elevensies

Also http://archive.is/vJa0u [archived copy of the WSJ article.]

I'm not who you asked, but the first thing that comes to my mind is contrib.auth.views, which look for templates at the default locations or the locations you provide (as described here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/topics/auth/default/#... )

So using non-django templates would rule out this kind of thing right?

The tyranny of percentages. If you lose 50%, to get it back you have to gain 100%.

Similarly, I don't doubt that the NSA has the ability to attribute an attack to an attacker. What I doubt is that the NSA has the ability to tell the truth in public.

[keep in mind I'm far from an expert on this]

The thing that bothers me personally about these examples is that there are a lot that end in 0x000000 or 0xffffff, i.e. all bits set or all bits unset in many of the trailing bits.

If you use this for a hash table, a common way that you get your index into the table is:

    index = hash_result % table_size

If you use power-of-two table sizes, then you are going to get these collisions, even though the upper bits differ.

You can use a non-power-of-two table size to compensate for this (prime sizes are typically the most robust choice I think) at the cost of a more expensive modulo operation. See more here in the first section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table#Hashing

If you use it for a hash table, every collision has to be "resolved" in a way that takes time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table#Collision_resolutio... .

So if a hash function has lots of collisions it will use the memory of the hash table less efficiently and cause inserts and lookups to be slower. I think collisions are undesirable for other reasons too, none of which are coming to me right now.

I guess what I'd like to know is: at what point is it worth seriously evaluating alternatives to just using cloud services and paying the sticker price -- which means evaluating the labor cost as well as the cost of the service, where this submission and many others I've seen will quantify the cost of the services and say that bare metal is so much cheaper while ignoring the cost of managing it.

The $30 number comes from the original article -- If I were to make the colo data transfer free and change nothing else, break even point is 100TB/mo.

For the employee cost I agree if you just have a couple boxes pumping out data your labor cost will be quite low. I'm imagining what else you might have happening on your back end using AWS services that you'd also have to replicate in your colocated installation to preserve the efficiency, which would take labor. For example, if you want some extra machines to do some load testing. Or if you need to store a bunch of data and want an S3-like system. Or if you want to wipe a machine and reinstall from an "image". The backup system, and backups testing. RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, etc. Most of that can be done with a couple clicks on AWS.

Back of the envelope calculation:

- assume $100/TB for cloud data transfer

- assume one employee full time equivalent to manage colo'd servers ($10,000/mo), plus $30/TB data transfer

The break even point for the colo'd setup from a networking perspective is:

    10,000 + 30X = 100X
    X = 10,000/70 = 142 (TB/month)

At 1MB per "request" I believe this works out to about 50 requests per second average to reach this traffic level.

Weaknesses of this model:

- Data transfer only. Depending on what else you're doing you could also save a lot on compute and storage.

- I don't know that much about how colocated data transfer would be priced ... i.e. do you need overprovision to guarantee availability, etc.

- one employee to handle servers to replicate the Amazon AWS experience ... could be highly variable depending on what AWS features you are using.

Can anyone recommend a book for an introduction level (i.e. tutorial or cookbook style) coverage of Fault Tree Analysis? I've seen it mentioned in article about SpaceX blowups, it is something I'd like to understand better.

China is willing to do it, as well as capital punishment for fraud. IMO this just transfers more power to politicians. There are more laws than anyone could ever read or count, anyone whose affairs are that complicated can be jailed at any time so it becomes purely political -- would Trump chose to arrest the same billionaires as you?

One of the reasons capitalism is so efficient is because of how quickly it deallocates from failure. Abandoning failed areas allows resources and people to be redirected to more profitable areas. Keep in mind the places we are talking about were quite possibly wilderness 200 years ago, and 200 years from now they could be again.

For various reasons, people want to be able to evaluate students against each other, which requires a total ordering ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order )

For example, I didn't want to go to grad school or work for a megacorp, so I didn't have to worry about my grades. But a lot of my classmates did want those things, which require large scale impersonal evaluation, so they had to sweat about their grades.

reran it: http://archive.is/6klEx

Regarding the mistakes section, the technical side of that is something I've also experienced. When you're working with smartphone derived hardware and platforms you get a pretty sophisticated platform that can do a lot, but it also takes a lot of effort to get everything working and stable. And you'll need to know how to use everything from linux build tools to an oscilloscope. And then 18 months to 2 years later, a new generation or hardware is out so you get to start again :-/. Very labor intensive.

I think they need licenses to use the radio spectrum. I believe Iridium set up a system in China so that all calls are routed through Chinese systems, so there is some historical precedent. The government of China also has anti-satellite weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi... .

I've been thinking along these lines, some other features I'd like:

- ability to have certain sites run site-specific extra processing: i.e. youtube-dl youtube links

- ability to have a list of sites to be archived periodically instead of once only. And the option to be notified when a site updates. even if it were run as a batch job

- ability to ingest a PDF or ebook, identify all the URLs, snapshot all the URLS, present them as a list that links to the original, cached version, the page location

- would also be nice if the data could be stored in a human readable structure in a normal filesystem, so your ability to use the data isn't dependent on your ability to run the tool.

Overall I think it is an interesting project but the commercial potential is limited.

EDIT: maybe the document processing and periodic check thing would make more sense as a higher level tool that depended on the bookmarking tool -- and the extra processing also might make more sense as a plugin type architecture.

Yeah, if the system can't be represented as hyperlinked documents, then you're going to be married to the browser APIs which are in Javascript -- so you can either use Javascript or a tool that outputs Javascript.

One "alternative" is to do the minimum possible in the browser, and do most of the work on the back end.

For example, if you inspect this page, you'll see that it has about 150 lines of Javascript.

There are two ways to change a webpage:

- manipulate it with Javascript

- reload a new page with the changes applied

If your page loads quickly and not all that often, you can get pretty far without Javascript. If you are willing to tolerate a pageload on each interaction, you don't need any Javascript.

I see Musk as having a Caesar-like role. He commands the army (of execs, engineers, technicians, skilled labor), his job is to decide what to attack. Each of those bullet points probably has 100 to 1000 people actively working on it. I don't think Musk could stop attacking new problems any more than Caesar could relinquish control of the army.

Along the same lines (machining), Clickspring is my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA (channel link)

Edit: Here is a particular video I liked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6xovvpuMQo&list=PLZioPDnFPN...

Also in Canada, I just assumed they were still doing it -- I don't watch any children-targeted media so I wouldn't see it anyway. I think I saw an ad during the hockey game last night of a kid eating a McMuffin at night. But a quick look at their youtube channel and it seems they're still at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWMQt_-w75Y

What impresses me most about McDonald's is the highly effective and efficient incentive structure. You have the franchise owner who is very committed financially and can make a high income, plus lots of low cost labor following a very precise process. And they seem to be able to replicate it at almost any scale.

What impresses me least about McDonald's is their ruthless child-targeted advertising.

EDIT: in sort of a quaint way the incentive structure is reminiscent of the manorial system.

Tenancy has strong and unique protections. If you are a tenant you can call the police to kick out your landlord if they are not within their access rights. Someone has the exclusive right to use the space, but it is not the landlord.

I think both of us have a very strong sense of property rights, only we disagree who to ascribe them to. I think it belongs to the airline, so if the man wants to create a dispute with the airline, he should be the one to take it to court (and he probably will.) From my POV, you are saying the man has property rights over the seat because he had a ticket for it and had his arse is in it.

I think that refusing to leave someone else's private property makes the use of force inevitable. I would expect him to be treated essentially the same if he refused after being asked to leave a bar, a movie theater, someone's home, etc.

I'm not aware of any situation where you can legally be involuntarily strip-searched without being arrested. Maybe by customs but I'm not sure.

Personally, if the flight crew instructed me to strip naked or leave the plane, I would just leave. I can't foresee any situation where I would physically fight the staff for my seat, or recommend anyone else to do so.

I think they handled it poorly, but there is no way that a passenger's wishes will override the pilot or the airline. They probably thought he would come to his senses when the cops showed up, I think that is where they screwed up, IMO they should have disembarked the rest of the plane and then arrested him in-place.

Whether or not bumping him is fair, there is no question about who owns the aircraft and has responsibility/authority. No one would want to fly on an airline where a stubborn passenger could override the flight crew.

Joel's criteria are intended to be efficient and diagnostic of common problems. I think his choice here is based on seeing teams use ineffective tools because effective tools are "too expensive". Whereas being made to use expensive tools and being forbidden from using more effective free/cheap tools is more rare.

One thing that Joel's list isn't, it isn't how-to-develop-software, or how to manage software projects, etcetera. There are many books about that. Joel's list is about recognizing ineffective leadership that will waste your time, which is finite, and limit your career and your earning power. And it is a checklist that you should be able to move through during a single on-site interview, not something that requires a four hour conversation and requires you to do an in-depth analysis of their decisions.

For example, I would personally mark any article false if it included any statements on the goals and mindset of Vladimir Putin, unless the author was Vladimir Putin. There are people who probably can't even tell why their wife is upset with them guessing the mindset of a foreign career intelligence officer, politician and tyrant from thousands of miles away.

Most political discussion isn't precise enough to produce a yes/no, and often claims are being made about nebulous stuff like the future, morality, the thoughts and intentions of others. Or, for example, one may display a direct quote from someone without mentioning if they are being paid to spread certain views. The quote may be accurate, but presented in a context that makes it prejudicial. It isn't uncommon to read article of pure rumor and innuendo -- so if something is presented as a rumor do you classify it as "true", because it is true that there is a rumor, or false, because the speaker can't verify the rumor? And then if you mark that false, is all speculation marked false?

The title is a nice pun: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036613/