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scottshea

1,413 karma · joined July 1, 2011

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scottshea··on Money Trees – Rap Genius Response to Heroku
Agreed. I am working with a client who is slightly lower on the Heroku customer food chain and using Unicorn with four workers right now. Our next step is Puma though that will likely not be the end point.
scottshea··on Heroku's Ugly Secret: The story of how the cloud-king turned its back on Rails
We did this in unicorn.rb `:backlog => Integer(ENV['UNICORN_BACKLOG'] || 200)` and then set the UNICORN_BACKLOG variable by the Heroku command line `heroku config:set UNICORN_BACKLOG=25 -a <app_name>`. We have been as high as 1024 and as low as 10. We settled in at 25 for us.
scottshea··on Heroku's Ugly Secret: The story of how the cloud-king turned its back on Rails
To amplify, I do a ton of queue adjustment work with Unicorn at the backlog level. It is so frequent that we set up Unicorn startup to read from an ENV variable on Heroku that we set as needed.

With two Unicorn workers we found that 25 was the best backlog threshold to accept (it refuses additional requests). When we were able to go to 5 Unicorn workers on Heroku we had to start to adjust that.

scottshea··on How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself
To expand on your comments I think it is safe to say that the elite, whether aristocracy or meritocracy, are adept at keeping the wealth, influence and power for themselves and their friends. Some of it is innate in that they will pass on resources to their children out of a desire to see them succeed. Some of it is cronyism as they want to do good things for their friends.
scottshea··on The inside story of Aaron Swartz’s campaign to liberate court filings
It is hard to tel if the Court's refusal to open up PACER is due to fear of oversight or bureaucratic greed.
scottshea··on Modeled on man: Breathable skin for buildings
I would love to see how this would work here in Phoenix in the summer. While it is aimed at temperate climates, if it is able to reduce the AC consumption here it might be worth it. First Solar in Tempe designed some shade screens into their building that open/close with the sun's movement. A skin like this might be a more practical solution.
scottshea··on One-third of Europe's software industry is SAP
Thank you for the addition. I was really depressed until I read that (I tend to read comments before articles)
scottshea··on A Short Rant About Working Remotely
As someone with Aspergers remote work has been a godsend. I am not nearly as agitated as before. My quirks do not annoy people. I am more productive and my wife says I am happier.

When I worked in an office I used head phones (not buds... big ol' ear covering things) to help and was criticized for wearing them (it made me seem unapproachable). In reality it was to help keep me calm and focused.

At home I face neither the noise issue nor the unapproachable issue.

Remote work may not be for every team but in-office work is not for every person either

scottshea··on The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell all just retroactively disavowed any connection to The Atlantic.
scottshea··on What one book could give me a new, useful superpower?
I think When Bad Things Happen to Good People is an excellent way to help reconcile jealousy and anger at the fortune of others/misfortune in ourselves
scottshea··on Why I Love Being A Programmer in Louisville
Actually I would argue that over twice as much is not enough. Having made a similar comparison living in Phoenix the cost of 'extras' in the New York metro area is much higher. If I wanted to invest, send my daughter to a private school or go out to eat is dramatically higher.

And, what the heck do you think happens to the extra money? It goes away? The difference between 100k and the cost of living in Louisville is hopefully invested back in his own family. Even if it is wasted he is still using it.

scottshea··on Why Recruiters Exist (and what to do about it)
It should become a core activity but in many cases even when a company hires a recruiter they are really hiring a 'seat filler' rather than a recruiter (btw, I have no idea about stevek's company; this is a generalization).

By 'seat filler' I mean someone who is simply there to find a body at the cheapest price they can get away with. More often than not it is to fill a quota or fight attrition rather than find someone worthy.

scottshea··on An Ode To W3Schools
For me it is a place to learn what to google... I often start with the W3Schools site and then use the verbiage as a launching point for further queries
scottshea··on Good riddance, PayPal
And yet you want him to turn to a bank to help secure Paypal's position so that would indicate that the costs of the risk are not wrapped into Paypal's processes (i.e. the transactions between the two parties).

For Credit Risk banks and other financial institutions use interest rates.

For Operational Risk they use fees. The freezing of accounts comes only when the activity of the merchant approaches a threshold not covered by the fees not prior.

As a base coverage all banks are required to keep a reserve just in case their losses start to mount and then they kick in the extreme measures. Paypal has no such standard to meet in the US (not sure what being a Bank in EU/UK would do).

Truly the Merchant should cover the risk directly with Paypal and the fee structure if they are legitimate. But that is not your solution... a third party must enter the equation to cover where Paypal is deficient in their risk assessment.

scottshea··on Good riddance, PayPal
> PayPal's freeze on that money means their end is covered, and you can still bring the sales to a bank and get a line of credit to cover the printing costs

So your suggested way around this is to incur credit charges & pay for the credit risk baked into the interest rate all so that Paypal is covered?

scottshea··on How Tracking Down My Stolen Computer Triggered a Drug Bust
I think the fact that the police officer was so involved with updating the writer is what stood out to me. It is rare that we see/hear a detailed explanation of what police work entails and unless we ourselves are the one they are speaking with it might never happen.
scottshea··on DMCA takedowns GitHub has received
I think it would be interesting to see the responses too
scottshea··on How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
As additional color here is what he posted in a reply to a reply of his blog entry:

Perhaps I was a little too brief in my writeup. Nobody that I know (certainly not me) went to MAF and downdressed any of the workers. What happened was that the conclusion was reached in engineering and management meetings and the word filtered out to the workers that poor workmanship was the proximate cause of the loss of Columbia – as if there wasn’t enough blame to go around in many other areas. I really regret the erroneous conclusion, the impact it made on the workers, and the way the whole scenario played out at MAF. The people there were very hard working, dedicated, and proud of their involvement with America’s space program, many of them second or third generation workers at that location. Now, of course, they have all been laid off and the MAF plant is virtually a ghost town with very limited work going on there for other NASA or commercial projects.

scottshea··on How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
And I wonder if there is a bias in his telling... that he words it harsher than it was presented in reality out of a sense of guilt.
scottshea··on Former NASA Flight Engineer blogs about Columbia Disaster
Agreed... someone posted just that on HN and it rocketed to the top.
scottshea··on How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
This guy must need antacid like nobody's business. In some ways I envy him a little... I always try to assign more importance to my job than is really warranted; he has no call for that.
scottshea··on City of Ruins
Um... wow... words are not enough...
scottshea··on How to hire a lot of talented people, very quickly
I have to admit it caught my interest and I am not even really looking at the moment
scottshea··on How to hire a lot of talented people, very quickly
Additional step: Write a post like this and have it make the front page of Hacker News
scottshea··on Kickstarter: rails.app
Slightly ironic since I just got a MacBook for my new job and am trying to get it set up for Rails development.
scottshea··on Open-plan offices must die
DO you want your developers taking simple tech support calls?
scottshea··on Open-plan offices must die
"Ironically, I was at the same company when we switched from a 3 person team room to an open floor plan to cut costs. The productivity hit was enormous."

So you had the inertia effect AND a less productive work environment. I wonder if there is anything out there about the productivity lost during a move.

scottshea··on How to contribute to an open source project: look for TODOs in code
This is one of those times when I read just the title and smack myself in the head because it was so obvious I missed it. Sure not all of the TODOs will make sense to me but it at least helps
scottshea··on The Worst C.E.O.’s of 2011
I wonder if I should stream Netflix on my Blackberry while taking Tylenol?
scottshea··on Avenger controller company pisses off gaming community with bad customer support
Surprisingly Paul Christoforo has also been in Health Care & Realty and has a degree in Culinary Arts... according to his LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-christoforo/1/295/835
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