HN user

turtle4

255 karma
Posts1
Comments107
View on HN

Seems like you have some experience with the orchestrator offerings. Airflow still the way to go, or would you recommend something else for someone just starting down the path of selecting and implementing a data orchestrator?

People acting as though this is nothing new are ignoring how the system and numbers have changed over time.

  - There used to be more children per family, so the burden was shared. The parents in question had fewer children, and now a single person is often responsible for both parents.
  - There are fewer and fewer middle class families. The younger generation is more and more barely able to foot their own bills, let alone take on additional for additional care for another dependent. 
  - The expected life span has risen, so parents are spending additional years alive, often long past when they simply would have passed previously.
  - Rates of dementia and Alzheimer's continue to rise, and require an entirely different level of care than someone who simply can't drive or get around and needs check ins once a day. Round the clock caregiving is an entirely different animal. 
Taken together, the burden on children taking care of their parents has never been higher. Either the support system will grow, or we're going to see a rise in mental breakdowns among the current caregiving population, imo, because they are being put in increasingly hopeless situations.

Regardless of whether you morally want to take care of your parents, the bottom line is people can only do so much and be so strong. It's really difficult.

Search for Quirk CBT. I think the core is open source and they have supporting apps for the various phone platforms. It isn't a general survey tool, but specifically tailored for CBT from what I understand.

I've not used it, so I can't endorse it one way or the other, but the author was interviewed on a podcast I listen to [1] and it seems like exactly what you are asking for. He went through a situation similar to what you are describing and created the project when he couldn't find software like what you are looking for.

Good luck.

[1] Changelog, Ep #345.

There are no perfect alternatives, just imperfect ones.

Apple has their own issues, but they've claimed that their business is selling you a device and software and media to run on it, and making their money from that as opposed to reselling your data. Everything they've been doing lately supports that stance, and they've already recognized it as a differentiation, hence the way they have been up-playing the privacy features of their devices lately. Since they aren't selling you as much after the fact, they are going to charge you more up-front, and since they make their money selling software, they're obsessed with controlling the marketplace.

Google gives away software and media, and sells your personal data and advertising. They're showing increasingly that they don't care about your privacy if it affects their bottom line.

You have to decide which of those business models you support, and then support it. There's no third model where a business gives everything away and cares about your privacy. That's inconsistent with a bottom line of making money, and at the end of the day that is what the business is trying to do.

For a while Google gave the impression that they cared, until they established a large enough market, and now you're seeing them make the natural transition. They've grew their cash cow by giving away stuff, now they are milking it.

Any rational company with their business model is going to do the same thing though, so if you jump ship to another ecosystem now selling you a business model that is too good to be true, don't be surprised down the line when that proves to be the case.

If I pay $10 a month and see 3 movies that are normally $11 apiece (local tickets are $10.75), that's a pretty clear value proposition. How can you ask what the service is with a straight face? Are you honestly implying that if I have to think at all, a 200% return on my money isn't good enough?

I don't really understand anyone who would even care that much about this change. I can barely find time to go to the theater 3 times a month let alone more. The changes that limit the most popular movies were much worse, honestly.

I don't think they are going to last, because even with this reduced offering I don't see how an outlay of $33 for a $10 subscription works. As long as I see at least one movie a month using the service I more than break even though, so I'll stay subscribed month to month until they go under.

Is that what they are saying though? I'm not reading it as 'small teams can't comply'. I'm reading it as if you comply, you will make less money advertising, and that affects the dynamics in a social app.

If you have to charge money, your chance to overcome the network effect of FB or an established site is difficult, because en masse migration of users to a new service typically goes hand in hand with that new service being offered freely.

Conversely if you don't charge money, your ability to fund the development of a competitor is based on reduced ad income since you can't offer targeted ads, which is going to shorten your runway by a significant amount.

These two things seem to indicate that the likelihood of building something that replaces one of the existing social services goes down. I don't think it makes it impossible, but the law seems to make it less likely that the social app incumbents get replaced (if that was at all possible).

As far as those in other regulated fields having done this for some time, I can't think of many regulated fields where the network effect is so high as social apps, so it is probably a bit apples to oranges. Presumably it is not as large a deal in those markets where social network dynamic is not as strong.

It's about eliminating cognitive load when reading and/or modifying source later. The more code you can eliminate from what is being looked at, the easier it is for the reader to understand the purpose of the function and what it is accomplishing.

At some point, someone is going to need to change your code. When that happens, it is easier to 'surgically' modify a single method that does one simple thing, than adjust one tiny piece of a much larger function. Even though the change might be exactly the same, it will be easier to understand which callers are affected by the change so you can detect the impact of your modification.

It is a guideline, not a rule. You'll (probably frequently) have methods that logically make sense to keep longer, but if you're writing and find yourself creeping past that, it is a good indicator you might want to review the function and make sure you're not inlining something that might make sense as its own function.

I don't think that's true. From what I perused of the driver implementations, I think that as calls are made, the driver basically builds an AST up, and then when you call run() it compacts it and sends it over to the DB. ie, when you call filter() you aren't actually filtering, you're adding a filter operation to the AST.

I would think that would allow Rethink to analyze the structure of the query and perform appropriate optimizations.

Thanks for posting. There's one piece of this that hasn't quite clicked yet for me, which is UI refresh coupled with the event stream approach. In the article's example, for instance, you have the user events going into the stream, which refreshes the cache, db, data warehouse, etc.

In a normal UI, the user makes some action, which would update the db, clear the cache for the affected key(s), and display the updated page to the user. In the event stream processing way, if the front end events are what is being logged and the cache refresh for example is running via Samza or some other processor, how does the UI get refreshed appropriately since the processing of the stream is decoupled? Or does the main app cache remain coupled to the form submission and there are just 'other' uncoupled caches, etc?

The situation sucks for you, but there isn't anything remotely illegal about it, and it really isn't a matter of being unfair. They don't have a monopoly on online advertising, and they are free to make whatever business deals they want. Dating ads can be shady. They consider it less hassle for them to work with known entities for a premium price than try to work with every site out there. That's not a matter of fairness, it's just business.

It just sucks to be in the position you are with essentially no leverage in the relationship, and dependence on a single source of advertising. I think the other comments offer some insights on how to try to diversify. I don't think you have a real alternative beyond that.

Good luck!

Marvel Comics API 12 years ago

While having access at all is nice, the terms of use are prohibitive and somewhat heavy handed. They basically say you can make something, but can't charge for it in any way, you can't create a mash-up (no augmentation of data) and if it works out, Marvel will probably implement it for themselves anyway. Not really as 'open' as you might hope.

The following default rules apply to all Apps:

Advertising. No advertising or sponsorship of any kind may appear on or be associated with any App (unless included in the Content made available by Marvel).

No Charge. All Apps must be offered free of charge to download or otherwise access and may not contain any in-App purchase features or any other method of monetization, unless approved in writing by Marvel pursuant to a separate written agreement as described below.

...

NO PRESS RELEASES. You may not issue any press release or make any public statement about the Marvel API (and related Content), Tools, the inclusion of any of the foregoing in any Apps (yours or others') or these API Terms of Use without Marvel's prior written approval.

...

Use of our Content. You may not change or edit the Content (e.g., modify, augment).

...

You understand and acknowledge that Marvel may be independently creating applications, content and other products or services that may be similar to or competitive with your App, and nothing in these API Terms of Use will be construed as restricting or preventing Marvel from creating and fully exploiting such applications, content and other products or services now or in the future, without any obligation to you.

At least one of the 12 seeds wins almost every year. An 11 seed upsetting doesn't really impact the odds much.

Not that anyone is going to win his money, but this one game doesn't change anything.

My question regarding this is how do you prevent gaming the system causing overpopulation? What will stop currently poor individuals from having 10 kids to collect their income? Is it just not awarded until you reach age of majority?

I think it is a set PPI or above, since 'retina' was marketed as the point at which the eye couldn't detect the pixels. Presumably anything more dense would be considered the same. Since the 10" is a so-called retina display, it stands to reason that a 7" display with the same resolution also is retina.

If nothing is given, you assume the first party is indicating that their thanks/recognition is enough.

If something is given, then they are acknowledging that their thanks/recognition is not enough, but that $x monetary value makes up the difference.

Some people take it as an insult that if thanks isn't enough, they can be 'bought' for $x, where $x is $12.50, or whatever. The reasoning is basically that if you are saying the time taken to reproduce and report the issue is important enough to compensate, you should probably compensate commensurate with what they would expect to make for their time/expertise.

I think most people who report these things do so because they want to improve things, not for the money, so most probably fall into the first camp, but I can understand where the second camp is coming from.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully society sees the benefits and gets out of the mindset you mention above (which I understand you are pointing out, not advocating).

The idea that 'even one accident is too many' is a joke when you consider how many accidents there are with human drivers, and yet we accept them willingly. If there are 30,000 deaths per year from human driven accidents, then surely the real answer to how many accidents by computer driven cars is acceptable should have an upper bound of 29,999, right? Why isn't it acceptable if it saves even one human life, rather than being unacceptable if it costs one?

Unfortunately, we as a group don't tend to be very logical, and love to spread blame, so I am afraid we'll take a long time to start saving lives. The data on the self-driven cars on the road is pretty overwhelming that they are safer than human drivers, but unfortunately there will be those (as in this thread) who believe that is true of everyone but themselves.

Its going to be a long road to acceptance.

Your response accounts only for one piece of the experience, which is the muscle memory. Perhaps you move like a robot, and muscle memory is enough for you to precisely strike the small tap targets of a keyboard, but you are off target to tell someone they are wrong based solely on that.

Tactile feedback is a big advantage to physical typing which allows you to know your fingers are in the right place prior to making a keystroke. Without it, you don't know until after the touch has registered. Ignoring that and saying it amounts to nothing is short sighted at best. Even beyond that, there are plenty of people who aren't that coordinated and/or stable, period, which amplifies this deficiency.

Additionally, this doesn't account for the fact that in most scenarios, the person using a mobile device is, in fact, mobile, and may not have a flat, stable area to place the device, but rather they are balancing it on their lap or holding it with one hand and typing with the other. Nor does it capture the fact that when you have the device in your lap, the screen isn't going to be at an ideal angle to view at the same time.

So sure, the same concept applies, but to pretend that the experience isn't inferior is just turning a blind eye to reality, imho.

Alright, so after I set up the environment using pip and virtualenv, I see it has python in it, etc. If I use pip freeze > requirements.txt, it lists the packages I have installed using pip, but it doesn't list anything for the python version itself. How do I make sure the right python version gets captured if I don't check in the /env/ folder?

He's saying in an absolute meritocracy, things are only awarded by merit. Given the choice between awarding a contract to company A or company B, once A has already shown to have more merit than B, all future work would logically go to A, and B would die out.

Presuming that A doesn't do something to demonstrate they don't deserve merit any longer, why would you ever go with a proven inferior (B) option, or an option that is unproven altogether (C)? Hence, a trend toward a single dominating entity.

In reality, I think things are more nuanced, of course. No one awards purely on merit, as you also have timing, capacity, and costs to balance. I'm not really aware of any market that you could consider a -true- meritocracy to the extent of the GP comment. And maybe I misread the comment altogether, but that is my understanding.

[dead] 13 years ago

Traditionally, dynamic websites run their script to generate a page at the time a request is made so that they output the site in an up to date state. So generally each request looks up data, does some logic, and outputs a templated result. While this ensures that the data shown is the most up to date, it also means your processing time and resource demand goes up a great deal with increasing traffic.

A typical improvement to this is to add a cache layer so that the data is only looked up once in a while. This involves setting up an appropriate time to cache data and/or an appropriate cache expiration scheme.

Jekyll takes a different approach and rather than generating a result when it is requested, it generates the result when the data is saved/published. This is very efficient because the data is ever only looked up once, and it simplifies caching. The trade off is that you aren't looking up the data each request, so it may or may not fit your needs depending on the type of data you are serving and the number of updates that are going to be made.

For a wiki page or a blog, where the number of updates is few compared to the number of requests to read it, Jekyll is a good fit because of its efficiency and ability to scale out simply. That is its appeal, in terms of your original question.

Your description of a few articles from time to time seem to be in line with its use case. That said, if you aren't intending to get alot of traffic, then it is up to you whether the workflow adjustments that it requires makes it a good fit for you or not.

Sorry, I was a victim of the translation, I think. I see the clarification now. Sorry, I tried to delete before replies, but a couple of you got in beforehand, apparently.

Does everything have to be subscription based now? I know it is good for revenue, but it sure is a poor experience for the user. I would rather just pay $10 for 100 screens, if that is what you are charging, rather than tack on the /mo charge. When I run out, I buy more. Offer volume discounts for extreme purchasing over time, perhaps, but don't make me subscribe for light use. That's my initial feedback.