"Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock." Congrats to Kevin Scott and the other folks I know at AdMob.
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
So, so true. Plus, rendering any part of your app on the server (except perhaps as a startup optimization) makes offline support damned near impossible.
- Joel Webber
I haven't been following GWT lately, but my main issue with these approaches is they make the latency of first view inherently, significantly worse than simple HTML because you have to load the HTML and JS serially before doing the additional work of rendering the page/fetching the page data. That "flash" we see in all Google apps annoys me quite a bit, and annoys me more for web sites that aren't really "apps" in the Google Apps sense
- Bret Taylor
FriendFeed renders stuff on the server and the client using shared code. I think that approach leads to the best user experience by far for most apps (apps like Gmail and Google Docs are probably special/different in this regard). I just think too many apps start off with this approach when it doesn't really benefit their code or use experience.
- Bret Taylor
I think that the client-only approach is difficult initially because there aren't a lot of good patterns for it. With careful juggling of CSS/script load order, you can get an experience that's faster than that of most server-rendered websites (ie: Digg) without any sort of UI flash. Once you've taken that initial hit, you user experience can be so much better. I'm still working on some code in this area, but I hope to release a GWT library that automates the whole process soon.
- Matt Mastracci
Without using GWT's runAsync, you definitely take a big initial runtime hit. If you hope to run all of your code dynamically, there has to be some sort of incremental load process.
- Matt Mastracci
Another approach is to send the data down with the scripts. In general, GWT reduces the number of HTTP transactions compared to what people usually do by hand (it's had automatic resource bundling/spriteing for a long time). For example, you could write a servlet that bundles the first fragment of a GWT app, along with data, in the initial download, so the major overhead is generating...
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- Ray Cromwell
@Bret: I completely agree that "content" and "apps" should be treated differently, and some sites are difficult to place into one of these two pigeonholes. If your site is primarily "content" and you really are just loading one (mostly) static page after another, you're probably never going to be able to write js that outperforms the browser's progressive renderer. I also agree that if...
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- Joel Webber
But I'm also looking forward to seeing Matt's library. I think that with really aggressive code splitting, careful precaching of data, and careful rendering (a lot of work, I know), you should be able to get the best of both worlds. And avoid *my* big pet peeve, which is static pages that get into bizarre, inconsistent states because they attempt to perform some logic on the client, some on the server, and have no consistent model.
- Joel Webber
I think you could also enhance server-side selection script by allowing it to combine the initial host "dynamic" HTML page and initial JS fragment in one HTTP request. They'll be no blocking or extra HTTP requests to get the page up and running, assuming you runAsync() on a point after the DOM is stable. This would avoid any flashing, limit serial HTTP requests prior to first render to...
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- Ray Cromwell
We are serving all of our big JS from a CDN, making it tougher to customize dynamically. Including the initial RPC fragments in the HTML would probably work, though I haven't experimented along those lines.
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
Edge Side Includes may or may not help. e.g. you can deploy your JS to the CDN, and use ESI to inject the JS into the HTML served from the CDN. I think it depends on how 'dynamic' your HTML is if this is a win or not.
- Ray Cromwell
Our current CDN (CloudFront) doesn't support any ESI magic and has a minimum TTL of 24h, so we have to ensure everything served from there is really static. I'll probably revisit most of the choices we've made so far in the near future and put together a set of good practices for highly dynamic web applications that I can offer up for peer review. There's not a lot of public literature on this sort of webapp.
- Matt Mastracci
So what are your thoughts on Cal and Stanford this year, Bret? Cal got toasted by both USC and Oregon, but has won elsewhere.
- Louis Gray
Louis: hopefully going to be a good game. Two great running backs, defenses that are inconsistent. It is really hard to predict given how inconsistent both teams have been, though.
- Bret Taylor
Evidently the University of Oregon PK Ducks Pro Team are not well liked by Stanford message board guys...some good comedy there. :-)
- Christopher A Carr
"While it is obvious that this maneuver creates a problem for the multi-billion dollar GPS market, it also poses real challenges for the leading smart phone players – RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone. Without access to their own mapping data, these vendors now face an interesting dilemma. Do you risk flying naked without free navigation or do you suck it up and swallow the above average royalty fee for each and every handset? Neither option is stellar. This problem isn’t nearly as daunting as the one now faced by the Windows Mobile and Symbian teams. As software providers, they are lucky to get a per unit royalty equal to that extracted by the GPS data guys. If they are now forced to integrate this data merely to keep their product competitive, their gross margin just went negative. Ouch!"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond
- Ray Cromwell
I'm psyched to get Google maps powered navigation. they provide much better directions than tom tom ever could... and if they calculate live traffic as well thats good. but i'm curious as to why Verizon doesn't seem to mind since their nav package is normally $15/month.
- Matt Ellsworth
My experience with Google has been completely different. They were notably subpar when they stopped licensing the leader in map data a year or two ago, and their directions now are as bad or worse than MapQuest. I split the difference now between them and a GPS unit when I need to, but generally prefer to use an actual map for most accurate directions.
- Cole Jolley
I think this is likely to change in a big way once they fully leverage their Street View database. Still, I can't argue with free when the errors are few IMHO.
- Ray Cromwell
Is this an example of "open" systems putting people out of business? (of course, it's not personal, it's just business..."
- Cliff Gerrish
What I really don't understand is: why are there so many lost people?
- LogEx
from iPhone
Does Google actually make any money from their maps? How many Google behaviors are enabled by their huge search revenues and how many of those can continue as their dominance wanes? Also as the article mentions Nokia owns Navteq so the "Symbian" problem is a non issue (unless you think there is a viable Symbian outside of a Nokia context).
- Hayes Haugen
Now the droid initiative on verizon finally makes sense to me. I watched the demos as they showed off feature after feature that verizon likes to charge extra for thinking no way is this not going to be expensive. But with google paying verizon on search ad revenue, verizon doesn't have to nickel and dime their customers for every added feature.
- dthree
"I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond" - things may be just as interesting in Cupertino.
- John Craft
Google's move is similar to MSFT's free browser play.
- Cliff Gerrish
I'm wondering how Apple's purchase of PlaceBace is going to play out. Are they going to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone?
- Matt Mastracci
I also have issue with the "less than free" thing as a new disruptive thing. Pay-to-play on a platform or a device is not new (e.g. anti-virus software).
- Hayes Haugen
@hayes yes, you're darn rite about Navteq thingie...
- A.T.
That seems pretty counter productive if you ask me.
- Matt Ellsworth
We have a client whose "logo" is basically their biz card stuff, complete with address. They had a quasi-meltdown last week asking for the address in *their* image to be changed. No one there seems to understand why we won't or can't change it. Silly.
- Anika
When we launched Maps, one of the best "new" features we put in that didn't get much attention was capturing the clipboard paste and replacing line breaks with commas so you could copy and paste a full address in an email into our search box (rather than typing all the components into separate form fields like MapQuest). Turned out to be a pain to do in many browsers - I spent an annoying number of hours tweaking it at the time (though it is easier in modern browsers).
- Bret Taylor
Bret: Why not just offer a multi-line text box?
- Gabe
Bret: I noticed that :). But it didn't always do that did it? I vaguely remember being frustrated that nobody did that
- Benjamin Golub
from email
Ben, what about companies that put email addresses in images in their info area instead of letting you click on a link or select the email address text? :)
- Cristo
Cristo: I'm not sure which is worse but I feel like I run into the maps issue more :)
- Benjamin Golub
Louis: the important part of religious humor is that it is equally offensive to all religions ;)
- Bret Taylor
I agree with Louis (and have been cringing every time I see this shared)
- Jesse Stay
Bret, that's understood. Jokes are jokes, but some religions fare worse in this one, and rely on old stereotypes/falsehoods that should go away.
- Louis Gray
Switched to Chrome developer release for Mac OS X (http://www.google.com/chrome...), and it was the best decision I have made recently. Firefox/Flash wouldn't stop crashing since my upgrade to Snow Leopard.
Flash slaughters my wife's Air, but does so on Safari, too. We've learned more about kernel_task than we ever wanted to.
- Christopher Galtenberg
It is a problem with Flash I am pretty sure, and it crashes both Firefox and Safari. Chrome does not crash for whatever reason, so I am using it despite its quirks.
- Bret Taylor
Good to know - I've been noticing similar issues with Flash - interesting that Chrome works fine
- Jesse Stay
I like Chrome, but it has its quirks... Personally, I use WebKit nightlies and love it. I also couldn't live without 1Password.
- Chris Messina
Chris, I hear you on 1Password. I do wish there had been a smoother transition regarding the 64-bit issue. I upgraded my keychain but my data wouldn't convert properly, so I downgraded off the beta and have to run Safari in 32-bit mode. But it's still a great app.
- Micah Wittman
I have all three browsers open every day as part of my work, but Chrome is the one I like the best. Safari's quality is pretty high, but it has some weird quirks like the developer tools not allowing you to inspect off-domain iframes and auto-unzipping downloaded .zip files (horrible feature for trying to update your Android ROM). Chrome also got me used to tabs on top, something I couldn't go back on now.
- Matt Mastracci
I hate Flash in OS X no matter which browser, but maybe Chrome's process separation manages to minimize the damage when Flash blows up?
- Victor Ganata
"However Play is a very unique Java framework. It does not really rely on the so-called Java Enterprise standards. It uses Java but tries to push all the good things from the frameworks based on scripting languages like Ruby On Rails, Django, ... etc. to the Java world. We really tried to get the best of the Java platform without getting the pain of traditional Java web development: slow development cycle, too much abstraction, too much configuration..."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
And Bret is probably the first reasonable evaluator of existing Java web frameworks I see. Because 95% of those are in fact unreasonable. Bret! I will appreciate if you also try to find some reasons in HybridJava - http://www.hybridserverpages.com/ Alex
- Alex Serov
If you became a .NET developer, that might be a good reason. However, if you are running OS X, that means you've probably got a Mac, so you can always run both or use Bootcamp, right?
- Cristo
Games? Exchange? Win 7 seems to run well in VMware fusion.
- Jim Norris
Video games are the only reason I could think of. But I just keep a Windows desktop in the office and use it only for gaming for that purpose; using it on a regular basis probably wouldn't increase my happiness.
- Bret Taylor
Windows Media Center - that's the only reason I use Windows nowadays
- Jesse Stay
If I had a Mac, I'd dual boot, of course. I do that anyway with my PCs using Windows and Ubuntu.
- Dennis Jernberg
Also, if you use Quicken Home and Business Windows is your only option (I don't like QuickBooks for small business)
- Jesse Stay
Win 7 supports the TRIM command which avoids SSD fragmentation over time.
- Private Sanjeev
Sanjeev, are you using SSDs in any of your personal machines?
- Benjamin Golub
Yes, the lousy stock SSD in an Asus EE PC 900. :)
- Private Sanjeev
Yes video games would be my only reason so far ...
- Nicolas Dufour
in this case the advantage of windows is that it can be installed easily on any hardware
- Mike Chelen
@Mike, I've often said the same of dog poo. You can smear it on a mac, you can smear it on a PC.
- j1m
task bar better than dock .. both have the same "are you sure" silly reminders .. mac a lot slower than it should be for so much hp ... i will never buy another mac
- Gregory Lent
Who cares about macos and windows ... like if the choice was only limited to those 2
- Nicolas Dufour
Many have reported the same. I do a lot of service refreshing to close the gap.
- Louis Gray
Yeah, Paul said they're moving to faster servers soon, can't happen fast enough!
- Glenn Slaven
Friendfeed lagging, yes. Twitter fail whaling, yes. Not sure how bebo's doing today :)
- Micah Wittman
Yes FriendFeed does not seem to be instantly showing tweets as it used to show in the past.
- Atul Arora
Yeah, FF's been mighty slow the past few days...
- Dennis Jernberg
maybe they're getting cut off now that they're Facebook. Paul, Brett?
- Steve Gillmor
We are having some issues with our connection to Twitter that we hope to resolve within a week. We are working with Twitter to find a solution to the problem.
- Bret Taylor
OHMYGOD IT"S STARTING NEXT THING POPUPS!!1
- Philipp Lenssen
This may have to do with the switch to the new servers...
- Dennis Jernberg
hmmm ... bookmarked an article on Delicious over an hour ago, haven't seen it show up on FF yet. But a test ping from identi.ca came in within seconds (5 AM PST) .... Edit: new test from Delicious showed up nearly instantaneously, along with previous one now 2 hours old. So looking okay now for me at least.
- Dan Freeman
i have a feeling these types of issues have less to do w/ friendfeed and more to do with the service it's coming from... but maybe not
- Chris Heath
Chris, you may be right. I see people complaining about Posterous import, but FF does OurDoings and Posterous exactly the same way (SUP) and OurDoings hasn't had issues. Posterous deals with a lot more traffic than OurDoings does, so it wouldn't be surprising if they had an issue.
- Bruce Lewis
I manually update all my blog posts here.
- Thomas Hawk
I had a post (pic from iphone via email) take like 5 minutes to show up on friendfeed today, but that may have to do more with email than friendfeed
- Chris Heath
"I’ve heard arguments that this kind of thing is culturally acceptable in Taiwan—in fact it may even be expected for technology events, though I’d love to hear further confirmation. I don’t care. ... If we want an all-encompassing technology scene, we need to actively work to cultivate an inclusive environment. This means a zero tolerance approach to this kind of entertainment. Booth babes, tequila girls, and scantily clad gyrating women simply set the wrong tone, here or abroad. Heck, this isn’t just about offending women—many guy geeks I know would be mortified by this kind of thing." Amen
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Really? This kind of makes me want to go. :P
- Cristo
Too true. Friends of Lulu has been trying to make this point to the comics industry for years.
- Spidra Webster
This was company sanctioned? Wow, someone needs to have their head read.
- Kenton
It's expected that the "coolest" guys get bitches all through history. See Fonzie, and that begat rock stars and today it's rappers. In Asia, the geeks are as cool there as rappers are here, so in Asia, the geeks get the bitches.
- Matthew DeVries
Very difficult to believe the sincerity of an apology that clearly comes in response to outcry. However, I do believe them when they say it won't happen again.
- Spidra Webster
Don't worry, Cristo. There are still plenty of places where you can get jiggle and blow.
- Spidra Webster
Spidra , but I want to write code at the same time. ;)
- Cristo
You can take your laptop when you go for a lapdance. In the winter, the goils might be esp happy to grind on your laptop. If your machine is anything like mine, it's plenty warm for winter!
- Spidra Webster
There's a lot of sharp edges on the Macbook Air though.
- Cristo
So would it make it all better if they added male strippers?
- Rodfather
Yes, just what the world needs is more zero-tolerance policies!
- Gabe
Well, if they're going to ban the girls, I think they should ban PHP programming too.
- Cristo
This event, and responses on this thread are pretty appalling. As a female in tech, and regularly attending meetings as the only female in a room of 10-30 males, this just illustrates one of the reasons. It's hard enough to just do your job and get heard, much less go to "company tech events" that are clearly geared in every way toward men. sickening.
- Jenna Bilotta
Most of the responses on this thread were intended as humor, which tends to be a hard thing to convey through text. Calling them appalling seems like an over-reaction.
- Cristo
Cristo, in this case, you're pretty much just wrong.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I thought humor was supposed to be funny? Also, your humor is not original and I'm exposed to this kind of joke day in and day out. It's yet another reason women might feel alienated in tech.
- Jenna Bilotta
Jenna, I fully agree I'm not always funny. It's a risk. I'm sorry if I offended you, and although making light of it, I was not supporting the Taiwan Hack Day performance. But to be honest, I really wouldn't go to one of these anyway regardless of what was there.
- Cristo
"Well, this just strikes me as funny, and I doubt I'd want to go to one of these without those girls there" ~ do you mean it's funny like dwarf throwing is to short people or minstrels to people of colour or how about sheep jokes to new zealanders? The excuse of "hey we're geeks and if you don't understand *cognitive dissonance* - like we respect women hackers but also like naked chicks on stage" is wearing a bit thin.
- Peter Renshaw
as long as woman play no bigger role in tech you will see male related stuff on such events. why should we bend reality. you should pity the lack of interest of femals regarding tech-development (and not just sales) if you feel the need for pity
- Chris Hofmann
I'm pretty sure the guy who wrote this article is gay. Hot chicks in short skirts FTW!
- Garin Kilpatrick
I dunno.. my lesbian friend kinda liked it. (me too).
- Martynas
We're simply a nation of Puritans who say one thing and indulge in the opposite...in secret.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
The problem here is not a society that craves "bitches" but women who raised to think that being one is an acceptable way to spend one's life, or even a portion of one's life. If there are no "bitches" to consume, then the "bitches" consumer will need to learn to adapt. Mamas don't let your daughters grow up to be "bitches"
- Matthew DeVries
FFS, people. This wasn't just dancing girls - it was lap dancing. http://news.ycombinator.com/item... tries to spell out why that is wrong as clearly as possible, but I think Jenna said it pretty clearly, too.
- Nick Lothian
+1 Jenna - Your comment, and the responses to it illustrate well how little effort is sometimes put in to what it may be like for women and minorities working in tech. It's sad that it needs to be so difficult, and how global this professional bias is.
- Michelle Darnell
Save me a Seat at the DRIP RAIL!! ;PPP
- Billy Warhol
@Tanath I'm far from prudish, believe me, but when this tactic is used to promote something, it makes me feel like they're promoting it to someone other than me. I went through the same thing in the '80s with marketing of musical equipment; it was very clearly pitched to guys. Just not very smart marketing if you want a wider audience!
- Eph Zero
"Well, this just strikes me as funny, and I doubt I'd want to go to one of these without those girls there." -- Funny, as in I wouldn't have gone to this anyway, those guys look really uncomfortable, and just like any number of things on FriendFeed and Youtube, it made me laugh. Also, my wife is in tech, and she thought it was funny too, so I guess I married the right person.
- Cristo
This has nothing to do with being prudish. It has everything to do with being professional. As a woman who works in technology, I work significantly harder than my male counterparts to be heard and respected simply because I'm female. I worked harder to be respected in engineering school and was often told to go do something that 'girls' do better. It's not that women aren't interested...
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- joey
joey, I think the using the term "hack" and "professional" are at odds to me. I agree this shouldn't be in the corporate workplace. I don't go to strip clubs, despite my joking. I also don't like "hacking" to becoming a professional corporate watered-down concept. It's like skateboarding, Yahoo! Taiwan was apparently trying to do both together. They failed, and it was funny to me.
- Cristo
Hacker news claims sexual discrimination. It seems as though the result would be to put the female dancers out of a job. Let's hope they find some other employment.
- Tim Tyler
Cristo, that's true, too, but 'hack days' happen at Microsoft, Expedia, etc. and they're very corporate environments. It was sponsored by Yahoo, it wasn't an impromptu gathering of 'hackers' at a local bar or something (and as a female I'd feel put off by lap dances there as well but not angry as I am that this had corporate backing).
- joey
I'm put off by corporate environments. In fact, it offends me when I'm subjected to it. E.g. I'm offended by most marketing programs, be them politically correct or not. It's their lack of authenticity that offends me.
- Cristo
joey, also you should know a group of hackers would never meet at a local bar and they would never have lap dancers. Didn't you see my list? :) http://friendfeed.com/cristob...
- Cristo
++joey I've experienced everything she mentions in tech, and constantly being called agressive, while my male counterparts are called "enthusiastic" its not ok. And no matter how hard I try to get male coworkers to see this, they just think its all in my head... it sucks.
- Jenna Bilotta
from Android
Jenna, you are aggressive in a good way only. Aggressive people change the world. Empathetic aggressive people change the world for the better.
- Daniel Dulitz
Marketing departments care little about pleasing small minorities.
- Tim Tyler
@Tim - Behold! The land Non Sequiters has a new king!
- Matthew DeVries
That was a reply to the two comments immediately preceding it.
- Tim Tyler
Tim, marketing a product and recruiting talent should not be the same thing. One can market a product primarily to men or women, but one should not discriminate in who they hire to create said product.
- joey
@Jenna In my experience "he/she is aggressive" is often an excuse by people who can't stand up for themselves. Daniel is right.
- Nick Lothian
++jenna Have you had the 1:1s where you've been asked to tone down your opinions because people get the wrong idea? What idea would that be, I sometimes wonder. Anyway, back on topic, I am far from a prude and I enjoy taking my boyfriends out for lap dances when the mood strikes but this? Not even close to being ok. A professional event should remain professional.
- EricaJoy
Let us also not forget that Yahoo is a publicly traded company that has shareholders to answer to. You really think shareholders want to be paying for lap dances? Doubtful.
- EricaJoy
As for the "booth babe" reference... just remember that judging anyone on appearance can quickly render one a fool. Don't assume. There are a lot of women in tech (growing?) and those women attending an event that are working a booth is no indication they were hired just as bait for men. Ask about the product, and based on the answer -- remember that the vendor cared or didn't care about how they spent marketing dollars.... Yes, a trade show floor is the perfect Roddenberry social fabric encapsulation ;-)
- Jay Cuthrell
Alternatively: print up an official "You wasted my time with your offensive and sexist use of unscripted talent on your booth -- Sincerely, A no longer potential customer" as needed... booth babes and booth boys apply
- Jay Cuthrell
I expect Yahoo shareholders appreciate the value of holding and pulling in young male developers by using sexual stimuli - but don't much care for the resulting international attention.
- Tim Tyler
Re: hiring discrimination - let's not forget that this was a hack day, not a job interview. If they had paid for a creche instead, would we see a similar outcry about discrimination in favour of women?
- Tim Tyler
I am an so call 'male developer' here in Taiwan. In my point of view, I felt that comments about the 'sexual' and 'hr to blame' note should be some kind of misunderstand. I think the hack day@tw is hosted like big event and its a contest between hackers.,In big contest, people do have something temporary transfer/release their tension. Take superball for example, half-time show is one...
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- marx
"Women of the future are likely to be slightly shorter and plumper, have healthier hearts and longer reproductive windows. These changes are predicted by the strongest proof to date that humans are still evolving."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
""This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame. You know where the real money is at? You start your own religion." And that's how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born."
- Bret Taylor
From 2006, but just read it today. So many classic lines...
- Bret Taylor
"Norvig’s writeup is a short essay explaining about 100 lines of Python that can solve any Sudoku. Jeffries [inventor of XP] writeup, by contrast, is spread over five lengthy blog postings here, here, here, here, and here and ends without coming anywhere close to actually producing a program that can solve any but a tiny subset of all Sudoku problems." http://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog...
- Bret Taylor
This is so bizarre. A Sudoku board is a 9x9 grid of integers. Most basic brute force solvers can easily solve any Sudoku game. The Siebel guy talks about the representation problem as if it were some sort of question where it's reasonable that serious working programmers would have any trouble at all representing it. Hello. NINE BY NINE ARRAY. And yes, Python has two dimensional arrays: you just make an array of arrays. (Norvig's hash table is also fine, mind you.)
- ⓞnor
But yeah, it's the difference between writing code and solving problems.
- Jim Norris
ⓞnor, it wasn't a serious working programmer, it was some kind of TDD consultant :)
- Paul Buchheit
The Norvig vs TDD guy story is hilarious btw.
- Paul Buchheit
Funny, just the other day my friend George and I were making fun of TDD nuts. While I'm all for unit tests, it doesn't make sense to write them before you know what the code will do yet!
- Gabe
I think maybe some people are just drawn to absolutes. If something is sometimes good, then it must always be good and is the only true and right way.
- Paul Buchheit
"I think maybe some people are just drawn to absolutes." That's absurd, and I categorically disagree. Those people are absolute morons.
- Jim Norris
Paul, I remember discussing this post with you back when he wrote it, and wondering what Steve has against pair programming. I now do most of my coding with a partner, and spend a lot less time debugging than before. It's great to code review as you type -- it saves tons of testing, debugging, refactoring, and redesigning.
- Gabe
OMG... that norvig code makes me so happy in my face. <3 <3 <3
- ௸ (k2g)
I am not an expert on agile programming, but I had always thought that a big part of it was to start coding as soon as possible, instead of spending days writing up specifications. Stevey mentions that design documents are taken very seriously at google.
- Robert Felty
"While Mr. Ozzie welcomes the gizmo revolution, much of what it appears to entail runs counter to Microsoft’s historical strengths. The revolution stretches well beyond a fascination with the aesthetic appeal of a computing device; it also marks a transition in which the consumer, not the office worker, is the dominant force shaping the tech landscape."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
"A century ago, there were only seven countries in the world that were more prosperous than Argentina... Over the course of the 20th century, Argentina’s relative standing in world incomes fell sharply. By 2000, Argentina’s income was less than half that of Italy or Japan."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
though my question is not related to the post, i am writing to ask about FF, what changes can we expect in the present version of FF, think search needs to be made more comprehensive...what new features can we expect? or is it too early? or you have forgot FF after joining facebook? waiting....
- ffcode
We have received numerous reports of excessive FriendFeed posts showing up in Facebook this evening. While we are not 100% sure, it appears to be an issue on Facebook's end due to ignoring application settings. We have disabled all FriendFeed updates to Facebook until we are sure the problem is resolved.
See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... for more information - it seems to also have impacted Twitter's Facebook app. Again, we are not sure if it is a problem on our end or not, but we are investigating now.
- Bret Taylor
Thanks Bret! FWIW when I checked the FF app settings in FB they were not the same options as I saw when I first set the app up.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
my freindfeed application is not working on facebook, and fr rest of..
- Madhav Tripathi
Click. Flip a switch and that's it. You guys rule.
- Pete Delucchi
Thanks, Bret. I've disabled it on my FB page and hope that cures what ails me. Appreciate the FF peeps being on top of it.
- Derrick
Yet another reason I'm happy I don't have a FaceBook. :P
- Trey Crossan
Good thing I only posted once to Twitter tonight. The duplication only happened once. Thanks for letting me know.
- Louis Gray
No problem, if I knew it was on your end, I wouldn't have cared, but thanks for letting me know about the situation. I was confused because it happened right as I was trying out a new twitter game. This was compounded by the fact that the game has no controls for turning off public messages. I'll bet they plan to add them later, but right now they want everyone to hear about it. It’s a...
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- Michael Fidler
So, is it fixed?Every tweet, every everything is showing up as individual news feed posts for all my friends, this is too much and I'm likely to piss them all off. Options ... 1.Stop tweeting etc. 2.Ditch the FF Facebook application. Hmmm, it's a no brainer. Anyone got any updates on this?
- Michael M Bailey
Decisions, decisions. Should I get this with the points saved through my 4-can-a-day Diet Coke habit, or save up for something bigger?
- Shannon Jiménez
from Bookmarklet
How many points do you have, Shannon?
- Anne Bouey
I currently have 324, but I've only been saving them for a few months.
- Shannon Jiménez
I've been accumulating them for awhile as our household consumes Coke products fairly regularly. I need to take a look at the rewards soon.
- Anne Bouey
Interesting - I liked a Twitter item on FF by Leo Laporte which was autoforwarded to Twitter but lopped off the FF conversation link at the other end. wonder who did it
turns out I did it, via a setting I don't remember setting that may have been introduced after I originally set up everything to go to Twitter. Changed it so that it does the right thing.
- Steve Gillmor
It says "video unavailable": this video has been removed from facebook or is not visible due to privacy settings (damn use youtube pls, wtf is fb) thank god slideshare works.
- Ahmet Alp Balkan
Hi Bret, we are looking for a technical keynote for Facebook Garage in Montreal October 26th could you come by and give us a Tornado/Realtime-web talk? Or recommend a speaker from Facebook/Friendfeed? I know this is a long shot, but I figured asking you on FriendFeed was the best "context" to reach you about this...
- Sylvain Carle
"Enthusiasts for technology fixes for poverty concentrate almost exclusively on the science and the technical design -- this is a characteristic fault of poverty solvers from Silicon Valley, the Gates Foundation, doctors, and natural scientists. All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it – people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
"Moreover, our algorithm is conceptually simple: we use transactions to manipulate B-tree nodes so that clients need not use complicated concurrency and locking protocols used in prior work. To execute these transactions quickly, we rely on three techniques: (1) We use optimistic concurrency control, so that B-tree nodes are not locked during transaction execution, only during commit. This well-known technique works well because B-trees have little contention on update. (2) We replicate inner nodes at clients. These replicas are lazy, and hence lightweight, and they are very helpful to re- duce client-server communication while traversing the B-tree. (3) We replicate version numbers of inner nodes across servers, so that clients can validate their transactions efficiently, without creating bottlenecks at the root node and other upper levels in the tree."
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, I think many of us are going to trust your opinion on this white paper. All Greek to me.
- Jon-Paul Bussoli
All I understand is that it is in my best interests to cheer for the way you access B-tree nodes in order to continue to enjoy friendfeed reliably. Go friendfeed algorithm go!
- Jon-Paul Bussoli
@nor It's really not the same thing, unless somehow you're using a distributed B-tree on hash collision, however, if you're getting that many collisions, then the hash algorithm is probably wrong or your key width is too small. Then again, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
- Eric Florenzano
Curious as to what problem Paul is looking at... My default data toolkit these days would probably include sqlite for in-memory data, sharded bdb's for btrees that are too big for memory, and hbase/hypertable for a distributed store. I wonder where this fits in...
- DeWitt Clinton
Ok this is a really *nerdy* post! :*)
- Susan Beebe
DeWitt, I just thought that it looked like an interesting paper. As for the several solutions you mention, I don't know that any of them have distributed transactions (maybe bdb, but that doesn't really work).
- Paul Buchheit
B-Trees and Prof. Bayer http://wwwbayer.informatik.tu-... - would be interesting to know what he'd say, unfortunately he's retired a few years ago. Used to be fairly approachable in all matters B-Tree.
- Mustafa K. Isik
@DeWitt - no room for a traditional SQL based database except as an in memory database?
- Nick Lothian
we had designed and implemented distributed tree control, but transactions were considered "too much" for near-real-time, and they were already in protocol... the rest you know as xGSN boxes in GPRS/3G/HSDPA - dynamic routing for mobile packet networks. I'd left team in 2003...
- A.T.
@paul - I'll readily admit to being out of my depth, but it depends on what the definition of "distribution transaction" is. With bdb a combination of local transactions and guaranteed consistent replication you can approximate a distributed transaction at the cost of speed. See http://www.oracle.com/technol... and http://www.oracle.com/technol.... But those won't work across bdb shards.
- DeWitt Clinton
@paul - A table-based distributed store can do this via a lock on entity groups, where entity groups are defined by relationship formed by instances of similar models that belong to the same parent-based ancestry chain. This is how App Engine transactions work -- see http://code.google.com/appengi... and http://code.google.com/appengi.... Ping ryan for some background there. Not sure if hbase or hypertable support this via their api.
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt: have you ever successfully used BDB with millions of newly written entries and transaction support turned on? We kept getting transaction logs with millions of entries that were never consumed, so restarts would take hours as it replayed the logs. Configuring BDB to work for large databases is insanely esoteric to say the least, and it may be impossible to get it to work acceptably in some cases.
- Bret Taylor
@bret -- no, definitely not with large databases. We used bdb's heavily at my last company, though. Aggressive sharding is the key if you want to support either transactions or replication, which matches intuition about how it is implemented.
- DeWitt Clinton
But your comment about millions of entries makes me wonder about which data is getting written to which place. I suspect a lot of problems like this end up with the bulk of the data being written transactionless + replicated to a table-based store (or a transactionless bdb), and only a small subset of the data gets transaction support. So multiple datastores. But you guys know this better than I do, so why am I rambling? : )
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, you can also look into all the trouble that Gaia had with bdb - I simply wouldn't trust any fancy bdb functionality.
- Paul Buchheit
Also, AppEngine transactions are limited to a single "entity group", which I assume means a single BigTable tablet. Essentially, they solved distributed transactions by not having them -- all transactions must be local to a single tablet. From the docs: "Every entity belongs to an entity group, a set of one or more entities that can be manipulated in a single transaction. Entity group relationships tell App Engine to store several entities in the same part of the distributed network."
- Paul Buchheit
@paul - yup, that's the trade-off. Entity groups ensure locality, locality makes transactions fast(er). Same old lever problem -- speed of consistency vs. scope of the transactions.
- DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, there's nothing wrong with having local transactions -- I'm just pointing out that they aren't distributed transactions.
- Paul Buchheit
Point taken. I got way off-topic regarding your original post anyway.
- DeWitt Clinton
The design seems reasonable. The only part that is under-specified is the way they switch from a master node to a slave. I'm curious why they don't use transactions to maintain replicas but instead rely on some unspecified master/slave replication scheme.
- Private Sanjeev
"I am nervous and it is hard to put my thoughts together. Sometimes you don’t know what to say." "I have come here today to die, not make speeches."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
i know it is not good to comment on it, but it is like i am in that death chamber listening them say those words, :( i don't know what to say
- testbeta
Yeah! From my friend and awesome person/author Claire Cameron!!
- Johnny B