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dexterchiefon Unironically using Kubernetes for my personal blog

I'm happy you're happy, but do you really need all that fancy file syncing/diff/resolution stuff? Wouldn't FTP have been enough? Vim over SSH?

Seems like overkill. :P

dexterchiefon Ask HN: Starting a project today, which web framework would you use?

It feels like the constraints/expectations we face building in 2017 are different from those of 2004 (when Rails was created) or 2005 (when Django was created). Both of these predate the iphone (launched in 2007) and the dominance of mobile, as well as stuff like Websockets (2011), 12 factor, immutable infrastructure, distributed systems...

It feels extremely unlikely that that if we decided to design a framework with these things in mind we would end up with something that looks like Rails or Django (or some other RESTish/MVC thing), and yet somehow these are the things we overwhelmingly use and recommend.

dexterchiefon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2016)

  Location: Ottawa, Canada
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Node.js/Javascript(ES6/7), Ruby, Rails, TDD, GraphQL, React, React-Router, Postgres, NoSQL (MongoDB, ArangoDB), Docker, *nix, graph-databases
  Résumé/CV: http://stackoverflow.com/cv/mikewilliamson
  Email: mike@korora.ca

=======================

I'm a full-stack Javascript/Ruby dev and linux geek looking for a place where stuff I write makes an impact: on users, on the organization. I built https://www.usesth.is. It's end to end Javascript: React/React-Router/Express/GraphQL/Node.js/ArangoDB(V8 in the database!).

dexterchiefon DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

Wikipedia has lots of disambiguation pages but somehow this idea has never made it into the search world. Perhaps the idea of a single text box that you can type "Michelangelo" into is not a good one. Tracking the user so you can get some context (is it Ninja Turtles or art history usually with this person?) seems a logical extension of the lunacy of that situation.

I use DDG a fair bit but I feel like without revisiting that assumption that a single context-free text box is even desirable, ditching the tracking (which I am totally in favour of) feels like they are dooming themselves.

I've played a little with running Yacy locally and directing it to crawl only sites I care about. So far that habit has not stuck.

The bangs are a step in the right direction. Suggesting additional search terms isn't quite right, and neither is doing a site specific search since I don't know what site will have the information.

Maybe a "metabang" where you search all the bangs in a category? "python !!tech"

Anyway, its good to see DDG growing.

dexterchiefon Glenn Greenwald Stands by the Official Narrative

Bill Blunden: "In this editorial he asserts that American spies are motivated primarily by the desire to thwart terrorist plots."

Glen Greenwald: "In one sense, this blame-shifting tactic is understandable. After all, the CIA, the NSA and similar agencies receive billions of dollars annually from Congress and have been vested by their Senate overseers with virtually unlimited spying power. They have one paramount mission: find and stop people who are plotting terrorist attacks. When they fail, of course they are desperate to blame others."

Maybe Glen's sentence could have been written "They have been given the mandate to find and stop people who are plotting..." to fend off a potential (purposeful?) misreading like Mr. Blunden has done, but the problem here is clearly not the wording.

Nothing about Glen's article supports any of Mr. Blunden's rambling innuendo. Not only is this is a lame attempt to score points off of Glen, but it's pretty dubious submission to HN in the first place.

dexterchiefon Microsoft's Software is Malware

I think FSF could learn a lot from what Micah Lee is doing at the Intercept. He's been doing a bunch of articles that are a nice blend of why and how with a nice conversational feel.

In terms of outreach and informing new generations of users... I think adopting that style would be a big win. Even non-technical users have a multi-year investment in Windows, and in spite of all the polish of modern distros, the jump to FOSS is still a big one. Help people make it.

https://theintercept.com/2015/04/27/encrypting-laptop-like-m... https://theintercept.com/2015/09/16/getting-hacked-doesnt-ba...

dexterchiefon Speaking out against Sarah Sharp (2013)

Because a blunt, rude, & brutal response to the observation that the community around the kernel is blunt, rude, & brutal is obviously the way to go...

dexterchiefon Native multi-model can compete with pure document and graph databases

That would be cool. I'm not sure it would change much though. I know someone working with search data who recently tried out Neo4j with a test data set of 500,000,000 nodes and apparently was really disappointed with the results.

I'm not sure that graph data (generally) is particularly amenable to being spread across multiple nodes. My understanding is that ArangoDB has implemented some clustering based on Googles Pregel Framework, so I suspect it might fare a bit better in my friends test... but in spite of my urging I don't know that he has had time to recreate the test with Arango. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I don't know if any database is fun to deal with at that size. My experience with Arango has been an unremarkable amount of remarkably complex data, so I would also be interested to see the results with something huge.

dexterchiefon Native multi-model can compete with pure document and graph databases

I think the idea with "native multi-model" is that Arango was explicitly designed to do k/v, documents and graphs rather than it being something that is bolted on afterwards.

dexterchiefon Native multi-model can compete with pure document and graph databases

I've been using ArangoDB for a year now and I think they are definitely on to something cool.

Having stumbled upon some really complex data a few times now, I am increasingly appreciating how amazing it is to model your data any way you need, without having to deal with the complexity of running multiple data stores.

Cool to see that I apparently didn't give up any performance to get the flexibility. :)

I'd love to see them push the geospatial capabilities a little further, but they are already pretty decent.

dexterchiefon Ask HN: What can a startup expect to spend on hosting?

Fair point. Assume a vanilla Rails app, with RDS for the Database. Perhaps a configuration something like this:

https://medium.com/@jatescher/how-to-set-up-a-rails-4-1-app-...

dexterchiefon Go Screencasts by codegangsta are Coming Soon

I second this. One for Rubyists coming from, say, Sinatra would be great.

Or maybe focusing on the language transition separately from the tools/library transition: "the X things that will hurt your head transitioning from Y to Go"

dexterchiefon Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

By all means, unapologetically build your startup with C#/.NET.

Every Linux/OSS based startup you will be competing with agrees with this recommendation.

dexterchiefon Ask HN: Would self-taught programmers be interested in such a book?

I took some classes with Marc-André Cournoyer (http://classes.codedinc.com/) and really enjoyed the format he used of online video, 4 hours a day for two days.

FWIW, I think what you are thinking of might be a good (better?) fit with that format.

Either way it sounds interesting!

dexterchiefon Stanford Scientists Put Free Text-Analysis Tool on the Web

Apparently this is done with Ruby/Rails... any chance this is going to find its way onto Github?

dexterchiefon Why I dropped the Linux stack in Favour of Microsoft

That's true, they're now worse. They are now a patent troll both directly (with the money they are demanding, and getting, from Android manufacturers) and indirectly (see link to bloomberg below) and engage heavily in astroturfing (which this article smells of... also see the readwrite link below) and attack ads (scroogle, droid rage, everything Mark Penn). On top of that it looks enough like they are closing their platform that Valve has jumped ship to hedge against MS forcing them through the MS app store where they can take a cut.

Who wouldn't want to be a part of all that?

http://readwrite.com/2013/01/03/googles-ftc-settlement-is-an...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/patent-privateers-s...

dexterchiefon Web Experience Toolkit – Open source web framework by the Government of Canada

Well how about that. I take back two or three things I said about the Canadian Government. :)

Seriously I am really happy to see this kind of thing finally happen.

dexterchiefon Do you need a degree to be a coder?

If you could dig up that link to the study I would love to read it.

dexterchiefon My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

This really makes no sense. Pointing to someone who is 5 years into learning the Microsoft ecosystem and who got their last software update two years ago is the worst possible way to prove you don't get "hammered" when you leave Bizspark.

Are we really going to pretend that never upgrading their software is an option?

For the sake of technical correctness, I'll agree with you, yes its true that you don't get "hammered" when you leave Bizspark.

You get "hammered" when you get 5-7 years into the Microsoft ecosystem and realize that you can no longer put off the software upgrades.

At that point you have to do the math and figure out which is cheaper:

throwing away most of what you have learned and rewriting your software using completely different language and ecosystem

Dropping "5 figures" on software licenses.

Where does the "5 figures" figure come from? An InfoQ interview with the guys behind Tekpub who dropped MS for Rails after being in Bizspark:

"RB: If the platform was holding up fine, what prompted the change of architecture?

RC: Money. We were enrolled in Microsoft BizSpark Program and it was great for getting off the ground, but projecting into the future we realized that everything - from our database down to our development environment would have to be paid for after 3 years. We also figured that we'd probably need a separate server to run videos properly (for streaming) to Silverlight (using Streaming Media) which would be another license cost - and, in addition, we'd need to buy Media Encoder in order to encode the video for Smooth Streaming.

This might not be an issue for a large company, but when we sat down to assess what the bills would be - well let's just say that it was about 5 figures. We put our business hats on and tried to justify that cost - and we couldn't.

Not only that, James and I both knew Rails pretty well. We realized we could push everything into the cloud with better streaming and throughput for a microscopic fraction of the price - so that's what we did.

JA: As Rob mentioned cost was one of the factors, BizSpark is great but it is basically a ticking time bomb. I think more than cost though the motivating factor was around what we both wanted to be using day to day. ASP.NET MVC and .NET are very lacking in some areas that are very important to us. The testing story on .NET is not the best, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to design your application in the right way to handle testing and then writing the tests themselves is not as clean or usable as some other languages. One of the other areas of high friction was deployment, there are ways to handle it in .NET but nothing as nice or clean as Capistrano.

RB: So what does the TekPub platform look like today?

RC: We moved to Rails 2.3.5 using MongoMapper against MongoDB. We have a reporting setup that uses MySQL to track stuff we need to report on which uses DataMapper. We also plugged in New Relic RPM to keep track of our site and it's health - all of this is less than 1% of what it would have cost us, on average, with BizSpark. "

http://www.infoq.com/articles/architecting-tekpub

dexterchiefon Ecuador offers U.S. rights aid, waives trade benefits

Seems like a good moment for some Emma Goldman:

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

dexterchiefon Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

"The goal is to create a happy, healthy and capable person - not an impressive 5 year old" I totally agree with this. This is a life long project. What you are looking for has to come from within, it can't be imposed from without.

If I could/had to do it all over again I would be keeping these things in mind: Pressure is bad. It's probably easier than you think to makes kids afraid to try. Keep him away from computers/TV as long as possible. Imagination is a pale and shabby thing beside them. Books build a different mind.

I would also echo the nutrition thing. I would suggest maybe a shake for breakfast with a variety of fresh/frozen fruit and some Vega One: http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ Take a good look at the nutritional content. Hopefully that will be a habit that will sustain the kids nutritional needs while he goes through the dreaded "I'm only eating white bread and dry pasta" phase.

Good luck.

dexterchiefon Photoshop 1.0 Source Code

For anyone interested in retro graphics programs, you should check out Wright Design. I wrote up a post about it and it includes a zip file of the actual program and tutorial files. I have always secretly hoped that someone would make an FOSS version of this software since I have yet to see anything like it even though it is now more than 15 years old. It seamlessly combined bitmap and vector artwork and was twice as fast as Photoshop in its day. Sad that Adobe was able to kill it off...

http://mikewilliamson.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/12-years-old-...

dexterchiefon Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

Relevant and hilarious. Good find!

dexterchiefon Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw

You are probably correct that what he did is probably unlawful (Canadian law is usually fairly close to US law), I disagree that it was unethical.

In a general sense It's not difficult to find instances of behaviour that, while lawful are far from ethical, so those to things don't necessarily travel together. Some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Sterilization_Act_of_Alb... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sch... Obviously this could be a long list...

In this specific instance it seems that his information was exposed by this flaw along with everyone else's. Wanting to verify the safety of your own information feels like a pretty reasonable and ethical thing.

I think I would rephrase your example a little: "Let's suppose you let someone store their stuff at your house you come back home and find them picking on your door lock with a lock picking tool. You ask him "what are you doing?" and he says "I'm just checking is your lock safe. I do it for your security." Would you believe him?"

dexterchiefon Youth expelled from Montreal college after finding security flaw

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/engineers_cold_and_d...

Suddenly everything makes sense. :)

Seriously though, where are those stats coming from?

dexterchiefon Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

There emphatically is not a worse motivation that being willing to do anything for money. Do something to ensure there is a little less tragedy in the commons. Please.

dexterchiefon The Browser You Loved to Hate

Amen Brother. IE was/is broken on purpose to prevent web apps from competing with Microsoft's bread and butter desktops apps, IMO. MS is scared they losing IE's drag on the momentum of the web. This is forcing them to update IE so its at least close enough to other browsers that it is not abandoned completely and suddenly I am supposed to be impressed?

Additionally, why is Microsoft marketing material making the front page of HN?

dexterchiefon Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

Sorry to hear you had to fold up shop like that. It sounds like you have plenty of talents to fall back on but that probably doesn't remove any of the sting of having all your hard work swept away. That said, US Politicians have plenty of misdeeds to answer for, but over-regulating the financial sector is really not among them. The requirement to prove that you have some sort of income before getting a house loan was one of the things deregulation "fixed". It was bank policy not government policy that "allowed millions of people making $50K a year to buy $500,000 homes they could not afford". Check out Alan Greenspan's testimony before congress. Its easy to find on youtube.

dexterchiefon Oracle makes move to kill open source MySQL

Why the quotes around "alive"? What has been happening with the Netbeans project?

dexterchiefon What music do you listen to while coding?

Mostly instrumental stuff. Some Dub, electronica that sort of thing. Lyrics usually distract but sometimes they are ok if the music is smooth. This is the stuff that has been in rotation for me lately:

http://northatlanticdrift.bandcamp.com/album/canvas http://seaoleena.bandcamp.com/album/sea-oleena http://pitchblack.bandcamp.com/album/remixes-rarities http://okamusic.bandcamp.com/album/half-lazy-half-crazy http://trinityroots.bandcamp.com/album/true And most of the Ultimae catalogue: http://ultimae.bandcamp.com/