I learned about Ayn Rand second-hand thanks to the Bioshock series (which took place in a retrofuturistic submarine dystopia produced by a strictly libertarian society), so I got the reference right away...
Same motivation as forwarding chain letters. Being superstitious and hope for invisible internet magic helping those poor orphans in need out. Just that you hold up the sky here.
This reminds me of the Button [1] experiment Reddit held in 2015. The interplay between the effect of the countdown reaching zero, the badge associated with clicking and the single use mechanics were quite interesting to witness. It was quite popular for a surprisingly long time.
>It was quite popular for a surprisingly long time.
Hah, that's a blast from the past. One reason it lasted as long as it did was the Knights of the Button, users who collaborated to keep it alive. I implemented the Zombie-presser, 1k+ donated accounts automatically pressing the button when no one else would. We kept it alive for a more then a month before the most embarrassing bug of my career finally killed it :D Good summary here [1].
> The final point of failure was even less spectacular: a co-ordinated attempt to keep the button alive by automatically pressing it with donated accounts when it got too low had been working on overtime, but a fatal flaw meant that no-one bothered to check whether the anointed account actually could press.
> The bot queued up the account, attempted to press the button – and found that the account had been registered after 1 April.
It seems like given the tricks I've seen with long-http requests and browsers, it might be possible to implement a version that doesn't require JS.
I think that would also have the effect of being able to easily curl it. Could just add a lil nixos module and quietly deploy it to a few servers. Gotta keep the sky up, of course.
Maybe they chose that name a disambiguation so as to be only associated with the god Atlas, and not the city Atlantis or its suggested founding leader Atlas (son of Poseidon).
That was actually one minor plot point in Robert Sawyer's novel, Flashforward, that stuck in my mind. When everyone on the planet lost consciousness at the same time (their minds being projected into the future) all video recording just saw essentially static.
The theory was that it was actually recording the quantum froth as it were, of the unresolved probabilities until an observer woke up and it collapsed into one outcome.
I'm perhaps not explaining it well. OTOH, it is called science-FICTION.
scaling this would make a great system design interview question. rather than building a larger system, build something that takes consistency, availability and fault tolerance to an extreme.
looks like another novelty page meant specifically for getting to the front page of Hacker News, which in a year will be abandoned or turned into seo fodder.
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The /ActivePlayers endpoint [1] returns an array of all active users, of which there are only 20-30 right now. What happens when/if there are 1000s ? This will fall over...
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 82.4 ms ] threadUse this for A/B testing of ads?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)
Hah, that's a blast from the past. One reason it lasted as long as it did was the Knights of the Button, users who collaborated to keep it alive. I implemented the Zombie-presser, 1k+ donated accounts automatically pressing the button when no one else would. We kept it alive for a more then a month before the most embarrassing bug of my career finally killed it :D Good summary here [1].
Fun times! Thank you for the reminder :D
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/08/reddits-m...
> The bot queued up the account, attempted to press the button – and found that the account had been registered after 1 April.
Though to be honest, if that’s the most embarrassing bug abra0 is doing great.
Sometimes Reddit is excellent.
courtesy of uMatrix ^^
I think that would also have the effect of being able to easily curl it. Could just add a lil nixos module and quietly deploy it to a few servers. Gotta keep the sky up, of course.
The actual word for pertaining to Atlas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantean
The theory was that it was actually recording the quantum froth as it were, of the unresolved probabilities until an observer woke up and it collapsed into one outcome.
I'm perhaps not explaining it well. OTOH, it is called science-FICTION.
Can't find it though.
[1] https://glkmsstwzynytciznsqo.supabase.co/rest/v1/ActivePlaye...