skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Oh I agree, I didn't say I thought the company was going bust... just saying that this is likely the start of a lot more focus on the hard numbers of tech companies and less focus on hype-based valuation (although the later isn't going to disappear entirely). Just that question a a lot of startups hate "So how are you going to make money?" is likely going to start getting asked a lot more.
This is really nice. Although it got the first example I tried wrong in the first video (I tried "awry", and it came up with one that he actually said "a riot").

Much more useful than dictionaries that have pronunciation, since you can hear it in context spoken by real people. If some people pronounce it wrong, that's ok, because it gives you a feel for how it is actually used.
> 4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there.

Absolutely! You could probably get a single rack to handle storage and broadcast of millions of tweets per minute, perhaps hook it up to a Teradata appliance to handle search and storage at that throughput. Throw it in a nice distributed database indexed by user. Then just another couple of indices for the hashtags and mentions, and the follows/follower graph. Throw in another few tables for handling API permissions, managing schema migrations while ensuring that data from day 1 is still as transparent as yesterday's logs, a highly replicated ad server hooked up to a realtime recommendation engine that analyzes an active user's current stream and recommends the most relevant ad (to maximize revenue of course), set up a few staffed policy teams to comply with the differences in global regulations, handle lawsuits and legal requests, and of course keep competing for more revenue with the likes of Facebook and Google.

It's pretty trivial.
I created a competing product. The truth is that I presented my idea and they rejected it and fired me. Now they want a piece of me because they think that they own it.

I dont have any agreement with the company. So I am allowed to make it. Plus I didnt take anything away from them. So I am good!
Agreed. I consider MySQL a red flag and avoid any projects or teams that choose it over Postgres. Postgres is reliable, flexible, fast, and well documented. It's one of the crowning achievements of the open source world.
Without knowing the breakdown I assume that there are a lot of people working in marketing type roles where they are working with big business and celebrities to get them using the platform.
Being a big sports fan (#phinsup) I find that I get breaking news first on Twitter. Player signings, coaches being hired (#dancampbell) and fired (#firephilbin), etc. I also find a lot of interesting links on Twitter, that are things I wouldn't necessarily have found otherwise, because they're from sites that weren't necessarily always on my radar.
mySQL has more baked in solutions for replication that don't require a support contract or a convoluted mess of choosing between half a dozen half baked options for higher availability?

Honestly, it's the one area that I feel that open-source PostgreSQL is really lacking, and that is a good replication/automagic-failover story. I think MS-SQL is probably the best (but almost as expensive as EnterpriseDB support contract) for the supported versions. MySQL is probably the best option for a lot of people.

That said, I think RethinkDB is a pretty decent all-around option for most workloads at this point.
Well a lot of other people are saying "It's crazy that a company with that few people and that little profit can be worth that many billions." Hence Twitter's problem at the moment.
OK, I'm hearing a lot about hardware there but not seeing where thousands of people are needed to keep it all up. Again, WhatsApp -- 50 employees.
That's truly surprising. I don't recall Facebook ever resorting to layoffs?
Facebook's never been in as bad a spot as Twitter's in now.
Couldn't help notice this is currently #85 on my HN front page with 58 points in 5 hours … at #16 is something with 22 points in 6 hours … wondering if it's a bug, or some kind of penalty box for this story.

see image, nos. 76 and 81 also seem odd to rank higher - http://imgur.com/gNXJsoy
As mentioned upthread:

> partnered accounts are allowed to upload custom thumbnails (which can be any image, not necessarily even a screenshot from the video).
Would you care to explain the cockroaches metaphor? I'm confused.
Given I haven't done anything with it in nearly 7 years now.. but every time I've touched MySQL for anything, there was always a quirky behavior that bit me in the ass that no other dbms does...

Postgres, MS-SQL, Firebird, Oracle, DB2 are all better options in my mind... unless you need a good replication story, without a pricey support contract, then Postgres and Firebird are sadly out of the running imho.
Depends on your data. Sometimes (particularly when you have only 1-3 tables) MySQL is much faster and you have to go out of your way writing stored procedures to make Postgres compete.

Example:

select COUNT(1), status FROM some_table GROUP BY status ORDER BY status; -- Postgres 10x slower.

Also, mysql CLI is IMO much nicer than the postgres version. Better and faster autocompletes.
DJI's slick 4K hand-held gimbal is ready for action
Probably hosted SaaS offernings, some of which may actually be Postgres and MySQL... just there's less need for queries about operations issues.

There's also a lot of NoSQL solutions that are being ever more widely used. Most of which have much lower costs for HA early on.
It doesn't much matter who is in the role, as it is exactly that: a role.

Even without conspiracy theories regarding secret cabals that rule the world from the shadows, there is overwhelming inertia baked into the system itself.

A fairly recent study that I very vaguely recall pointed to this fact: the conclusion being that it is extraordinarily difficult to effect change within systems that are essentially self-perpetuating.
Netgear router exploit detected
Even just setting up a Twitter account for a business feels like it's not something they've put any effort into. You can set up an advertising account with multiple users, but for a regular public-facing Twitter account it's either use TweetDeck or share passwords.
The second dotcom boom is coming to an end. Have fun everyone
correct.

salesforce.com posted the same.
In some cases using shiny new things does give you some type of advantage over bigger companies that are not willing to take the risk.
That being said, when it comes to choosing a database developers should stick to mature technology with a non-restrictive license aka Postgres
Jupiter moon Iapetus' peerless equatorial ridge
I wonder how many of the 4100 are tech. Probably less than half at this point. The rest are there to work with advertisers, publishers, celebrities. All to maximize profitability and all of them failing at it.
is it really just that? I don't think so.
Safe harbor has always been a joke to begin with. A promise of good conducts with no checks whatsoever, that's not how humans work.

Forcing the data to be in the EU makes it much harder for the US govt to look at the data in bulk and non-obvious ways, as they now have to either backdoor remote systems or transmit data back, instead of just having their little machine in the datacenter.

Of course, EU will have their own little machine in the EU datacenter, but at least the intelligence gathering is then split (which helps protect EU companies from US companies - in case you did not notice and you're born yesterday, companies govern the world, not the government per se.)

Now to implement user-side and end to end crypto in everything regardless..
Perhaps Donald Trump could make it his presidential yacht.

I find such ships fascinating, but also sad in that many of them are floating superfund cleanup sites. Restoring one is something a billionaire might do on a whim but since such ships became impractical commercially, their eventual fate was decided.
Depending on your reporting needs, or data shaping, you may be better off doing rolling exports, or additional reporting to a Hadoop or ElasticSearch setup for your reporting... Especially since reports are pretty much snapshots in time, not real time... no need to slow down the server for other users.
One of the reasons MySQL is still popular is Wordpress.
Ranking on HN isn't purely votes and time, but includes user flags, flame detection, and probably some other stuff.
AT&T is truly the shittiest company I've ever dealt with. Maybe I should try the magic of Twitter...
Facebook has 3 properties which have more users than Twitter (Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram). Facebook itself has more active users than Google and has another property, Whatapp which is also close to or just over that billion user mark.

And they are already reporting profits.

I doubt they will go the way of Twitter.
As someone who took a stab at automating slony deployment and configuration, I have to agree that the replication situation is not quite there yet. There are maybe 2-3 examples online on how to use some of those tools, and maybe half a dozen people who actually would be able to answer questions about them. Betting your business's scaling future on that kind of tooling is terrifying.

Would be great to have both out of the box failover (you can get that in RDS nowadays) and logical replication. I suppose the latter can stave off the need for sharding for a while.

I believe there's work happening for UDR/BDR right now that will be in the product by 9.5 or 9.6
Yup pretty much. People wonder how to change the opinion of any large group, and the answer is to get the "thought leaders" to agree and the rest will follow. So a good skill to acquire is watching to see gets things done and who doesn't.
I used to be a Google Reader/Google Buzz addict. And was interacting with a very living community through those tools.
I now use twitter as my exclusive medium for both mainstream and "niche" news.
I appreciate the wide availability of content, but still think they are much too conservative with their user experience.
The inability to browse tweets by topic is sometimes a pain.
The inability to connect with the right people and build a discussion about topics you discover and find interesting.
Basically twitter should have a chatroom. And propose you conversations about (your) trending topics.
And yet no one avail to fix the mobile Twitter website. It just does not work. Get enraged everytime I click on a tweet from Safari.
The lost art of getting lost
Somewhat curious if this is the beginning of the unicorn pop.
Whatsapp is an outlier in many ways and comparing them with any company will make that company seem bloated. As for the comparison, Whatsapp has no monetization model, no marketing and a simpler product.
It's Gaining Season#Gain
> recommends the most relevant ad

They're nowhere near relevant. I keep getting local-to-US ads, and I'm in UK (and geolocate as in UK too). Not as bad as showing alcohol ads to 5 year old children, but still pretty bad.
"Computers are no match for super recognizers..."

Give it time.
Nothing lasts forever in tech. How will they monetize Instagram and WhatsApp? Don't show me users. Show me profits from those users if you want to count them.
>he is very dangerous to moneyed interests in politics

Which is exactly why he can't win: those moneyed interests have...money.

Citizens United eviscerated of at least the appearance of a democracy.
You don't give the government access to their own door. The company simply retains the right to access things- you know, the same way we have it now.

All it's arguing, is to say "You don't have to encrypt literally every part of your system and delete the rest" a la what Snapchat suggests they're doing(though we don't have proof).
The Physics Behind That Insane Chinese Traffic Jam
Instagram used/uses PostgreSQL http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/10853187575/sha...
Agreed. TLDR Media Hype led to unfufilled expectation leading to whingers.
@dmritard96, care to elaborate a bit on your post?
Ask HN: Why does my previous question not show up in “Ask HN”?
Why does my previous question not show up in "Ask HN"?
In 2014, WhatsApp reportedly made $14 million in revenue. By comparison, Twitter made $479 in revenue in just Q4 2014. I think company size generally scales super-linearly with revenue, so a total staff in the thousands seems reasonable for a post-IPO company.

Are you suggesting that WhatsApp's model of organization is the norm for a sustainable organization? I think it's a clear outlier in many respects.
GolangUK 2015
That is true if the layoff is specific to Twitter and not a harbinger of a general downturn
This what happens when you create a company around a glorified public majordomo public email list manager and virtuous feedback loop used by the media. I'm looking for the Google and companies that invent real tech.
True, but thus far Facebook has responded well to existential threats by buying companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.
heyoh http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=i0php8i94%22%3C/script%3...
I really liked this
Thanks for your insights.
This is a fantastic article and it confirmed what I've learned from the Rich Hickey talks: software isn't about software. It's a medium for information. Information is light and it deserves a place to live that isn't creating uncertainty. The world will be shaped by software, and the root of software that deserves to last is lasting respect of the people who use it...
I haven't used Java in a while, but does Oracle still run around extorting folks for using the JDBC license? I'm curious.

Frankly I don't have any really serious problem with mysql other than it's ownership and speed of improvement. Plausibly MariaDB sorts that out but I agree with other commenters that at this point Postgres seems like the best choice for most new projects.
@Bachmeier, I agree. And oh, they are right there with Comcast in my opinion when it comes to bad service. They are very good at making small mistakes like overcharging you know on a bill. So Twitter will do wonders for you :).
Episode 656: Bubblelicious
Claire Patterson was able to run a successful one man campaign against lead in our products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campai...
So your suggesting, Ember has almost all React's feature? And almost same performance?

Guess the learning curve of Ember is also easy.
The notion that fat people are unhealthy is a modern notion. Look at the paintings in the Louvre.
I suspect that's just people having their delusions of rampant future growth and expansion of twitter being crushed in the gears of mundane reality. These moves are perfectly fine for a normal company that intends to continue operating at about the same level as it is currently indefinitely. But people view every tech company through the lens of apple, google, amazon, etc. They expect growth, they expect new stuff, and so on.

The truth is that with modern technology you can build a company that has hundreds of millions of high-volume users and yet is not very expensive to operate. Companies, and their revenue, don't necessarily scale the way we're used to from the experience of industrial companies.
Yes, it's sad for employees let go, but it's good news for AOL. I don't think AOL is going anywhere; it has a huge user base and a lot of people think of it as the internet. By cutting surgically (removing, as you put it, the "fluffiness"), Jonathan might very well be able to bring some fighting spirit back.
Yes, better to eat the eggs of another species before they become babies, like snakes do.
Could ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ Happen?
True. But where is the focus on making money?
I completely agree. Twitter was never really a technology company to me considering it was essentially just a mimic of a wrapper around an email list.
Their website says that 50% percent of their employees are engineers. (https://about.twitter.com/company)
I work a Fortune 500 company in an industry where FTP and EDI are the norm, and SOAP/XML is considered fancy. Half the time our customers (many of whom are other F500 companies) think that all that stuff is too hard or expensive, and prefer to just e-mail us an Excel spreadsheet every day. Enough so that we recently introduced a new service offering where a customer can e-mail their spreadsheet of data to one of our employees, who will upload it to our system for them once a week.

This is just how IT works in most businesses.
Well, going back to the original issue, the Islamic system has already made the decision that the rich owe the poor part of their wealth; and it disallows exploitative financial practices. Hence, it is a more fair system, that upkeeps a good quality of life for people in the society. All this while still allowing people to act on their own interest and accumulate wealth if they wish so.
And if you look at the TOP HN commenters you will find a horrible skew of users that comment on everything while many users hardly ever comment. No surprises here.
I would get the Visa right away. I got a B1/B2 (tourism and business). I just showed my application form and the interview dates and it was enough. At least here (Brazil) the hole US VISA process takes much longer than the 2 weeks of head start YC gives the founders it invites to the interviews.
Totally agree. Which is why I'm telling you this isn't spam :) I wanted to post something to answer a lot of people's questions, plus it's a fun project to work on. If people want to watch it, that makes me happy. If they don't, then don't click, ya know?
Does it really matter what WhatsApp made in revenue? The owners got a $16 BILLION payout.

Are you suggesting that WhatsApps business model was based on annual revenue?
Even if the app is running in the background? Sorry, I don't use iOS
So, in an article about image processing, why not include nice big beautiful images, that get even bigger when you click on them?

I click on the low detail inline images, and they stay the same disappointing size and reveal no further detail.

They're all, like 600px X 200px? Am I being greedy for want of gigantic images, upwards of 3000px wide?

I suppose it is an article about thumbnails, after all, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
What are the rich going to do with the vast tracts of land that they apparently claim, and then let lie fallow? Remember, in this hypothetical, all the rich need to do is provide for their own consumption.

This scenario being described here is exactly the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged - the rich (and their robots) all retire to Galt's Gulch and the rest of the world goes to hell. It's surprising to see so many Ayn Rand fans in one comment thread.
IIRC Instagram had ~13 employees when they were acquired by FB, and they were obviously already huge.

WhatsApp had ~30 when they were acquired, and were also huge. ("Huuuuuge!", says The Trump)

Those teams are gods of scalability. Twitter is.... kinda the opposite.
Perfectly Accurate Clocks Are Impossible
Most compilers I know of do register allocation better than nearly all humans where optimization is important.

Aliasing is a problem, but I don't think it's strictly inherent to C.
The museum's about 50% technical glass and 50% art. It's one of my favorite museums anywhere.
> I consider MySQL a red flag and avoid any projects or teams that choose it over Postgres.

I am in the "pro Postgres" camp, but this attitude is too black and white for me. For many projects Postgres in superior to MySQL, but there are situations and requirements where MySQL makes a lot more sense.

For just one example, I can get MySQL as a service much cheaper and easier than I can get Postgres as a service. Which isn't to say Postgres as a service doesn't exist (it does), just to say MySQL is more readily available and there is more competition in that sector.

Additional if I had a DBA who was a MySQL expert and didn't know a thing about Postgres, I'd go with MySQL for my project. Since a good DBA is worth their weight in gold, and an expert in a particular DBMS can be a massive asset to a project.

But given no restrictions or needs, I'd pick Postgres as my "default" choice. I just don't think it is right to say you'd avoid a team/project just because they picked MySQL, sometimes there are completely legit reasons (or politics).
> A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

That made me giggle. Their entire existence is communication.
If you're talking about this one -

"Ask HN: ireadthetpp.com – Video archive of each Senator reading the TPP"

- it's there, currently at #39 (second page).
Why would they care? As long as they are left with sufficient amounts to provide for their own (miniscule) consumption, they have no reason to stress. And why is confiscating land and resources a necessary step?
Bridges are also built following "fashion". After all, motorized carriages are fashionable now, and many more bridges are built to support that mode of traffic than were built, say, 150 years ago.
Codeflask.js and Wordpress – IDE Micro Code-Editor
50% are tech
> Does it really matter what WhatsApp made in revenue? The owners got a $16 BILLION payout.

Silicon Valley mentality at its finest.
Maybe it's finally dawning on investors that nobody wants to pay money for #sarcastic #selfpromoting #hottakes #mixingcontentandmetadata
A bit of history in the making if we're at the precipice.
Genuine question - why do recruiters hire new people when the company is laying off?
Build their own.

Essentially this hypothetical is a scenario where the rich have "gone Galt" (stopped producing useful things for the rest of the world). Your fear of the rich abandoning the rest of us to our own devices is very Randian.
It's not just individual links, it's also entire sites, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/internet-providers-would-be...

"Under the agreement, it appears that internet service providers could be forced to block websites hosting content that infringes copyright ... if a US court were to, say, find that a popular filesharing website was distributing copyrighted Hollywood movies, ISPs in all TPP countries would be compelled to block access to that site."
That may be why MySQL is popular for small installations, but that's not why it's popular with companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest who run replicated clusters that number in the thousands.

It's popular at scale because unlike Postgres, it has replication that is well understood, is reliable, and isn't a massive pain in the ass to operate.
> They're nowhere near relevant.

This doesn't mean that there aren't teams of people trying to constantly make those ads more relevant. And since not everyone at a Twitter can statistically be incompetent, I'm going to assume that the problem is actually quite difficult, and perhaps requires a large team.
http://blog.samaltman.com/china
Choose? I'd argue no. But inform your choice? Sure.

Looking at trends can help you:

- See how easy hiring people will be in the future.

- See the likelihood that your chosen framework will lose support.

- See the likelihood of third party support/addons/libraries/etc.

- How easy it will be to find help/tutorials/guides/etc.

But looking at it, to me, seems prudent.
RDS wouldn't be my first choice to run in a production environment like AirBNB...
Living in a snowy climate yes AWD and 4X4 are great yes (even FWD) it's the traction control that's the problem.

You can tell it wasn't designed by people who have ever seen snow. The Ford Transit is manufactured in Turkey but I don't know if that's a reason for the terrible traction control (and poor heat, and failing wheel bearings, and always cracking windshields).
Free+download+iTools+iOS+9.0.2+/+iOS+9.1+on+Windows+and+Mac
Your hands are deadly weapons.
> Are you suggesting that WhatsApps business model was based on annual revenue?

Since WhatsApp was a revenue-generation corporation with a board of directors, like any other corporation, before their acquisition, and since I don't like to indulge in conspiracy theories, I'm going to assume that yes -- their business model was based on annual revenue.