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mcos

216 karma · joined June 22, 2011

markcostello.net
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mcos··on Tabs or spaces – Parsing a 1B files among 14 programming languages
The biggest problem with the spaces vs tabs debate is that editor presentation is still tightly coupled to file persistence. Imagine an abstraction layer created so that developers might choose to see what they wished, yet have files saved in a standard format it might negate some of the issues people have.
mcos··on Buffett FAQ
This is great. I wonder if there's a way to package it up for an e-reader, or as a PDF?
mcos··on YC Open-Source Sales Agreement
This is a great move. Unfortunately it's still in Microsoft Word format and there's no license associated with it. Would love to see this somewhere like GitHub, where it could be forked and changed by others.
mcos··on Show HN: HireMyFriend – Get your friends to help you find a new job
I'd like to give this a go, but I don't have a twitter account. How do you see this working for those developers without a social media presence?
mcos··on Show HN: Get a summary of your Steam account apps – price, install size, etc.
Techcrunched: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/01/steam-gauge-gauges-the-size...
mcos··on Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything
You could read all the responses into a Queue-type structure and then populate the database in the background.
mcos··on Goodbye, Malcolm
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mcos··on Download Adobe Creative Suite 2, Including Photoshop and Illustrator, for Free
Unfortunately, if you're using an Intel-based Mac, the Mac versions of applications are limited to Power-PC machines.
mcos··on AWS Data Pipeline
Thanks, I've already tried that. My main issue is EBS performance when writing the dump file to disk. The backups themselves don't impact on database performace much, but writing up to 20 Gigs of a dump file to an EBS disk on a nightly basis is extremely slow. Maybe this Data Pipeline service will help bypass that.
mcos··on AWS Data Pipeline
Just this week I was looking for a better solution that would back up my RDS database to S3. I'm currently using mysqldump, but the RDS instance size has grown extremely large and so, it has become unwieldly. Hopefully this will help with that.
mcos··on Why Geeks Should Care About Sports
If you've seen the movie, I'd highly recommend "Moneyball" the book too. It goes into a lot of great detail that the movie doesn't deal with.
mcos··on A History of the US Congress: Partisan and Ideological Makeup
A large version is available here: http://xkcd.com/1127/large/
mcos··on AWS issues, affecting Heroku and others
No, just straight up EC2 and RDS. It seems not all the RDS instances are affected, but it's just frustrating that they all haven't failed over.
mcos··on AWS issues, affecting Heroku and others
"11:03 AM PDT We are currently experiencing connectivity issues and degraded performance for a small number of RDS DB Instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region."

Given that my sites are deployed using Multi-AZ RDS instances and yet they're still down, this takes the cake a little.

mcos··on DeployButton is the simplest and fastest way to get code on your server
"It's built with simplicity and power in mind -- The simplicity for a non-technical user to be given the reigns to deploy from a master branch to a "staging" server… or to a production server after any tests have passed."

I'm sure there's good reasoning behind wanting to give a non-technical user the rights to deploy code to servers, but I'm afraid I can't seem to conceive of them right now. Can you elaborate why you would want someone without the requisite technical skills deploying code?

mcos··on What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing
They are hiring! http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/twilio/list
mcos··on Paid Vacation? That’s Not Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Paid, Paid Vacation.
There is an argument to be made that no guaranteed vacation days means that companies don't have to pay you for your unused vacation days if you leave or are let go.
mcos··on Ask HN: Summer reading
I'm currently really enjoying "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry...

A very interesting read for hackers.

mcos··on Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu
I've always thought that using some sort of internal torrent mechanism would be a good way for applications to download their updates, especially something like Chrome, which updates quite frequently.
mcos··on Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up U.S. Citizenship
For the vast majority of the world's population, not being in the United States hasn't been a barrier to doing something with their lives.
mcos··on Colleges and Employers Demanding Facebook Passwords
Are you sure it would cause a collapse in its user base? I don't think it would, given that it's so ingrained in the lives of college students. At most there would probably be some outcry followed by a symbolic climbdown by Facebook, but a 'total collapse' is extremely unlikely.
mcos··on Colleges and Employers Demanding Facebook Passwords
Who's to know whether or not Facebook is considering plans to monetize this sort of behaviour by offerring institutions you have listed on your profile the opportunity to see everything you have listed for a fee.
mcos··on Sublime Text 2 Beta released with Auto-complete and Improved UI
I use SublimeRope and I'm quite happy with it (It's for python only though.): https://github.com/JulianEberius/SublimeRope
mcos··on Twelve Factors of Web Application Development
Is there a link to a pdf version or a single page version?
mcos··on The new Alan Turing docudrama is available for streaming
The entire thing is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4hhX_j6pQ
mcos··on Facebook's Browser is Google's Worst Nightmare
Could they fork a release of Chromium and customize it?
mcos··on New York I Love You, But US Immigration Policy Is Bringing Me Down
As someone currently going through my second H1B transfer in three years, I hope it works out quickly for you.

I'm in the process of drafting a letter to the Rep from my district about the nightmare that this process has been. I know its not going to change any overarching policy, but I'd at least like for the USCIS to keep the documentation I've already provided for my current visa on file so that I don't need to send them paperwork they've already seen for my first three applications.

Unfortunately, I suspect that somewhere at the heart of the USCIS system an entity relationship is enforced such that there is a one to one relationship between candidates and cases/visas and, thus, no interchange of information between one case/visa and the next. One advantage of this is that there is not likely to be much carryover of any errors between cases. This is purely speculation though.

A better model might result in a one to many relationship between candidates and cases/visas, where only one can be active at a time. This might result in an easier way for the immigration service to query each visa and tell me exactly what documentation is necessary for a transfer. However, this would also involve me trusting USCIS to actually manage and keep my data safe and secure. It would also involve me trusting them not to make any errors when inputting data to their system and for there to be an easy way to correct their data when they do make a mistake.

The one unfortunate thing that I'm sure about regarding immigration issues is that things are not going to change anytime soon. The lawyers who assemble and file visa applications at a very high cost for companies are not going to be happy if the system is made accessible for people to do by themselves. They, unfortunately, have a vested interest in keeping things as complicated as possible.

As for me, I'm going to do the same thing I've done with all my visa applications, I'm going to assemble everything associated with the application into one place (all paperwork, forms, emails, communications etc) and make a digital copy which will be encrypted and stored on a backup drive as well as a physical copy which will sit in my personal safe. Then, I'm going to start my new job and forget everything about the process and hope that I don't have to go through it again for a long time.

Good luck with everything!

mcos··on Show HN: My iPad app Etude got acquired by Steinway & Sons
Congrats! Ever since I watched "Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037" (http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Note-by-Note-The-Making-of-S...), I've had the impression that Steinway are a really great innovative tech company whose employees care about their work and their craft - not unlike a great software company, but in a different medium.
mcos··on Would you pay for a Super Bowl commercial out of your own pocket? Steve Jobs did
It says in the video that he paid for half of it, and Woz paid for the other half.
mcos··on USCIS makes it easier for immigrants to build startups in the US
Does this mean that I can establish my own business on a H1B and then have that business sponsor my visa so I can work for it?