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jdcryans

61 karma · joined November 17, 2010

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jdcryans··on Dole Food Had Too Many Shares
I think you are misattributing his snark. In his regular column he has a recurring section called "Blockchain blockchain blockchain" such as in [1] in which he covers how the finance industry itself is trying to apply blockchains to everything. It's the new fad, they are in the Peak of Inflated Expectations [2]. So while it might be true that some bankers are afraid that Bitcoin is going to replace them (I have no opinion on that) the author is highlighting yet another case where blockchain is supposed to easily solve any difficult distributed ledger problem.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-31/mirror-tr...

2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Ga...

jdcryans··on Kudu as a More Flexible and Available Kafka-Style Queue
Well TBH you do get to pick which Hadoop-related components need to run, HDFS's Datanode itself is happy with just a bit of RAM. I do understand the concern though.

You're probably happy with what you have in prod but if you get some time to try out Kudu feel free to drop by our Slack channel for a chat! http://getkudu.io/community.html

jdcryans··on Kudu as a More Flexible and Available Kafka-Style Queue
You seem to have a pretty typical use case that we're targeting. One thing to understand about Kudu is that it doesn't run queries, it only stores the data. You can use Impala or Drill, they'll figure out the locality and apply the aggregations properly/push down the filters to Kudu.

Did you initially pick ES over systems like Impala because of the lack real time inserts/updates when used with HDFS?

BTW, here's a presentation that might help you understand Kudu: http://www.slideshare.net/jdcryans/kudu-resolving-transactio...

jdcryans··on Kudu as a More Flexible and Available Kafka-Style Queue
Hi, I work on Apache Kudu (incubating).

Analytics is what Kudu was designed for (it's not just marketing), so some tradeoffs were made. You'll get the biggest bang for the buck if your use cases are heavy on inserts and big scans with selective filters. Other use cases will perform ok or meh VS other storage engines. Also note that Kudu is still pre-1.0.

jdcryans··on Kudu as a More Flexible and Available Kafka-Style Queue
Yeah, the title in the article does says "Apache Kudu", maybe it was changed later. What it should really be is "Apache Kudu (incubating)".
jdcryans··on Call Me Maybe: MongoDB Stale Reads
Heh, Poe's Law, etc :)

I guess you could also call it Quantum Consistency.

jdcryans··on Call Me Maybe: MongoDB Stale Reads
The issue isn't that MongoDB is eventually consistent, it's that the documentation claims that in some cases it's strictly consistent[1] while Kyle found that:

"MongoDB, even at the strongest consistency levels, allows reads to see old values of documents or even values that never should have been written."

1. http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/glossary/#term-stri...

jdcryans··on Yelp Buys Eat24 for $134M
Will it be the end of eat24's weekend coupons? When they started they were regularly giving 3-4 bucks per coupon. Now, I can't remember the last time it wasn't $2, apart from those times when they teamed up with other companies like Paypal and gave away $10. I'm actually surprised it went on for so long, seems like an expensive way to help retention.
jdcryans··on Now on Twitter: Group direct messages and mobile video camera
That along with: "Many of you use Direct Messages to reach the people and brands you’re only connected to on Twitter."

So the blog post's target audience seems to be their own users (you experience/use), but spoken in advertiser-speak. It's a not so subtle reminder that the user is the product.

jdcryans··on A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
Well you really... saved the day!
jdcryans··on A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
Ah that makes more sense, thanks.
jdcryans··on A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You
> and me for French > The French guy actually translated "Garbage day" to something like "Shitty day"

So you translated it to "jour de merde"?

jdcryans··on 20 Years After the Hijacking of Air France Flight 8969
Merci :)

I wonder why Google translated "huis-clos" to "camera" in the header text. Best I could find is that Sartre's Huis Clos was originally called "in camera" which means: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_camera.

jdcryans··on Bay Area tech company caught paying imported workers $1.21 per hour
> I think it's more likely they didn't understand the law fully rather than malicious intent. The workers were after-all, temporary and were not going to be staying in the US permanently.

Oh yeah, we agree there, what I meant is that of all the times companies brought over employees here to work for some time, this time it so happened that their salary was below the minimum. If they were bringing over people from, say, Canada or Germany, they'd probably be paid way above the minimum.

jdcryans··on Bay Area tech company caught paying imported workers $1.21 per hour
Best I can tell, they have a presence in India:

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-EFI-RVW5844... http://www.justdial.com/Bangalore/efi-india-pvt-ltd-%3Cnear%...

So my guess is that they are actual EFL, India, employees who are flown in for some time, probably on a tourist visa (I've seen that elsewhere), but still paid their normal salary while they work here.

The truly exceptional situation here is that their salary happens to be so low it's below the minimum salary (edit for clarification: exceptional in that it also happens with employees whose salary is above the minimum, but then article would seem a lot less sensational).

jdcryans··on How odd is a cluster of plane accidents?
For those interested, a good source for a lot of publicly reported crashes, accidents, incidents and whatnot is The Aviation Herald. Here's the list of all their recorded crashes sorted by occurence date (toggle the icons next to "Filter" to see more kinds of events): http://avherald.com/h?list=&opt=7681
jdcryans··on Spouses of Some H-1B Visa Holders to Be Allowed to Work
Ah I see where you were coming from, so you're saying that it's ridiculous since most spouses probably gave up/found something else to do, and those who would really benefit from a relaxed rule are those who just got their H1.

The way I see it, in the best case scenario a spouse can now get an EAD in 2 years (1 year before starting the GC process, 1 year to get the PERM and the I-140). Still far from being able to work right away, but progress nevertheless.

jdcryans··on Spouses of Some H-1B Visa Holders to Be Allowed to Work
I don't think it's ridiculous, and the current 97k H4s that will now be able to work are probably pretty happy about it [1].

Regarding the L2s being able to get their EADs but not the H4s, keep in mind that the latter are not the only ones in this situation, it's the same thing with TN/TD. And then you have the E-3 spouses (Australia) who _can_ get their EADs[2] :)

I think that the problem is that each visa/work status was created separately, so it's more than just a case of "since it works for this one, why doesn't it work for this other one". I agree with you that this current situation is ridiculous but I'm happy that they start addressing those issues, even if piece by piece.

1. http://recode.net/2014/05/06/congrats-h-1b-spouses-you-can-g... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa

jdcryans··on Spouses of Some H-1B Visa Holders to Be Allowed to Work
As whitenoise mentions below, it's only if your I-140 has been approved or your H1B has been extended that your spouse can work.

Even if you are getting your H1B this October, and assuming that you could qualify for EB-2 in ROW and that your company starts the green card process the day you start working (more likely it's gonna take 6 months to a year), your wife still won't be able to work for another 2 years. Just getting the PERM these days can easily take a year.

Also IANAL.

jdcryans··on The way we board airplanes
> First, people traveling together tend to sit next to each other, so ordering by "columns" instead of rows breaks them apart in the queue

You can order by column but still let families together, for example with United you can board with your group/family's lowest group number. This means a 1K with boarding group 1 can bring in his wife and kid (who are somewhere between 3 and 5 if they don't have status) on the plane all at the same time. This way you can fill up whole rows at once.

jdcryans··on Why is asbestos still killing people?
I come from one of the towns mentioned in the article, Thetford Mines (they somehow misspelled it), which is about 45 minutes drive from Asbestos. Reading the local newspaper is always entertaining, it seems everyone in town has an opinion about the fibre, and most of the time it's a positive one too. If some MP dares speak against it, everyone gets mad.

Anyways, people live there and as a child it's normal to go play in the dump sites, which have a strange white-greenish color due to the mineral. You pick up a "bearded rock" as we call them, the beard being the asbestos fibre, and stash them in your bedroom or whatever kids do with rocks.

Needless to say, living now in the States and telling people about those stories (which I considered normal, who wouldn't play with an asbestos-laden rocks?) always brings up interesting reactions. I was told (by the local newspaper) that you can't breath the big fibres, that it's once they're processed that they're dangerous, so I do wonder if I still have some it in me...

jdcryans··on Weebly Valued at $455M Amid Website-Building Boom
From the same article:

“All the dot-com ideas were correct,” he said. “They were all too early. They are happening now.”

The article's title is clickbait.

jdcryans··on Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders May Soon Be Allowed to Work in the U.S.
Maybe, but I'm not sure if it matters. Like the article says, spouses of L-1s are already doing it, same for the spouses of Australian E-3 holders. From wikipedia: "spouses of E-3 visa holders may work in the United States without restrictions". So they can be baristas if they want to :)
jdcryans··on Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing
(not a flightfox user but my 2 cents)

Booking an award trip can be much harder to do unless you have an easy route like a domestic non-stop. The ITA matrix won't show you those flights, expertflyer.com used to be really useful but right now you can't get access to the United (and most of *A) data, some airlines have vague routing rules that may or may not play in your favor depending on which agent you talk to on the phone (looking at you US Airways), etc.

I think 99$ is steal.

jdcryans··on How the Harper Government Committed a Knowledge Massacre
Not really.

What counts is how many MPs you get voted in, including the leader who's going to become the PM (see footnote). Let's say there's 100 counties, then you need to win 51 to have a majority government and you can basically pass any law because MPs tend to follow party lines. A minority government is when you get less than 51 MPs, in which case you always have to ally yourself with another party if you want to pass a law, or just form a coalition.

Note: If the leading party's leader isn't voted in, he can swap with another MP. It almost happened in Québec with Jean Charest.

jdcryans··on Ballmer forced out after $900M Surface RT debacle, analyst says
Not sure about the nameless part:

"'He was definitely pushed out by the board,' said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, in an interview Friday"

jdcryans··on Google Ventures Puts $258M Into Uber, Its Largest Deal Ever
I was in Montreal for 4 years before moving to SF so maybe I can help a little. I've also been using uber from the moment they started and have used it in multiple cities.

Apart from the basic benefit of not having to get your wallet out, I'd say it's the option of choosing between different type of rides that I like the most. In SF via uber we can get taxis, uberx (basically Lyft, some drivers do both), black cars, and SUVs.

In Montreal I don't remember ever getting a black car, but I was student at ÉTS so maybe that's a moot point :)

For your last question, SF has a developed taxi network but it's really bad. Montréal in that regard is much better, but maybe when leaving the bar at 3AM you'd rather get a black car to take you home rather than a taxi from Hochelag, and uber would make that really easy for you.

jdcryans··on The NewsBlur Redesign
Congrats Sam! Funny meeting you virtually ;)
jdcryans··on A quick message queue benchmark: ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ, HornetQ, QPID, Apollo
My thoughts exactly, this is useless. Benchmarking is something everyone can do, so people do it, but it doesn't provide any real value unless you put an insane amount of time into it, and even then you'll get a lot of hate mail :)

For example, look at the "Yahoo! Cloud System Benchmark" AKA YCSB paper. Those researchers spent a lot of time designing the benchmarks and properly configuring each database that they were testing. They even dedicated a researcher per database to sit down with the developers to review the configurations and the test runs. I was part of this process for the Apache HBase as a dev. In the end, everyone was still critical of the results once they saw the graphs comparing the DBs.

But, I'm still glad they did it as I use YCSB as one of my tools to benchmark HBase.

jdcryans··on Sequoia’s Leone: In Venture, Big is the Enemy of Great
I found one nugget: “You want very small, tight teams, same thing with running an engineering department.”

I can think of reasons why you'd want that, but yeah the article wasn't about making that point.

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