One place I worked at had a stock price that fluctuated. Some times it was 8c, other times it was 16c - we could actually double our stock price and still have to lay people off...
I'd be surprised if it were otherwise. The company only makes its money from selling "new" stock. The 8 and 16 cent prices are what people are paying each other for "used" stock, and the company doesn't see a penny from those "used" stock trades.
It's not a complex algorithm, it's a static website run from wordpress that could be faster by any of these: S3, CloudFront, memcache, APC, or even file caching.
Yes, you could spin up any number of AWS to throw ab / httperf traffic at it, but why? HN has demonstrated how inadequate their server solution is.
Well, if it's anything like the Chrysler 300, the touchscreen dims as the ambient light decreases. There are buttons on the back of the steering wheel to move around the stereo system, without looking at the screen.
The 300 also has a voice system like a lot of vehicles these days, so that you can hit a button on the front of the steering wheel and give voice commands.
Not a link, but without any plugins of that type installed, this is the behavior I've had for a long time now. (I use Chrome for everything until I need to test apps in FF).
It's pretty easy to own a smartphone and not go around acting like a jerk who isn't aware of the surroundings. You can drive a car without talking on it. If the phone rings, beeps, or vibrates, you can even ignore it.
I suspect that for a lot of people, the temptation is just too strong so they would rather get rid of the thing than try to ignore, etc.
I'm doing this with Facebook. I know it sucks, I never get anything out of it but just the idea that something there is going on and I'm missing it, makes me want to login and check my timeline. It's stupid I know.. so instead of fighting myself I joined 1) the fact that I KNOW it sucks and I'm not getting anything from it and 2) that I can't be trusted to ignore life's stupid distractions.. so I deleted my account. I have not missed it any bit and I'm achieving my goal.
Some other posters have mentioned that you can't raise rates in the time of an emergency. I don't know how valid this is, or what constitutes an emergency.
Irrespective of the majority of cab money going to the corporate apparatus and not the drivers in plenty of cases, it still seems unfair to expect drivers not to raise their rates somehow just for the increased danger.
Well, Uber knows there is a disaster. A large temporary change in the NYC cab market would not go unnoticed. They can update their own 'system' to reflect current prices, it's not a third-party thing.
Zero. Their location got flooded with a 12 foot storm surge. I doubt the police are letting anyone near that area. I'm up on 96th and Park. We've had flooding and power outages along the river inland to 2nd ave up here as well. Also, there is practically no way in or out of the island of Manhattan now. All bridges and tunnels are closed except for _possibly_ the Lincoln tunnel.
How long would some <X> 55-gallon drums full of fuel have helped, anyway? Most cars can easily run through 55 gallons of fuel in a matter of hours (<10), much less a datacenter!
There well may have been poor planning at some point, but these things happen so infrequently there must be an allowance for this-is-a-disaster that cannot easily be worked around.
Another question is for the customers: are they running all their services from a single datacenter? Sounds like it shows poor planning.
So, now they're expected to move around an unknown quantity of 400-500 lb 55-gallon drums of fuel? And where would they have sourced these so easily and quickly (another unknown, I would think)?
We don't know how much energy is being used nor how much fuel is required to run the generator(s) per hour, among other things. That seems like a lot of important information that's missing to call this situation 'poor planning.'
But, I'll respond to your single datapoint with mine: according to [1] that's 2 full drums for every one hour of generator running.
My point isn't to be simple argumentative but to look at things from a more appropriate perspective. Generators in these circumstances (and my professional experience) are not meant for very long periods or indefinite usage.
I'm filing this proposed drum-filling plan into the 'unrealistic' category.
Try to see it from a different perspective: customers are paying (my guess) $800 per rack, per month, plus power and bandwidth charges; and a rack takes up 30 square feet once you include the space around that rack.
So almost $30 per square foot for just the raw space alone. $360 per square foot per year is a high rent, even for NYC.
And what is the client supposed to get for his money? Reliability! The engineering and facilities management expertise to ensure this, is baked into the costs.
You ask, "so now they are expected to move 55 gallon drums of fuel"? ABSOLUTELY they are expected to do that. The only "appropriate perspective" is that the clients are paying a lot of money for the datacenter to do whatever needs to be done.
They had a week of warning to source these; they already have a long-standing relationship with their fuel supplier for diesel delivery, so they call him up and say "Joe, we need 20 drums of diesel in addition to topping up the tanks we have" and they arrive in the next 2 days.
These diesel generators are basically modified / tuned versions of a big truck or marine diesel, which has a rebuild interval of 500K to 1 million miles if used as a truck engine or some high number of operating hours (like 10,000 hours). Perhaps you are thinking of LPG, natgas or gasoline powered gensets, which are designed for less frequent use.
I researched all aspects of building a DC years ago and realized that even if I could raise the $5 million to do an entry level one, my effort was best spent elsewhere.
Customers punish downtime, this DC will lose clients, be sure of it.
Aside: there was a guy in New Orleans who kept his DC running all through Hurricane Katrina and after it - if you search the site at http://mgno.com with terms like "diesel drums" you will find his old posts. Can't seem to easily link to these old posts, though.
I'm well aware of these generators with two shipping-container sized units right outside my building, tested fequently. So, I concede and simply disagree.
I agree they will likely lose some customers but I disagree that there was too much they can do now. Were they in the mandatory evacuation zone? (I don't know) Will 20 drums (10-ish hours) really help if this is a multi-day outage? Did the customers plan for a failover to another datacenter, or put all their eggs in one basket? (oops!)
Please, since you are so familiar with the ins and outs of Yahoo, what would you have done differently?