Hacker News Reader

galenmarchettion The Raft Consensus Algorithm (2015)

Consensus algorithms underly distributed databases like Cassandra, or distributed caches like Redis. (in fact Redis does use a version of Raft).

Simple use case, you're running a database across three servers, so that users can ping any one of the servers and it still works (fault tolerance).

User X pings server A to write something to a table. User Y pings server B to read from that table.

How do you make sure that User Y reads what User X wrote, so that User X and User Y are on the same page with what happened?

That's the consensus algo

galenmarchettion Ask HN: Why focus on unit tests over end-to-end tests?

unit tests generally have a faster iteration loop than end-to-end testing. so while you don't get the full coverage of a workflow, you do catch some class of bugs earlier than you would if you only rely on end-to-end testing.

IMO both are to be used together...unit testing for increasing development speed by catching errors earlier, end-to-end testing for making sure the full workflow works

the failure mode is writing so many unit tests that you actually slow yourself down maintaining a bunch of tests that barely ever increase your total velocity

galenmarchettion The worst decision Google ever made?

not sure it can be reduced to a single decision, but losing Ilya Sutskever to OpenAI/not cultivating his talent to its fullest extent is a pretty big "one that got away" moment

galenmarchettion The worst decision Google ever made?

Agreed...the user quality has fallen so much due to the advertisers preference. But it's also hard to imagine how they could have built such a long-lasting business without monetizing via ads...what would be another route to sustainable business and service?

galenmarchettion The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

Another domain you see this...political revolutions. Tend to be organized by the equivalent of the upper-middle class, rich-but-not-quite-nobility. High in social-economic status...but not quite high enough.

galenmarchettion I mirrored all the code from PyPI to GitHub and analysed it

https://pypi.org/policy/terms-of-use/

Seems like PyPi explicitly allows this behavior:

"If I upload Content covered by a royalty-free license included with such Content, giving the PSF the right to copy and redistribute such Content unmodified on PyPI as I have uploaded it, with no further action required by the PSF (an "Included License"), I represent and warrant that the uploaded Content meets all the requirements necessary for free redistribution by the PSF and any mirroring facility, public or private, under the Included License.

If I upload Content other than under an Included License, then I grant the PSF and all other users of the web site an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, and publish the Content, including in digital form."

galenmarchettion PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

Does there exist a Discord business plan / any way to even get such a contractual agreement in place? We use Discord as a support channel for our developer tool and I've never heard of an option to get enterprise support...but if such a thing does exist and Discord offers it, I'd probably take it given OPs story

galenmarchettion PSA: Don't base your business around Discord.7yr account banned for posting ASNs

Is it a common practice for Discord to enter in contractual obligations with businesses that use Discord as a central support or distribution channel? I've never heard of this before and given what happened to OP it seems like this should be (a) common knowledge that you can do this and (b) a default option for businesses to consider, if Discord is indeed a big channel for your business.

We use Discord as a primary support and community channel and it never crossed our minds to make a contract with them, but now I'm thinking about it..

galenmarchettion Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Sept 2023)

I'm building a Starlark-based build system that operates at the level of building multi-container environments, rather than normal code assets: https://github.com/kurtosis-tech/kurtosis

It's kind of like Docker in the sense that it packages up an application in a reproducible, composable, and portable way...but instead of working at the level of one server, it works at the level of multi-server applications.

In the back of my head I'm very curious about making an application that just messages me on WhatsApp whenever its the birthday of one of my close friends because I never remember those

galenmarchettion Ask HN: How many Slack messages do you send/receive outside working hours?

I don't count, but probably 10% of the total volume of messages that I send. A bit different for me as a founder though. It also spikes up and down depending on urgency/sprints

galenmarchettion Open-Source: Why Every Business Model Failed

feels like the conflation of "free open-source software" in the Stallman sense with "nonfree open-source software" muddies up all of these discussions/judgements on how software should run

nonfree open-source software offers the right to repair, a promise that the code you use will be free forever, and the right to inspect (security/functionality). for some developers those rights + promises are enough.

the author places common business models at odds with "OS philosopy"...not sure that's true. at odds with Stallman's definition of free software which has some pretty aggressive moral tilt ( https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-prog... ) ...but outside of that, I think most of these business models are actually Just Fine.

galenmarchettion A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)

This is one of my favorite threads of theoretical physics. An entropy modeling of life.

The article says it "underlies rather than replaces" Darwinian evolution but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. Sure general relativity "underlies rather than replaces" Newtonian gravity, but honestly, the understanding of GR gravity does "replace" a pure Newtonian understanding.

Darwinian evolution focuses on survival pressures to force natural selection. An entropic basis for evolution can explain things other than survival pressures; evolution can occur on a basis that rather than "improving survivability" it simply is a more functional expression of entropic drive.

How would this change how how we view evolution? It would be massive and perhaps explain a lot of the oddities in the evolution of very complex features where full functionality and marked increase in survivability is very delayed...

Would love to see further research along these lines

galenmarchettion Why should be believe anything on Social Media?

why should we believe anything on any media? organized media outlets are subject to the constraint that they can't say anything that's demonstrably false without getting flamed, but that constraint is so loose.

social media accounts can straight up lie, organized media can lie by omission - is it that big of a difference? lying by omission gives pretty tremendous wiggle room as well

galenmarchettion Ten killed in private jet crash – Wagner leader Prigozhin 'on passenger list'

what are the odds this is a faked death so prigozhin can chill on a beach island somewhere?

galenmarchettion Why are commercial airplanes still so slow?

The Concorde had a lot of issues with getting permits to fly overland due to sonic booms disturbing residential areas, so was limited to flight paths primarily over the ocean...which hurt the usability of the plane a lot. Add in fuel inefficiency (not sure if this is still the case given progress in aerospace engineering?).

Maybe aerospace engineering experts can weigh in on the fuel inefficiency issues, but definitely the combination of cost + limited flight paths made supersonic commercial flights nonviable from a business perspective

galenmarchettion First Autonomous AI Assistant in the Business Travel Industry Launched

Has anyone had a great experience yet with these autonomous AI assistants since ChatGPT4 came out? Personally I haven't experienced an increase in quality for support bots but I'm curious if anything has stood out to anyone else...

galenmarchettion Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2022)

Kurtosis Technologies | Software Engineer, Backend | Fully Remote | Full-time

Kurtosis is a seed-stage, fully remote DevTool startup working with the biggest names in the blockchain space. We're looking for talented backend engineers to join our founding team as we build our product to meet the strong demand we're finding in our initial market. (https://kurtosistech.com)

Kurtosis provides developer tools that fundamentally change the way blockchain technology is built by giving engineers complete control over their development and testing environments. The history of software development is abstraction layers over abstraction layers: assembly code is built over 0’s and 1’s, and C is built over assembly code. Kurtosis is the next layer of abstraction needed to effectively develop decentralized systems, built on top of tooling like Docker and Kubernetes. Our mission is to make the innovation of modern distributed systems accessible to everyone.

More info: https://kurtosistech.notion.site/Careers-9a52dc08027d47648ba...