tiredofcareer · HackerTrans

tiredofcareer

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Jesse Noller's Gittip account is now the #2 receiving account

gittip.com

1 pointsby tiredofcareer13 lat temu1 comments

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13 lat temudiscuss

I think you're unnecessarily combative in the face of advice and sitting comfortably atop your pillar of experience, ready to shoot down anyone that dare take time to offer you advice. You've appealed to your authority on this matter more times than I can count. Look at how you've approached the conversation from the very first reply, which set the tone for the rest:

    - I've been using WP Supercache since it was released
    - [I've been using] Nginx for I think 4 years at this point
    - Basically, I was there
    - I saw the numbers and I know why they wound up looking the way they did
    - I've been running Wordpress blogs since 2004
    - You clearly don't understand what my problem is

Now I've asked you something specific. You've lamented that you identified the issue as on-disk joins, when MySQL has to resort to an on-disk temporary table due to a TEXT column. That's discussed here[1]. I'm assuming, because I didn't assume you are stupid (unlike in the inverse), that you deduced this was the case by inspecting created_tmp_disk_tables. I then asked if you tried removing the disk from the picture by creating a RAM disk, mounting it somewhere, then instructing MySQL to use it for its temporary disk table area by setting tmpdir. I also assume you know that tmpdir defaults to the system /tmp, which might not be on a filesystem that you prefer[2]. Again, I assumed you knew these things, and just asked if you tried them.

How do you respond? "Let's ignore each other." So now I'm left wondering if you genuinely don't know how to scale MySQL, and you've tired yourself of appealing to your own authority in order to prove me wrong. What I'm telling you, is the notion that your blog network creating a workload for MySQL that it is incapable of operating on commodity disk is completely ridiculous, and I'd laugh you out of an interview if I pressed you like this. I think you gave up, but I wasn't saying it, but now that you've gone at me like this, I will. You're basically saying you couldn't make MySQL work with a <50QPS write load (I refuse to believe you're writing more than 50QPS to MySQL) because of some TEXT columns.

I'd have far more respect for you if you'd just say, yeah, I probably could make MySQL keep up with my blog workload, I just didn't put much effort into it and bought SSDs on a provider I don't prefer instead.

(But wait: I don't understand. Username oddly appropriate.)

[1]: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/internal-temporary-ta...

[2]: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/temporary-files.html

13 lat temudiscuss

> Sarcasm aside, you clearly don't understand what my problem is.

Yeah, I spent this entire thread clueless about the issue you're running into, even though you spelled it out a few different times because you think I don't get it. Wordpress falls over under normal site load, film at eleven.

Since you want to switch to condescension, I'm assuming wise sir moved MySQL's tmpdir to a RAM disk and found that unsatisfactory for his mystical, MySQL-breaking SELECT/INSERT workload? Also, I'm far more expensive, and I know that WPEngine is multitenancy Wordpress on Linode in the backend. (That one's free.)

13 lat temudiscuss

Got it. So you have users that expect to have real-time conversations in the comments on a blog, meaning you can't optimize a blog application like a blog is designed to be used, meaning you have to pay for SSDs in order to make your blog function at all because apparently MySQL can't handle N inserts/second and however many people have these conversations refreshing every ten seconds, generating a few SELECTs that are rapidly in query cache.

I completely understand how this could be a problem and how switching providers would fix it.

13 lat temudiscuss

    set beresp.ttl = 30s;

Varnish gives you your own throttle for how often you want invalidation. It's a tool specifically designed to make misbehaving apps -- i.e., that widget -- misbehave. You just have to slap the dog on the nose when it behaves. I'm just saying you could have made this work on Linode (and I have), but I do see your post-purchase rationalization at work, so I know anything I say will be fruitless anyway.

There's also the possibility that you had shitty neighbors.

13 lat temudiscuss

That's why Varnish is more effective, because you can configure it to cache the results of things that WP Supercache misses by design including the Recent Comments Widget and its data. If you need SSDs to run Wordpress, there's a flaw somewhere. Every time I've scaled Wordpress, caching has been the answer. Apply liberally.

WP Supercache is a hack anyway, for folks running WP on shared hosts without root. If you have root, there's a plethora of better things for caching, even as ancient as Squid as a reverse. You can get your MySQL traffic down to <1 QPS fairly trivially, no matter what kind of traffic is hitting the frontend.

Don't forget wordpress.com is a huge MU installation, and they've existed since before SSDs became popular. The disk is not your issue here.

13 lat temudiscuss

You need a cache in front of Wordpress so that it doesn't hit the database on every read, then you can run Wordpress anywhere. I survived close to 3,000 req/sec against a Wordpress entry using a single Linode 360, back when those were available.

wp_supercache, nginx, varnish, etc. Rinse and repeat.

13 lat temudiscuss

Look around at the replies to me and the downvote beating I'm taking for sharing my opinion. Turn on showdead for an even more depressing trip through my replies. Then ask yourself if this can ever come to an understanding without me seeing the "error of my ways" and adopting the "acceptable" position of this community. Then, go even further, and ask yourself if it matters one iota of a shit more than the several minutes I've already spent subjecting myself to this beating, including someone telling me I should play with anthrax and die for fuck's sake. Then turning it around on me and calling it my fault after I called him out on it (and got downvoted yet fucking again for doing so!).

The answer is, very clearly, absolutely not on all accounts. Hacker News does not tolerate dissenting opinion and that should scare you. The continued existence of this community and any contribution is plainly pointless, and while I'd invest a little time demonstrating that to you, I know that nobody will listen, I'll turn light gray, and this community will go back to having a grand old time patting themselves on the back throwing money at a Florida teenager they have never, and will never, meet nor hear about ever again.

One of the (many) problems in our discourse today is that there is no middle. No compromise. Ever. Look at American politics for an example. Even in this discussion here, there was no possible suggestion that I might be a little right, no possible seeking of an understanding, no middle ground. You either think this girl deserves our showering of praise and affection or you suffer the consequences and get grayed to nonexistence.

No, nitrogen. I'm done. You guys can have your polarized, pointless discussion, and I will go back to keeping my opinions to myself. Just like I'm pretty much done with this industry, as well, because it seems like the number of intolerable people that I have to spend nine to five arguing with, over pointless shit like this, continues to multiply until I don't want to listen any more.

I started this account when a good guy, Jesse Noller, had has life threatened by the very people in this industry for daring to intervene in the PyCon situation. I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I could effect some change and get people to see that there is a middle, there is a compromise, there is an opportunity for discussion. When I follow the community, I am rewarded with heaps of karma -- including one comment with dozens of upvotes for saying what HN wants to hear. When I dare speak against the community, as I have here, I am reminded why I keep my distance and why those of us who think rationally consider this community a heaping pile of arrogant shit. You should hear what people outside HN say about it, based on discussions like this. Congratulations, HN. You're now Slashdot. You're now the community that in a single thread compared a teenager that built a bomb in a two-liter bottle to Alfred Nobel and Marie Curie.

In the hours since you left this question for me, I went to see a film and forgot about Hacker News for four hours, and it was four glorious, wonderful hours I intend to repeat. Continuously, for the rest of my days.

13 lat temudiscuss

I was referring mainly to Hacker News and similar communities. Everybody condemning her has been downvoted to oblivion on these threads.

13 lat temudiscuss

Yeah, that was called for. Thanks for the rational, objective discourse, there, by telling me I should kill myself with anthrax because I disagree with your opinion. Just reminds me why I love the Internet.

13 lat temudiscuss

Her first statement while being interviewed was that she was performing a science experiment. That story changed under interview, and she later admitted someone told her how and encouraged her to do it. The outpouring of support from renowned scientists and legal funds happily ignored that point, and stuck with the "science experiment" angle.

So, no, this is not an anti-science campaign by the government, regardless of how really hard we want to believe that she's aspiring to science. These things will blind you and take limbs off if you mishandle them. They have blown up on police officers after being left in an alley because they didn't detonate when kids make them. Then they just leave them for other people to clean up.

Even if you buy the science experiment angle, which she herself went back on, this is a safety issue from the completely reckless way in which she performed a "science experiment", similar to detonating a pipe bomb on school property just to see what happens. Oh, how the narrative would be different if she had built a pipe bomb instead.

Honestly, guys, we have this one wrong. Here's several other cases for your consideration, showing how big this problem is (the reason arrests are picking up is because LEOs are communicating about this, now that kids are starting to do it more):

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/04/grosse_p...

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=... (from TODAY)

http://www.ktvb.com/news/crime/Five-more-plastic-bottle-expl...

http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/Police-warn-about-plastic-bo...

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/bottle-bomb-warning-goes-out-t...

This is a serious problem, not an opportunity to "win another scientist," and the narrative around this case has been disgusting. Reckless behavior and endangering yourself and others intentionally is not the hallmark of a scientist, no matter how much you want the science angle to be true.

13 lat temudiscuss

Her first statement while being interviewed was that she was performing a science experiment. That story changed under interview, and she later admitted someone told her how and encouraged her to do it.

13 lat temudiscuss

And if she had hurt or, worse, killed herself or other people? Reckless is not a quality of a scientist. Why didn't we, the public, extend an invitation to "become a scientist" and pour support and legal defense funds to the Novato teenagers arrested for making the exact same thing OFF school property[1]? It's a felony charge in California, as well.

> But officers did arrest a group of teenagers at the end of January for making and setting off Drano bombs in an open space off Palmer Drive.

Let me be clear: mishandling one of these devices can blind you and remove limbs, and even if you buy the "I'm doing a science experiment" angle, she's doing it without training or safety considerations. This is a safety issue, not a science-hating issue, and there have been many charged and convicted before this young lady. I hate that we absolutely cannot have an objective conversation about this.

[1]: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/bottle-bomb-warning-goes-out-t...

13 lat temudiscuss

So I should be able to manufacture pipe bombs because I'm curious how big the explosion is, then? Maybe I can try one out on my school's football field? No malicious intent, just curiosity to 'see what happens', so by your logic I should be square right?

Or perhaps I could study the inhalant properties of anthrax powder at my desk at work, because I have no malicious intent and just want 'see what happens'?

There's a difference between science and doing something reckless that could, theoretically, endanger others without scientific safeguards in place. Public commentary on this issue is completely ignoring that.

13 lat temudiscuss

I completely agree. She went back on her story that she was doing a science experiment while being interviewed, but everybody wants to stick to that story anyway. It's almost like everybody in the world wants her to be a scientist, and I pay dearly every time I raise this point here. I don't get it.

13 lat temudiscuss

It is a strange world we live in when making Drano bombs at a high school is compared to the work of Alfred Nobel.

13 lat temudiscuss

I wouldn't be so sure. I pay a rent premium for a view.

13 lat temudiscuss

For most customers, maybe, but I suspect there's a pretty sizable portion of the population (myself included) that will happily pay more for an airline that treats me extraordinarily well, considers my comfort while on board, and gives me reasons to shout their name down the street. For example, Virgin America is one of those airlines for me, and I will happily pay a premium to fly one of their tragically few routes (they're one of the few airlines I fly first on, as well). I blacklist Southwest entirely because of the complete disregard for my experience shown on the three miserable flights I've had with them. I don't think I fit in your business bucket, but that's a data point, at least.

In another industry where profit is the focus, domain registration, I'm absolutely dying for a $100-$200/year registrar that knows what they're doing and isn't awful to deal with. I will happily pay that premium since my hosting bill far outweighs my domain registration, and handling support tickets expediently and providing features I want are far more important than the bottom line to me. If an extra $10/year from all customers means I get IPv6 glue or a ticket answered inside of 72 hours, please, do it! (This is less relevant now, but was a concern for me in the past.) I'm willing to part cash to be treated better in almost all cases.

13 lat temudiscuss

I do understand the basics of probability. The likelihood of your serving infrastructure or application being compromised is an order of magnitude higher than the most popular repositories in software development. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I also don't walk around worried about having an asteroid land on me simply because I understand probability. If it happens, it happens, and we deal accordingly, but using a much more difficult software engineering process because of (arguably) paranoia is silly.

13 lat temudiscuss

None of the things you listed are problems. The other comment demonstrates solutions to all of them, and I do not understand your fourth bullet point in context at all.

> C, C++, Java, C# etc. programmers have been pulling dependencies in their repos for ages.

I'm not making this up: in my career, I have never worked on a project where this is the case, and I've worked for shops that write in three of those languages.

> I certainly prefer to manually update them from time to time than to have builds that work on my machine but fail for other people

That's your choice, and it's a little bit different because I'm assuming "other people" are end users -- those that want to recompile SumatraPDF from source for some bizarre reason -- not developers. Fixing a broken build is a skill that every developer should have, but not an end user. Once I learned how to write software, I never came across a situation as an end user compiling an open-source Unix package that I could not solve myself.

The opinion I'm sharing here is related to developing on a team, not distributing source for end-user consumption. It sounds like you don't develop SumatraPDF with many other people, either. Nothing like merge failures on a huge dependency that I didn't write to ruin a Monday.

Also, wait, SumatraPDF is built with dependencies in the codebase? What if a zero-day is discovered in one of your dependencies while you're on vacation for a month; what do distribution maintainers do? Sigh? Patch in the distribution and get to suffer through a merge when you return?

13 lat temudiscuss

> There's no such thing as, say, Maven binary dependencies for Java.

I'm saying there should be, but not necessarily the same thing. That's my entire point.

I'm also not a fan of the "you have a dissimilar opinion to mine, so obviously you've never used Go properly" attitude in this thread. One way to read your last is that I've never used Go at all, though I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you meant used Go properly. Either way, I don't get the condescension of assuming I'm unaware of everything you're explaining to me simply because I have an opinion that is different than yours. Especially since half of your comment is repeating things to me that I said earlier.