skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Would it be possible to see your Facebook app? I'm curious to see what traits these fast growing apps have in common in person.
mirror: http://blog.shrewple.com.nyud.net/
But these are not products. They're internal code names and there's no chance that Google will ever be releasing these pieces of software to the public. Thus no possible trademark issues.
The following until you no longer have issues handling the traffic (which might be right after step 2).

1. Upgrade your linode to something around 2 Gig for now.

2. Start playing with your MySQL or Postgresql config (assuming you're not already using redis or something similar, in which case just throw more RAM at the box). Google performance settings for your DB of choice and look for relevant posts to the memory you have.

3. If there's anything cachable, install memcached and implement it.

4. Purchase a second linode and move your database to it.

5. Upgrade each VPS as needed.

6. At this point you get into fancy scaling and there are loads of options. You should have plenty of breathing room by this point though and can plan it out.
Any solution that requires end-users updating the firmware on their phones is a completely useless and broken solution. If it isn't an auto-update, it is not going to happen, unless they go to use their phone and it says "sorry, you have to bring it to AT&T to have your phone updated before you can make a call."

Yeah, AT&T is going to go for that.
- Dark Avanger

Have not heard that name in a while! Admired his code
I doubt they're unhappy. Resources are shared in such a way that everyone is guaranteed their fair share. I think the 400% reflects that you have access to multiple cores. 100%=maxing out one core, I believe. (And you might not be truly maxing it out, just maxing out your share of it.)
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Might not be a time to trip over pennies, but there's also no reason to rush into things. Heroku has always seemed to be horribly overpriced as a scaling solution.

A more traditional approach of 1 web and 1 db server (possibly even physical boxes) might end up providing better value and give him enough time to figure out how to scale this horizontally on EC2 (the web part should be easy...remove any in memory state data, the db might be a bit more work).
Hey Mark, it's been a while. Nicely done. You said it was just an MVP so I assume you have a product designed beyond this point. So, NOW is the time to do some validation on what those other ideas are. You have a large audience who already know who you are and are willingly giving you input.

Maybe in put down your follow ideas in short little phrases and have people provide three words on that, if they wish, along with three words on their friends. It will give you great insight into what THIS audience thinks is a good or bad next step for you.

This is a site that will not maintain interest as it is beyond a short period unless you add more to it. So the key here is to move forward quickly, even if it is in tiny incremental steps. letting the users help you make some of those choices of what steps to take can only help.
Upgrading to the 4 gig linode as we speak. this is getting kind of ridiculous.
Yes, the world is fair and just and everyone deserves to be where they are today. This is why our society operates according to a caste system, and we should preserve it whenever possible.

Ergo the rich deserve to stay rich in perpetuity without any effort or contribution to society on their part. They should be able to set aside a pile of cash and reap the capital gains forever, with only a 15% tax rate on that income.

It is the natural order.

Edit add: In addition to the aforementioned caste reference, I'm seeing a lot of parallels to feudalism here.
The linode guys are great. You might want to flip them an email and let them know you're getting hit. Could speed up the resizing etc.
let the words become tags linked to the FB account. Such that if users have a tag like "Snowboarder" associated with their FB account - he can build out a tagDB of FB accounts.

This way - you could target ads to FB accounts/users that are all "snowboarders"

Or you can at least search who among your friends have the tag [snowboarder].

Or if you give more categories to the tags, you can ask your friends to fill in their favorite 3 [X] -- so you can simply ask all your friends a question and then build an interesting DB of tags/info/interests of all FB users.
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^ This is reason why I love this place and never believe the occasional "hacker news is going to shit" posts.
Not sure if there's any benchmarks out there. But I had your similar setup when my app went viral. Switching to Unicorn w/REE replaced an expensive engineyard setup. Learned about it from github (https://github.com/blog/517-unicorn)

But something you could do immediately to help with the load is to run haproxy on your current linode and funnel some of the traffic to a new linode that you spin up.
I took me 3 months or so to finally grok CouchDB map/reduce queries. Now that I've seen the light, I'm not sure I'll go back to an RDBMS any time soon -- at least not for bread and butter webdev.

"...You must know what will be the questions that you will be asking upfront."

Even in SQL land you need to know your queries in advance. Sure you can do table scans on unindexed fields, but you're going to crush i/o.

With Couch you can always deploy new views during a maintenance window for queries you didn't anticipate. Same thing with adding indexes in an RDBMS to handle unanticipated/slow queries.

At least with Couch I know that my queries are more-or-less pre-computed in B-trees. I know I'm not scanning the same tables over and over.

Moreover, if you know what you're doing wrapping conflict handling around Couch's MVCC is straightforward.. and you get all the benefits of offline replication.

In my case, I've built a service that calculates utility-style usage based off Couch range queries that are reduced into a cost calculation. Given any date range I can reduce a utility fee an order of magnitude faster than I could in SQL land.

YMMV, etc.. but I'd say this is a case of "haters gonna hate".
>>Next, I would try to become known as the place to get a quick summary on anybody -- even celebrities.

You mean like About.me is attempting to do? This is an interesting twist though...

However - the quick summary I look for on anyone of interest (professionally) is linkedin.

I do not and shall not have a facebook account.
then it starts suggesting people. apply it to more than people. then it starts suggesting more than people. you get the picture.
Dremel is the technology behind BigQuery. The talk from Google IO is informative.

http://code.google.com/apis/bigquery/
Does anyone else find it comical that the author spends so much of his post talking up the virtues of not being a people user, while simultaneously offering advice on how to use women?

I guess if you're dating her that's one thing, but as a general strategy? Replace "girlfriend" with "hot secretary"(or "athletic looking black man", feel free to get creative here) – I honestly don't see how is this somehow more tolerable than pitching to a potential investor without getting to know them first.
EDIT: HN doesn't render that code very nicely, here's a pastie: http://pastie.org/1416631

Hi there, your home page is very simple, render it in plain HTML and post the signup to queue.php.

In queue.php put:

<?php
$data = serialize($_POST);
mysql_connect('localhost','dbuser','dbpass');
mysql_select_db('dbname');
mysql_query('INSERT INTO cache(cache_data) VALUES(\''.mysql_real_escape_string($data).'\')');
echo 'YOUR REAL PAGE SHOULD BE HERE WITH A MESSAGE ABOUT BEING IN THE QUEUE';
?>

The cache table should just be a PK cache_id and a text field (or perhaps mediumtext). I've suggested using a database instead of a filesystem based cache because, if you're doing this quickly, doing it using MySQL means you're less likely to run into file permissions or security problems.

Then you're at least capturing everyone's information whilst you figure out how to scale.
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Agh, I hadn't gotten that far, but the first couple seemed interesting (if not terribly detailed). Sorry for posting.

Unfortunately Microsoft's documentation is horrible, and the books I've skimmed on DX likewise (they are all light on shader code and heavy on "so you wanna make a game?" content).
I think that's orthogonal to my point. All I was saying was that many of the answers presented only a majority view of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, and that if you were to ask women and blacks what they thought, you might see some different answers.

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough, but I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that you're only seeing one side of the story.

> year [sic] people go on and on about how ashamed you should be because god gave you a white skin (and that all social ills of other groups are due to you).

Also, maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd, or don't watch enough CNN, but I have never experienced this in my life.
Cache the hell out of it! I'd spend all of my time looking into caching mechanisms for Rails right now.
Clickable: http://threewords.me
I don't suppose this traffic will sustain. Slap an ad right in the center and monetize the hell out of it. Or get a sponsor.

Also, for the short term, Amazon EC2 would be the best option to handle the traffic.
Rich people often lose their money due to poor mismanagement. IE, the son would squander the fortune of his father.

Rich people who have manage their wealth properly should deserve to keep it. It's not like the companies that they invest in are going to last forever.
Where is your current bottleneck? mysql? check your slow query log, turn on the log-queries-not-using-indexes, do a quick analysis of those to see if you have queries that aren't using an index or queries that can be optimized. Probably 90% of the scaling problems are database issues.

The quick solution is to scale up your current linode package, however, I think you might find that your traffic is going to peak and will wane next week after everyone has gone back to school/work and is out of the holiday mindset at which point you can scale back.

Put in a throttle - /proc/loadavg

Limit it to X signups per hour, asking them to check back next hour. Collect email and notify when they can sign up. Point them at a facebook page, ask them to like the page, do announcements when the next 'batch' of users is able to sign up.

If you want some help analyzing the slow query logs and/or the normal logs, email me a url of a .gz/.bz2 of a reasonable snippet at hnusername@hnusername.com.

Since you're running nginx, consider doing an alias and use proxy caching. I would doubt your static files are causing too many issues, but, if you can cache computationally expensive pages a little, that can help.
New Feature Idea if it's not already in the works: threewords.me places (foursquare?). would leverage current users engagement to tag locations with a dead simple description. could keep users coming back, provide utility(value)to businesses, and make you some more money. email me (mw63214@gmail.com) if you want more ideas, although it seems you have your hands full as it is. Good Luck!
Heroku in the short term b/c you wrote it in rails and you can easily scale it up or down based on virality.

App engine after that b/c it should be fairly easy to port and it's an extremely headache-free way to host an app. Now that they have always on instances, it's very fast and scales efficiently and effortlessly.
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2 words: self-interest.
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"throughout the 1950's . . . the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent"

This statement's math is inaccurate.

In the "mid 50s" there were many more brackets, and in fact the 90% rate was for incomes in the 2m/yr+ range adjusted for inflation.

A more fair comparison is to look at today's top rate bracket which is anything above $373,650.

In 1955 that was ~$47,500 inflation adjusted, and the marginal tax rate for that bracket was 72%.

Not arguing the point that a greater share of the top earners INCOME went to taxes back in the day, just that 90% is not an accurate representation of the top, or wealthy class tax.

Beyond that what bugs me about this line is that he uses it as proof that taxes are lower today than they have been in the past, when in fact that is not accurate.

Trends in state taxes, capital gains, property taxes (and values), and sales taxes add to the burden today at every level, so marginal tax is not the best measure.

A better measure is total tax revenue against GPD which, shown below, illustrates that the percentage of tax revenue has GROWN since the 1950s:

http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/downchart_gr.php?year=195...

and the history of marginal tax rates:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_histo...
Yes, their deftness at not being idiots with their money should be rewarded indefinitely, since it is such a huge contribution to our society.

(mostly unrelated: check out index funds, money management is only made to look complicated to benefit brokers/advisors paid on commission)
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Here's one way Google could be clearer: have the text the customer has to agree to on the screen instead of pointing to a link. I don't know about you, but with any physical contract I've signed, the relevant information is always included (the exception being laws that the contract refers to which I don't need to explicitly agree to).
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What a load of socialist bullshit.
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Any Flex developers looking for freelance work?
I just got a contract approved for a freelance Flex guy but my usual Flex guy e-mailed this afternoon to inform me that he had just gotten a full-time job and wouldn't be able to freelance anymore. So, I need a Flex pretty quickly.

The rate is not that good right now ($40/hr), but it may be somewhat flexible; if you won't work for that, let me know your minimum and I'll see what I can work out with the client.

The application is written in Flex/AS3 and uses PureMVC. I use git for version control. Someone familiar with all of those techs is preferable.

The gig is spotty and variable, some months zero hours, some months ten or twenty, some months fifty or more. I just need a dependable Flex guy who can take on the work as it comes; start dates are generally negotiable but handling of new stuff should be at least relatively timely.

Interested parties will need to sign an NDA and a contractor agreement before any code can be distributed.

I've had a hard time finding decent Flex guys, so if you know of one, please send them my way.

Thanks.
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Don't forget to apply for the Thiel Fellowship! Email me for help with your essays (that offer applies to anyone).
To be fair, Reddit has a noted capacity for charity and generosity, but I do agree.
"If you're curious, the stack is Rails + Ruby Enterprise Edition + Passenger + nginx, which isn't cheap like PHP to host. On the $40 Linode right now but maxing out CPU at 350%."

Interesting. Makes me think that an MVP should be done in PHP or something else that is cheap to host and handles these sorts of conditions well, and then if things look bright build the real site in whatever seems appropriate for the expected demand.
An even easier way: send the email to that number on ALL carriers. Only 1 of them will have that number, and they will deliver it; the others will just drop it (or bounce it, so use a return address that can ignore the bounces).
Probably no one else has found it comical, because I haven't offered any such advice. The only thing I have done is highlight the apparent good will conferred by being associated with attractive women. The girl in question was not coerced or cajoled into doing what she did, she did so completely of her own initiative.

Also using the help of someone you are dating someone is completely different to 'pitching to a potential investor without getting to know them first' or 'being a people user' and I object to that. One does what one can to help a SO, there are many ways in which favours are returned.
Another thing worth comparing is the number of tax brackets. Currently, tax law considers someone making 400k/y to be the same as someone making 5m/y (or more), when in reality those are completely different leagues.
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I work for Microsoft. Part of my job is talking about BizSpark.

BizSpark doesn't impose any conditions like you listed, to qualify for BizSpark, you just need to meet the requirements listed here: https://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/Faqs.aspx#Startup-Questio...

We don't have a formal way to offer assistance to startups looking to integrate with our software. That said, I'd love to talk to anybody who is interested doing integrations with Microsoft software.
This is interesting - I'm assuming that by "Exchange Integration" you're talking about Calendaring, appointments, and so on yes? I don't get the connection between your use of Exchange and your client's use of Exchange.

Put another way - I'm imagining you have a "Add to Outlook" bit of functionality which makes perfect sense. But the format is quite open and it, after all, a text file. How does this jibe with your web offering and your need for Exchange?

The main reason I ask is that Exchange is (generally) seen as not necessary in a startup (company < 20 or so). Typically they'll use Google apps or another hosted service which will accept their domain (Live.com does this as well).

Can you detail more why you needed Exchange with a Web app?
Nah. MVP should be done in the technology you are most proficient at, regardless of how fast/slow it runs. Optimize after you've proven your idea.

I think he just should have hosted on Heroku as he could have scaled it a bit faster.
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Good point. Can I suggest now then that people avoid x. Keep python -mx for private hacks.
But it's not free if it's only 3 years - you still have to pay don't you? I'm not arguing the utility of it - I'm wondering if you would have paid anyway - or if the 3 year "loan" made a difference.
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Why should I start from tests? Pretty simple, by implementing tests before you are looking on your service as client<, not as a developer. When I was working to version 1 of my REST API I didn't do any tests, basically because I didn't know how to do them. When I was ready and started implementation of the client code and documentation, I found out major API issues that I had no time to solve. Those issues were related to: design, security, formats and convenience of usage. TDD principles works the same here: clear and simple design through series of tests.
Unless you don't plan on your software running on a Windows-based machine, seems like a no-brainer.

Regarding MS's lack of self-promotion. They tend to self-promote what they believe and are mum on other stuff. Like WP7 and Azure -- they won't say its the best, but that its a marathon, not a sprint. But with Visual Studio, they'll happily tell you that it is the best. SQL Server, they'll enumerate the scenarios where they're the best. And with Office, they have no problem making the claim that it's the best office productivity platform.

While Rob would like more self-promotion... I think its fair to say that if you don't know what your tools are good at and are looking at a company to tell you then BizSpark (or any other program) probably won't help you.
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq.html#locations

"Here are the subnets from which Google Public DNS sends requests to authoritative nameservers, and their associated IATA airport codes"

So in theory, if you live in one of those cities, you shouldn't have this problem. Right?

Some of the reported numbers are too astounding to be covered by this explanation, however. I wonder if something else is at work.
HN readers interested in BizSpark can also contact me directly to get in.
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You've since mentioned that you've gone for a 4 gig box with 55 Passenger workers. Definitely a good start.

If I were in your shoes, these three items would be next on my emergency-scaling checklist:

1. Database sanity check: Are you using indexes for calls like "Find user by username"? Does your database need its own dedicated box?

2. Pick up another box for memcached. Full-page cache everything you can with rack-cache. Don't worry about expiration, just use some reasonably low TTL to put a throttle on your read requests for now.

3. Move all of your static assets to S3 + CloudFront. Gzipped, with a far-future Expires header. While you're in there, move the JS to the footer of your layouts. No sense serving any of that stuff from your Linode boxes if they're as pegged as they sound from your other comments.

As to making money? No clue. Maybe I'll have an idea when I can get a request through and see what the app is all about ;)

One thought occurs: this seems to be a very vanity-driven kind of app. Find a way to charge $1, $2 or even $5 for some simple premium vanity-stoking feature and you could be in good shape. Better than advertising, in my book.

Have fun!
Strawman argument is straw-like.
Fair enough, but one can justify racism and ethnocentrism by appealing to our animal instincts as well – we may very well be predisposed to seeking power over others and reserving trust for those we perceive to be our own kind. Now granted, I have no way of proving that there isn't some kind of misogyny gene. But legally, slavery was done away with by passing a constitutional amendment that makes no direct reference to race. Culturally, there was a large precedent of underground and increasingly popular outrage against the practice, founded in principles of human equality that had to be actively argued for.

I bring up the parallel, again, not because it's an equivalent situation, but to illustrate what I think is a common ethical trap we can fall into: what good is it to see an injustice and wave our hands, saying that it's just the way the things are?

You suggested that the grandposter is blindly optimistic for wanting to change the way men relate to women in the workplace (or something like that), but think about how much has changed culturally, that we can have this conversation in 2010 and have it be basically a given that human bondage is morally wrong? It took a law in 1865, and it was controversial at the time. Today you have to be on the fringe of society in order to believe that it was ever morally defensible, presumably. That's not a triumph of law, it's a triumph of active social change.