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ceslami

226 karma · joined July 1, 2010

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ceslami··on What we've learned about marketing on Reddit (with real data)
You make a good point - luck plays some a role. That said, where I think we got lucky was finding a good "community fit" (Step 1 from the article). It was up to us to execute well on the rest :)

In terms of audience size, I would expect smaller audiences to yield smaller results. Despite that, I think the message of the post is that building an authentic relationship with a community means you can grow alongside them over time. This means continuous feedback, new ideas, etc. All stuff that's useful to us as technologists and entrepreneurs!

ceslami··on What we've learned about marketing on Reddit (with real data)
Good eye, thanks! Fixed.
ceslami··on Microservices
> Note also, that microservices experts (and I'm not one of those) recommend a monolithic and transactional core architecture, for microservices infrastructure.

This is a pithy encapsulation of something I've been thinking a lot about recently: bud off a microservice from your transactional core if it is higher leverage to do so. Any good readings you've found on this perspective?

An example that comes to mind is: I might write my core application in Ruby on Rails, but need to perform a specialized, CPU-intensive function (PDF generation). I can delegate that to a microservice, invert a CPU-bound problem into an I/O bound one (from the perspective of the Rails core), and get the job done with less hardware.

ceslami··on Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?
Tell your story!
ceslami··on Show HN: Dependency CI – Continuous testing for your dependencies
You're not wrong, but you can use that technique and benefit from Dependency CI too.

Typically, you can define your dependencies in a file specific to a certain package manager. NPM uses `package.json`, RubyGems uses `Gemfile`, etc.

It is a reasonable practice to "vendor in" your dependencies, as you suggest. But given the declaration of your dependencies in some manifest file, Dependency CI can give you valuable insights.

ceslami··on Why and How I Switched from Python to Erlang
For the sake of discovering a middle ground between our arguments, let's look at an example of a >$1B company running Rails: Github.

Most of Github's stack is Ruby on Rails, with specialized components/sub-systems written in C. This is a common theme amongst companies that use Rails or Python at scale.

There's a reason why people keep those languages around. Its the same reason why they tend to be used for MVPs: the tool gets out of your way so you can focus on solving the hard problems of your domain. The longer you can preserve those ergonomics, the better.

ceslami··on Why and How I Switched from Python to Erlang
> if you get far enough and need to scale

Alright -- I'll bite.

Rarely anyone "needs to scale." Plenty of $1B businesses can succeed on a fistful of c4.large's running Ruby on Rails. The same Ruby on Rails that ran their MVP. Scaling via language change isn't the path to victory, unless you picked a language that was poorly suited to your domain to begin with.

Too many companies end up following this cargo-cult advice, and spend more time grappling with their tools than innovating. Because "concurrency." Someday.

Optimizing your choice of language for anything other than a linear relationship between Real Complexity and Implementation Time is a fool's errand and a fiduciary travesty.

In all fairness, Elixir/Phoenix could become as well-learned as Ruby on Rails. We'll end up in a best-of-both-worlds scenario. And at that point, I'll happily eat my words.

But in the meantime, solve your "scaling" problems by measuring and optimizing, instead of re-writing your app in the flavor-of-the-week.

ceslami··on Why Code Snobs Are Invaluable
Pretty much the same as in any other language. When you want to guarantee that there will only ever be one instance of an object.

It is a useful pattern for managing data synchronization (ie, if I only ever have one instance of a User, I know another instance won't mess up its state accidentally.)

ceslami··on Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?
Your economics are unique compared to typical SASS, for example. The LTV of a Youtube channel subscriber is basically $0.
ceslami··on Gitrob – OSINT gathering tool for GitHub
Fantastic concept and execution.

I would note that by the time this sensitive code hits Github, its already too late. Criminals who mine PII/secrets use the Github event firehose to analyze code pushes in near-realtime.

It would be great to integrate this code as a pre-commit hook, so that code doesn't even get into the tree if its sensitive.

ceslami··on Ask HN: Require.js + CoffeeScript Smart Autocompletion
Tern.js is pretty solid and is compatible with a bunch of popular editors. Nothing in the IntelliJ family though. I have enjoyed working with it in SublimeText.

http://ternjs.net/

ceslami··on Yahoo Nears Investment in Snapchat
korzun is explaining why it was a good decision for Alibaba to pass on Snapchat.

Yahoo made $9.4B on $BABA because of how revenue-driven their core businesses have always been.

ceslami··on One reason we lack Internet competition: Starting an ISP is hard
Is Webpass the SF ISP that is partnering with Artemis to deploy a test network of pCells. The idea of everyone who shares the connection clocking the speed of the undivided pipe sounds a lot like Artemis' technology.
ceslami··on Ask HN: What are the best Marketing APIs today?
I have never heard of a Marketing API. What do you mean?
ceslami··on Square Cash
The products are marketed very differently and have different features. Google Wallet is explicitly hoping to replace your wallet, focusing on loyalty cards, NFC payment, online shopping, and fraud monitoring, in addition to simply sending money to friends.

On the other hand, Square is positioning Cash as a dead-simple way to send money to friends, whether or not they've download the Latest Social Micro-payments App™. Its plumbing. Long run, they are obviously gunning for cards-on-file to support their merchant tools, where they make money hand-over-fist.

Who knows...Square Cash might expand into something that resembles what Google Wallet is today. They seem to be starting with the basics.

Besides that, Google Wallet is available in all 50 states, while Square does not allows residents of Hawaii and Tennessee to send money (only receive it).

ceslami··on Unified API of WebSocket and HTTP long polling/streaming for Clojure
I, and many others, want to use this in production. Is the API solidified, as per version 2.0.0?
ceslami··on Chart.js is back online
There's nothing stopping you from doing that with a pinch of javascript.
ceslami··on Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm
What do you mean by "put my Amex into my phone once...and let apple handle it"? Is this a component of Passbook or something?
ceslami··on How long would the Mailbox app line be in real-life?
what?
ceslami··on Stripe Push Notifications
Not everything has to be an overthought, standard UI element. It adds a bit of Fun, and is harmless in its consequences.

It would be nice to be able to undo though.

ceslami··on Unofficial documentation of the Tesla Model S REST API
Beau, everyone certainly agrees with you. This same comment appears any time someone mentions REST. The phrase has indeed been repurposed to describe HTTP APIs, generally, despite the hard work of Fielding to give REST a proper meaning.

It would be better if people just said "HTTP" when they mean "REST," but that's a long shot.

ceslami··on VCs downsize amidst funding crunch
Nope, that's how the paywall works.

Google link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&...

ceslami··on Segment.io (YC S11) Lets Developers Integrate Multiple Analytics Services
Segment.io is, in a way, creating one. That said, an interoperable standard would not make it any easier to .push to all of your analytics vendors.

The (hosted) product seems especially useful to non-technical staff, who don't necessarily care about standards and protocols.

ceslami··on Ask HN: What is the highest trafficked website run by an individual?
Markus Frind, Plenty of Fish: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...
ceslami··on Who is DDOSing GitHub and why?
Isn't this the situation that Cloudflare was designed to protect against? Their service is free as well.
ceslami··on Show HN: Contactually landing page resembles 37Signal's HighriseHQ landing page
This isn't as egregious as some other copycats in the past. 37 Signals came up with a novel landing page concept, and we will likely continue to see companies test derivations of it.
ceslami··on Iran designing its own version of the Internet
The people of Iran will suffer the most, unfortunately.
ceslami··on Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing
This piece confused me for several reasons.

First, if anything, this seems like an accessibility problem that would be hard to solve. Shakiness affects many of us as we get older, but it is hard to design a website around this constraint.

Second, there is an implication that this ad placement is somehow "surely wrong," and a step further, is likely only successful due to pseudo-fraudulent interactions. I want to rebut this, but she does not actually substantiate it. The most I can say is that the top-left corner of the screen is the hottest hotspot, so placing an ad there is savvy at worst.

I too have been reading her blog for a while, but this piece caught me off-guard as awkwardly personal and lacking in substance.

ceslami··on Ebay Acquires Svpply
I don't think its going anywhere -- at least that isn't the plan: http://blog.svpply.com/post/31008753911/ebay-inc-acquires-sv...

On another note, if you truly find the site useful, you should be interested in its longevity. For all you know, a team of 7+ with an affiliate sales model and only 60,000 monthly uniques may not have been able to sustain this product without interest from a larger corporate entity.

In essence, a sale is not synonymous with disappearance, and sometimes it can even _ensure_ the opposite.

ceslami··on Ask HN: Is anyone else being forced to move to Facebook timeline?
It is entertaining to me that you would presume Facebook doesn't "have a right" to change the way your profile looks.

This reminds me of when SearchKing sued google because they position on SERP's dropped. At some point, people forget that there are multinational corporations behind these massive service. They have no obligation to delight you, or remain consistent in appearance/functionality.

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