield over modern western society.

And it wouldn't be the first time a corporation is duplicitous, that's for sure. I don't personally think this was done on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

<comment><USER17> Having just spent time overnight dealing with customer pain I can assure that we do care about customer happiness and talk about it every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Others also reported that they successfully price matched gear at retailers > such as Best Buy and Walmart._

Wow, this is incredible if true. Not just as a sign of how much these traditional retailers will stick to their promises, but also how the ostensible safeguards of brick-and-mortar/human-touch can still be subverted by algorithmic error. I've never worked at retail but if I saw such a drastic reduction I'd call my manager.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure how far and wide the show Nathan For You reaches, but there's a fantastic episode where he proposes a local electronics store mark TVs down to $1 in order to buy up new inventory from Best Buy for his own store using their price match policy.

Rather than trying to explain it poorly, I highly recommend everyone watch this clip from the show:

[http://www.cc.com/video-clips/i6q9t5/nathan-for-you-the- pric...](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/i6q9t5/nathan-for-you-the-price-match- plan)

<comment><USER20> Never tried it but I've considered just editing the DOM to make Amazon page show the price I want.

<comment><USER21> When I've price matched before the associate pulled up the website on her computer to prevent this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A previous similar incident became a legendary in-joke over at MetaFilter 18 years ago:

 _Astounding. I can 't take a moral argument seriously from any of you who jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of an honest mistake. I don't want to hear ever again about greedy corporations or crooked politicians. You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from those you rail against?_ – _posted by marknau at 6:45 PM on November 20, 2001 [4 favorites +] [!]_

 _We have cameras._ – _posted by NortonDC at 6:48 PM on November 20, 2001 [164 favorites +] [!]_

[https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067](https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067)

<comment><USER23> Wow, I remember that one!

I was just thinking recently it's hard to believe Mefi turned 20 years old this summer, and then I realized MY site turns 20 years old this fall... I know people feel old when their kids get old, but damn, having a website turn twenty just makes me feel old.

<comment><USER24> Ten more years and you won't be able to trust it any more.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_anyone_over_30%22)

<comment><USER25> See also: [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586.full](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586.full)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In California, at least, Amazon does not need to honor erroneous prices. Per CA Civ Code § 7103 (2018): [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=4.&part=5.5.&lawCode=CIV)

      7103. Improper pricing on the shelf or on the item due to unintentional error shall not constitute a violation of this division.

<comment><USER27> My guess is they could request the item back, and if they really wanted to, put a negative balance on your account effectively banning you from Amazon without a return. Whether or not they would sue you or win and collect is a different story.

All of this is assuming this was not an intentional PR test by Amazon for Prime day. One would presume that that is possible.

<comment><USER28> As I understand this if it lands on your doorstep and wasn't reclaimed by UPS/FedEx/USPS prior to that there's nothing they can do. They can ask you to send it back, but you don't have to. If they made the transaction and it's in your hands they can't put you in the red for the difference.

<comment><USER29> Correct. Now, I highly doubt they'd do it, but Amazon could take some action such as banning you from their services until you return the item. At which point do you want to own the item more than using Amazon? Could be a tough choice for some.

Though I still don't think they'd do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Amazon would be within their rights to refuse to honor such purchases. I also don't think it's ethical to take advantage of such mistakes. What if it was you who accidentally listed your house for $60,000 rather than $600,000? What if you accidentally included an extra 0 on the check you wrote?

<comment><USER31> In my ethical framework it is more than fine to take advantage of a mistake by one of the largest companies in the world. They'll take advantage of you if given the chance.

<comment><USER32> At what size company would your ethics require you to reverse course and treat them the way you would like to be treated if you had made the mistake?

<comment><USER33> Whose mistakes is it ok to take advantage from? It's hard to draw a bright line to split the continuum that goes from, say, the neighborhood nonprofit shop that employs homeless and disabled people from the community, all the way to a ruthless global mega corporation such as Amazon, but that doesn't mean that one's ethics are crooked if it draws a distinction between cases where it's OK and cases where it's wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They will cancel majority of the purchases. However, if you were smart, you'd have chosen 1 day shipping and have received the item.

Me? I was not smart and did not select 1 day shipping so it looks like my order will most likely be canceled once Amazon deals with this...

<comment><USER35> Nah, the blowback they'd get from not honoring the purchasing would be terrible. More generally, Amazon are one of the few companies who understand that short term losses can lead to long-term goodwill and profit.

So anyway, my prediction is that they will do nothing about your purchase.

<comment><USER36> Eh, no one is going to stop using Amazon if Amazon didn't honor 2k camera for $94.

<comment><USER37> _Eh, no one is going to stop using Amazon if Amazon didn 't honor 2k camera for $94. _

Probably, but people might be disinclined to pay attention to prime day next year. It's definitely lost a lot of its luster now that Amazon mostly hawks their own cheap crap that nobody's that interested in.

Me? I could see this easily being an accident that someone decided to let ride. Maybe they cancel a few orders, but I doubt they'd cancel most or all of them.

<comment><USER36> Well most of the people found these deals are the ones who will understand it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I like the comment suggesting articles like that being banned. That lens has been one of my dreams for years now for birding. Though 800mm is kinda ridiculous and probably impossible to hand hold.

I did nearly get lucky like this some years back when Walmart $100 gift cards were on sale for $10. All my orders were cancelled. It seems like several of these Amazon orders have been delivered.

<comment><USER39> >>Though 800mm is kinda ridiculous and probably impossible to hand hold

If you have a bit of DIY spirit - You can get a decent 4" Newtonian telescope, porro prism and an intermediate lens and adapter to play around with and see if you like it for much cheaper - roughly $1200

Bonus: For $45 you can get a solar filter and take snazzy photos of partial eclipses.

<comment><USER38> Yes! I looked into some mirror lens options too trying to get the price down more. It turns out that doing a zoom/crop on the computer afterwards gives me the same or better results apparently. I haven't thought about a telescope though that would be sweet for pictures of nests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib IANAL. Any U.S.-based lawyers out here?

I believe a listed price is an "invitation to treat" which means a retailer can charge whatever they like regardless of listed price (whether in a physical or online store), but at what point can't an online retailer cancel/back-out of a transaction? Let's say the merchant and buyer are both California-based for simplicity. Would it be legally similar to "theft by discovery" (e.g., taking money falling out from an overturned armored truck) for accepting goods sold at an excessive, erroneous discount? Or would it require proving intent on part of the buyer that the price was a serious mistake they deliberately acted in bad-faith to exploit?

Let's say the (over-simplified) phases of a transaction are:

1\. Agreed - Buyer clicks "Buy".

2\. Paid - Payment is posted.

3\. Shipped out - The product leaves the custody of the merchant.

4\. Received - Customer receives the product.

<comment><USER40> I'm also not a lawyer, but they have the ability to correct the error right up until it's delivered to you - every online retailer has something like that in their T&Cs. There's been plenty of cases where retailers have cancelled order and refunded any moneys paid and customers have had no recourse to enforce the contract.

After you've got the goods in your hands - well, there's likely a lot less they can do about it.

Some resources for the US here: [https://smallbusiness.chron.com/company- advertising-price-wr...](https://smallbusiness.chron.com/company-advertising- price-wrong-responsible-mistake-73117.html)

Changing the price after the fact, or demanding you return it - well... That could end up with them in a whole lot of hot water themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I remember something similar happened at Best Buy 15 years ago with a high end nvidia card. I bought one, but Best Buy obviously chose not to fulfill on the glitch. I wasn't surprised or disappointed. I _was_ surprised at how many people felt entitled to it, though. The number of calls to boycott Best Buy over it seemed insane.

I wonder how many people will feel entitled to Amazon honoring this glitch.

<comment><USER42> I thought there were advertising laws that required stores to honor their flyers, but I don't know how that translated to the online world.

The idea was, print a "price glitch", people come into stores, "so sorry that was a mistake", people still buy stuff... Then laws were enacted.

<comment><USER41> I don't know either, but I know I didn't get my video card and got refunded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I doubt they will cancel the orders. Amazon lives by customer service. They seem to just write off their mistakes directly from revenue. I learned this when I was scammed for a $5000 and Amazon let the scammer keep, refunded me and closed the issue in one fell swoop.

<comment><USER44> Amazon is less customer-friendly than ever before. They refused to adjust a TV I purchased 7 days ago to the Prime Day pricing which was $400 off. The only solution according to them was to purchase another TV at the Prime pricing and return the original. That's unfriendly to the customer, it's unfriendly to the planet, and it's unfriendly to Amazon's bottom line. An all-around disaster.

<comment><USER45> Not trying to pick a fight, I'm genuinely curious- why should Amazon be expected to do that? Even with their attitude for good customer service, if you purchased an item a week ago why should they give you money now because it is on sale? Prime day isn't exactly a secret, I would say the fair argument here is that you wanted a TV in a hurry and weren't interested in waiting for the sale. Otherwise, should they also refund me 60% of the 2k I spent 2 years ago on my last desktop PC?

<comment><USER44> It's standard practice in retail that price adjustments are made if a price cut happens within the return period of the purchase.

<comment><USER45> This starts to make sense to me after reading the sister comments. Within the return period, environmentally it does make sense (CO2 costs of shipping a large TV aren't negligible). I may not be savvy enough, if I see an item I bought on sale I don't think "I should return this and buy the same item" but it does make perfect sense to do so.

If i see an item I bought on sale I think "damn, I missed out", but a rational consumer (economics sense) would think "I should return this and buy another". I just approached the question from my typical viewpoint, which is "you buy it, you own it" and not expecting any additional customer support.

That, and social anxiety means I would be far more comfortable paying the extra $400 than bugging an associate for a refund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My favorite ecommerce glitch was a guitar center coupon for $50 off being usable an unlimited number of times. I didn't push my luck and only applied it a few times. Surprisingly they honored it and I got a bunch of miscellaneous guitar accessories for free.

<comment><USER39> Back in the 1998 there was one website that let you enter negative values into the quantities to zero out the cost of other items. I notified them quickly and they let my order though as a way of saying 'thanks'.

<comment><USER47> Did this once for credit card rewards redemption along with another glitch allowing one to set the amount of rewards that would be deducted and made out with 20k in gift cards. Lasted a few weeks then died.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'll go on and say something, perhaps, controversial.

This "price mistake" was not a mistake at all. This was intentional move by amazon to attract publicity.

Once these news spread, people will remember. And next year they will have a few extra million people browsing amazon "looking for that super deal".

This "price mistake" is simply part of the advertising/marketing stratagy by amazon to create extra excitement about prime day.

People will be coming back for years ... looking for that 100$ super lens. This is money well spent.

WELL DONE AMAZON MARKETING GURUS!!!

</comment><comment><USER49> There was a similar incident in 2001:

> Amazon messes up a 'Buy this camera and get that bag free" promotion to be > "Buy this bag and get that camera free." As a result you can get a $350 > Minolta Maxxum SLR for $40.

[https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067](https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067)

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone know if someone tried to order a ridiculous amount of the 13k Sony zoom lens? If I would have noticed this pricing error still in time to place an order I wouldn't have wasted a minute to think what I want, I would have ordered 100-1000 lenses worth 13000 for 95 each and later sold them on eBay for 10k each and bought myself a Tesla or something...

Why don't I read an actually interesting story about this pricing error, who cares that some people got a single item discounted... That's as interesting as someone winning $300 in the lottery. Happens all the time, not worth a story otherwise...

</comment><comment><USER51> Given the algorithmic pricing on a lot of things (everything?) sold on Amazon there's probably money to be made building some bot that checks for pricing mistakes and buys when one is found.

<comment><USER52> I believe this was common on eBay. People also looked for common misspellings of items, misspellings that would lead items to get fewer ids and usually end underpriced relative to similar items.

<comment><USER45> I don't have this automated, but this is definitely still a thing, at least for used test equipment. I'm not clever enough to automate it fully, since often constructing the search terms is fairly difficult, but I definitely have scored some incredible deals ($40 for a perfectly fine HP spectrum analyzer a month ago). The only automation is some simple greasemonkey scripts, but there are definitely deals to be had on mis-categorized items. Likely this works best on specialized equipment that the average bulk auction buyer doesn't recognize, I would suspect that most industrial/scientific equipment would apply. This certainly won't apply to consumer items like a laptop though, the item has to be esoteric enough that a non-expert has difficulty even determining what it is.

<comment><USER52> Most I believe use all words within a given Levenshtein distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is an unintentional by-product of shipping so quickly. As Amazon moves to quicker and quicker shipping policies, it means that errors like this can't be reversed in time.

I would imagine that Amazon could threaten to close the customer's account if they refused to return the camera equipment but that might be a bit extreme and might be very bad press.

<comment><USER54> You'd think they'd add a fail-safe into their systems just in case for these circumstances.

eg.

* If SalePrice < (0.25 x CostPrice) - Delay Order

* If (CostPrice - SalesPrice) > $500 - Delay Order

<comment><USER2> Obligatory Boeing edition:

* If trim adjust > 2.5deg { deactivate mcas }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hm, seems this post would have been more actionable a couple days ago :-)

<comment><USER34> The deal (price mistake?) was only available for like 1 hr around 10 or 11 pm PST Monday night...but enough time for hundreds of mistaken orders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Some think this is a marketing gimmick. I don't:

1\. They would not be able to resist making the price a cute number, like Prime day's date, eg $7.16

2\. They would later claim intentionality to not seem incompetent.

3\. If they stuck to a product category, they would pick a category of mainstream or sympathetic appeal. Eg: pool toys for summer fun, back to school items, gaming pc or kids clothes.

4\. They would bake in stop loss prevention. IE putting a per account quantity cap in place, and a global quantity cap.

I'm kind of surprised at many people thinking it was intentional— it's a good use of imagination but going a bit deeper the execution does not fit with any imaginary world I can envision.

</comment><comment><USER56> Amazon can eat that loss without batting an eye. If it's resellers, etc, I'm not sure how the situation would be remedied. I think cancelling the orders would be fair, because some small camera shop can't be expected to eat the same losses as the #2 multinational retailer. While I wish I had gotten one of those cameras, as 10kUSD would completely change my life, I can understand both sides I think...

If it was Amazon it would be the best PR for the next prime day you could think of. People will be scouring the site for these kind of deals next year.

</comment><comment><USER57> What nobody is touching on here is that there are UPP/MAP restrictions on many items from different manufacturers. You'll see notice this in action when you see a price that's obfuscated behind some magical "add to cart" wall.

Regardless of the PR value here (which is worth more than this stunt IMO) I'm going to bet there are going to be more than a few MFRs whipping out their contracts for some type of damages here based on those ULP/MAP guidelines. The cost here is going to be much more than the gross loss on the items individually.

</comment><comment><USER58> What if this was done on purpose to increase hype for the next Prime Day? They'll probably cancel the orders anyways, and there will some people who will visit Amazon on prime day hoping to score a ridiculous deal, only to settle on buying some random shit.

<comment><USER59> The guys shows a picture of him getting the gear down at the bottom of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Leaving aside the question of right or wrong, I have always thought that the pride people take when they "beat" a large corporation is one of the most fundamentally American things there is.

How many times has someone given you a tip on what lie to tell to a customer service agent to get what you want? How many websites are there devoted to jumping on airline ticket pricing errors? How many times can you think of someone telling you their insurance paid out more than their loss was worth?

In some circles this even extends into taxes. People brag about how they minimize their tax burden even though that means the person you're bragging to will be the one receiving less govt. services. We have a president now who brags about not paying much in taxes, even though his current job would be meaningless without them!

I think in a purely capitalistic society, this is all rational behavior. But it's also the reason we have such antagonistic relationships with corporations. Both sides look to screw each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This is the internet so I am sure I will be told which side is right, but that's really not what I am getting at. I just find the dynamic so interesting.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yeah, it's Amazon losing money.. Big deal. However it does make me wonder the same people that jump on these kind of deals and justify it (rightly or wrongly) would do it to a much smaller company or even a person that's selling something.

</comment><comment><USER62> Taking advantage of this "deal" is obviously morally untenable if you stop and think about it. Rather than posing the hypothetical of flipping it around between vendor and customer (i.e., "Would you be OK with it if Amazon charged you more?"), consider the case where it was a local mom and pop camera shop that made this mistake on its website. Then you would probably feel terrible about exploiting this and would be fine with the company requesting the merchandise be returned, say with a $100 store credit.

Now ask yourself why this scenario is really different from the store being Amazon from a moral standpoint. If you're being intellectually honest with yourself, you will conclude that it's the same reasoning that would support the idea that it's OK to steal from people as long as they are very rich and won't miss the money.

</comment><comment><USER63> This happens a lot with HDDs and SSDs. At least once per month I get a notification about disks being really cheap. Looks like sellers make mistakes and put wrong numbers to quantity/price boxes. Most often orders are cancelled.

</comment><comment><USER64> The customer is always right. Doubt Amazon will do anything about the customers that already received their merchandise. Hard learned lesson for Amazon and probably sucks to be the engineers dealing with the postmortem.

</comment><comment><USER65> If I saw cheap photo equipment on Amazon, I'd assume it was some knockoff. It might be good, or not. I mean, really, how much does it cost to make a camera back? It's simpler than a smartphone.

<comment><USER66> I believe they were being sold from the official Sony storefront.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> A part of me wonders if this is a calculated marketing move for next years prime day. "Hey remember last year when $13k cameras were priced for $100? Lets see if that happens this year!"

</comment><comment><USER68> I recently "got" free echos from Amazon pricing error only to see the orders get cancelled and a single echo shipped at the normal prime day pricing though that was not what I agreed to.

<comment><USER69> I got a couple of those as well but that's in a different ballpark then this goof up. Plus those were Amazons products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The markup on this gear is probably insane, it has a limited shelf life, if I told Amazon they could get this many column inches of good will for a few 100k they'd jump on it :)

</comment><comment><USER71> Unfortunately this happened in US, while in EU the price was correct

</comment><comment><USER72> Is there even any evidence that this was an accident? From what I've seen, there is no evidence that this wasn't on purpose despite everyone stating it was surely an accident.

</comment><comment><USER73> This bug probably cost Amazon far far far less than last year's prime day outage.

Also, it got them free press coverage. This could have totally been intentional.

</comment><comment><USER74> It's a marketing gimmick: lose a bit from a few products to ensure crowds looking for the same "mistakes" on next Prime Day.

</comment><comment><USER75> I got a $20 credit/gift card for a canceled HD purchase that was priced wrong... maybe you will get a $200 credit in this case?

</comment><comment><USER76> Ughh. That's the newest version of my pseudo broken camera and the tele lens I've wanted forever.

</comment><comment><USER77> Retail arbitrage at its finest!

Even the big players make mistakes that are completely avoidable with proper oversight

Love this so much <3

</comment><comment><USER78> How much do you want to bet that Amazon sacrifices small-volume margin losses for ridiculous press ROI?

</comment><comment><USER79> To me this is a really cool marketing stunt to bring even more people to Amazon prime.

</comment><comment><USER80> Knowing something about Amazon, some team is going to miss a few nights of sleep.

</comment><comment><USER81> "Amazon Prime Day gets global marketing campaign for less than $200k"

</comment><comment><USER82> Aww, I wish I'd gotten in on that, could really use that sigma thing ^_^

</comment><comment><USER83> I'd make an order and immediately ask Amazon if I can keep it or if it was an error.

Why? How come can I know for sure this is an error and not, say, a marketing strategy to show up for free on big news outlets?

Free publicity for the company and a free expensive product for me. They would be just using me to earn some publicity space, and I would be compensated a lot by it. Being a libertarian, I don't see any problem with this free trade.

Except, it was probably a huge mess on their pricing system. As this might be the case, if they wanted to cancel my order, I wouldn't complain at all.

What about if it was an error that turned out to be great for them because it drove more access to the camera area and they sold twice what they expected, and they admit it? I'd still be interested in returning the camera because I don't want to take advantage of an error, but I'd ask nicely if I can keep it and make it clear I have no intention to fight or complain if they said 'no'.

</comment><comment><USER84> Wow, and I thought I had it good with the HP fire sale years back.

<comment><USER85> or the great Walmart "sale" of 2013 where everything was ~$9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Didn't get on this, but reminds me of when Amazon didnt collect sales tax for states they didn't operate in. Was able to save about $300 on a stereo purchase because of that back in the day...

</comment><comment><USER87> Dam. Wish I had noticed! Been on the hunt for a 70-300

<comment><USER38> The Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM was worth every penny. I've had it for 10 years now and it is still wonderful.

<comment><USER88> If your pictures are the sunny outdoors and not indoors, a long slow lens is almost certainly a better value than the typical 75-200 2.8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Thats brilliant marketing (intentional or not), because in my mind prime day is amazon selling of their crap. The last years there was not a single item I was interested in.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is great for Amazon publicity wise.

<comment><USER91> This is what I'm thinking. Take a small (for Amazon) that will be dwarfed by people who sign up for or renew Prime memberships hoping to luck out on a similar deal in the future.

<comment><USER92> according to random people in the slickdeals thread the loss was $16 million

<comment><USER48> Companies pay a whopping $5 million to run a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl....

This super sale (if everyone gets what they ordered) will have much deeper impact than a 30 second commercial.

Believe next year, millions more people wil be looking for deals on amazon on prime day....

Well executed "price mistake" ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oof! Someone's losing their job.

</comment><comment><USER93> Good promo!

</comment><comment><USER94> email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER95> What?

</comment><comment><USER96> Or it's a cheap PR stunt.

</comment><comment><USER97> It doesn't matter. They will simply cancel the order citing some TOS. (Source. Used to work at Walmart)

</comment><comment><USER98> Maybe an intentional amazon move to take some losses but destroy B&H's hold on high end photography

</comment><comment><USER99> What are the guesses as to how this happened? At the risk of sounding conspiratorial I propose that sometimes these "accidents" are less accidental than they claim. So much hype over this has got to be worth something.

<comment><USER48> this was no accident. their pricing mechanisms are top notch. this is a marketing move!</comment></comment>


An inside look at how Heroku handles downtime - <AUTHOR> http://webpulp.tv/post/5836248693/an-inside-look-at-how-heroku-handles-downtime-with-mark <comment><USER2> Nice, thanks for sharing this man. I really enjoyed having Mark on to share all his devops knowledge!

</comment><comment><USER3> +1</comment>


Pro-Trump CEO gets booted from Y Combinator over harassment concerns - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-from-y-combinator/ <comment><USER2> Without a doubt he was goaded for sure. But unfortunately he took the bait, and lost his cool. He is speaking his mind, but in a debate in a public setting like this you have lost when you start cursing.

The condescension from the left is very evident:

> trying to engage you as civily as we can

> a few of us have given you the courtesy of trying to engage with you

Like you are some kind of "other". The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

I've received similar comments during Trump debates on HN.

I always assumed the HN community and entrepreneurs would stick to logical debate without the need to resort to ad-hominem attacks, but I was deeply wrong.

I think entrepreneurs are very susceptible to thinking with their emotions rather than their brains, as it is necessary to sell a vision to investors and employees, ignore the risks, and take on the seemingly impossible.

Think - Steve Job's reality distortion field.</comment>


Microsoft releases code to enable training BERT at large scale on commodity GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-makes-it-easier-to-build-popular-language-representation-model-bert-at-large-scale/ <comment><USER2> The actual code is in this repo: [https://github.com/microsoft/AzureML- BERT](https://github.com/microsoft/AzureML-BERT)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I work at Microsoft/Azure on ML

Really excited to announce the release of the code we use to train/fine-tune BERT at Azure & Bing. Please let me know if you have any questions!

</comment><comment><USER3> seems like the scripts have a dependency on pytorch_pretrained_bert library. Is there a way to run the dataprep/create_pretraining.py or train.py scripts on-premise?

<comment><USER4> The recipes are optimized for AzureML but the implementation can be adapted to any cluster. --aagarg [MSFT]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you have any questions, please let us know. maxluk [MSFT]</comment>


Eric Rosenfeld Talking LTCM, Ten Years Later - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/04/eric_rosenfeld.html

<comment><USER2> Great presentation, true information, excellent complement to "When Genius Failed", well worth the 90 minutes run time.</comment>


My Unpopular Career Advice for Today's College Graduates - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2018/05/21/advice-for-graduates/#5a32acf600cd <comment><USER2> _Sometimes the most effective way to get the attention of influential people is by selling your willingness of wanting to learn from them at any cost, even if that means working for free or for very little money._

Nope. Giving terrible advice, couching it in "my unpopular opinion", then backpedaling through "maybe this could work for you, who knows" is lazy writing and lazier thinking.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate why this is terrible advice?

I have two real-world examples where this notion played out spectacularly:

\- An ex-gf took an unpaid internship at the main museum here in San Diego with minimal job prospects upon graduating from USCD with a BA in history. 6 months later she took a full-time position at that museum, beating out someone with a MFA from Stanford simply because she was exposed to so many influential people in the industry who vouched for her. A year after that shee was promoted to managing their event planning dept.

\- I transitioned from C# to Rails work by doing a pro-bono project for 4 months @ ~20hrs/week, the main condition was that they paid for a Sr. dev for mentorship. My mentor on that project continued to bring me work following that project, so much so that I quit my day job.

Value can be many things. Money is just one of them.

<comment><USER4> Oh hey, a great opportunity for a counterexample!

My wife got a Bachelor's from UCLA, then a Master's in Museum Studies from University College, London. She then worked for free (it was called "interning" \- which is kind of crazy for someone with a master's) at the San Diego Air and Space Museum (some kinda weird folks there...), and the USS Midway. She gave up weekends and time she could have spent earning an income. It amounted to nothing, though she did get a neat volunteer dinner from the Air and Space Museum. Now she has a normal job in a normal office because she has to pay off the debts from school and can't afford to work for free.

Anyway, your anecdote is valid, but so is mine.

<comment><USER5> A master's in _museum studies_? Why? Why in the world would you pay for that? What could the study of that possible produce?

<comment><USER4> Apparently, when your ex-husband whom you started dating at 17 is an abusive asshole who says you're an idiot, your interests are stupid, and you'll never amount to anything, you may, upon divorce, feel a strong sense of internal motivation to do all that stuff you always wanted to do, and make decisions not based purely on financial rationality.

Also, I totally understand the whole "why in the world would you pay for that" but if you work in tech you're in a fairly privileged position. The thing I desperately wanted to do most of my life happens to pay well. Somebody else desperately wanted to work in museums/heritage/archaeology and share knowledge. And museums do good work - one of the projects she worked on was repatriating artifacts stolen from Native American graves in the early 20th century. Since the thieves generally didn't take good notes, it could require a lot of time, effort, and knowledge to determine an artifact's provenience. That was more related to her undergrad studies - the graduate degree was more about a mix of preservation, conservation, etc.

I'm not sure it's worse than making some F2P game or Tinder for dogs. But it's definitely less profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would make a slightly different point:

The best way to earn is to find people who are willing to trade with you in a way that is fair for both of you.

For example, I've worked (as in full time paid) for companies where I was told "Do X and we will pay you $Y". Upon completion of X, there was no $Y. This is an example of unfair trading aka not keeping up their end of the deal.

I've also worked, for very little or no pay, and done even better work and the people/companies I worked for did exactly what they said they were going to do.

Everyone has a different value space. If you are young and your time is cheap and you have lots of energy, find someone who needs that and is willing to trade you (ideally explicitly) for that in return for whatever you desire. That could be money, status, knowledge, experience etc

</comment><comment><USER7> I dont think the idea of doing free work in order to learn and acquire knowledge and skills is that unpopular or controversial.

At least I myself did that when I was in university. I got into open source community and started contributing to the Haxe programming language. I ported some libraries from another languages and contributed some unit tests and CI configs (Travis, AppVeyor, SauceLabs) to the Haxe repo. Since I become a frequent contributor, the core developers are much more willing to teach and answer my questions on not just Haxe but coding knowledge in general.

After I graduated I was employed by the Haxe Foundation and that was my first fulltime paid job.

<comment><USER8> I had to turn to such when my specialty was replaced by The Web. I boned up on Web tech, but had no practical Web experience to put on my resume. The only way I found to get practical experience was to do projects for free, in exchange for references. It was _survival_ for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Weird that his "unpopular" advice that sounds exactly like every other advice article...

<comment><USER10> Good advice, even if it's common knowledge, is usually unpopular, because people want quick fixes, advice that does not require any effort on their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh. IMHO, the problem with 'learn, earn, return' is that the peak earning years are towards the age of retirement.

If by 'return' the author means in some partial way (not full time), then I can maybe see it. But if he means full-time giving back in your retirement, I don't think that fits my plans. I plan on some relaxation.</comment>


Apple and Google tied for web ad impressions. - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/14/google_android_stalls_remains_tied_with_apples_ios_in_ad_impressions.html

<comment><USER2> The title is very misleading.

The tie is for number impressions served to iOS versus android devices.

Not the total web ad impressions, nor even ads served on the respective platforms, since Google is serving a significant number of ads on iOS.</comment>


Tell HN: Four (hopefully) unique and useful start-up tips - <AUTHOR>

I've read a lot of posts here on HN about start-up tips and advice. Many are good, but some are too vague to be actionable. Others, while useful, sometimes repeat common themes.
I run a start-up that is relatively successful. I am a long time lurker on HN, and wanted to give back to the community. I don't have a personal blog, and HN is the primary audience I want to share this with, so apologies in advance for the formatting.
Although they might sound similar to other posts, hopefully these tips will be unique enough for someone to find useful. I know that they've been worthwhile for me.
== 1. Learn to say "no" gracefully == A lot of tips stress the importance of saying "no", turning down projects that you can't do, and focusing on your core competencies. This is all great advice. However, in my experience, saying no is not always an easy task. Often times, you'll be saying "no" to an existing partner, or someone with whom you might want to develop a business relationship in the future. It's important to learn how to say "no" gracefully, burning no bridges in the process. By all means, be clear in your response, but don't be a jerk about it, and leave the option open for future discussion at a time of your choosing.
Most online industries have relatively small social circles, and it's important to be respectful, even if you can't possibly understand why you might want something that another person is offering. Situations and circumstances change; you might need those connections in the future.
== 2. Negotiate everything == Get in the habit of negotiating everything. "You don't ask, you don't get". Remember that phrase and repeat it to yourself. Revenue shares, commissions, server costs, bandwidth costs, CDN costs, software costs, marketing costs, conference ticket prices and contracts are all negotiable.  At first you might feel weird asking for a discount, but pretty soon you get used to it, and it will become natural. Contrary to what you might assume, most people won't find your request offensive, and you wont sound like a jerk. You don't ask, you don't get.
You'll find it changes your life, not just your business. I negotiate everything now, and it's probably saved me thousands of dollars this year alone, all for a few minutes of work. Car repairs, hotel prices, restaurant reservation times, and most recently an engagement ring from a high end jeweler that supposedly "didn't negotiate" ;) Remember: you don't ask, you don't get.
== 3. Don't obsess over stats == If you run an online business, it is easy to get caught up in the habit of checking your stats repeatedly throughout the day. Maybe you check your revenue reports every hour. You know how it's "supposed" to look at 11AM on a Friday, and if it isn't hitting your past targets you get discouraged and distracted, searching for a reason. Maybe your traffic is slightly down from what it was a week ago.
The problem with this is three-fold. First, it's a huge distraction. It takes your attention away from other tasks you could be doing. It distracts your focus from long term, strategic thinking. Second, day to day (or even hour to hour) data is unreliable and unpredictable. There are seasonal trends. There are 500 other factors outside your control.  Third, it accomplishes nothing. Checking your stats isn't going to change them.
Start checking your stats only once a day, at most. That way, you'll be alerted to any potentially significant changes (i.e. your ecommerce engine is down), but still be able to keep focused on your daily tasks and the big picture, which is going to make more of a difference in the long run.
== 4. Make money == Ok, so this one is pretty obvious. But it's shocking how often it is ignored. There are plenty of reasons to justify starting a business. Maybe you want to work for yourself, maybe you like the challenge, or maybe you really want to change the world. But it won't matter if you aren't making any money. Trust me.
A lot of times you will be faced with hard choices. Should I put this ad up here? Will this feature make my app/site look too commercial? Should I charge? If you don't have a proven business model, you need to make figuring it out your NUMBER ONE priority.
If you're only getting 1,000 visitors a day, it might seem hard to justify putting up an ad to get what might seem like chump change. But, by doing so, you'll understand where your money is coming from, and what kind of traffic levels it will take to get you to where you really want to go. Most importantly, you might find that your business model doesn't really scale, and it will force you to think of a new one. Better now than later. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise, or you'll just be delaying the inevitable. <comment><USER2> I, too, negotiate everything. You would be surprised at how much wiggle room there is at a national retailer like Best Buy for big-ticket items.

Here are some ground rules and the steps I use to haggle: Haggling works better if you can pay in cash. Know how much you are willing to spend and do not exceed it! Never, ever reveal to the salesperson how much you are willing to spend.

1\. Express a casual and not too focused interest in the item (HDTV is a perfect example).

2\. Show that you understand the product and are in the market for a new television.

3\. Mention how the store's competitors and the internet are making it easier to price compare.

4\. Ask if there are any specials on your particular model (are they throwing in a Blu-ray player? Free DVDs? Sales price that doesn't go into effect until the weekend?).

5\. Let the salesperson know that the currently advertised price is more than your are willing to spend and ask him/her if there is anything they can do to bring the price down. If they ask what you price you would like to see then give them a number below your predefined maximum spending limit. It's up to you to gauge how much lower, and you will find that after time this number gets to be farther and farther from your max limit the comfortable you get at negotiating.

6\. Make the deal at this price, or continue to haggle until you've crossed your limit and are ready to leave.

7\. If you don't make the deal, you have four options:

      You can go back tomorrow and try with a different sales person

      You can head to a different store and try again.

      You can raise your max spending limit (not recommended).

      You can decide that you really didn't need the product anyway.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER3> Internet prices and retail is actually something I have been thinking about recently. Someone, please help me with the economics.

What if a retail store offered great advice and let you order online so you get the best Internet price?

One reason why I almost never visit a retail store anymore is because the best deal is always online.

So rather than take it as a challenge for retail, embrace it. Can one build a retail business that relies on ordering stuff from the cheapest online retailers?

I can think of the obvious reasons why not. But if you think creatively, wouldn't that make sense? Even the cheapest online retailers offer some kind of referral compensation. There may be other ways to make money than making a profit on the big ticket item that your visitor came in to order...

<comment><USER4> Amazon affiliate revenues go up to 9%. I'm sure you could negotiate something similar with other providers.

Possibly you could offer people an guided Internet shopping experience in the mall - people come in and, with the help of an 'Internet shopping expert', buy things at Internet prices for later delivery. As you suggest you could monetize by collecting the affiliate commission.

If running a kiosk in a small mall cost you $20,000 a month (?) you would need to persuade people to buy ~1,000 $200 TVs a month.

The biggest barrier I can see would be overcoming the hostility from the other stores who would be really keen to kick you out once they spotted what you were doing. Because they occupy more square feet I'm sure mall management would oblige.

<comment><USER3> _The biggest barrier I can see would be overcoming the hostility from the other stores_

If that's the only problem, you could just open your retail store outside a mall, where no one can bother you.

Think El Camino in Silicon Valley. If you have the best value (unbeatable price and good service), you should have a winner, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Start checking your stats only once a day, at most.
      That way, you'll be alerted to any potentially significant
      changes (i.e. your ecommerce engine is down)

I agree with this advice, however I would sincerely hope that it doesn't take reviewing your stats at the end of the day to notice that your ecommerce engine is down! Monitoring should be in place to achieve this.

<comment><USER6> True story I heard from some Amazon engineers.

Amazon doesn't (directly) monitor whether their servers are up. They just look at the revenue graph in real-time, and if there's a noticeable dip, something's wrong.

<comment><USER7> Right, although they don't have to manually look at this -- they have many sophisticated monitors in place that immediately notify engineers if things are not in normal ranges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> == 2. Negotiate everything ==

I've found this to be a very much cultural thing. Bargaining / haggling is quite common in Asian cultures. Since I'm originally from India, I initially was surprised to find that haggling is not an acceptable thing in the american society.

That hasnt stopped me from my efforts at haggling one bit.

My latest conquest - a free shield and case for my iphone when bestbuy made me wait for about 45 minutes to get a new connection. Even before starting with the process, I made it clear that I want freebies thrown in - else,I'll simply take my business elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> Heh, I can imagine that it must have been a shock! I've been traveling through India for the last few months and at first I had a really hard time haggling.

Westerners feel guilty and have all kinds of emotions fixed to this process, while it's commonplace in India. I think Indians have a big advantage in that aspect.

BTW: I love your country and GJ on the shield case :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definite resonates! What's your startup?

      If you don't have a proven business model,
      you need to make figuring it out your NUMBER ONE priority.

Amen!

Naturally this will bring up facebook, google etc. who may not have focused on business model for a while. Like Steve Blank said in one of his talks, if you think you've a google/facebook on your hand, ignore every rule and good luck:)

<comment><USER11> Google is an exception.

Facebook is possibly in the same group (I'm still not convinced).

You should not model your practices after outliers, since by definition it is most likely that their experiences will be nothing like yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome. I'd love a small conversation thread about how to find openings to negotiate things; I'm getting adequate at negotiating when negotiation is expected (like in professional services), but I suck everywhere else.

<comment><USER13> Negotiate everything - Agreed. Would the OP have any tips on how one would know how to approach this? Pointers to books/articles welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of it just takes experience and practice. There are a few good books available. "The Knack" by Norm Brodsky is very good, and the source of the "You don't ask, you don't get quote". The chapter on negotiation is small, but the rest of the book contains tons of invaluable insight.

Many books stress formulating a "win-win" situation, and "expanding the pie" so that "everybody wins". This is good in theory, but rare in practice. In almost every negotiation someone will have the upper hand.

I think the best approach is to listen carefully and try to understand the other party's _need_. This may not necessarily be more money. Maybe they want to build a long term relationship. Maybe they are willing to lower the price if you pay upfront, or provide a larger deposit, because they prefer the cashflow now. Maybe business is slow. You never know.

You also need to know your best alternative. If you have options, it is easy to walk away from the deal. If you are informed, you will know the true market price. You can't be afraid to walk away. I think it just takes time and practice to develop this mentality, and the opposing side can typically sense if you're serious about it or not.

A strategy that has worked well for me is to just say something like "I really like your product/service, and would love to start using it, but the price is a bit out of my range. Is there any way you can give me a discount?". It doesn't work for everything, but I've been surprised how often it does work. The worst thing that happens is that they say no. Remember, you have to ask!

<comment><USER12> Strong second recommendation on "The Knack", even though I didn't get much negotiating help out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want this on the web, email me and I'll put it up. I've temporarily put up a version that you can download, edit and email back to me if you like. You can find it at www.penzba.co.uk (slash) StartupAdvice (dot) html

I won't put anything else on it, I'm not looking for traffic, I've just got a parking space if you want it. I'm sure others could make similar offers in case you're interested.

If I don't hear from you in a few days I'll remove it - the above is obfuscated to avoid having links to something that might disappear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, as long as you keep the page ad and link free, I would certainly appreciate the offer to have it hosted. I want the content to speak for itself. Maybe you can just add a small "credit" link at the bottom to my HN profile. Cheers --

<comment><USER14> Added the link. Do feel free to download it and email me an updated or enhanced version. We'll have to do a dance to make sure it's you for real, but that's easy enough.

If you don't want to change it, that's fine and we'll just link to it from here so Google can find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for adding it. I don't think I want to change anything, but if I do I'll contact you at the email address you have listed.

<comment><USER14> Cool. Here's a link for Google to find ...

<http://www.penzba.co.uk/StartupAdvice.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the key disciplines with stats, which is unfortunately not helped by the default configuration of most popular tools (looking at YOU Google Analytics), is that it either drives decisions or it is useless. If you are checking stats more frequently than you're making decisions based on them, you're wasting time.

Spend an hour and condense the stuff you absolutely need into a dashboard, and schedule time to do any drill down or reporting you need to do on a regular basis. Then, ignore the flowing river of noise your tools would otherwise distract you with.

P.S. If you find yourself rationalizing a once-an-hour check as a sanity test, either put it in a dashboard that you can check out of the corner of your eye while doing productive work, or reduce your heuristic to code and then fire it on a cron job. The computer's time is cheap. Yours is not.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great advice. I'd rephrase #3 as "Obsess over having stats, not checking stats"</comment>


Google: Unicode conquers ASCII on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9936329-39.html?tag=blog.1 <comment><USER2> _One disadvantage Unicode has over ASCII, though, is that it takes at least twice as much memory to store a Roman alphabet character because Unicode uses more bytes to enumerate its vastly larger range of alphabetic symbols._

LIES. A decent (though brief) article about increasing Unicode use on the web, and then they write this in their last paragraph. They even _mention_ UTF-8!

Here's the original source of the data:

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/moving-to- unicode-51....](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/moving-to- unicode-51.html)

<comment><USER3> Clarification on parent: One of the best parts about UTF-8 is that ASCII text is also valid UTF-8-encoded text.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I kind of assumed that the HN crowd would know this. (judging by the comments - maybe the silent, lurking masses don't, I don't know) I've read a few too many articles with glaring mistakes today.

If you're reading this, are even vaguely technically inclined and don't know what we're talking about, please read

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8>

<comment><USER4> The fact that this is so often gotten wrong by very smart people (in my experience) that I think we should consider it a design defect.

<comment><USER4> To be clear: Unicode v.s. specific encoding terminology is my gripe. The 'UTF-8 is ascii at the bottom' is quite cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> is all wrong!</comment>


Ask HN: Explain AWS - <AUTHOR>

Ok, so I might be completely missing something here, but bear with me.  I want to use AWS to build my service.  But I am a bit perplexed when it comes to storage.  If I have MySQL running where do the database files get stored?  Does each EC2 instance come with a certain amount of storage?  Would be glad if someone explained this for me :) <comment><USER2> Every EC2 instance has about 150GB of transient disk space. It works like a regular disk but once you shutdown the instance (or in the rare event the instance fails) the disk is gone forever. To solve this problem, Amazon provides EBS volumes ("elastic block storage"). These are like raw disks that you can create on the fly. You create one, attach it to your instances, give it a filesystem, and then mount it.

You can run MySQL off of the transient disk ("/mnt") but you should consider running it off of an EBS volume. One reason is because you won't lose the disk if something happens to the instance. Another is that you can use the snapshots feature to create instant backups of your database. Later on you can create new EBS volumes from a snapshot (which is really cool for building a stage environment with production data).

This may sound a bit complicated when you're just starting out. It was for me anyway so after working with AWS for a couple years I started working on a development and deployment tool for EC2. The configuration is entirely via a Ruby DSL.

You define the properties of your environments and roles with the machines DSL (including EBS volumes) and you script your repeatable processes (like deployments) with the routines DSL:

<http://github.com/solutious/rudy/blob/0.7/Rudyfile>

If Python is more your style, there's boto: <http://code.google.com/p/boto/>

<comment><USER3> I've found it easier to think of an EC2 image's 150GB of 'disk' as RAM, and Elastic Block as an actual hard drive. EC2's disk is there when it's powered on, but when you turn it off, all data disappears. Elastic block is really EC2's hard drive.

Two issues that burned me a couple of months ago with EC2 and Elastic Block:

I built my server and got it running just right. I then wanted to back it up, so I bundled it (save your instance to S3) but forgot to register it(list your S3 bundle as a privately available AMI). When I terminated my instance I wasn't able to restart it, because it wasn't available in my list of registered AMI's. I had to rebuild my server from scratch.

The second problem that I had was in rebuilding my database after my instance terminated. Postgres keeps the log files (transactions the database has completed) in the install folder and the data file(what the database has stored) in the storage folder. When I terminated my instance, I lost all the log files that were stored on the EC2 'disk'. I had the data file on elastic block, but the log files were gone. The standard recovery process for postgres needs log files.

It took me a day to figure out how to rebuild the database from just the data files. I now have both the database and the log files on my elastic block image. Hopefully that will help the next time I kill my server. :) I also now have automated backups of everything.

<comment><USER2> Ya, getting burned by EC2 is a rite of passage. I learned my lesson with Amazon's API tools. Dealing with IDs is cumbersome and dangerous when it comes to production instances. Automation is a necessity.

How are you running your automated backups? Have you automated deployment too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Each EC2 instance is a virtual, private server which looks just like any other linux box. However, files on disk are part of shared drives and are not guaranteed to persist. You have three choices : attach and pay for an elastic block store that IS persistent, make periodic backups to S3 or forgo the use of the disk altogether and use SimpleDB instead of mySQL. I'd recommend using an elastic block store.

<comment><USER5> I'll back this up with the addendum that SimpleDB has useful applications where using it might be a better choice than MySQL (e.g. a service that gets lots of reads but real-time updates isn't necessarily mission critical)

<comment><USER4> I think it's also interesting to note that once you do a cluster, you have a distributed system and instantaneous writes are no longer a cheap operation... Plus how many operations do you need to access full data in your database? For simple one off access, you could propagate the changes into ram on each of your cluster machines (memcached) and only relatively "unimportant" search operations would see stale data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Each EC2 instance comes with a certain amount of transient storage. It is transient because it does not persist beyond instance termination. Amazon also has persistent storage for your EC2 instances called Elastic Block Store. EBS volumes will persist beyond instance termination and can be attached to any running instance (but only one at once) within the same availability zone.

If you're running MySQL on EC2, it's pretty straightforward. You get an EBS volume for your database and back that volume up to Amazon's S3 service. S3 will then provide multi-site redundancy for your data in the event of AWS availability zone failure.

</comment><comment><USER7> Others mostly answered your question, but if you like to run MySQL on Elastic Block Store (EBS), you should read the following article:

[http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?ex...](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1663)

If you take the approach described in the above article, you should think about creating a symbolic link to your EBS volume instead of changing MySQL configuration file.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you haven't done so already, check out RightScale (www.rightscale.com). They offer a dashboard that helps users access AWS.

<comment><USER9> Or you can just use Amazon's console.

<https://console.aws.amazon.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used Engine Yard Solo for working with AWS. It's great service and really easy to get started with Rails app on EC2. You've got to wrap your head around how EC2 works but I really love the ability to start up a brand new server on the fly and do whatever I need to do, and then shut it down.

</comment><comment><USER11> a. Unless you like throwing money out the window, there is no need to host your stuff on AWS. It's the most expensive of the cloud offerings. Go with Linode or Slicehost.

b. You'll have to use EBS if you want persistent disk storage with an AWS instance. Otherwise when you reboot, goodbye to everything on your harddisk.

But, seriously, reconsider your aims of putting up a 24/7 web hosted up on EC2. You're wasting money.

<comment><USER2> You can do things with EC2 you can't do anywhere else.

I've helped companies build deployment processes with EC2 that allows them to launch a staging environment with a single command that includes a complete copy of production data. They run their tests, then cut a release and shutdown the staging environment with another single command. That's not possible without EC2 and EBS.

<comment><USER11> Also, you are wrong. You can do that on slicehost with their API as well.

In fact, with the slicehost api, you can take a snapshot of currently running system, and clone a new slice from that snapshot.

<comment><USER2> Can you create, attach, and take snapshots of multiple disks with Slicehost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> RightScale's paid edition has prebuilt MySQL Master-Slave configurations with or without EBS. EBS is great if your transaction volume is average, but on high IO disks it can get prohibitively expensive. The RS Manager for MySQL has failover, recovery tools as well. All you need to do is plug in your DB dump.

RightScale's Developer Edition is always free - AND - RightScale Website Edition is FREE for Ycombinator startups while you're actively engaged in the program.</comment>


Apply HN: DAYS, One exceptional product a day - <AUTHOR> DAYS is an (iOS) app that features one exceptional product in women's luxury fashion, every day.
--PROBLEM--
The problem here is that the fashion world is now moving at an unsustainable pace: with hundreds of new products released online weekly, the constant churn has left consumers and aficionados overwhelmed and unable to keep up.
--SOLUTION--
We believe that this situation has left our audience wanting for a more personal, curated experience: one that brings back the magic in fashion and adapts to your life, not the other way around.
This is where DAYS comes in: by narrowing down the best thirty products each month from thousands of new releases, we are able to present a collection of the most thoughtful, intriguing and well crafted products in fashion, all this only a tap away.
You can think of DAYS as a crossover between 1) a digital fashion "magazine", becoming part of your daily entertainment routine, and 2) a shopping edit/catalog: inspiring and influencing your next buy.
--TEAM--
You might remember us from our previous idea, Skyler, the fashion weather app, and our (failed) subsequent attempts to save it and ourselves: PepperPrank (Send your enemies pepper through the mail) and AskJemima: ask Jemima, our virtual psychic, a question for $1).
Me (Olivier) and Henrry have been working together for almost two years now (the last 6 months from two different continents) so I can confidently say that we have a really solid team: neither of us are going anywhere until we make this work. We operate like this: Henrry is our fashion editor and I design and develop the app.
We just launched our app two days ago in the App Store (iOS only for now) so you can check it out there:  https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1097827734
Ask us anything! --Olivier <comment><AUTHOR> Oh and I had to remove this extra part because of character limit so here goes:

\--MONEY--

1) Ads. Print fashion magazines are failing, digital fashion ads were up 60% in 2015. Mobile/digital is where the future of advertising is at. In addition: fashion ads are beautiful and can be as interesting as the actual content (ex: >50% of fashion magazines are ads).

2) With one product a day and a nice amount of followers, one could imagine collaborations with brands for exclusive features/releases, etc..

3) All of our features are shoppable and we have direct affiliate contracts with retailers with commissions ranging from 8-12%.

</comment><comment><USER2> My, admittedly limited, understanding of womens fashion tells me that women do not like to buy the same things as other women. At least there is a certain 'she has the same dress as me' effect. Are you doing anything to combat this? Or do you not imagine it to be a problem?

Have you done any beta testing on actual users?

I think there is an opportunity here if you make a compelling product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Tangokat,

This is an interesting question.

Having asked this ourselves before, I feel like the reason this might seem like an issue to you is because you might be approaching the problem from a "fast-fashion" point of view.

 _For context_ : The fast fashion industry (Zara, Jcrew, etc..) produces tens of thousands of the same garments, so after a quick trip to H&M, you might walk out and spot someone else on the street wearing the exact same thing you just bought. But in the luxury world, pieces are purposefully limited to create demand and keep an aura of exclusivity.

So first off, keep in mind that these are the kinds of products that we feature.

Second, this app is like a luxury ad in a print magazine in the sense that everyone can see the product, and aspire to get it, but not everyone can afford it. 1) Off the bat, that limits the potential "same as me" issue to those very few who can afford it. 2) And for that group, this is not even an issue because the products we feature are "IT" pieces, that every girl is trying to find and buy _BECAUSE_ it is it the "IT" piece.

And finally, we are positioning ourselves first and foremost as an entertainment and discovery experience, rather than a pure shopping platform. We want to showcase and celebrate these products beyond their price-tag (which we don't feature) as the works of art that they are and in that sense, become the daily platform of fashion inspiration: think Vogue in the digital age.

As for the beta testing, we just launched but we are already seeing a nice amount of sharing on our products, with some users even sharing two to three days back to back, so pretty good engagement so far!</comment></comment>


I Want a New Data Store (for Craigslist) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zawodny.com/2010/04/27/i-want-a-new-data-store/ <comment><USER2> GenieDB <http://www.geniedb.com> is an interesting possibility for these kinds of migrations. It allows you to use NoSQL type stores with a MySQL interface, using SQL and even doing JOINs between MySQL and NoSQL tables. The idea is you can gradually adjust your application over time without a sudden transition where you have to rewrite all your database code.

(Disclosure: I'm on the advisory board.)

<comment><USER3> Hmm... Very interesting idea, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> whoa

 _ALTER TABLE takes an unreasonably long time [...] Changes take over a month._

How about a RAID of SSD ? Or a Fusion-IO ioDrive?

Shouldn't they be an order of magnitude faster?

I'd love to see a benchmark comparison of a large db with SSD vs conventional (can't find one).

added: here's an old benchmark with an older slower SSD that is faster than RAID10 <http://www.bigdbahead.com/?p=68> and an update with more details (and faster) here <http://www.bigdbahead.com/?p=557>

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. Fusion-io removes the io bottleneck but ALTER TABLE is still single threaded. So you're looking at a CPU bottleneck where only 1 core can be used.

We just did a lot of ALTER TABLE work on one of our clusters WITH fusion-io drives (2 in a RAID-0) for a 360GB table and it still took ~8 hours to finish.

<comment><USER4> So what was the CPU on that bottleneck, out of curiosity?

If single core is the problem, throw a massive clock rate at it?

The i5-680 is out this month and is 3.6ghz native ("turbo" near 4ghz) should do 5ghz with good air cooling (it's 32nm) and then you could use ECC memory to be certain in a mission-critical environment?

<comment><USER3> This was... lemme see. less /proc/cpuinfo

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz

So it was a pretty high-end Nehalem proc already. And, yeah, we do have ECC RAM in the box, of course. Plus InnoDB does page-level checksumming to guard against corruption too.

But still, it was ~8 hours or so. Using all 8 cores on the box would have brought it down to ~1 hour _if_ it could have been perfectly parallelized (and much of it could have been, I bet).

<comment><USER4> Ah okay, so even with the fastest clocks available today, the best you could hope for is cutting the 8 hours to 4, or one month to two weeks.

As far as the parallel cores it sounds like you already have thought about possible "end runs" around MySQL's "transaction safe" ALTER (which is probably why it's single threaded). InnoDB supposedly has a few performance improvements for ALTER over MyISAM so you are already taking advantage of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've got a few TB in couchdb-lounge (we also wrote couchdb-lounge) so we think it works. Big pluses ... it's got a RESTful API which means that we don't need a special library to access it in any language ... if you can speak http you can talk to couch. This is especially important for us because there are lots of places where we like to talk to our databases asynchronously. It's a lot easier to find an async HTTP API than it is to find a random db API.

<comment><USER3> That's a great point about async libs. Look no farther than MySQL to see how much pain it can be to get a good one in your language of choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > to influence the organization of records on disk so that the most common > queries will require very few seeks

might be revealing my lack of knowledge here but what tools/apis etc does one use when they want to work at this level? It seems like a good thing to do but I'd have no idea how to go about it. Enlightenment appreciated.

<comment><USER7> SQL has a CLUSTER command, for instance. See e.g. [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/sql- cluster.h...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/sql- cluster.html).

<comment><USER6> ahhh, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of this article on how friendfeed implemented schemaless storage on top of MySQL:

<http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql>

I always thought it was a very clever design.

<comment><USER3> Yup. It's a very interesting mix of using a subset of something very well known (MySQL) to get what you need done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know it's not NoSQL but wouldn't this be a very good candidate for RethinkDB? A few TBs of SSD is not that expensive for a major site. It also supports live schema changes and is a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

<comment><USER3> As luck would have it, I'm an advisor for RethinkDB. They're doing great work, but also aren't quite ready for prime time either. I'm very optimistic for their technology in an OLTP system, but this is not like an OLTP system at all.

</comment></comment><comment> w-ll Redis says that craigslist uses Redis. You have a link to a redis tutorial on your blog. Is this not your answer?

<comment><USER3> Redis is great for some things but is definitely not the right tool here. It's built mainly for serving up small chunks of info (or functionality) _very_ quickly. And it kicks ass at that.

This is a system that probably sees even more writes than reads, and they're batched up mostly at night anyway. The longer term _management_ of that infrastructure is a big part of the pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Riak has everything you need. It's worth a look anyway.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, a few folks have mentioned it already. And I remember seeing some good features in the video I watched about it several weeks ago...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So it is Cassandra then?</comment>


EBay Will Sell Skype: Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/ebay-will-sell-skype-report/ <comment><USER2> This whole "buying and selling" thing is clearly outside of eBay's area of expertise...

</comment><comment><USER3> Becoming a phone company was never in their best interests. VOIP has been looking for the killer app for 10 years. Unfortunately, everyone who does it winds up competing on cost.

Why? Because the telephone has had over 100 years of innovation. So every VOIP company recreates the wheel and sells it for less than the telcos or PBX companies by making it free or almost free. In the end cellphones will win out. The only thing people seem to care about VOIP for is games. The rest of the time they're just as likely to pick up a cell phone or land line.

<comment><USER4> I dunno. I like my Skype account. Good for calling home. At the office we use it to communicate with our offices in Europe.

<comment><USER3> Liking Skype and Skype being profitable on the scale neccessary to justify its acquisition price are two different venues.

The goal of skype was to empower the eBay users and drive more users to eBays core auction business. It never materialized. The probelm is that VoIP services have a tendency to try and compete by being free or near free. It's not that there is no cost associated with the technology, but that's the easiest, least creative way to pull customers.

VoIP is evolutionary not revolutionary. They treated it as something revolutionary and made a messy business acquisition that was far outside their realm of expertise.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, ebay + skype seemed silly at the time. Right now it is like $3 a month for me. Even if it was $20 - $30 I still would like it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> but arent they making money?

<comment><USER6> EBay is having trouble with their core operations. Whether Skype is profitable or not (I assume they are), since it has nothing to do with their core auctions business, EBay wants to get rid of it to focus on more important issues.

<comment><USER7> More of a situation where they know that other companies could make a lot more money with skype, so why not sell skype to them and make a bigger profit than ebay could by holding onto skype?

It's all money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was always told a company should eat it's own dogfood so to speak, so I'll look forward to bidding on skype at auction.</comment>