20bits
Monday June 9th, 2008
Erlang: A Generic Server Tutorial
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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One of the benefits of working with Erlang is that it was designed with real-world applications in mind. This is reflected in OTP, or Open Telecommunications Platform, a set of standard libraries that come with the default Erlang VM.
OTP implements in a generic way lots of networking paradigms, including finite state machines (gen_fsm), event [...]
Monday June 2nd, 2008
Copyright Infringement != Theft
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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I wasn't planning on writing about this topic today, but Matt Maroon's essay on intellectual property warrants a response. I'm not going to get into the broader philosphical and political argument about whether the current copyright scheme is good, bad, or whatever else.
Instead, I want to make a simple, provable point: copyright infringement is [...]
Tuesday May 27th, 2008
Implementing A Suggest-A-Friend Feature
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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Many social networks, including Facebook and LinkedIn, have suggest-a-friend features that prompt users with a list of likely friends. This is a great feature because it allows these sites to notify current users when one of their (likely) friends joins the site.
It's also good for the social networks because it allows them to improve [...]
Sunday May 25th, 2008
Politics and Tufte’s Lie Factor
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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I admit it, I'm a political junkie. I'm also a math guy who loves design. Politics gets emotional fast and people are quick to stretch whatever data they have to fit their small, partisan aims.
Pundits and partisans misuse statistics all the time, but I happened upon a real gem that perfectly illustrates Edward [...]
Thursday May 22nd, 2008
An EventMachine Tutorial
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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Ruby / EventMachine is an event-driven networking library for Ruby, similar to Twisted for Python. Certain aspects of it are also similar to Erlang/OTP's gen_server module.
Why EventMachine?
EventMachine satisfies two key requirements. First, because EventMachine is an implementation of the reactor pattern, it separates networking logic from application logic. This means you don't [...]
Monday May 19th, 2008
Facebook Users Just Want Entertainment
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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Starting in late 2007 Facebook began instituting its media strategy in earnest with Facebook Pages. According to Facebook pages offer "a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand."
It's good to see Facebook becoming conscious about how they can help shape the future of branding, since this is [...]
Thursday May 15th, 2008
Facebook Bans Google Friend Connect
From 20bits, 7 months ago,
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Facebook announced today on their official developers' blog that they have banned Google Friend Connect, stating privacy concerns.
Google Friend Connect is a service that allows users to share their social data, such as personal information and friends, with websites that embed the Google-created widgets. This data can come from many social networks, including Facebook, [...]
Tuesday May 13th, 2008
Interview Questions: Database Indexes
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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Continuing my series on interview questions, I'm going to spend some time covering ops and sysadmin questions. Today we'll start with databases.
The Question
Most consumer-facing web startups these days use one of the major open source databases, either MySQL or PostgreSQL, to some degree. If you want to prove your worth it's a good [...]
Monday May 12th, 2008
Powerset Launches, Verdict: Meh.
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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Powerset, the much-hyped natural-language search company, has finally launched a public product: a showcase for its search technology that "enhances the Wikipedia experience." It's live right now on its homepage, so go check it out.
Are you back? That sound you heard is the technology world shrugging in unison. For all the hype [...]
Friday May 9th, 2008
How I Grow My Blog
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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I was talking with Matt Humphrey the other day and he asked me, "How did you grow your blog?" My answer at the time wasn't very enlightening, so I thought I'd sit down and hammer out my strategy for growing 20bits.
General Principles
Play to Your Strengths
Not everyone is witty and not everyone is penetrating. [...]
Wednesday May 7th, 2008
The State of the Platform: Update
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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My article about The State of the Facebook Platform has been spreading through the blogosphere like a game of telephone. Lots of people have chimed in with their own opinions.
I wanted to write a follow-up post to clarify my opinion and address some of the responses.
What I'm Claiming
My claims are simple and uncontroversial. [...]
Tuesday May 6th, 2008
The State of the Facebook Platform
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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Something is wrong in the Facebook developer community. Starting in March I began noticing that the level of activity in the Facebook developers forum was dropping sharply.
But it's numbers that matter, not vague impressions, so does the data back me up? Is the Facebook developer community retreating from the public space of the [...]
Friday May 2nd, 2008
Network Programming in Erlang
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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Since I'm learning Erlang I thought my first non-trivial piece of code would be in an area where the language excels: network programming.
Network programming (or socket programming) is a pain in the ass in most languages. I first learned how to do it in C using Beej's Guide to Network Programming. Read it [...]
Thursday May 1st, 2008
Help, Facebook’s Hacking Me!
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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BBC's technology program, Click, is claiming to have "exposed a security flaw in the social networking site Facebook which could compromise privacy."
ReadWriteWeb, without a trace of humor, followed on with an article called Facebook Hacked Again. Yes, the title of the post was that sensationalist.
Fortunately for we Facebook users the BBC and ReadWriteWeb show [...]
Wednesday April 30th, 2008
Interview Questions: Counting Bits
From 20bits, 8 months ago,
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Continuing my series of interview questions, today I bring you the classic bit-counting problem.
The setup usually goes something like this. We're receiving gigabytes of data per second. Each chunk of data comes with a header that contains an unsigned 32-bit integer. Let's call that integer the routing number. We choose the [...]