Silvrback performs well under stress. It's setup to autoscale when a traffic surge is detected so the platform can easily handle articles making the front page of HN. Unicorn and memcached also really help.
I had the same strategy as this but I realized one important thing: I was spending all of my time looking at the damn charts.
The opportunity cost of being constantly distracted and worried about your investment might be higher than the profits you're realizing. Especially if you are a developer and command decent hourly rates.
It's also not enjoyable to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, worrying about what the current price is.
> We should respect the name which the discoverer gave to it.
Why?
I have a feeling if Americans said "aluminium" and Brits said "aluminum", you wouldn't be saying this. I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves any special status.
> I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves any special status.
At its most basic, this is one of the main currencies of science. Remember what happened with apatosaurus / brontosaurus?
This is a practice that most people will agree without persuasion is "fair", that certain people care about a great deal, and that costs society nothing. What's wrong with it?
As a mark of respect, I agree. However languages don't work that way. I've changed my stance over the years to whatever works in the name of communication. Language is fluid so our attitude needs to be fluid too.
There is no real discoverer. Its like crediting Columbus with discovering America? Or Al Gore with inventing the internet?
Wolfram story is probably a decent analogy. Some Swede described an ore in a book and named it after himself, then a sample of his ore that was contaminated with wolframite (named by german Agricola, yes, by that famous Agricola) had an acid extraction run on it, that resulted in what we'd now call impure raw tungstic acid. A lot of people thought that acid was pretty interesting but it took some Spanish dudes to reduce the acid to a completely worthless metal. Then two centuries later one American dude came up with a way of purification and heat treatment such that it finally made a decent wire for electric light bulb (no, not the guy you're thinking of, a plant scale engineer decades after the inventor) and then General Electric (at that time an American company unlike now) tried to patent the whole process. Such that in the 1920s, or whatever it was, you'd have a chemical element where its only industrial production was patented, which sounds crazy in 2013 but wasn't all that unusual about a century ago. And that patent got overturned if I recall correctly (no I'm not that old, just from memory)
The point of this ramble about Schelium metal lightbulbs is given some research there IS NO DISCOVERER. Other than the victor writes the histories and such, which is trivially interesting from a sociological perspective but has no actual hard science meaning.
Loved the post. I'm in the exact same position as you. Have 6 months of runway and I've become an independent consultant. I'm also spending the time on my own ideas, like my newly launched https://www.silvrback.com
I wish you the best of luck. Like you said, life is too short not to take risks.
If you're choosing between Ghost and Medium, and would like something that is hosted, I recently released Silvrback (https://www.silvrback.com). It has the simplicity of Medium, while giving you control over your own brand.
Ugg. I really like where you were going with that, but you lost me at this: "People shouldn't spend any time configuring a server for a blog."
Maybe some people shouldn't be spending any time configuring a server for a blog, but I have been increasingly working to take back control of my data and it's related services. That means I want to be able to install things on a server of my choosing. This also means FOSS wherever I can possibly put it. I would even happily pay for the FOSS, but the thing I hate the most about medium, svbtle, and the others, is that I can't use the platform where I want to and I don't see gpl/mit anywhere.
I understand that your intention is the hosted segment, but I really think you could gain a lot more traction by going to a one time price, FOSing the code, and still offering a paid hosting service for those that want it.
Maybe it's just because the older I get the more I am aligning with RMS.
Yeah, you're right. There's always going to be a group of people that want to configure everything themselves and setup their own servers. I'm not really targeting this group with silvrback. Open source ghost would be the best route for you.
However, there are a number of people looking for hosted solutions so they don't have to waste any time with config issues. This is where Silvrback comes in. Also, Silvrback should really only be compared to the hosted version of Ghost (which isn't out yet). Comparing it to open source isn't really possible.
"Comparing it to open source isn't really possible."
I don't really understand this line of reasoning. You are running code on your servers, are you not? Your code is either closed or open. (closed) How is comparing it to open source not possible?
Just not possible in the sense that a hosted solution has the expectation that everything is managed for you. An open-source solution requires you to do the work of setting it up, configuring, handling traffic spikes, backups, etc...
I see your intention now, but you are using the words in the wrong context with the wrong definition. There are plenty of hosted open source products that require little to no setup.
I might be biased, but I think your new blog on silvrback looks way better than your old one. The presentation of your code is much more enjoyable to read, as well. Just my 2 cents.
It's similar to svbtle in its simplicity.