mryan

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 - 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

It confuses me too. If there was an affiliate link to Earn1k and he spent the whole post talking about it then I can see it being considered spammy.

I wonder if the DN mods would be so quick to ban the post if he had mentioned the name of a book he found useful, rather than the name of an online course.

Perhaps it is because he has the audacity to be motivated by money, rather than a pure love for design, and this upsets the DN team?

> That's feedback was really the only reason why chose to impose this requirement for the beta.

I'm not sure how accurate this quotation is, but Henry Ford may have said:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

As a consultant I feel it is my duty to advice people when they are asking me to implement something that is not in their best interests.

If someone has told you that "installing packages is difficult, just login as root", I think it is your duty to educate them as to why that is a bad idea.

Anyone familiar with security best practices would never even consider allowing an untrusted third-party to log in to their servers as root, which drastically reduces the size of your potential market.

Currently, your target market is: people who find it difficult to use configuration management tools, and who aren't aware of good security practices.

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

- Infrastructure design and engineering

- 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/

Last month I gave a talk at Puppet Camp Amsterdam 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

Lately? ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

In the past I've gone through Futurama, LoTR, The Simpsons, Saturn's moons and musicians.

This was posted two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503256

I'm hoping this is a breakdown in comms between team members rather than deliberate spamming of the same question.

> So how do you measure $productivity_cost accurately?

With great difficulty :)

You're right, and I think your question helps strengthen my point - the cost of office space is just one factor.

I like the idea of building a bridge to other DNS providers - it seems like less work in the long run, for a much more reliable service.

Using CloudFormation to manage your Route 53 records will achieve most of the goals of this solution, although editing CloudFormation stack templates has a little more overhead than managing zone files.

In that case it would appear to be unavoidable. However, when comparing the costs between offices I think it is important to take lost productivity in to account.

When looking at $cost_of_office_with_private_space versus $cost_of_open_plan_office it might make sense to go for the open plan office.

But $cost_of_office_with_private_space versus ($cost_of_open_plan_office + $productivity_cost) might lead to a different conclusion.

Anything containing the substring "admin" is banned. Which is a PITA when you want to set up a Twitter account for a sysadmin book/service...

Why? To me it suggests this is an very early release of a software package using semantic versioning. Nothing suspicious about a developer who understands semantic versioning and is releasing early and often.

http://semver.org/

The "Who's Hiring" threads are posted on the first of the month.

Yes, they are supposed to be taken seriously. Lazy sysadmins are the best sysadmins - I'm sure the same is true of programmers.

Note that "lazy" does not mean "does not want to work". As per the linked article, in this context it means:

"The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer."

> The Contest is void in Cuba, Quebec, Saudi Arabia and Syria > and where prohibited by law. Individuals and entities > restricted by applicable export controls and sanctions > programs are ineligible to participate in the Contest

Some could perhaps be explained by export restrictions on crypto code, although I would expect to see some other countries (Iran) banned if that were the case.

Quebec has rather stringent data privacy laws - perhaps these are not compatible with Google's personal data storage policy.

> ... pretty much a cultural centric representation of the action of saving valuable information for later retrieval.

Surely one could make the same arguments about bank safes and paper folders, to a certain extent?

Seconded. I stopped reading after a few paras because the revolving background gave me a headache.

That would be great.

Security Groups work across accounts, so Heroku (or whoever) could let you provide your account ID and Security Group name, then authorise access from this group.

I like to know exactly why I'm updating my database before I apply any patches. I doubt they could have been sufficiently light on the details, while still giving admins enough information to decide whether or not to upgrade.

"Apply this patch, don't worry what it does, just do it" is not something I want to hear from my database vendor :-)

Had the repos remained public, this detailed information would have been available to a lot more people, a lot sooner. Temporarily "going dark" to work on the patch seems like an acceptable compromise.

It certainly seems feasible with the use of VPC and Security Groups.

At the very least I think they should offer an option that only you to restrict access so only your dynos have access to the postgres port.

nawitus, I can't reply to your other comment, which is probably a good thing :-)

You are taking me literally, when you shouldn't - I was being flippant. Of course it is unlikely we will ever make the technology that can take the dust that, decades ago, used to make up a human brain, and somehow retrieve information from it.

The point I am making is that you said:

> On the other hand, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a cryopreserved brain preserves a lot of the information in the brain.

I flippantly argued that if your argument is "it's reasonable to assume science will solve the problem for us", you could apply that to essentially anything.

It used to be reasonable to assume that the world is flat, or that the world was the center of the universe.

I do not think we will somehow invent a machine that turns dust in to a working brain.

I do think that "it's reasonable to assume" is faulty logic when talking about something that is beyond the current reach of science, and should be questioned at every possible opportunity.

Now, you might say "but Mike, I provided links that back up my assumption" - and if that's the case, you are no longer "reasonably assuming" that this is true, but basing your belief of the scientific literature that outlines how such a thing is done. :)

alphaoverlord understands the point I was making.

Both of these things are impossible, at the current level of tech.

One or both of them might become possible through the use of sufficiently advanced technology.

> On the other hand, it's pretty reasonable to assume that a cryopreserved brain preserves a lot of the information in the brain.

See, I don't think it's reasonable to assume this.

I believe that both of these things are equally possible - that is, not very possible at all.

> ... is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots.

You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology.

The business model seems to be "give us money now, and the technology that could make this work will probably be invented soon enough. Probably".

Sure, that's a valid point. I suppose the best time to do it would be while arranging the in-person/phone interview.

The interviewers will (hopefully!) be told what time the interview is, so this information could be forwarded at the same time.

And if the HR team can't ensure the interviewers have this extremely relevant piece of information? That's probably a signal about how effectively that company handles communication.

How about having this discussion in the preliminary emails? Take the card too, but let them know in advance so it is less of a surprise at interview time.

Targeting the public sector is great advice - http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ is dedicated to jobs at UK universities, hopefully that helps in your search.

If you take freelance jobs from oDesk/PeoplePerHour et cetera, you might be able to perform all communication via email/IM. This isn't ideal, but could work as a backup plan if you want to try your hand at freelancing in the meantime.

> it's slightly offensive to see that being demanded.

Interesting - I don't see this as an offensive request at all. As I see it... the company is looking for a new employee who best matches their ideal description. A cover letter merely gives you another opportunity to demonstrate your suitability for the position, in a format that is more personal than a CV.

When I made "writing targeted cover letters for each role" part of my application procedure my success rate increased dramatically. I know there are specific instances where I got asked for an interview based mostly on my cover letter, and not on my CV.

I guess different parts of the industry have differing expectations in this regard.

SEEKING WORK - Remote, Amsterdam, London

Syadmin as a Service

Just because you don't have a full-time Ops person on the team, it doesn't mean you don't deserve the best when it comes to scaling, resilience and reliability.

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

= How can I help you? These are some of the services I provide:

- Expert sysadmin services, on tap

- Automated server provisioning and management

- Server maintenance and optimisation

- Reduce your AWS bill (I helped one client reduce their bill by 45%)

- Migrate high-traffic web apps to AWS

- Quickly get up and running with tools like Puppet

= Why choose me?

I am a sysadmin who loves to efficiently solve business problems. With a DevOps background, twelve years of sysadmin experience, and a passion for problem-solving, I am keen to help HNers achieve their goals.

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/

This week I'll be talking at Puppet Camp Amsterdam 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

Good idea. This would be easy to sell as a package too - "For only $X, I will prepare a detailed feedback report on your site, and provide Y hours of training tailored to your needs".

Understanding the business reasons for needing an infrastructure.

A love of automation, bordering on an obsession.

A deep understanding of the individual technologies that make up the stack, as well as a higher-level view of how all of the moving parts fit together.

They've been tweeting about it for an hour or so: https://twitter.com/SendGrid

I would expect them to send emails to customers in the event of serious issues though, expecting your customers to learn about problems through Twitter isn't that much better than learning about them from HN.