Food for thought for sure. True, nothing can get better forever...
But do we believe in "economy of scale" for computer and Internet systems in this age? Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. have already proven to me that they have enough human and financial capital to architect and run systems that show economies of scale.
It's a bit scary to think about what it will mean when this runs out, but for now I personally feel confident that things are getting much better, and will continue to do so.
These outages are very rough. Clearly a lot of the Internet is building out on AWS, and not using multiple zones correctly in the first place. But AWS can have multi-zone problems too as we see here. Nobody is perfect.
But what people forget is: AWS has a world class team of engineers first fixing the problem, and second making sure it will never happen again. Same with Heroku, EngineYard, etc.
Host stuff on dedicated boxes racked up somewhere and you will not go down with everyone else. But my dedicated boxes on ServerBeach go down for the same reasons: hard drive failure, power outages, hurricanes, etc. And I don't have anyone to help me bring them back up, nor the interest or capacity to build out redundant services myself.
My Heroku apps are down, but I can rest easy knowing that they will bring them back up with out an action on my part.
The cloud might not be perfect but the baseline is already very good and should only get better. All without you changing your business applications. Economy of scale is what the cloud is about.
I see your point, but who is uploading videos to Google then deleting the source? These services are for sharing and streaming, not archiving.
I don't work for Google but I do work on large scale data hosting. When you shut a service down you have multiple phases. Step 1, stop capturing new data. Google Video did this years ago and anyone truly invested in the service knew what was up back then. Step 2, pick a date to stop serving existing data. Step 3, wait for a very long time for more requests to get data back. It is crazy how and why these trickle in years after the fact. Step 4, delete data. I bet Google wont actually delete data for a very long time if ever.
Maybe step 2 is aggressive, but in my experience 90 days notice doesn't make a difference. Nobody does anything until the last few days if ever. You just have to draw a line in the sand.
It is very hard to shut a service down with any sort of usage, let alone Google scale usage. But very important to do from time to time. This is what I respect.
Edit: not a good comment for HN. More: it was a great service, and it had a good run. And mad respect for Google for running it well but shutting it down gracefully.
I think I have more than 20 components using Sendgrid. I forget what and where because it's been working like magic for so long.
Also the free Sendgrid addon for Heroku is a dream for throwaway apps.
My time is quite valuable, and the costs of Sendgrid aren't even a drop in the bucket compared to other costs. So I don't plan on switching any time soon.
Great read. I agree with less immersion in 3D films.
I saw Pixar's "Up" in 3D. Such a touching story.
But at the sad scenes, when my eyes started to water up, I became super conscious of the fact that I had silly oversized glasses on my face, and it ruined the moment.
Watching the Blu-ray, in the comfort of my own home, I'm bawling like a baby.
I'm quite tired of these posts, but HN appears to love them.
If you don't like a company, don't invest in it, and don't use it's products. But it's not your duty to scare other people away, especially not by reading tea leaves.
First, any ad buy is a gamble. Perhaps investing $100 in ads on Facebook can result in $1000 in sales. But the payoff here has everything to do with your own business, and nothing to do with the Facebook platform. Literally: mind your own business.
Second, I am interested in the thoughts of long term Facebook/Twitter/etc employees. These are people with actual knowledge of the roadmap, revenue, and vibe inside a company. Everyone I personally know at Facebook is extremely happy and bullish about their career there. Ask a friend that works there if it is a Ponzi scheme and watch his reaction.
I am interested in constructive advice about how you are building a successful startup.
I an not interested in these hit pieces from casual observers. I think the small portion of bloggers, commenters, etc. that try to knock Facebook down are having sour grapes. Are you really more confident in your own business acumen than Zuckerberg's? Is your business model perfect, with bubble free growth unto eternity?
But ultimately, there's nothing constructive here. What am I supposed to take away from this article?
The PG Yahoo article is a totally different beast. He was inside the machine and is offering his intimate business knowledge. This article is useless. Yet HN eats it up for some reason...
Disclaimer - I am not at all affiliated with Facebook but I was at the YC at FB event last week and it was fun.
All other browsers are open enough to get native support or have a plugin. Android phones will have support. Who knows or cares what happens on WP7...
Google is taking a stand. It is annoying that Google is removing existing support for h264. It will be annoying if Apple is completely against adding a software WebM decoder for current gen iOS devices, and ignore hardware solutions on next gen ones. But both companies are free to do whatever.
I also think this will have negligible impact in the real world. Youtube will always work on whatever. Content providers can just upload stuff there if they don't want to manage multiple formats themselves.
I've been feeling that the Internet hurts my mental health.
Filling my brain with HN, Reddit, DrudgeReport, Twitter, Facebook, email, chat, etc., is exhausting.
And this is on top of the massive amounts of code I digest when I am being productive. New libraries to learn, more of my teammates code to decipher, new specs to write, new architectures to understand.
It's really exhausting, and my short term memory for things like names and social events is shot to shit. If I can't get a brunch appointment in my email inbox, I will forget it.
I'm not complaining too loudly -- I'm never bored, and I'm happy and successful in my career. But I'm just feeling more and more like my brain is full and every new piece of information pushes out something else, but there's still endless more information to absorb.
Browser technology is on a tear recently, and terminals are ripe for innovation. For a newborn project, this is an impressive mashup.
The number of dismissive people in this thread shows how disruptive this idea is!