tlianza

Seems like a useful app idea. Probably not something that would get much repeat use though.

> and “for sale” became Facebook Marketplace.

Ummmm... 1. Does the data suggest that is true? 2. If it were true, would it support the "unbundling" narrative given that it would be a case of something being part of another bundle?

The "small codebase" claim hinges on the fact that you're not counting the lines of code in nginx, leveldb, and other external software that are glued together to make this system. Those systems may reflect the years of battle-hardening you seek.

So, it may be more reliable than you think by virtue of that selective counting of codebase lines.

> It definitely beats OnePlus.

Vs. a OnePlus 6 it has a smaller screen, worse camera, one fewer sim slot, lacks a headphone jack, half the RAM, a slower processor, no face recognition, and a smaller battery.

In what way is it superior? Just screen resolution?

I'm not sure where the optimism comes from. I too have been surprised at how mediocre most conferencing software is, and concluded that it's probably harder than it seems.

What would great videoconferencing software look like, and what are the odds that this is it?

FYI (and disclaimer I work here) CloudFlare provides SSL as a service for free and you can host your site anywhere: https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/

I did something similar, but on a few legs spent the extra money for a sleeper.

For those who are interested: http://lianza.org/blog/2015/05/15/on-traveling-cross-country...

I think it's more like they're part of the "Android ecosystem" where you have a lot of choice around fundamental components, as compared to the iOS ecosystem.

I get your point that Android, broadly, is a competitor to Apple. But, I think he's not just highlighting that the world needs an Amazon alternative (it has several).

I think he's saying the world needs a more open ecosystem where they have the choice of best-of-breed components from different companies. And, in that world, you might be able to pick the world's best compute stack from one company, use Cloudflare as the world's best edge/networking stack, etc.

Biggest downside is the FireOS, Amazon store instead of Google Play, etc.

If you want to do basic web surfing stuff, this is a phenomenal deal. I doubt you'll find a better one.

If you want to experience all that modern Android tablets are capable of, these tablets will not provide that. In particular anything related to Google services (mail/apps) and Android apps that are delivered through the Google Play store but not delivered though the Amazon store. There are a lot of mainstream apps that don't bother to push their apps to Amazon's store.

> The ASP->PHP conversion was extremely low-hanging fruit (the conversion involved almost no logic).

This is where I'm curious that they didn't just start writing PHP from that point forward. It was already a cross-platform language. And, if I recall, had a lot of hype and was gaining traction fast I'm the late 90's and early 2000's.

Certainly hindsight is 20-20, but I remember a lot of folks betting big on PHP at the time.

There are so many delivery services... there should really be an inverse. "We'll pick things up for you." I bet Shyp could branch out into this, though it's clearly not their target scenario http://www.shyp.com/

Yes, people are trying. The problem is hard.

https://www.rivetandcuff.com/find-your-fit

You think this is illegal in China? I can't think of anything the government would approve of more than a giant database of creds at their disposal...

embraced and extended? [ducks]

"Mandarin, despite being excruciatingly hard to learn for most Westerners..."

Mandarin is hard to learn, period. Even if you're born and raised in China and it's the only language you know, it still takes a long time to learn.

No need to single out the Westerners :)

One thing I was surprised to run into is how basic CRUD operations don't have an out-of-the-box solution, like they did even with Rails many years ago.

When I read the "Discover Meteor" guide and they got to the part about handling submit buttons by writing jQuery handlers with e.preventDefault and all that, I was really surprised. Similarly I didn't see obvious, baked-in solutions to validation, or sharing templates between "edit" and "create" situations.

Then, there's the built-in Meteor accounts stuff, which does not make it easy to create an admin page for users, which again I expected to be a straightfoward task. And, not only that, but once you do start to build that you read more-and-more about how allowing the client to make certain modifications is insecure, and so you should start pushing things back to Meteor methods...

Anyway, a lot of this stuff has given me pause. I love the runtime speed, but the speed of getting something up and running (in terms of dev time) seems considerably slower than the equivalent in Rails, particularly around basic CRUD operations that you just need to get out of the way before you can build the more interesting stuff.

I appreciate that people are upset at the USG and I think the comparison to China helps the argument, to be clear they're asking for a lot more than the USG.

China is way, way, beyond the NSA. They block huge swaths of the internet and blackout televisions. They monitor every chat you send on WeChat, without even the illusion of a warrant or probable cause. And, they're not asking, it's a condition of WeChat's operation. Imagine if you DM'd someone on Facebook or Twitter and the US government stepped in and shut your account down. It's that.

Comparisons are fine, but these are not the backdoors "you were already compelled to insert."

I believe "adding backdoors" is exactly what they meant.

In the context of China, I think you can interpret "controllable" as more than just controllable by the companies that operate the systems, but the government as well. And, the backdoors are necessary for that.

There's some poetic justice to feeling deceived by a book with that title.

#2 isn't solved with a CDN since you'd always hotlink a specific version - the version you tested your code with.

The main reason I think isn't even really #1 (cost) but a general assumption that CDNs are faster than your servers, and the chance that if multiple sites are sharing one of these CDNs, you actually have first-time users who can visit your site a bit faster because they already have that resource cached.

If you're interested in hosted solutions that try to do automatic identification of pages, diffbot is worth a look. We've had some good experiences: http://diffbot.com/

I've seen this happen myself as well, in 3 cases at 2 different companies we wound up firing a person due to those sorts of issues. But in my opinion it should not be (and it was not) a big hassle to fire someone. I've also hired some people I was on the fence about from a personality perspective and have been pleasantly surprised at working with some productive, albeit quirky people.

But, underpinning your story is the blame/cover angle which I completely understand, and would consider an antipattern itself. If a few people screen someone and decide to take a bit of a chance on them from a personality perspective and they don't work out, let them go, learn from it, and move on.

Or how about "Psy Makes ONLY $8.1 Million..."

Is this a lot of money for the most viewed video in the history of the Internet and the most popular song worldwide?

Because owning 93% of a company that's even 2x more successful than it'd otherwise be is still a good deal for you.

The USA has these things, don't they? They're just not popular options. BoostMobile, AT&T's "GoPhones", Verizon PrePaid, etc. You can either get a cheap phone, or bring your own phone, without a contract. Is it that different?

Here's a perspective that is not from ignorance: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...

I think it's a fair point.

But - what problem are we solving? Do we think there are too few entrepreneurs, and this will help create more? How many is enough, and how much should we spend to create them?

The problem Stewart seems to be solving is that he'd prefer to remove ammunition from his opponents' argument, which isn't an actual problem.

Is it possible that Facebook is indeed The Best way to feel somewhat in touch with a lot of people you may otherwise have lost touch with, and Pinterest is The Best way to discover recipes, craft ideas, and other things that add real value and happiness to your life?

I think the author is being very subjective about The Best and using it to come to an odd conclusion. The more obvious and less controversial conclusion is that The Best apps are widely used and doing well.

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