Don't Waste Your Twenties - <AUTHOR> http://artofmanliness.com/2013/02/04/dont-waste-your-twenties-part-1-taking-advantage-of-the-unique-powers-of-the-twentysomething-brain/ Part 2: http://artofmanliness.com/2013/02/05/dont-waste-your-20s-train-your-brain-for-lasting-success/ <comment><USER2> I hate these kinds of articles because they can put tremendous pressure on people. There isn't a "right" way to spend your twenties (or thirties, or any decade) and comparing yourself to Einstein and Newton and Kepler like this article does is worse than counterproductive. The only way you should concern yourself with living is to try to be happy every day, whatever that means to you. Listening to pundits showing you charts and graphs and science about how you're wasting your life will just invite stress and pressure.

<comment><USER3> Especially idiotic are the random references to successful people.

As if not "wasting" your 20s (whatever that means) would somehow improve your odds to become the next Einstein.

If you happen to be the next Einstein then I firmly doubt reading baseless self-improvement drivel makes a difference towards realizing or not realizing your potential.

<comment><USER4> > If you happen to be the next Einstein then I firmly doubt reading baseless > self-improvement drivel makes a difference towards realizing or not > realizing your potential.

Thanks. My quote of the day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are three of my decades thus far. I'm trying to decide which of these was "wasted" according to the article:

Phase I, 21-30: "Work hard/Play hard" mode, socking away retirement savings, building skills & reputation to prepare for Phase II, nights & weekends packed with climbing trips and going out. "I think I can get a full night sleep the weekend after next".

Phase II, 30-40: "Semi-retired nomad" mode, working short (~3mo) contracts about once a year, logging several laps around the world & entire seasons spent chilling at some of the best climbing areas anywhere. Building SaaS products from the beach to finance Phase III.

Phase III, 40-: "Comfortable family guy" mode, working remotely from a little village in the countryside south of Paris with some of the best bouldering in the world, playing with the kid in the garden, and doing "vacations" involving actually booking hotel rooms and not forcing myself to live on $15/day when on the road.

I think according to the article, I was supposed to swap out the "work for employers" part of Phase I for the "build products" part of Phase II. But I'm not sure where Phase II would have come in, had I done that. It's tough.

I guess the best a fella can do is pay attention to one's life and try to at least have a plan. Had you asked 25 year old Jason what his plan was, he would have described something remarkably similar to the above. Except that Phase III might have involved a 19 year old Swedish girl and happened in his sixties:)

<comment><USER6> Similar trajectory here. Probably a number of HN'ers in the same boat?

Phase I, 18-29. "Work, train (athletics), travel, and save money." Started working at 18. Never settled down anywhere, after 21 I started saving money. Also building contacts that will carry me into phase II.

Phase II, 29-34 (now). "Husband/father/freelancer/student/athlete/coach". Pursuing studies in Math (my passion) getting ready for Grad school (2014). Funding it with Phase I and working part-time from home. Lots of family time and staying in good shape. Keeping a consistent routine (something I never did in Phase I).

Phase III. Probably starts around 35 next year: Math PhD? Post-doc, etc. Nothing set in stone. But without Phase I in my 20s the way it was I wouldn't be in the position to do this now.

I think I was supposed to be a student first, then start a career. Not the other way around.

<comment><USER7> Clearly the lives you describe are interesting. And probably happy. Many middle-class-and-upper people strive for such a life. But these lives also seem quite photoshopped, like a packaged tour version of life. Not judging or anything, but i'm wondering if, given its utmost uniqueness, a life should be lived on a predefined plan.

<comment><USER8> You need plans (however rough) to achieve goals.

It's also quite unlikely that they summarized the entirety of their lives in ~6 sentences. Nuances and changes of plans aren't mentioned. These summaries are in retrospect. The plans are plans, and subject to change.

I think it just so happens that when you look at comfortable people's lives from 30,000 feet, they look similar. "I was young, did a bunch of fun stuff, thought about the future", then "I started a family, or got less risky", then "I know what I want to achieve next".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My advice to the kids or the weak willed reading either the article or the HN commentary is to study the wikipedia article for "survivorship bias" and think really hard about how if you're only "beginning things" in your 20s and "building things" in 30s etc then you're doing it horribly wrong. For a small fraction of people who are very lucky this is almost useful, but everyone else needs be able to handle what could negatively be described as rebuilding after disaster or positively described as lifelong learning. You shouldn't stop "beginning" until you're dead, not on your 30th birthday or whatever. Never stop "beginning".

Always be resilient... Ask any "old" person, eventually, you're gonna crash and burn even if you think you're conservative. What really separates the winners from the losers is how you react when at the bottom, not when peaking or at the top...

Another thing worth considering is living in the world, not in a plan, although goals are OK. A plan is nice, but as an engineer I assure you that physical reality follows its laws, not your plan, and you'd best get used to living in the world instead of in a plan. Not that planning as an abstract concept is always a waste of time, it just usually is. Goals are good and are not detailed plans. A goal is something like meet the ideal spouse and live happily with them. A plan has ridiculous metrics and set pointless scheduled firm dates, like meet spouse at exactly age 26, married by 28, squirt out precisely 2.1 kids by 32, etc. Plans are doomed to failure and unhappiness, goals on the other hand are OK.

Finally a really good piece of advice is broaden your horizons and question your definitions, especially if the definitions don't benefit you and come from people making a profit off you. "Kids" think the definition of socializing is staying up all night drinking until you vomit and make a fool of yourself then miss work the next day. Therefore the 20s are when you should socialize. Uh, no, you need a new definition of socialize and you should be doin it all your life not just 20s or until your liver gives out. I was ignorant too, and I survived and improved since, so don't feel bad if you have to do the same.

<comment><USER10> This sounds like really good advice, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      At Age 20: I was partying like a madman, it was awesome
      At Age 21: Graduated, seeing a great girl, making a little money, enjoying city life
      At Age 22: Still having fun, meeting and sleeping with new people
      At Age 23: Yup. Same.
      At Age 24: New girl, same awesome life
      At Age 25: Lots of international travel this year. More great friends made Fun!
      At Age 26: More of the same.

And I'm still doing financially fine (though have not ever really settled into home ownership, I'm too fond of packing everything in and moving round the world), and am building a business based on the technical experience I gained in that decade. Also now in my mid 30s I still like learning and I still enjoy risk-taking.

You'll never make me regret not taking life seriously, and channelling my awesome early-20s brain-power into socialising and enjoying myself.

tl;dr - sex, drugs and rock'n'roll

<comment><USER12> Awesome. It sounds like you had a great decade!

Do you have any pointers for us early-twentysomethings? I've just turned 23 and while I'm having fun in the city, enjoying the world of work, it doesn't sound quite as interesting as the same part of your life. How did you meet new friends, expand your social network, sleep with new people, and enjoy the metropolis? I've found the transition from university to work has made all of the above more difficult.

<comment><USER11> I guess in my case I guess had a hook, I was part of a scene (the goth scene, in case you want a laugh, though in the UK it isn't/wasn't synonymous with angry teenagers or Marilyn Manson).

Once you're on the inside of something like that then the barriers to meeting new people within the scene are significantly reduced, though obviously you're perceived to have put up barriers to everyone else to a greater or lesser extent. Also it turns out a lot of goths are software engineers...

I guess what I'm saying is if you have a thing (be it goth, learning the ukelele, mountain climbing, whatever) don't be afraid to embrace the thing, and don't let the day job take over your whole life :)

\--edit-- Also, just do stuff. Take a risk, meet people off the internet. I organised a couple of 'fark' meetups in London back then, and even have a couple of pretty good IRL friends met through some much shadier sites.

<comment><USER12> 'Just do stuff' (or, more specifically, 'take more risks') is my one resolution for 2013. I'm meeting new people through online meetups, CouchSurfing, Twitter, and just randomly chatting up strangers (a skill I'm trying to actively develop). It's a fun ride.

Thanks for the advice! If you're ever in London, let me buy you a beer.

<comment><USER13> I'm in London too. 24, with a similar resolution to get out of my comfort zone. Let's grab a pint or two.

iMessage or email: nquo at iCloud dot com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a little disappointed in the middlebrow dismissals here. Let's set aside the brain stuff and do some simple math: you're going to live anywhere from three to seven decades after you reach 30, but only one decade of adulthood before. Therefore your have the opportunity to build a foundation for your life's happiness in your 20's. Economists have this notion called the "discount rate", which is the degree to which one favors instant gratification over greater long-term returns. The younger you are, the more biased towards long-term returns you should be, largely because you have a longer long-term to enjoy them in. This principle is just as true in life as in financial investing. Likewise, as in financial investing, it's prudent to take more risks while younger since you have more time to recover from them.

Of course, we say such things to comfort ourselves now. Advice is wasted on youth.

<comment><USER11> This neglects that for many people your 20s are also when you're at your most active, most sociable and all-round most alive.

To me an over-emphasis on 'investing' during this period is the real waste.

<comment><USER14> Activity and sociability are exactly the resources you use to create your investments, by achieving real accomplishments, building your skills, and meeting the people who will become your lifelong friends. Hell, you should even have a lot of fun--having good memories and stories to tell are an investment, too. But bias yourself towards things you'll want to have done later, not just things you want to do now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lost my 20s to depression and to the aftermath of depression. I used to be grumpy about it.

However there is a thin thread of causality that leads me to the life I lead now. It's pretty good and I think it will get better.

Also: The Art of Manliness is played-out schtick.

Manhood doesn't come from reading about manhood on a website whose incentives are skewed to making you read more.

<comment><USER16> > However there is a thin thread of causality that leads me to the life I lead > now.

While I'm still early in my 20s this is what I've realized as well. I spent much of 2011 battling depression. That year sucked and I used to wish I hadn't had to go through it and that the events which led to it hadn't happened.

Then I realized if that wish came true, I wouldn't have the friends I have today, I wouldn't have had the experiences I had in 2012 and I wouldn't be where I am right now. There's no way to see that line of causality until it's said and done.

Life is strange that way.

<comment><USER17> My experience has been somewhat different. 2012 was a wholly miserable year for me and I honestly feel that it was rather pointless ordeal exacerbated by toxic relationships I lack the means to escape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I worry that I'm missing my twenties. I'm 26 now and occasionally wish I had done more.

But if you look back there are lots of things you've done. They might not be as crazy, exciting or important as some people manage. But the truth is your probably ahead of the curve; very few people achieve truly extraordinary things.

I've travelled, met amazing people, started my own business, fallen in and out of love. I could have maybe done more of all these things, but it's hard to regret them.

Don't waste any decades of your life. But also, don't think about your life experience so far as wasted. That's silly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I often think that if I could talk to myself when I was younger I would change a lot of things in my life but the truth is my younger self would not listen. By definition I made the decisions that I thought at the time were right.

If you don't have regrets you must be one of those alpha males I hear so much about.

</comment><comment><USER20> Articles like this remind me of "Spreadsheet CEOs": people who focus only on what is visible in the numbers, and not on all the little underlying things that make all that possible. Save costs by removing trash bins from every desk. Make money by focusing on the best-selling products or services only.

At the age the people mentioned in this article were busy starting businesses and winning nobel prizes, I was busy discovering my personality, improving my soft skills, getting over myself little ridiculous situations that had always made me nervous, and developing a small set of real, true friendships. Is the result measurable on my CV? Surely not. Did I spend a significant amount of time in bars or hung over? Definitely. Were my twenties wasted? I can't see how.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is no such thing as 'wasting your life'. You live every second of your life, how you live it is up to you, and to a smaller (but not always small) extent up to the circumstances around you. Every decision you make (or don't) pushes you in a direction, sort of a life vector. You can change the direction and the size of the vector, but it's yours, no matter what, and it's not a waste. Even if you live your entire life and leave not a ripple behind you, your life still has worth. Don't read articles like this and let them make you feel bad about what you think you haven't accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've spent my twenties doing graffiti on trains all around Europe and the world. It didn't make me rich or more employable but boy, what a ride!

</comment><comment><USER23> For those interested, there are two great works that go into much more detail on not just 20s, but the other decades of peoples' lives.

The Seasons of a Man's Life (<http://refer.ly/a4hO>) is the work of a few researchers. They were frustrated that most work in psychology studied childhood development in depth, but little research was done into development during your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. The research is focused entirely on guys (sorry ladies). Not surprisingly, he was able to find several phases most men go through. Several friends have found the book really helpful when they're reflecting on life.

The Up Series (<http://refer.ly/a4hN>) is a set of films, each shot every 7 years that chronicles the real lives of a dozen people from England. While it has a bit of reality TV "drama", most all of it is the real unvarnished changes that people go through as they age, including their regrets and accomplishments. It's a remarkable watch, given that you get to see people age from 7 to 56. Just as an example, I feel it prepared me ahead of time to deal with the death of my mother, and savor the time that I have with my dad who's still alive. Ultimately, we all have to face up to a lot of the same things, and it's comforting to have a bit of a map.

</comment><comment><USER24> The master advice for being happy at any age isn't even in the article: Surround yourself with interesting people; build meaningful relations.

Every study, every social comparison comes up with this factor as prime factor. It's not money, it's not social recognition, it's not fame. Your happiness is mainly influenced by how much you are tightly integrated into a happy group.

<comment><USER25> +1 I can relate to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can someone properly define "wasting" please? Accomplishments, last I checked, don't have a youth fetish.

This one was well written, but these types of articles miss the point. You can't make sweeping generalizations based on brain chemistry alone. Experience and background plays a large part of who we are, not just genes.

You succeed when you succeed, if it happens. Sometimes, maturity is essential for the process, but age is often not a factor on the Internet. I remember an article posted here (can't recall at the moment, maybe my 30yo brain failed me, HA!) where a designer discussed how people disregarded his accomplishments and talent because he was comparatively young. Well, after going exclusively online, that's not a factor. Same applies for older people as well.

Curiosity, passion, innovation, all the things that make the 20yo brain so wonderful, according to the article, can be sustained well into later years as well.

<comment><USER27> All quite true but I'll drop in here that the Fields medal is only available up to age 40.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my opinion it's all about the _golden mean_. Party too much and you will regret not achieving anything in life, working a shitty job you hate for mediocre money. Work too much and you will regret not having fun being young, realising it's too late now and even the money you have won't make for the lost time.

<comment><USER29> Yeah I agree. 20s are the time in which you basically bootstrap your life.

Anyway, did the author ever think for a minute that Kepler or Newton were probably pretty "special" people?

I don't believe any article about the human brain except it is from a decorated Neuroscientist... ;)

<comment><USER30> "Special" hardly does Newton justice - not many top scientists have made a succesful jump to undercover secret service agent fighting organised crime...

<comment><USER29> What I mean is, when you look at the list of people in the article: pick one of them and odds are high that this person is just completely over the top, super smart, IQ over xxx and whatever. When you think you are super smart, you are probably not so smart in comparison to this person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article is self-contradictory. On one hand a person should follow their dreams, take risk, blahblahblah and on the other worry not to waste that time! To take risk I need to be able to forget about potential waste and opportunities lost.

</comment><comment><USER32> I didn't read the article other than the comparison with all those great minds. I don't feel that concerned when it comes to comparing myself to such persons. I mean, should I have been the next Einstein, I would have know before reaching my 20s. Nevertheless, I'm a very curious person, thanks to my dad. I want to understand and know many many things (not everything), and for the last year I've spent most of my time learning, reading interesting articles here and there, following classes, reading the f __ __*g manual. Eight months ago, I never had touched Linux. Last week, I installed Arch Linux. I didn't know how to program a year ago. Now I touched SQL, VBA, C/C++, Python, Haskell. I'm no expert in any of these language, but I do my best to learn a handful of languages before sticking to one/a few. I try to learn something new every day, and I don't even feel like I'm trying. All the information just flows at me. For each new thing I understand, there are 1000s more questions that appear. I don't feel like I'm wasting my 20s even though I'm not building the next Microsoft. I'm constantly learning and I couldn't be happier about it. I feel like I'm doing a ton of investment for my future, and I'll never stop learning.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm nearly done with my thirties - a time when many of us start to feel uncomfortable about how much time we have left to make our mark.

I didn't make a ton of money or change the whole world in my twenties, but I did marry a great woman early (at 20), and begin to raise 3 great kids. I feel good about those decisions, but won't settle, I still feel that I've more growing up to do and greater days are ahead.

</comment><comment><USER34> What you do with your twenties really isn't the significant insight of the article. Though there is some merit in the conclusion:

 _The twenties are for launching, while the thirties are for building what you launched._

The main point is to recognize the state of your brain at a given age and its resulting effects:

 _The trick is simply to take advantage of each power in the season it is given_

That is applicable regardless of chronological age.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would consider my 20's to be wasted, but yet I'm definitely not the same man I was at 20. So was it really wasted? I have little to show on paper or as paper, but I learned much about myself and others so that I could make better decisions later in life. Basically, I made a ton of mistakes and had my mid- life crisis early. I hope it will be worth the investment.

I also improved my social skills, had a long term relationship, taught myself programming, learn how to have investment failures, quit my job, tried a few jobs, understood my family dynamics, faced my emotional issues from childhood, developed an athletic body, earned a black belt, learned proper nutrition, etc.

So were my 20's wasted? Only because I wish I was 20 again and had more fun. But I'm told 30 is pretty good too.

Edit: I also completed an MS degree during this time, but funny, I completely forgot to include it. It wasn't intentional. The truth is that I don't find it as valuable nor much of an accomplishment as it was just falling into a path not chosen consciously.

</comment><comment><USER36> No matter what the age, you can still take control of your life. Also, time wasted enjoyed is not wasted time. So what if your peers were successful in their 20's and you spent your time enjoying what you wanted. Agreed, that with age you are a different person in your physical and mental ability, you got to make the most of your time here and and have no regrets.

</comment><comment><USER37> From a Meat Loaf song: "A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age"

I've always found those lines to be quite insightful.

</comment><comment><USER38> You shouldn't waste your life, no matter how old you are. But one person's 'wasting' is another person's 'enjoying', so articles like this don't really answer any questions.

<comment><USER25> Yep, everyone has their own reality. You cannot copy/paste one person's solutions to another person's situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I got bit depressed when I read the article, but was cheered up when I read the comments here. You guys are awesome!!!

I think a better article could have been "Don't waste your day". Who has seen tomorrow, and they are talking about planning a whole decade!

Keep your expectations low, work hard, give more than you take and be grateful. If you are to become next Einstein, your destiny will find you by itself. That's the best I can think for myself.

</comment><comment><USER39> god damn stop it with these articles! they are based on pointless and handpicked quips, and frankly they just drop my brain chemical levels and depress me until i go out to lunch for tasty burritos in 3 hours.

and the god damn brain formation things PLEASE neuroscience is at the most 10 years old we have no idea what the brain is doing and won't until we monitor brains the way we do now for a generation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Don't waste your twenty minutes reading this article. Go play with your spouse/children/cat/dog/friends for twenty minutes instead and then read the desiderata (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata>) for instructions on how to live life at any age.

</comment><comment><USER41> It would be interesting to have this contrasted with an article written about the same age span 75-150 years ago.

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting point, because in roughly that timescale an awful lot of people had their passions and fearlessness subverted and channelled into pretty _awful_ directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> As long as you're willing to go through the early phases of sucking at things during adulthood you'll be fine. Most people are uncomfortable sucking at things any other time than childhood. Get rid of that limitation and your whole life is time to grow not just coast.

</comment><comment><USER43> Funny, I've just received my weekly digest and started reading this: [http://www.quora.com/Life-Advice/I-am-turning-27-and- feel-I-...](http://www.quora.com/Life-Advice/I-am-turning-27-and-feel-I-have- wasted-a-lot-of-time-Is-it-too-late)

</comment><comment><USER44> Awesome article.

And I suspected that in a long time... And I fear I am too slow to do what I must.

At least, I DID went into some crazy life changing adventures last year, against all "adult" advice. But this year I already started to want to give up and go in a safer path.

I am 25 now.

</comment><comment><USER45> I find it hard to take seriously any information coming from a domain called "artofmanliness.com". I find myself wondering whether the Art in question is Donovan, Garfunkel, or Carney.

</comment><comment><USER46> I proud to say that a) I have some regrets from my twenties and b) none of them have a damned thing to do with Albert Einstein or Bill Gates.

</comment><comment><USER47> This article would have been much better if it started with the second section without referencing society's greatest outliers.

</comment><comment><USER48> How about this - don't waste you time following what other people think a fulfilled life should be.

</comment><comment><USER49> "You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone

</comment><comment><USER50> Too late for me, I guess. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not buying the article.

I agree that no one should waste 10 years of his life-- that seems obvious-- but the article itself is a mix of pseudoscience and anecdote.

In fact, the people who seem least to be "wasting" their 20s-- the ones in IBD analyst programs and MBA programs-- are the ones losing their creativity the fastest. If you play the corporate game, creative atrophy sets in, and it's a rapid process.

<comment><USER16> This is what I realized. I did what a "successful" college grad is supposed to do: I joined a large company right after college and started a career. Problem was, I got screwed around by them and quit after six months (finishing up my two weeks notice right now).

Part of this is that I picked a _bad_ company to join (they had me filling out dozens of meeting invites in Outlook and doing SAP data entry when I was supposedly hired as a developer) but I also spent those six months really thinking about what I wanted to do on a day-to-day basis and where I wanted to end up in 5, 10, 20 years. I realized that I wasn't creating anything, I was just following a process. Filling out database table request forms and bashing my head over trying to explain a cursor to a supposedly senior developer.

So I quit after saving up about a year's living expenses and I'm going to use the next year to figure _something_ out, not sure what just yet. I've been kicking around a few ideas and we're going to start talking to potential customers at the end of the month.

I'll probably end up burning through my savings and going out to find another job a year from now but at least I'll have tried. If I don't do something creative I feel like I'm going to forget how. Five years from now I think I'll regret not trying more than I'll enjoy the fruits of a five-year-old career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is HN now the place for junk neuroscience? Seriously?

<comment><USER53> HN is for everything that is interesting for hackers. And yes, neuroscience could be interesting also.

<comment><USER52> I'm fine with actual neuroscience.</comment></comment></comment>


Traits of Serverless Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/traits-serverless-architecture <comment><USER2> The first trait of "serverless" is that there is still a server, and it has nothing to do with P2P networks. This must be one of the worst marketing-isms I've come across, and I've heard some really awkward conversations due to it. In the very brief contact I had with "serverless" systems, I remember the phrase "serverless server" mentioned several times. A more appropriate name would probably be "managed microservices".

<comment><USER3> I think opsless would be a better term, but probably has shitty marketing potential.

<comment><USER4> Opsless is pretty good. Function as a service (FaaS) is what my preference is. It seems every time something about serverless comes up on the forum, there's the inevitable "but there are servers" comment.

<comment><USER5> I don't like FaaS much more because of the ambiguity of the word "function". In most servers I've worked on, you start by definition the single function that determines where to route the request. What it really is, is managed services, but that has its conflicting definitions.

<comment><USER6> To add to the confusion, in Azure a Function App (the deployable thing) an contain multiple Functions (the invocable things).

<comment><USER7> Microservice as a service is clearest to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, I disagree with the "low barrier to entry" point on the basis of all the other points that follow. Yes, "Hello World" is easy. But a non-trivial distributed system consisting of dozens or hundreds of these functions, where each function is defined and deployed on its own, with an automated deployment pipeline with rollback functionality... not to mention debugging functionality, etc, etc.

But sure, Hello World is easy.

<comment><USER9> I work in this space, and the reason I do that is because I believe we can (and should!) make it fundamentally easier to build big distributed systems. Today's serverless offerings (including compute services like AWS Lambda, databases like Aurora Serverless, and others) do a great job of reducing complexity in some areas, but do still tend to add complexity in others. It's also "just one more thing to learn", especially if you are already familiar with server-based system operations.

One trend in this space I'm super excited about is tools like pywren (from UC Berkeley) and gg (from Stanford), which show the way to building much higher level abstractions that allow non-experts to build and run pretty huge systems. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that, and the serverless infrastructure is a huge enabler there.

Another trend is observability, and all the cool tools folks are building to see how systems work 'as built'. These tools can cut through a lot of complexity when debugging systems, and point very clearly to where problems are happening. This is an area where serverless is catching up to single-box tools, and will be for some time. Still, the core problem here is that distributed systems are still harder to debug than single-box systems, but I think that's entirely a reflection on immature tooling. I believe that the fundamental law here is that with the right abstractions distributed systems can be significantly easier to debug that single-box systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Unfortunately, much of the current literature around serverless architecture > focuses solely on its benefits.

This article suffers from the same problem though. Where are the downsides? What about production debugging? Moving complexity from inside of services to service interoperability? Vendor lock-in? Lack of human support? Etc.

<comment><USER11> Vendor lock-in from serverless -- It's not the boogeyman that many people make it out to be.

Two broad use cases for serverless -- event based triggers and APIs. With event based triggers you're already locked in by the events you're subscribing to and as far as API's, at least with AWS, if you're using proxy integration, you can use your standard Node/Express, C#/WebAPI, Python/Flask, etc. framework. You add a few lines of code for the lambda proxy but you can use the same code without any changes with your standard web servers.

With AWS, you also have "serverless Docker" with Fargate and you use standard Docker containers.

Production debugging? The same issues and solutions with any micro-service implementation. The solution usually being a common logging infrastructure.

On a broader scale, "vendor lock in" is severely overrated. Despite all of the "repository patterns that will let us hypothetically move our million dollar Oracle implementation to MySql", it rarely happens and often you end up with sub optimal and more expensive/harder to maintain solutions by not going all in on your vendor's of choice solution.

<comment><USER12> > The same issues and solutions with any micro-service implementation. The > solution usually being a common logging infrastructure.

A mature service mesh will let privileged users get inside containers to attach profilers and debuggers, manually as needed or systematically through performance monitoring tools, in situ or with temporary exclusion from the load balancer pool. It's also sometimes necessary to correlate issues with host-level metrics to understand weirder bottlenecks and tail latency issues.

> it rarely happens

The credible threat of it happening keeps prices low enough to make it unnecessary.

<comment><USER11> _The credible threat of it happening keeps prices low enough to make it unnecessary._

As far as vendor lock in, in general not just with respect to the cloud, there are so many path dependencies and the risk of disruption versus the reward is so rarely worth it, it hardly ever happens.

How much would Oracle or Microsoft have to raise their prices on their database products for instance to make it worthwhile for a large enterprise company to move away from them to an open source alternative?

<comment><USER13> A lot of CIOs would dearly love to move away from Oracle. The cost of rewriting software that was not designed to be portable is immense. Oracle knows this, and keeps the pain just below the threshold where porting to postgres or mysql is cost effective.

I agree with the general sentiment that optimizing for extreme portability does not make sense- but there is a balance that needs to be struck. Designing your apps to be relatively SQL agnostic, or at least isolating those dependencies, makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER11> And even if you do have a policy of "designing your apps to be SQL agnostic" and you have had that policy for 5 years over dozens of apps. Would you trust your policy enough that you would change your connection string from pointing to Oracle to pointing to MySQL and hope everything would work?

What about all of the programs that you used that depended on Oracle specific drivers. Even in a perfect world where everything was using standard SQL, would the regression testing and migrations be something you would want to tackle as a CTO? Would you be willing to take the reputational risks of something going wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The term Serverless is meant to illustrate that by using things like the Firebase ecosystem and namely the Firestore database, the most common database operations such as CRUD operations can be done in a secure way straight from the client side without having to develop server endpoints, such as for example REST endpoints.

This is possible because the data modification operations are triggered directly on the frontend using a SDK, and they are sent straight to the service provider, which will then validate if the operation can go through, like for example checking if the user is authenticated and has write access to the data.

No application code is involved in this process, other than the client-side code.

Not having to constantly hand-code REST endpoints just for doing secure CRUD is huge!

<comment><USER15> Indeed. Firebase seems to be the leader here, who else is competing on "Not having to constantly hand-code REST endpoints just for doing secure CRUD"?

<comment><USER14> I thought there would be competitors, I don't know why Firebase is not getting more adoption then, it's still a bit of a niche and Google does not seem to be pushing it as much as a couple of years ago, even though the product is better than ever.

<comment><USER16> In our case, it's because we have more than web/mobile clients talking to our API.

If the business case doesn't require partner/3rd party API access, then maybe Firebase is appropriate.

Mentioned elsewhere in the comments here is the risk of vendor lock-in.

Given Google's history of EOLing products from under developers, there is real risk in putting all the business logic eggs in the Google basket.

<comment><USER14> Firebase is like a web developer friendly version of Google Cloud, that it bases itself on.

It gives easy to use serverless CRUD (with Firestore), authentication, authorization, secure file upload, hosting and server-side functions for things like image processing or database triggers.

I don't think Firebase will be end of live anytime soon, worst case it's user base would get migrated to Google Cloud, as it's really just Google Cloud under the hood. I don't think it's an option for Google to give up on the cloud at this point, even though AFIK Amazon has the biggest market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My main concerns with serverless are unexpected costs and vendor lock-in, especially for small startups and side projects. I like that you can create an event-driven architecture and "glue" various services together (e.g, execute a lambda when an object is created on S3), but I feel like this setup could get out of control if you don't do a lot of planning and budgeting ahead of time -- these time costs should not be overlooked. A more traditional setup may not scale as well out of the box, but that could help you avoid system spike costs. I'd rather have my site go down than go into bankruptcy because of my serverless bill.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some of my questions for anybody who's successfully implemented this at a 30 engineer+ company:

How do you tie in to version control?

How do you QA this? (Can it be QA'd locally?)

Would you have unit tests for serverless code? E2E tests?

How would you catch/diagnose a more junior engineer making an infinite loop of events? Would this potentially bring down production or eat the budget?

<comment><USER19> I can't really speak for large companies, but I believe my answers apply, no matter what's the company size.

> How do you tie in to version control?

You're probably talking about the infrastructure definition? Infrastructure- as-Code (e.g. AWS CloudFormation) works quite well and can easily be put under version control.

> How do you QA this? (Can it be QA'd locally?)

For AWS there are projects like the AWS SAM CLI ([https://github.com/awslabs/aws-sam-cli](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-sam- cli)) which try to offer the ability to run your serverless application locally, but I believe such approaches are fundamentelly flawed once your application reaches a certain complexity, as I believe such projects will never be able to re-implement all features and services made available by the Cloud provider.

What works well for us is to simply have QA environments spun up in addition to the productive ones. Once you got the infrastructure codified properly that's quite easy. The biggest downside is that it, depending on your architecture, might take some time to provision, so it's not as instant as if you'd run it locally. And you need internet access of course.

> Would you have unit tests for serverless code? E2E tests?

Yes and yes. Actually I see no reason why you'd want to handle test coverage differently from traditional applications.

> How would you catch/diagnose a more junior engineer making an infinite loop > of events? Would this potentially bring down production or eat the budget?

Running code during development should never be able to affect production. For AWS the way to go is to use separate AWS accounts for production and testing/QA. You could even go so far to give each engineer his own account.

Regarding catching and diagnosing infinite loops, it all comes down to monitoring: Monitor how the cost evolves and other metrics of interest (e.g. the number of invocations of your serverless functions) and have automatic notifications once certain thresholds are crossed. Additionally limiting the maximum concurrency of serverless functions for non-production accounts might help to avoid things getting out of control too fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" Stateless: Functions as a Service is ephemeral, hence you can't store anything in memory"_

This is more a characteristic of certain stacks rather than a trait of serverless.

For example, it's a common practice in AWS Lambda functions to cache DB connections using static variables.

<comment><USER9> Right. I like to make a distinction here between "hard state" which needs to be persistent for correctness, and "soft state" which just needs to be around often enough for efficiency. Lambda's function re-use behavior, and the fact it lets you use static variables between invokes, is ideal for soft state.

Data locality, and amortizing the cost of expensive operations across multiple requests, are still things that matter in the serverless world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a long-term side project, SlickDNS ([https://www.slickdns.com/](https://www.slickdns.com/)) which is a DNS hosting service, and recently moved the URL monitoring feature from four self- managed $5/month Digital Ocean VMs to AWS Lambda. My monthly hosting bill for that particular feature has dropped from $20/month to $0.10.

Porting the Go monitoring code to Lambda was trivial. I spent much more time trying to automate the deployment to Lambda & API Gateway and in the end gave up and just deployed it manually via the AWS console.

I also recently moved the main web app from a self-managed Linode setup to Heroku. Deploying via "git push" and not having to worry about configuring or updating servers is a huge time saver. Heroku provides the best of both worlds since I can still login into an ephemeral shell if I want to interactively poke around my live Django environment.

</comment><comment><USER22> Also, FaaS isn't serverless, it's just one of many serverless services.

Many people think FaaS is the definition of serverless which leads to false assumptions.

First "We can build serverless with containers at home, because everyone can host FaaS!"

And "Coldstarts make serverless unusable for many problems!"

If you have to manage servers, vms or container (clusters) your solution isn't serverless.

If you don't like coldstarts, don't use FaaS for your API. Use something like Firestore, AppSync or FaunaDB.

<comment><USER23> Did you read the article? The author dedicated a whole section to this and introduced their own term "hostless".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Statelessness is not a trait of serverless. Serverless, as poorly named as it is, just means that you don't have to manage servers, nor do you have any control over the servers.

There are plenty of stateful serverless services. DynamoDB, BigQuery, Serverless Aurora, etc. In all these cases, you get statefulness without managing or controlling servers.

</comment><comment><USER25> most important trait of them all: coldstart. It can take upto 10 seconds for the first request to be handled if the "server" is cold. meaning it has been inactive for 15 minutes or more.

no thanks.

<comment><USER26> "Cloudflare Workers respond very quickly, typically in under 200 milliseconds, when cold starting. In contrast, both Lambda and Lambda@Edge functions can take over a second to respond from a cold start." Also included network latency, and maybe some bias.

[https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/serverless- pe...](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/serverless/serverless-performance/)

<comment><USER27> Google expects you to have a TTFB of <=200ms. You've used up 100% of your allocation just on cold boot time with serverless lambdas, FaaS, whatever you want to call them.

<comment><USER26> I think you are being disingenuous.

Firstly, the Cloudflare number includes network time, which isn't included in Google's number.

Secondly you can't compare the numbers unless you know the percentiles used.

Thirdly, you are presuming your function is always cold loaded - which is only for the free tier of pricing from what I could see.

Google (v4 pagespeed) says: "Server response time is the time it takes for a server to return the initial HTML, factoring out the network transport time. Because we only have so little time, this time should be kept at a minimum - ideally within 200 milliseconds, and preferably even less!"

Disclaimer: happy customer of Cloudflare, we don't use Workers except for one debugging purpose.

<comment><USER27> I'm not referring to Cloudflare. There are many other FaaS providers, e.g., Zeit's Now. It's true that cold boots are more probable for low-traffic sites. If your function recently ran, it's unlikely for a subsequent execution to be a cold boot.

But it could be luck of the draw that Google's crawler hits your site during a period of low traffic, and your functions have to cold boot. That could impact page rankings, as response times influence those.

<comment><USER26> > I'm not referring to Cloudflare

Why would you use a slow provider for a comparison point?

> and your functions have to cold boot

For $5 per month, it looks like you get warm startup _always_ on CloudFlare, which is very fast.

Also: Google surely pay some attention to network delays: serving Kenya from a Mombasa POP is going to be way faster than using some server in the US. I would expect Google to give that some juice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anders Behring Breivik`s manifest contains hidden codes, want to hack them? - <AUTHOR>

The following codes has been found inside the norwegian terrorist`s manifest disquised as links:
http://h3x.no/dump/breivik-hidden-codes.txt
The first part is a GPS location (i have written down the city it is close by or in), but the other parts are still unknown. I do not think it`s just some rubbish text, so i am trying to crack the code to see if i can get anything out of it.
Any ideas on what this can be encrypted/hashed/<insert type> as/with?
The TV-station that went out with this case today confirmed that they have not been able to figure out what the rest of the string is. And i suspect that many would like to figure out what it is since it can give important information about the case or even information about any people he has been working with. <comment><USER2> In chapter 1.19 B. uses the same footnotes repeatetly. He starts to count from 1 eigth times, counting to at least 4, the highest is 37.

Chapter 2.36 is also odd, he uses footnote 28 as well 42 eleven times each, while none of the 8 Urls in the footnotes of the chapter appears in the text.

Maybe ~codes ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. Some more context would be good though: is it part of a certain chapter of some sorts, or does it really stand on itself?</comment>


Using Pusher Chatkit with SlackTextViewController on iOS - <AUTHOR> Nowadays many applications offer in-app chat and messenger features to their users. The in-app messenger can be useful for things like live support chatting or in-app messaging with other application users. <comment><AUTHOR> Continue reading IF you are interested in seeing how this was implemented: [https://www.codementor.io/neoighodaro/using-pusher- chatkit-w...](https://www.codementor.io/neoighodaro/using-pusher-chatkit-with- slacktextviewcontroller-on-ios-ez3iawue1)</comment>


Awesome video of astronauts in the 80s testing NASA spacesuits from the 60s - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/video-nasa-testing-awesome-old-spacesuits/241818/ <comment><USER2> I love the dude doing jumping jacks, but it's not quite as good as when the guy does toe touches.</comment>


Fell in love with a product/start-up, want to invest in it - <AUTHOR>

The other day I signed up for a product offered by a small start-up.  I fell in love with the product that does everything I need and more and the company itself.  I looked up the company and noticed they got about $200k of financing from various venture groups (mostly small ones). I would like to approach the founder and invest about 50K. I've never done this before.  What do I ask in return? How to I approach the founder?  What do I say so I dont turn him off? Any pointers will be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Startups get approached all the time (ones with traction & articles written about them) so simply tell the founder you love the company and would like to invest.

If he has raised money he will not be turned off by your approach.

Your best bet is to join in a round (if it is open) otherwise, it may not be feasible given the other investors and legal issues involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing to be aware of is that they can't safely take your money unless you're an accredited investor. Hopefully you meet the requirements or you wouldn't put 50k down but FYI.

<http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I just checked, looks like I fall in one of the categories listed. Never knew I am an accredited investor :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all you should to analize theirs finance situation. If you don't know how, then invest smal part of money. And then, if all goes well, you could to increase the value. Otherwise you just lose your money.

</comment><comment><USER5> If it's a great product with lots of potential, the startup may already have an oversubscribed round so you'll have to pitch them on why you should be allowed in. It's best if you can bring something other than $50k to the table since a startup is always looking for someone who can provide either mentoring, connections, and help with other aspects of their strategy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also consider how much you'd be willing to invest overall. if they took off, you want to make sure you can maintain your stake. it's probably better to start with a more conservative position, and leave yourself room to re-up.</comment>


Herd Immunity - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity <comment><USER2> Reading the simple formulas in this article, it looks like the present strategy of "social distancing" is intended to reduce R(0), the number of persons infected by each infected person. Pretty obvious, but still it's good to have a clear understanding.

It would be good if the same strategy could somehow be applied to the person- to-person spread of misinformation. But that's harder, witness some of the comments here.

<comment><USER3> > _person-to-person spread of misinformation_

You know, for as much as I've heard about the supposed danger of "misinformation", so many factual observations have been labeled "misinformation" early on, only to be later confirmed by WHO, a major national authority, or a medical journal.

The type of misinformation matters a lot, because if people take the concerns about permanent lung damage, reproductive damage, and the extreme contagiousness of the virus seriously, it doesn't matter if they were "misinformed" to some extent. If the misinformation encourages them to not take things seriously, or to breach social distancing (see Rudy Gobert, who should hope he hasn't committed homicide for a laugh), that's when it is the most dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's been talk that previous coronaviruses don't cause immunity and there already seems to have been cases with this one where a person got it twice. Does anyone have insight?

<comment><USER5> I've read that coronavirus is a near relation to the common cold virus. How significant is it that catching a cold doesn't seem to give you immunity from catching another?

<comment><USER6> That's because the common cold mutates very quickly, so by the time you catch another cold it's effectively a new virus.

<comment><USER5> Is coronavirus different in that respect?

<comment><USER7> If we can use data related to Human Coronavirus strains (HCov), which are responsible for many colds, then not that much different.

Of course, SARS-CoV-2 could be different. For SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, there was no data on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area This is the best solution we can hope for now with Coronavirus IMO.

Slow the infection rate (but not too much) till we hit enough cases to have herd immunity, which will then slow the rate significantly till it mostly dies out (I suspect this has happened in China and South Korea, if not they will suffer the consequences later as the virus is reintroduced unnoticed from another country).

Since it won't be stamped out worldwide this year, there's no point in attempting complete eradication and tracing all contacts. That means the aim of reducing the spread should not be to avoid infections, but to to reach herd immunity in an ordered way without taxing healthcare systems too much on the way.

<comment><USER8> > I suspect this has happened in China and South Korea

How could it have if only a negligible fraction of the population caught it?

<comment><USER9> Do we know how many people are already susceptible to it? It's plausible that some percentage of people are immune to it already — maybe they recently caught a similar coronavirus or some other natural resistance to it.

<comment><USER10> Something seems a little off. If this thing truly incubates for up to 14 days, during which time it can be transmitted, it seems odd that so few people are ill.

Is it possible that many people, in fact, are infected but do not get sick?

<comment><USER7> It is likely that the early symptoms get ignored, as they are similar to a cold - except the nasal discharge and phlegm, which SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to cause. (It gives dry cough instead of wet cough.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be clear, a strategy of allowing this to spread unchecked will result in 10s of millions of people dying around the world.

<comment><USER11> If you're referring to the UK strategy, it is not to be "unchecked".

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure how sound is UK's strategy.

Current advice is to self-isolate for 7 days if persistent cough suddenly appears and/OR a temperature of 37.5°C (that is not high temperature).

That sound like good advice, but they are not going to test those cases unless it ends in hospital. And they don't want you to call to the NHS help line or go to the doctor (again, not bad advice but I see some people getting anxious about this; IMHO at least the help line should be available because most people aren't doctors).

Considering that it could be a mild case of the disease or any other common seasonal disease (I have two toddlers at home: they get ill), how can we tell we had passed the disease and we have some immunity?

Besides, if testing and tracing stops, it means there won't be information about the progression of the epidemic in the UK; which sounds to me like a bad idea (but I'm not an expert).

Considering how the Conservative government has been underfunding the public health system for 10 yeas, I understand how their approach can be seen by some as untrustworthy.

EDIT: I see this may be off-topic re: herd immunity, sorry about that.

<comment><USER11> > Besides, if testing and tracing stops, it means there won't be information > about the progression of the epidemic in the UK;

Yes, there will. It will be inferred from hospital stats.

Testing and tracing (apparently; I'm no expert, parroting what I've read from experts) is only useful in the contain phase. After that, you're better focusing on slowing the spread in the delay phase.

That said, Singapore and China have shown success with testing, tracing, and extreme measures. The assumption of the UK Government, however, is that in the long-term these measures will fail and kill more people than following a delay phase strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Early on, doctors were quick to note that there is no herd immunity with this particular coronavirus.

<comment><USER14> No _existing_ herd immunity. That doesn't mean "herd immunity doesn't work for this virus" which is I suspect what you're thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's currently unknown if there is an immunity after getting Corona.

<comment><USER16> All signs point to the coronavirus infection inducing normal immunity. The number of apparent reinfection is extraordinarily low, consistent with being due to testing error, and in any case not relevant even if real if it only applies to a small fraction of the population. Furthermore, the virus does not have a segmented genome like influenza (thought to be responsible for its rapid evolution and ability to evade vaccine) and is a single "species" (unlike the huge family of viruses, mostly rhinoviruses, that cause the unvaccinable common cold).

<comment><USER17> That's great news. Got any links to the data?

<comment><USER16> I just found some strong counter evidence in tension with everything I'd been hearing:

Francois Balloux (Computational biologist, director of UGI at UCL): "How long immunity lasts for following covid-19 infection is the biggest unknown. Comparison with other Coronaviridae suggests it may be relatively short-lived (i.e. months). If this were to be confirmed, it would add to the challenge of managing the pandemic.

[https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12388371671426416...](https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1238837167142641664)

It's not inconsistent per say, since it still seems that the recent reinfections were likely due to test error or rare poor immune response, but my initial comment is misleading enough that I retract it (and would delete it if I could).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An interesting side discussion to this regarding vaccines: Does the presence of vaccine antibodies exhibit selection pressure on viruses? That is to say, do vaccines inadvertently and indirectly create an 'arms race' scenario?

 _NOTE: I am not anti-vaccine. This is intended as a nuanced point_

<comment><USER19> In some cases it does, in some it does not. And yes, the western world taking their flu shot does mean that those who can't afford it might have a problem or a worse problem compared to what would otherwise be. ( Also why many advocate you should only take it if you need it. )

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Herd immunity until now referred to immunisation (ie vaccination). It is not at all clear that allowing people to get infected and recover will achieve the same result.

<comment><USER21> Herd immunity is a term describing a steady-state distribution and one avenue (the typical one) of getting there is vaccines. Typically when 80% of the population\\* is immune _for one reason or the other_ a population is said to have herd immunity. The idea is statistical safety for susceptible individuals (yes, typically those that cannot be vaccinated for $reasons) thanks to being significantly outnumbered by those immune/resistant to infection - or a buffer population acting as a firewall, if you will.

I haven't seen the term used for small pox in the Modern Era, but I believe it would be fair to say even though the small pox vaccine hadn't been invented (and wouldn't be until 1796), there were definitely periods of herd immunity in major European cities/ports of the time as it absolutely destroyed the previously unexposed Native American population.

But when dealing with "learned immunity" due to previous exposure as compared to natural/genetic immunity to the same diseases and the antibodies are not passed down from mother to child, what you're going to see is a resurgence in cases as each new generation loses that immunity. In the present case, the unvaccinated herd immunity would be something to keep spread in check until a vaccinated herd immunity can take its place (assuming the vaccine isn't developed before 80% of the remaining population has been exposed to and has recovered from this particular variant of the coronavirus).

\\* at least that's the number we were taught in my livestock/farm animals veterinary medicine class a decade ago.

<comment><USER20> Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. Certainly more than the pundits currently lambasting the UK health services for their strategy of flattening the curve. The current argument against being (I kid you not) that the health authorities are somehow stupid enough to think that immunity can be passed between individuals like the virus itself.

I appreciate you taking the time to correct me.

<comment><USER21> No problem. I wasn't yet aware of the UK drama when I wrote that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If this is going to happen and we don't get a vaccine in time one interesting possibility is to look at stuff like hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic that seems pretty good in vitro and could maybe reduce the infection from very nasty to not too bad in the appropriate dose. I'm hoping for some trial and error research here.

paper showing it good in vitro [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/32150618/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/32150618/)

medcram talking about that [https://youtu.be/vE4_LsftNKM?t=200](https://youtu.be/vE4_LsftNKM?t=200)

some semi evidence of it working in real life - the lupus patients didn't get it in Wuhan here [https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pn...](https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pneumonia_has_short_term_curative_effect_on_the_treatment_of_new_crown_pneumonia.html)

I was wondering how you could encourage people to try it and see if it works. My idea - if you got a thousand health frontline workers to try and compared with a similar number who didn't you may get decent data in a week or two if lots of one group got sick and the other didn't. Or it might not work. Don't know till you try though and could save many lives.

<comment><USER23> There was a lot of talk about this early on in China's epidemic. Is there any newer evidence anyone's seen? Seems to have gone quiet.

I wonder if this is would be more effective in the second stage of getting COVID-19, which is the immune system going haywire rather than the virus directly causing problems.

<comment><USER22> There's this trial where chloroquine worked well for treatment. (4.4 days to negative tests) [http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/con...](http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/content_190536632.htm)

Tocilizumab seems good for the later stages [http://www.ansa.it/english/news/science_tecnology/2020/03/11...](http://www.ansa.it/english/news/science_tecnology/2020/03/11/coronavirusarthritis- drug-seems-to-work_8113f9d9-9bb8-4181-9c02-3e314c30e7e9.html)

Prophylaxis, taking the drugs before catching the virus, remains a bit untested.

<comment><USER23> Thanks. The first one seems positive. I wonder why no other countries are using it then?

(Here's a translate link for anyone who can't read mandarin. [https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/content_190536632.htm&usg=ALkJrhjCR7mu8Nrfx8Fhmhvx5rUIMeIjAQ))

The second one is a different drug isn't it? An arthritis drug rather than an anti-malarial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's getting very hard to believe the UK story. I mean, i get exceptionalism, but this is going too far.

<comment><USER25> The UK has some of the best epidemiology schools and experience, thanks to a tradition harking back to the British Empire expanding in very dangerous lands.

HOWEVER

Imho, precisely this wealth of experience is driving a lot of people to overthinking it, looking too much at the long-term big picture and not weighting the immediate costs correctly. Some people have ended up in Strangelove territory and we risk paying a big price for it. Saving more people right now is worth, say, a longer impact on the economy or longer quarantine measures, if anything because those are social constructs that _can adapt_ \- whereas our bodies work only one way.

<comment><USER24> > The UK has some of the best epidemiology schools and experience, thanks to a > tradition harking back to the British Empire expanding in very dangerous > lands.

This is not an argument in 2020. This is the kind of exceptionalism i m talking about

<comment><USER25> I'm not the one saying that, Italian experts are saying it, because it increases the level of bafflement they experience when looking at the (non-)approach the UK is taking at the moment. I am extremely critical of this (non-)approach, I'm just trying to figure out where it comes from and this might well be a factor, sadly. After 2016, I've learnt never to underestimate the often-misplaced sense of superiority that the English upper classes have drilled into the wider population for the last 200 years, and the degree of detachment of their elites.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alleged OnePlus 7 First Actual Image Leaked No Notch - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberockk.com/2019/01/alleged-oneplus-7-first-actual-image-leaked-with-full-view-display-no-notch-and-long-earpiece/ <comment><USER2> Ye, I think it's a real image. But can't say anything is based on a slider or pop-up camera setup</comment>


Simple self-hosted SQLite powered server side analytics without Google - <AUTHOR> https://funnybretzel.com/self-hosted-analytics-using-sqlite-and-metabase/ <comment><USER2> This is great. I really like the simplicity of it.

How does sqlite handle the streaming load/frequent writes per second? What hardware does it run on?

I recently did something similar for server monitoring, after spending days/weeks trying out different stacks and services (datadog, netdata, and the like).

Like you, I don't have huge scale issues (<100 servers) and I don't need to monitor every single aspect. A few bash scripts, a couple of systemd services, a node/express server at the receiving end, in-memory data storage and sms/email alerts when the most recent metrics look a bit off.

Much cheaper, less resource intensive, and easier to maintain by far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

I am running it on the DEV1-S machine from Scaleway. It's 2 vCPUs and 2 GB Ram, not much on the compute side really. So far it peaked at 150 writes per second. Which is not a lot but there are solutions to remediate in case it grows and to be honest I heard SQLite could go as far as 50k inserts per second (never tested)

I think this works well because I'm blocking a lot of bots using this solution as well: I query weird requests from the sqlite database and pipe the output to an ipset blacklist shared accross my servers.

That's correct, I decided to share this approach since it benefited me and is really "lightweight" so to say. Again, glad you liked it.

What are you using for the SMS/Email alerting?

<comment><USER2> Cool.

For sms I'm using a local provider, for email just an alerts@... account on our company's email (via Google). The emails ended up in spam, but after creating filters on the receiving email address they get flagged as non spam.

We were using send grid for some other things but their bounce rate wasn't very reassuring, so I preferred the Gmail approach for now (it always works).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool. I'd be interested in a docker-compose script that wrapped this all into a single deployment, as it seems you have created a very nice self-hosted with analytics solution.

I do wonder if Metabase is too resource intensive for this purpose, and perhaps a more lightweight data analytics resource might not be better suited? I say this because I usually run metabase on its own server. Perhaps not an issue, more a question.</comment>


Bayesian Analysis of Normal Distributions with Python - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.richrelevance.com/bayesian-analysis-of-normal-distributions-with-python/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that they chose this approach. At Myna we normally squish data through the logistic function to rescale (if necessary) and then use a beta model. The beta model expects binary observations but you either interpret fractional observations as the probability of a weighted coin flip, or just do fractional updates to the beta. Both worked about the same in my tests. (This difference is mainly due to our different approaches A/B testing. Both are fairly textbook.)

The more interesting question, to me, is how you get credible intervals. I'm assuming you just MCMC 'em up, but it would be nice if there was a more computationally efficient trick.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't actually use Gaussian models for any of our Bayesian tests =). For continuous data, we use log-normal models, and the next blog post will be about how to make all that work.

And for intervals: yup, we just use sampling. But it's super fast because all you need are independent samples. For more details, see this first post:

[http://engineering.richrelevance.com/bayesian-ab- tests/](http://engineering.richrelevance.com/bayesian-ab-tests/)</comment></comment>


Ballmer dismisses Dropbox as a 'little startup' with 100 million users - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3931846/steve-ballmer-on-small-dropbox-users-interview <comment><USER2> Lex Luthor really needs to step down. It would be one thing for him to be dismissive in public in order to bolster his company's competing products. But time and time again, the company's actions indicate that he is predisposed to believing that genuine competitors pose little risk ("Challenge Microsoft? Inconceivable!").

For the first time in decades, I'm hoping that Microsoft can figure out a sustainable strategy for maintaining relevance. Maybe I just want to pull for the underdog--it just makes it hard when the underdog isn't particularly plucky and carries on with unwarranted swagger.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Javascript on JVM/CLR a bad idea? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious to know why there is no Javascript on JVM/CLR (compile Javascript to vm bytecodes)? Is it possible at all? Node.js seems to be the only option to run Javascript server side. <comment><USER2> There's Rhino, but AFAIK it's much slower than V8. <http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/> <http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/07/rhino- invokedynamic>

Nashorn and dyn.js are some immature but promising implementations. <http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/dynjs>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer.</comment></comment>


Sentimental versioning - <AUTHOR> http://sentimentalversioning.org/ <comment><USER2> This is cute and all, but completely ignores how useful strict semantic versioning is to both developers and maintainers.

Everybody bitching about semver is lazy, full stop. If you can't be bothered to bound breaking changes only into major versions, and can't be bothered to document properly the _expected_ functionality of things in your package, you shouldn't be sharing your code with people.

And if your answer is "lololol I'll just stay at <0.x" so that you can Move Fast and Break Things, I'm going to mock you.

<comment><USER3> The page was satirical. Given the content, the author is likely pro semantic versioning.

<comment><USER2> Given some of the issue threads I've seen around the topic, it's not always obvious to me when people are making satire and when they're serious. D:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That settles it. I'm using balanced ternary version numbers in my next project. Or maybe I'll just use tally marks:

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

</comment><comment><USER5> We should document life versioning, as in web 1.0 verses web 3.0.

Can I do a pull request to make this change, or is this page so 1.0?

</comment><comment><USER6> "And how does this change make you _feel_?"

<comment><USER2> If it's Gnome, worse. Always worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> its*

its*

its*

its _

<comment><USER8> Came here to say just that. Amazing how distracting that gets.</comment></comment>


Killing Kojitsu - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mattwest.io/killing-kojitsu

<comment><USER2> > After I announced that Kojitsu was shutting down a lot of people asked if I > would open source the codebase. I decided not to. Not because I'm possessive > over the code, but because I don't have the time to maintain it.

> I don't want to just throw some code over a wall, then turn my back and head > off into the sunset. Open source projects are only successful if they have a > healthy community around them. Open sourcing the codebase so that it can rot > out in the open wouldn't be the right thing to do. Sometimes it's better to > just let things die.

I strenuously disagree. Software is not a piece of fruit; it doesn't rot. If no-one ends up using it, it doesn't stink up the room; it just doesn't get used. But if it is not released, then it _is_ dead, and the world is a slightly worse place.

If you really don't intend to use your code again, what's the harm in dumping it in a public repo? Maybe someone will pick it up; maybe someone won't. Macht's nichts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I respect your view here but I believe developers have a responsibility to maintain the code they release into the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why shutting it down? 200 users can be served using a $5 droplet from digital ocean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately this was not the case. For ranking purposes Kojitsu had to crawl every unique link it found which ended up being very resource intensive. There were multiple servers dedicated to crawling, in addition to the app and db servers.

Running Kojitsu taught me a lot about building up technical infrastructure.</comment></comment>


Russian Gangsters Buy Aol Instant Messenger. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100428005962&newsLang=en

<comment><USER2> Gangsters??

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a broader definition of gangster, for sure, but the big PE firms in Russia are largely backed by ex-soviet bigwigs turned natural resource masters. Have you noticed how many of them seem to end up in prison?

Just like American gangsters eventually built hotels and casinos, Russian gangsters are buying up yesterday's big tech names at a premium either as a vanity play, or to diversify by sinking their blood money into foreign businesses that Putin can't touch.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Coming up with ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to build a few small but useful apps to build experience and a portfolio outside of my workplace, an area shamefully neglected.
I'm stuck at the first hurdle and I haven't got a clue where to start or what to build first!
Do you have any tips for coming up with ideas? <comment><USER2> i usually just get the ideas while im working, from things that suck

need to write a regex for css parsing... why isnt there a regex generator yet

need to debug my javascript... why isnt there a repl?

writing windows 10 hello world, <button xmlspec123ABCUnstandard="{{ Microsoft.Windows.XAML.WinForms.Imaging.Image.NewBitmapFromFilestream(filestream) }}" /> ... wow mixing xml with code sucks why doesnt someone make a good template language

(edit: actually, why dont compilers have enough logic to at least try to include the right library so I dont have to type shit like use Namespace Windows.XAML.Winforms.Imaging 10 times for every file)

etc!

anyway

another good idea is to get your ideas from books, say a productivity book, the guy recommends keeping a schedule? make a scheduling app with the features you need, the author recommends using timers? make a timer app with the features you need. this is actually what i did. heck why not even sell it on iphone for a few bucks afterwords using phonegap.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.udacity.com/course/product-design-- ud509](https://www.udacity.com/course/product-design--ud509)

Start with Lesson 1: Ideation and validation to get those creative juices flowing.</comment>