Tavern on the Meta

Dan Grossman

9:00 PM

rewrite, some cache rules and mod_geoip

Fosco

^ nice to see on your w3counter stats page @DanGrossman :)

Dan Grossman

:shrug: porn exists, I don't filter the web :p

Fosco

feature-request - filter out porn, and allow people to exclude their sites from that list.

Josh

Hey @JoelSpolsky is here!

ircmaxell

As far as rewrite that's easy. Cache rules should be easier depending on what you are doing. Geoip: redmine.lighttpd.net/wiki/1/Docs:ModGeoip

Joel Spolsky

9:01 PM

Say something funny, I'm taking a screenshot for the company newsletter :)

drachenstern

@Josh shhh, don't say that, he'll spook and run :p

@JoelSpolsky "something funny"

Josh

@JoelSpolsky oy

drachenstern

So these three guys walk into a bar. You'ld have thought the third would've ducked

Dan Grossman

@Fosco I implement no feature requests :)

drachenstern

@Josh lmao

Fosco

9:01 PM

The problem with Alcohol is that you're always just a few drinks away from making life-altering mistakes.

2

ircmaxell

But why are you using GeoIP on the frontend? Why not do a passive lookup after the request? It should help server load since you can batch it...

Josh

@drachenstern I couldn't resist!

drachenstern

@Josh can see that! :p

@Fosco lol

Tim Stone

Funny on demand...this may be problematic.

4

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell Every W3Counter report is real-time, so no batch processing. mod_geoip is faster than doing the geoip lookup in PHP

radp

9:03 PM

@JoelSpolsky isn't the porn screenshot funny enough?

ircmaxell

Well, if it's realtime I guess...

Tim Stone

Where's @RebeccaChernoff? We need her to say something that we can comment on irrationally and bring up every day for the next few months.

3

ChrisF

@TimStone may be problematic - I think it would certainly be problematic

Josh

@RebeccaChernoff! Your boss needs you in here stat!

Fosco

This is the greatest web chat program in any of the inter tubes!

ircmaxell

9:04 PM

But I'm from the school that you keep as much as possible out of your front-end server, since it's blocking (or at least bound to one processor) rather than being able to take advantage of multiple cores/boxes...

Josh

:443474 Ok. After that horrible mistake I am now leaving in shame and going back to my broken server

Tim Stone

@Josh Yeah, that was definitely not the ideal place to drop a letter.

radp

►

if you can't get a LOL, post a rickroll for at least half an "heh"

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell I could move from PHP entirely (for the tracking) if I could get geoip and the ability to write text on an image and output it in some other language/server/environment

Josh

@TimStone I think I'm going to go back to committing my password into subversion, that's less embarrassing ;-)

drachenstern

9:05 PM

@JoelSpolsky did we help at all? :p It's shake n bake and we helped!

Fosco

@DanGrossman So there is no opt-out from your front page stat list?..

Tim Stone

@drachenstern Do we ever? :P

Joel Spolsky

sort of. thank you.

Tim Stone

@Josh Perhaps ;)

ChrisF

3

Q: Why do multiple vehicles running same route tend to bunch up together?

Having more than one vehicle working a single route usually means that after a while, the vehicles tend to bunch up together. I had previously thought it may be minute differences in delays introduced through, for instance, waiting for a free path for trains, differences in cargo loading time or ...

openttd

drachenstern

9:06 PM

@JoelSpolsky lol, that's as good as you'll get with this crowd ;)

Tim Stone

@ChrisF This is true, heh.

drachenstern

my advice is to snapshot the SO javascript room

ChrisF

It looks like OpenTTD simulates real life quite well.

ircmaxell

@Dan: what would you want to move to? The only thing that's going to be significantly faster is C/C++ (at least based upon my tests). Python is at best case as fast if not significantly slower. Ruby is always slower, etc..?

radp

Tim Stone

9:06 PM

@drachenstern That's just Ivo talking to the Kitten bot.

Fosco

@DanGrossman Ok, awesome.. just checking because that was a deal-breaker (you think im going to pay nothing for that?!) :)

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell node.js

Rebecca Chernoff

@Josh |:

Dan Grossman

@Fosco you're being weird, who cares if your webpage showed up in that list on someone's screen for two seconds

Tim Stone

@ChrisF According to @YiJiang, the AI seems to be severely challenged...which I suspect is true of many city planners, so yes.

ircmaxell

9:07 PM

doesn't have experience with node.js and SAPI based capacity

Josh

@RebeccaChernoff I'm really sorry!!!! I am very embarrassed )-:

Fosco

@DanGrossman Private site is private... /shrug.

Rebecca Chernoff

Oh I wasn't even commenting on the typo.

Fosco

@DanGrossman Now I see that you offer a PRO service, and are truly a big deal.

Dan Grossman

gotta pay for itself somehow

drachenstern

9:09 PM

@Josh Most of us didn't even catch it, quit pushing us to read history :p

Josh

@RebeccaChernoff Oh well then, I'm confused. @JoelSpolsky needed something humorous, I figured you were the one to ask. Was supposed to be a compliment :-)

@drachenstern Not sure about that...

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone Meant to reply to this, not you @Josh. Oops q:

radp

@Josh I'm not sure that helps

Tim Stone

@RebeccaChernoff It's too late now, blame has already been assigned. :P

Josh

@radp Yeah. I think I'm going to STFU now :-X

Fosco

9:10 PM

@DanGrossman Even though you said I was weird, you're still getting a PRO customer out of the conversation.

drachenstern

@Josh ok, well considering the number of users "in the room" and the nature of the typo, you'ld have done better to ignore it after correcting it :p

Dan Grossman

@Fosco I'm scared

drachenstern

@Josh lol, I know that feeling well sadly enough :p

seeks his own corner of contemplation and STFUness

Rebecca Chernoff

declares @Josh to now be the butt of all jokes in here. I have passed the torch on!

Fosco

@RebeccaChernoff a.k.a. The Blitz

Josh

9:11 PM

accepts the torch gladly

ircmaxell

Ok, now you've peaked my interest @DanG... I'm going to have to brush off my development servers and do a good hard benchmark against Lighttpd/PHP vs Node.JS (either statically, or proxied from Lighttpd)...

Dan Grossman

heh

ircmaxell

Perhaps Wednesday night...

Tim Stone

@RebeccaChernoff Where's your day calendar? I'll replace the spots where you have "Reply with 'oy'" written down with "Play Drop7".

drachenstern

@Josh for the record, I decline the torch, even when thrust upon me as into a stack of kindling :p

Dan Grossman

9:12 PM

@ircmaxell gist.github.com/773485 I wrote this little server in node.js to pick up AJAX pings... it handled hundreds per second with no problem on the cheapest linode VPS

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone >_<

drachenstern

@DanGrossman that's a cute trick ...

@TimStone wait, we're encouraging her to play Drop7 now? Interesting ...

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell If I could add IP-to-location resolution and image generation (to draw a number on an image) I could use something like that for all of w3counter's tracking

ircmaxell

My current server is capable of about 5k PHP requests per second (depending on page) with the real world code...

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell It drops connections and queues up database writes, no blocking at all

Tim Stone

9:13 PM

@RebeccaChernoff Well, you'll probably free up hours in your day by not having to respond to jokes in here, so. :P

ircmaxell

You're using MySQL for statistics? Real Time?

Dan Grossman

What else would I have used when I built this thing 7 years ago

there was none of this nosql nonsense

ircmaxell

Ahhh, ok...

that's fair (considering the history of it)

Tim Stone

@drachenstern We really shouldn't be. We want her to be working hard on SO stuff so that we can bribe her to get our way.

I'm not really sure what "our way" is at the moment, but I like to have options.

drachenstern

@TimStone I thought we had established that bribing her didn't actually work to the positive correlating factor we wanted it to, see: the disposal incident

@TimStone lol, I believe that deserves three or four stars ( ... wait for it ... )

ircmaxell

9:16 PM

@DanG: I don't intend to come off like a popmus know-it-all here. I've run high traffic servers for a while and am really interested in talking to anyone who does it differently than I have (I built my knowledge off of experimentation and experience). I'm always looking for newer and better ways of doing things, and sharing my knowledge as well... So thanks for letting me pick your brain and sorry if I sounded harsh at ll...

Tim Stone

That was the fallout from making fun of her, which @Josh seems to have forgotten ;) (Just kidding, Josh)

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell It's fine, whatever I've built is probably NOT the right way to do it ;)

Fosco

There is no "Right" way... it works right??..

Josh

@TimStone I have not forgotten!

Dan Grossman

Every year or two I end up with a slightly different architecture that just manages to stay ahead of the traffic

Fosco

9:17 PM

Apache and MySQL are definitely acceptable production apps for high volume uses.

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone ask @Pekka about bribing me. (;

ircmaxell

@Fosco: Sure they are. But for some use-cases there are more efficient alternatives

Tim Stone

@RebeccaChernoff I thought that didn't turn out so well for him? I blame his payment service. :P

Josh

2 days ago, by Pekka

@Josh I tried to bribe her once, but sadly, she didn't accept the payment.

Dan Grossman

mongodb seems all the rage for realtime logging now

Tim Stone

9:19 PM

On cue! claps

Fosco

@ircmaxell Of course... but let's not prematurely optimize too much.

ircmaxell

Josh

I get the feeling @Pekka just sits around and watches the SUpercollider

Dan Grossman

@Fosco optimization isn't premature when you're already at scale :x

Pekka

@Josh no, I just happened by :)

drachenstern

9:19 PM

@Josh some days you have to ;)

Shog9

@Josh Don't you?

Pekka

@TimStone She didn't accept my bribe.

Rebecca Chernoff

@Josh well of course I'm not going to accept it LOL

Josh

Oh wait, I am supposed to be silent, sorry, I forgot...

ircmaxell

That was on a VM of mine. the prior spikes were 100% CPU usage. I switched in March to LIghttpd, and the April spike was about 5% CPU usage (peaked at bandwidth instead of CPU)

Tim Stone

9:20 PM

@Pekka I feel your pain :(

Josh

@Shog9 In case you haven't noticed I am in chat all day long... :-p

ircmaxell

(Alexa since I didn't have any other analytics at the time)...

Pekka

@TimStone Although I think it might have been because the amount was too small

Dan Grossman

@ircmaxell MySQL is as big a bottleneck as the web server, even if I replaced that

drachenstern

@Shog9 speaking of people that watch the supercollider all day :p

Rebecca Chernoff

9:20 PM

@Pekka oy.

ircmaxell

@Dan: that's fair

Tim Stone

@Pekka Well, now that she has all of those diamonds, a few dollars here or there really don't cut it I suppose.

Dan Grossman

the potential workign set of data is like 80GB, I can't fit it in RAM :(

Pekka

@RebeccaChernoff Hah! I'd see you reject a $1000 bribe for a few more downvotes :)

Shog9

@Josh you miss out on life. Wherein "life" is defined as "watching the supercolliodal"

Josh

9:21 PM

Jan 7 at 4:15, by Rebecca Chernoff

would've accepted a bribe...

Rebecca Chernoff

Well that didn't mean paypal me now!!

Dan Grossman

If the site earned more money I'd get two 64GB RAM servers, split the DB between them, and never have to worry about load again

Pekka

@RebeccaChernoff :)

Dan Grossman

W3Counter's super fun to work on and run, but it's not a primary source of income for me :/

ircmaxell

@Dan: really? That's it? That's not too bad. As long as you have fast disks and aren't being stupid about the queries, MySQL shouldn't be too bad (again, depending on insert rate)

Dan Grossman

9:23 PM

I just moved the database to Amazon RDS, and it averages like 5% load

I'm good to grow for a while

ircmaxell

cool

Dan Grossman

one of my problems running the DB myself is that it was impossible to take a backup without taking down the site for hours

ircmaxell

Ahh, yes

Dan Grossman

Amazon solved that

ircmaxell

Especially with that write-heavy of a load...

Dan Grossman

9:25 PM

synchronous replication to a replica server

which I can take backups off of at any time without affecting the site

ircmaxell

yeah, and swtich over if you ever fail

Dan Grossman

I have no idea how they make it work, but it works

:nod:

ircmaxell

hehehe, it's not hard to setup or run

Dan Grossman

it's not just mysql replication to a slave, which would be async and probably never catch up after a backup

ircmaxell

it's hard to debug a replication failure.

Ohhh,

radp

9:26 PM

@RebeccaChernoff Pekka should've guessed you're not venal.

ircmaxell

unless they are using something like drbd...

radp

disturbing stuff aside -- any news about the elections?

Dan Grossman

possibly, RDS is built on top of their Elastic Block Storage

theyre doing something nifty back there

Rebecca Chernoff

@radp (:

ircmaxell

Well, they could be doing a drbd replication, and then mount the standby instance Read Only... That way they don't risk contaimating the data, but still have a live backup...

Dan Grossman

9:29 PM

the automatic failover is nice too... they just swap the DNS to point to the other server (which I can't directly access otherwise) and start a new standby in the background

Josh

Attempting this server copy for the fourth time... wish me luck... gulp

ircmaxell

Ok, time to go. Take it easy everyone...

Fosco

@ircmaxell See ya later..

cya

@Josh g'luck!

9:31 PM

I guess this is a bit over the top but anyway

drachenstern

@Josh break a leg

Robert is the one that does community building right?

Dan Grossman

@radp Really?

Now I need to try that...

doesn't work...

I took a picture of a sudoku game and all I got were similar images

radp

@DanGrossman maybe it's 3.0 only.

Related Google blog post

Dan Grossman

wait wait

7 pictures later, it's decided it can solve this one

Josh

@drachenstern more like break a server ;-)

Tim Stone

9:37 PM

@Josh I think that's what got you into this problem in the first place. :P

Josh

@TimStone I don't know how this server broke

I do know what I'm going to do to it once I get everyone off it though

it'll be a bad day to be my misbehaving server then!

Tim Stone

Heheh :D

Hmm...

I definitely am not focused today. Let's see what can be done about fixing that.

Josh

I think I'm going to pull up the Unix or SF thread on "worst system administration mistakes ever" and try some of them on this server then ;-)

drachenstern

@Josh lol, was gonna say what @TimStone did with :443658 but ....

Josh

@TimStone <kbd>Control</kbd>+<kbd>W</kbd> ?

drachenstern

9:39 PM

@TimStone are you ever?

Tim Stone

@Josh Heh

Josh

(I mean not like I'm one to talk, but)

Tim Stone

@drachenstern Actually yeah, otherwise I definitely wouldn't be able to spend so much time here.

Dan Grossman

drachenstern

@TimStone you'll notice I've been trying to leave off the last few workdays? ;)

This weekend was another story, I had to finish (mostly) moving our stuff. One more carload and we should be done, and the wife will do that this week.

Tim Stone

9:41 PM

Nice, still have to unpack stuff, or?

drachenstern

of course

I've made her start going through tho on repacking and what I call "sift and toss" meaning repack the boxes and get rid of the cruft.

like old textbooks, old letters that nobody wants, stuff that's obviously broken, things that have lost any contextual meaning, candles that have absolutely melted beyond memory, etc.

Dan Grossman

:takes a picture of a chess board but phone does not offer to solve:

drachenstern

I've got six or seven boxes that were last taped when we moved from Alabama to Texas (like 7 years ago?)

Tim Stone

Yeah...I have a hard time getting rid of that stuff. I'm not sure why, but I tend to keep it around.

Oh, wow.

drachenstern

Yeah

I don't want her to get rid of everything, but before we put stuff in storage I'm going to get her a slew of "same size" boxes and let her repack and pack neatly :p ... we can just about not quite fill up a 5x5 climate controlled, and most of that she'll never look at during the time it's in storage. I'm like "I get the sentimental past, but it's time to let it go"

we have two 24"x24"x24" boxes full of stuffed animals. WHY?

Tim Stone

9:45 PM

Yeah, that might be a bit unnecessary, hahah.

Josh

@drachenstern WTH?

Damn, account 2/5 failed to copy

Tim Stone

:/

Josh

I will be so glad when this is over

Dan Grossman

Donate them to goodwill or something, then she won't be throwing them out

Josh

if it ever ends, LOL

Dan Grossman

9:46 PM

even if goodwill just throws them out eventually

drachenstern

@Josh you're not dating anybody seriously right now are you? haven't been for a while and have forgotten what it's like? She's a chick, that's all I can say. They all have stuffed animals from forever ago ... let's test that

@RebeccaChernoff do you have stuffed animals around the house that are older than the time you've lived in the current residence?

Josh

@drachenstern what, did my chat activity give that fact away? ;-)

drachenstern

@Josh lol

Michael Myers

I have stuffed animals under my bed, but not from an older residence.

drachenstern

ok, time to go knock on the door of the landlord at the apartments and inquire why my heater isn't working in my apartment. I'll be back in about 20 :(

Josh

9:48 PM

@drachenstern Does it apply to women who know code?

drachenstern

@MichaelMyers should we encourage you to tell this story?

Josh

@drachenstern move the stuffed animals off it?

drachenstern

@Josh I am pretty sure it applies to all women, ovaries or no.

@Josh lmao

Dan Grossman

chat doesn't work quite right on my phone :/

Tim Stone

Really?

drachenstern

9:49 PM

@DanGrossman no it doesn't. What phone do you have?

Michael Myers

@drachenstern It's a long story. It starts with the day I got a phone call from a stuffed animal telling me they'd kidnapped my kids...

drachenstern

@MichaelMyers lmao

Dan Grossman

android 2.2

the gray bar with the text box to chat isn't sticking to the bottom of the screen, it's floating over the middle of the page

drachenstern

damn, I don't have that problem on mobile safari

Ok, bbiab

may go mobile, we'll see

But first, a special badge for me :D dba.stackexchange.com/badges/63/convention?userid=171

Dan Grossman

oooh, the private beta ended

Rebecca Chernoff

9:54 PM

@drachenstern Not this one? dba.stackexchange.com/badges/16/beta

Josh

10:06 PM

OK, only 1 of 5 accounts so far have failed... that's not too bad

drachenstern

@Rebecca I have that one too ya know

Rebecca Chernoff

I know, that's why I asked. (:

drachenstern

Remarkably I oint have this one :/ dba.stackexchange.com/badges/60/talkative

@Rebecca ahhh

Hey iPhone QUIT HELPING ME SPELL

Josh

Damnit. Another account is failing. One of the important ones

RAWR

drachenstern

RAWR indeed

Dan Grossman

10:19 PM

@Josh stop failing!

why's it so cold in here today

Josh

@DanGrossman Tell that to my server!

@DanGrossman IDK. Same here. We were promised snow too, but only every nearby town is getting snow. We are getting nothing. If it's going to be this cold at least we could get some snow out of the deal

ChrisF

I might add dba to my 101 sites (those with an account but no activity). It could be a useful site to follow.

Pekka

@drachenstern is that the irish spell check? :)

Josh

Ok... copy attempt five starting...

radp

stackexchange.com/tagsets/2124/election-watcher

Now this is something I can consider subscribing myself to.

Josh

10:32 PM

@radp I don't understand this

radp

@Josh posts tagged elections on all metas

They're supposed to start this week, for at least all SEs

Josh

OH, sweet!

radp

There hasn't been any in a few days, hence the page is empty.

Josh

@radp this should be pinned by @Tyler

radp

@Josh not sure if the little blue girl mod flipping the switch the elections' switch will also post on meta tbh

Josh

10:35 PM

@radp I'll keep an eye out

radp

Something I can't quite get about Twitter:

why did Kindle Ltd. decide to follow me, for God's sake?

Shog9

advertising

radp

to spam me about their existance?

Shog9

well, yeah...

radp

@Shog9 yeah, I always report those accounts for spam

I just don't think it'll do much here.

Dan Grossman

10:44 PM

following you isn't spam...

radp

...actually this is a spam account, not the real thing.

Shog9

Some folks auto-follow anyone who follows them

Michael Mrozek

Or if you mention them. I still wish I'd never tweeted a WebKlipper link; I still get messages from them about it

Shog9

hence the follows from link-bloggers and camgirls

Tweeting is dangerous business... Just ask sparrows.

radp

Originally I was annoyed because Twitter wouldn't give any particular weight to @-mentions coming my way

from followers or not

now... eh.

I'd rather want to have @-replies from followers bouncing around

non followers not so much.

Rebecca Chernoff

10:52 PM

Is being called a Vulcan a compliment or insult? >_<

Josh

hm well that time the copy worked!! \o/

@RebeccaChernoff I'd say insult

Dan Grossman

@RebeccaChernoff As a Vulcan, you feel neither pride nor contempt, so it doesn't matter.

2

Josh

but depends on the context I suppoe?

Dan Grossman

:runs away:

Josh

I'm also far from an authority on the subject

drachenstern

10:54 PM

@RebeccaChernoff depends on the context. One should assume it means that you're logical and cool in the face of a problem, so that's a good thing

@Pekka presumably.

Rebecca Chernoff

I'm thinking not. (; meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/74571/…

Shog9

@RebeccaChernoff In this particular context, it means your opinion doesn't matter because you're not human.

Rebecca Chernoff

That's more like what I thought. <_<

Michael Myers

.\\//

Pekka

@DanGrossman POW! Touché! :)

Josh

10:57 PM

@RebeccaChernoff don't worry, I think he's just plain wrong :-p

@MichaelMyers Damn, I reached my vote allowance!

I swear that was lowered

Can anyone confirm?

drachenstern

With context.

Pekka

@Josh yup

Shog9

@Josh No, you're just... promiscuous.

Josh

@Shog9 not really. I'm pretty faithful. I star the same things over and over an over agin. Oy!

drachenstern

A true Vulcan would look at the answer and say "It is out of date. The information was being kept up to date, but is no longer. Therefore it is not useful. Therefore it deserves a -1 downvote." However, a true Vulcan would despise this site, and would not often find a need to vote -1 downvote, additionally would find that this whole system is odd and hardly worth supporting.

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