{"items": [{"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539293142", "anchor": "fb-10100118539293142", "service": "fb", "text": "Hey, you can't blame a small country for trying. :)", "timestamp": "1572270930"}, {"author": "Bill", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862", "service": "fb", "text": "The Power industry literature is now full of the demands of server farms. The #1 need is cheap electricity, as servers need a lot of electric power. The #2 need is a generally cool climate, as all that electric power has to get discharged to the environment as heat, which is is of course cheaper when it's cold outside. Signal response time is a lower priority.", "timestamp": "1572271418"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100118569667272", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100118569667272", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I agree there are a lot of considerations. I'm specifically responding to their claim that Iceland is a good location for them because it makes them be close to their customers.
But I disagree that response time is a low priority. They're a third-party analytics vendor, and high server response time means dropping analytics pings from short pageviews (because registering a ping over HTTPS requires multiple round trips).", "timestamp": "1572286396"}, {"author": "Ross", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100118895020262", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100118895020262", "service": "fb", "text": "→ > high server response time means dropping analytics pings from short pageviews
I'm certain that I'm missing technical nuance here, but why does it require more than a one-way message the register the pageview?", "timestamp": "1572445756"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100118897570152", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100118897570152", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ross good question! The contents of the ping are built in JavaScript that you load from the analytics provider. So you need to fetch that JavaScript, which requires a round trip. Except you need multiple rounds trips to set up the TCP and HTTPS connections. HTTP/3 (QUIC) improves this, but you can't get away from having a round trip to get the JS.
Well, you could get away from it if you cached the JS. Except all browsers these days fragment the cache by first party domain, for privacy reasons, so you'll need to pay this penalty on the first page you visit on every new site assuming otherwise ideal caching.
Then we get to sending the ping. If they reuse the same connection they loaded the JS on and the ping is small enough then this is one way. If it's cached there's no connection to reuse, though, and then you need to multiple-round-trips connection setup before you can send the ping.", "timestamp": "1572446532"}, {"author": "Ross", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100118898847592", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100118898847592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ That makes sense, given the state of the art. It does make me wonder, though, whether an analytics engine that truly cared about collecting very short pageview data could feasibly get by with a one-way message produced with inlined js and public-key crypto instead of https.
(Also, you wouldn't need a roundtrip to the analytics engine's servers if they're using a CDS, which presumably is worth their while, no? So the latency from server location mostly comes down to the ping, which gets back to the question of whether one-way crypto could replace https.)", "timestamp": "1572447361"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100118901572132", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100118901572132", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ross you can't send one way pings from the browser today, so this is moot.
If you could send UDP from the browser, say, the analytics company is going up need a very hefty server side integration with each site.", "timestamp": "1572449195"}, {"author": "Ross", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118539931862&reply_comment_id=10100119442523062", "anchor": "fb-10100118539931862_10100119442523062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ah, that makes sense.", "timestamp": "1572678073"}, {"author": "romeostevensit", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ALjPEQwkN8YiaW2Z#g972cWmK7DtWgZaLQ", "anchor": "lw-g972cWmK7DtWgZaLQ", "service": "lw", "text": "Warning: massive time sink. Also, quite fascinating. A history of undersea cables by Neal Stephenson.
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/", "timestamp": 1572273135}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118546723252", "anchor": "fb-10100118546723252", "service": "fb", "text": "I think the bigger objection is that it\u2019s easy to serve from multiple locations; this is also best practice for fault tolerance. Just do US and Europe.
That said, Iceland is a plausible place for a data center due to cheap power, stable politics and amenable norms.", "timestamp": "1572275064"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118546723252&reply_comment_id=10100118569213182", "anchor": "fb-10100118546723252_10100118569213182", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"it\u2019s easy to serve from multiple locations; this is also best practice for fault tolerance. Just do US and Europe\"
Agreed! (I do talk about that in the linked post)
There are various reasons to choose Iceland, but \"it's between the US and Europe\" is not one of them.", "timestamp": "1572286219"}, {"author": "MN", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118600370742", "anchor": "fb-10100118600370742", "service": "fb", "text": "At some point, there will be undersea cables going over the Arctic, from Western Europe to the Bering Strait and East Asia. When that happens, Iceland will be a logical cable landing, and will then probably be in a good position to have good, but not great, connectivity to all three of Europe, Asia, and North America. But that point is years from now, and it's silly to arrange your servers for that this far in advance.", "timestamp": "1572299022"}, {"author": "Chris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100118529867032?comment_id=10100118848902682", "anchor": "fb-10100118848902682", "service": "fb", "text": "I feel vaguely like this might have been a plot point in Cryptonomicon.", "timestamp": "1572402167"}]}