Alex Le’s Blog

On slashdot today…

Last night we crossed over 16,777,216 comments in the database. The wise amongst you might note that this number is 2^24, or in MySQLese an unsigned mediumint. Unfortunately, like 5 years ago we changed our primary keys in the comment table to unsigned int (32 bits, or 4.1 billion) but neglected to change the index that handles parents. We’re awesome! Fixing is a simple ALTER TABLE statement… but on a table that is 16 million rows long, our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting. So today, we’re disabling threading and will enable it again later tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. We shall flog ourselves appropriately.

This is kinda amusing.  After all, we are all human.

First, look at this screenshot of www.petsorfood.com

Is this for real? Humh, I’d to have a slice of the Komodo Dragon then, rare and bloody. I wonder if this is a pratical joke or another crazy and outrageous idea from this one guy Sidney Zwibel, the self-claimed entrepreneur behind ClickMonkeys.com.

I’m still waiting on my order to complete…

Besure to read the Testinomials, they are hilarious in some mysterious ways similar to the mysterous meatloaf at at NY school in one of the testinomials…

This can be the biggest scandal since the ResearchInMotion’s BlackBerry last year.

“The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is as remarkable as its size. In March 2001, when the company was serving about 70 million Web pages daily, it had 8,000 computers, according to a Microsoft researcher granted anonymity to talk about a detailed tour he was given at one of Google’s Silicon Valley computing centers. By 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.”

Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power, Published: June 14, 2006, nytimes.com

100,000 servers?  Holy cow!  I also have a copy of this artilce in PDF format if you’d like to read it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html  by Paul graham
This is a great article argueing the comtetitiveness of America compared to other countries in terms of starting up a startup.  I agree one of the great reasons why there are more startups in the States than anywhere else is the US is rich. In the US, people do not have to worry about their everyday meal - even in the case they are out of work, the government will support them.  Tax dollars go to work.  Back home in Vietnam, pretty much everyone has to work like crazy to support themselves and family.  It’s easier to work to feed yourself than to find something to feed and work on some other ideas.  You will be so starving that you will fall dead eventually because noone will try to feed you — frankly, other people are trying to take away your food!  Social security in Vietnam is just bad, bad, bad.
I love every seconds here in the States, even though I have had more ramen than I’ve ever wanted (US college students are in fact a different species)  I’ve had much stress and worries but being in the States opens up my eyes and allows me to grab the next opportunity out there.