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tdonia

628 karma · joined September 30, 2008

travis (at) likestripes (.com) /// @likestripes

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/tdonia; my proof: https://keybase.io/tdonia/sigs/mitVUzBPfEskSK0fVfWHZLqXS6n92258HqDXN55yMZU ]

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tdonia··on Facebook Renames to Meta
visiting a friend at a facebook office a few years ago, we walked by a small room near the bar cordoned off with caution tape. "oh, they're replacing the TV again, people keep using the oculus and smashing it by accident, has happened a few times" -- i can't help but picture that small, broken room today. #meta
tdonia··on Google and Ambient Computing
as someone who switched to an iphone yesterday after having using google flagship models since the nexus one, i agree that this is an important direction for google's product strategy, but i think they're playing catch up from far behind.

i remarked to my wife last night that the biggest difference in the ux between the two was that my android was always a phone, and this iphone has become a platform/ux that's larger than a single device, a whole set of humanistic little devices -- airpods and the home ipad in my case. i'd always thought i couldn't switch because i use google services, but those are largely commodities now -- i've got a wide range of good enough options for photos/music/email/cal/etc. -- the google android apps are a little better, but not enough so to make a difference. even siri has been good enough so far, though my queries aren't especially complicated.

tdonia··on VR is opening up new ways to experience art
Reminds me of Giphy's Museum of GIF Art // many of Planeta.cc's works
tdonia··on Show HN: A tool that helps you focus on startup metrics that matter
Just a heads up on the site itself -- the height/width/clipping of your .header-background is glitching in Chrome for me so everything in the content body is blurry. Looks nice when i disable that element!
tdonia··on [dead]
Added -- thanks! forgot that big one.
tdonia··on A Submerged Monolith Near Sicily: Evidence for Mesolithic Human Activity
http://xkcd.com/1190/ ?
tdonia··on App Engine for Go Now in General Availability
I've hacked together a package targeting the auth/user accounts gap, albeit in a fairly opinionated way. Very rough, but maybe they'll help someone:

https://github.com/likestripes/kolkata //user accounts API

https://github.com/likestripes/calcutta //basic UX

(ping me if you've got an interest or opinion on these!)

tdonia··on App Engine for Go Now in General Availability
Basically just a proof of concept at this point, but I've been hacking on something that would help mitigate these concerns for people who like App Engine's Golang abstractions, but not the lock-in. Contribs / thoughts welcome!

https://github.com/likestripes/pacific

tdonia··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2014)
Sorry about that @tutufan. Mitchell reposted with the job description here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253633
tdonia··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2014)
Context Matters, New York, NY - Hiring an engineer in NYC. Sorry, no remote.

Context Matters is a platform that the world's largest pharmaceutical companies use to make strategic drug development decisions. We're looking to add another developer to our small team. If that sounds like a good time to you, please check out the attached job description and answer 3 short questions online at http://www.interviewzen.com/apply/5x2pbm or you can email me: travis.donia (at) contextmatters (.com)

tdonia··on New study suggests the microbes in humans' intestines may influence food choices
http://www.biologydirect.com/content/9/1/14
tdonia··on $1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So Hard
If this debate interests you and you want to learn more about it, you should get in touch with me. Check my profile for my email address; http://contextmatters.com is the company I work for and here was a post our analysts wrote about Sovaldi: http://www.contextmatters.com/sticker-shock-in-drug-pricing-...

We're systematically collecting data on this exact conundrum - how much is a treatment that was, until recently, infinitely expensive worth? there's a whole lot of room for smart people to make a difference.

tdonia··on Ask HN: Dealing with a huge MySQL database - help
ah ok, cool - good luck!
tdonia··on Ask HN: Dealing with a huge MySQL database - help
...looks like you've (again, assuming webvet.com) also got an openx server. that'll benefit a lot from the master/slave replica. i'd also look at making spc.js non-blocking as that may be why the pages are blank for a few seconds even after content has been delivered...
tdonia··on Ask HN: Dealing with a huge MySQL database - help
Inline with questions 2 & 3 - what's the bottleneck? reading or writing or both? if you haven't already, it's worth looking into a master (writes) / slave (reads) setup - provides a bit of redundancy and lets you scale reads very easily by adding more slaves. It also helps with writes because it can take a lot of pressure off the master.

...assuming you're webvet.com it looks like you're scaling drupal, so these would be my first questions: are you using the views module? if so, kill that, as well as anything else by merlin (panels, etc). and look at your indexes. setup pressflow + percona. master & slave db. reverse proxy caching (varnish or nginx) are all good places to start. hostwise if you're not already on amazon, you can get a lot of mileage out of a service like voxel that lets you mix VPSs (cheap webheads) with physical hardware. it's not great and it may well be worth biting the more expensive bullet and going to AWS for long term needs, but it's a lot better than linode for an underwater db.

my email is in my profile if you'd like more detail - drupal is a bear at first but it can be scaled for a while.

tdonia··on SpaceX update: The engine did not explode
Same race, better outcome: http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Long_Way.html?id=rgK...
tdonia··on Show HN: A Handcrafted Web
Anyone remember dreamless? This reminds me of the meaningless css wars. In a good way.
tdonia··on Sorry Dan Shipper and other coders, you are wrong.
The OP is replying to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4395008
tdonia··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (June 2012)
Tribeca, New York City - Frontend/PHP Developer for The Daily Voice

We're looking for someone that's passionate about HTML/CSS/JS to join our technology team and help us publish local news for our growing audience.

Important:

  HTML / CSS - semantic, crossbrowser and crossdevice markup
  JS - jQuery
  PHP - 5.3+
  SQL
  Git or other source control

Nice to have:

  Drupal (API and/or module development experience, for 6 or 7)
  SASS or LESS experience
  JS Lint
  Objective C
  Unit Testing
  Profiling code
  A/B or Multivariate Testing

Interested?

  Send your résumé and/or github links
  Recommend a book
  Tell us about a cool project

Get in touch: travis@dailyvoice.com
tdonia··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (July 2011)
Brooklyn, NY

Main Street Connect http://www.mainstreetconnect.us

Our Creative Tech team is looking for smart hackers to evolve our product. We're building a national community news network, so we've got a wide range of work to be done and problems to solve. We think they're interesting problems. Mostly in PHP.

creative_technology@mainstreetconnect.us

tdonia··on Loren wants to work at Airbnb
http://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&biw=1280&...
tdonia··on Subtle Google easter egg
and http://www.google.com/search?q=helvetica
tdonia··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (April 2011)
Brooklyn, NY (local/salaried) - PHP Developer - Main Street Connect

We're a well-funded startup with ambitious plans for local news looking for a problem solver to join our Creative Technology team in DUMBO. We use Drupal but are more interested in someone smart & adaptable than specific Drupal-domain expertise. The rest of the Brooklyn team includes a UX Lead, our Creative Director, Product Infrastructure & Ad Operations + a small army of freelancers. You'll find most of the team lurking about HN.

Recommend a book/tell us about a cool project: creative_technology@mainstreetconnect.us

tdonia··on Why local newspapers are worth saving
Our experience in CT has been different. Journalists are happy to have a place-to-work-not-print because they've been watching print die a slow death for years. They want to work with other journalists, of course, but a roomful of journalists alone isn't an especially profitable company. You need a way to publish their content and you need a way for the community to pay for the value that local content creates. Typically, local business has an interest in the proliferation of said local content, so along comes the (local) sales team. Can the math work? So far, the indications we've seen are positive, but there's much work to be done.
tdonia··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (October 2010 Edition)
Brooklyn, NY || telecommuting for the right person

We're looking for PHP/MySQL/Drupal and/or HTML/JS/CSS hackers to evolve our local news platform. You can see our product & network here: http://www.thedailynorwalk.com

tdonia (at) MainStreetConnect (.us) - mention hn, please

tdonia··on NYC's Underground Grilled Cheese
see also: the twitter lobster roll guy in greenpoint http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/33/20/wb_lobsterman_201...

got caught: http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/33/34/wb_drclawcuffed_2...

tdonia··on [dead]
the links in the footer and the domain name support your theory.
tdonia··on 500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?
Adobe built the app for Wired: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-...
tdonia··on Google Previews Chrome Web Store — An App Store For The Web
iPad compatible?
tdonia··on Google Removes http:// from Chrome
They do, in either red or blue depending on the SSL state.
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