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mryanon Why Vagrant?

Puppet has some limited support for generating manifests based on the state of an existing system: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/man/resource.html

mryanon How do game companies share massive files?

> That's because some of the complete game files were as large as 50GB

50GB is not the total size of the files needing to be transferred - some of the files were 50GB. Knowing the total size would have been interesting for the sake of discussion.

mryanon The way government does tech is outdated and risky

They are not synonyms - NIH is correct in this case. NIMBY means something rather different.

mryanon Ask HN: a better couchsurfing platform?

I completely agree, and I like the way you phrase this: It can break it, but not make it.

mryanon Ask HN: a better couchsurfing platform?

> To start the discussion on a better platform (starting from which framework/language/DB to use)

The tech stack is probably one of the last items that should be discussed. Communities do not die because of the tech stack they use, but because of problems at higher levels.

IMHO a good starting point would be to identify features/processes that will ensure your new community does not suffer from the same problems you have identified with couchsurfing.com.

mryanon How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem

Pledging is optional - I used beeminder for a long time without entering my credit card details, for exactly this reason.

mryanon Oakland Neighbors Crowdfunding Private Security

Louis Theroux's documentary Law and Disorder in Johannesburg touches on the topic of private security. As someone with no experience of such situations I found this fascinating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZJ1w9-Umcw

One section shows a situation similar to that which you described, in which the private security guards beat a suspected criminal to discourage repeat behaviour. Interestingly, the most brutal of the private security guards later falls foul of a mob of citizens, and must be protected/arrested by the real police (there's a chance I'm confusing this with another Theroux documentary).

mryanon Ways You’re Making Your Employees Less Productive

Interesting - sounds like a more detailed version of "A's hire A's, B's hire C's".

mryanon The Engineer Who converted 12,100 Cups Of Pudding to 1.25 Million Air Miles

A few weeks ago I attended a party in that penthouse as part of Puppet Conf, which was held at the Fairmont. It is an incredible place, but the advertised rate of $15k/night made me quite certain that would be my only visit.

Unfortunately the "secret door" in the library was locked so it was not possible to take a look at the helipad.

$2k for lifetime membership to the Fairmont Platinum club is a good deal, nice one!

mryanon Structure Sensor: Capture the World in 3D

The first 30 seconds or so of this video are particularly impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmgRdFQOLPw

I can see this dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to build 3D environments for games once the tech has had time to mature.

Imagine fitting a fleet of drones with this tech and sending them out exploring...

mryanon Putin: A Plea for Caution From Russia

> UK has this trait also and it is well illustrated in "Great Britain".

This is a common misconception. The "Great" part it not meant in the sense of it being important or excellent. Rather, it refers to the size of the island.

The name "Great Britain" has been around since the UK was a wet and rainy corner of the Roman Empire - in a sense, it is a relic of an empirical past... just not the British Empire.

mryanon All LinkedIn with Nowhere to Go

> So you don't know what to endorse and what not

Surely that's the point of how endorsements should work? Do you know that this person is skilled in Fooing Bars? Then endorse them. Otherwise, don't.

If you don't know whether the site or the user added the skill, it suggests you don't know enough to endorse them for that particular skill.

> It's like the whole damn site was build to fool people around and to promote lying.

Agreed. I'm sure the whole endorsements system at least was built to generate spam and click-throughs. Fortunately, almost everyone recognises it for what it really is - a pointless click-fest with no real value in deciding which skills someone has.

mryanon Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

http://xkcd.com/1053/

For each of these irritants, perhaps someone has just recently discovered them and is keen to appear knowledgable the next time the debate comes up.

If I had my way, a comment that matched something like /^This\./ would result in an immediate hellban. I don't know why this particular habit annoys me so much.

mryanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (September 2013)

SEEKING WORK - Remote, Amsterdam, London

Syadmin as a Service

Do you want to improve your scaling, resilience and reliability, but don't have a full-time Ops person on the team? Why not rent one?

I work with startups and web agencies to help them spend less time worrying about technical problems, and more time growing their business.

How can I help you?

- Expert sysadmin services, on tap

- Continuous Integration for your infrastructure

- Infrastructure design and implementation

- Server maintenance and optimisation (performance and cost)

- Quickly get up and running with tools like Puppet

About Me

I'm writing a book on AWS System Administration that will be published by O'Reilly later this year.

Here's an AWS case study for an infrastructure I built:

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/fashiolista/

If you think these services could help your business grow, let's talk. mike@fadedink.co.uk

mryanon Flutter: $20 Wireless Arduino with 1 km range

If the KS is successful they will sell boards starting at $20.

mryanon RethinkDB now available on AWS marketplace

Thanks Jeff. I've learned to always provide the caveat "unless AWS have upgraded this recently" due to the speed at which new features are added/improved. :)

mryanon RethinkDB now available on AWS marketplace

No, it's just plain ol' EBS which delivers a minimum of X IOPS, where X is between 100 and 2000 (unless they have improved this since I last checked).

AWS does have some SSD-based storage, but only for the larger instance types.

mryanon A fast and static web server for serving web apps

That was a terrible recommendation. Proposing a solution when you know nothing about the situation nearly always results in a pointless solution.

Suggesting that the best way to securely install Windows packages is to use a different operating system smacks of immaturity, and is obviously not a practical solution in Windows environments.

A better suggestion might be: If you do not trust it, run it in a VM/sandbox.

mryanon Show HN: Blog Exchange – Sell Or Promote Articles To Earn Money

PS: After re-reading my post it looks overly negative. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just raising some concerns I would have as a reader or author.

Props to you for a) having a solution to the problem and b) getting the landing page launched. Both of these are a lot harder than picking holes in someone else's idea! :-)

mryanon Show HN: Blog Exchange – Sell Or Promote Articles To Earn Money

It sounds as though your model is based on a Ponzi scheme. I don't mean to be offensive when I say that - I'm not suggesting you are trying to scam people, merely that your early "investors" (the first person to pay to read an article) will only get paid as a result of later readers purchasing articles they promote.

These later readers will have to find further readers in order to recoup their costs and perhaps make a profit.

The business model is decidedly pyramid shaped, which is usually only a good thing for the people at the top of the pyramid.

mryanon Show HN: Blog Exchange – Sell Or Promote Articles To Earn Money

> Bloggers post content which is sold to readers, and readers can profit by promoting the good content to other people.

One of the problems with this model is that the incentive for sharing content is to get paid, rather than to share genuinely good content. The system will be gamed by people who are sharing as much as possible without regard for quality.

At the risk of sounding elitist, the types of people you want sharing your material are not the same types of people who will be excited about earning a few cents by sharing an article.

> This model has proven to work, and it is now time to bring this model to the greater online community.

This model (paying for access to content) is already available to the greater online community in the form of paywalls. They are not popular unless the content is very good and can not be accessed elsewhere.

> Good content is a commodity worth paying for.

I agree with this, but who is paying? It appears that you will buy articles from bloggers and pay readers to promote them. So where does the money come from?

mryanon 'WWIII Queen's speech' script revealed

This is one of my favourite sections in both the book and the audiobook.

I would highly recommend checking out the audiobook even if you've read the dead tree version. It is a different, but equally enjoyable, experience.

mryanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2013)

My apologies, I misread that as "work with you to help you relocate".

It's great to see a site dedicated to WFH. I wish you every success with it!

mryanon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2013)

Also, some of them are not actually WFH, e.g. this one requires relocation to Portland: https://www.wfh.io/jobs/16/

mryanon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2013)

SEEKING WORK - Remote, Amsterdam, London

Syadmin as a Service

Do you want the best when it comes to scaling, resilience and reliability, but don't have a full-time Ops person on the team? Why not rent one?

I work with startups and web agencies to help them spend less time worrying about technical problems, and more time growing their business.

How can I help you?

- Expert sysadmin services, on tap

- Continuous Integration for your infrastructure

- Infrastructure design and implementation

- Server maintenance and optimisation (performance and cost)

- Quickly get up and running with tools like Puppet

About Me

I'm writing a book on AWS System Administration that will be published by O'Reilly later this year.

Here's an AWS case study for an infrastructure I built:

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/fashiolista/

In August I'll be at Puppet Conf speaking about how to get the most of out AWS and Puppet. If you think these services could help your business grow, let's talk.

mike@fadedink.co.uk

mryanon [dead]

They get posted at 9am EST: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring

mryanon NSA Project X-Keyscore Collects Nearly Everything You Do On The Internet

The TC piece adds nothing to the original Guardian article, which is currently at the top of the front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6133349

mryanon First Open Source Airplane Could Cost Just $15,000

> This is great, I've been wanting to get into aviation for some time but the barrier of entry is steep.

There are some hobbies where starting without any prior knowledge and learning through a process of trial and error is fun and rewarding.

IMHO aviation is not one of these hobbies. It tends to be rather unforgiving of the "error" part of the equation, especially if the error is something like "wings not correctly attached". :)

mryanon Show HN: This page will disappear in 10,000 views

Probably best not to try this on any systems you care about if the command is completely unknown. killall on Solaris might have some unintended consequences.

mryanon Ask HN: Non-US citizen. Why should I care about NSA/PRISM?

The Ministry of Defence has issued a D notice preventing the UK media from 'publish[ing] information that may "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel"'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/defence-d-bbc-me...