jchb

> You're just sending messages, so you can send a message over the wire and it would be as simple to the developer as sending it locally

If you are expecting a reply, or some side-effect in another system, as a result of the message you sent (and usually you would expect that, otherwise you wouldn't send the message in the first place) then it's not that simple. If the actor is in the same OS process on the same machine, then message delivery is reliable, and you know you'll either get a reply OR a signal that the other actor died. If, on the other hand, the actor is on another machine across the network then the semantics are different. You cannot always differentiate between the remote actor dying and an intermittent network connection error. So you need to take that into account in your protocol design - for example by making operations idempotent.

I've many times seen Erlang code where the developers didn't make this distinction - because the message passing operation looks the same, remote or not - and as a result the system is not resilient to network failures.

“might cause”, yes. But at least with Postgres that only happens if you add a default value to the new column. You can add the default value in your application instead, just like you would with your average NoSQL DB. Then, when you have low load on your system, you can migrate the rows in batches to have a default value, and eventually remove the application default.

Second that, what's wrong with NTT? 250mbit fiber for a fraction of what it would cost in the US. IPv6 ready. Basically no down time in 5 years. Very polite service staff.

Sure, if you look at how they design their websites, signup process and router UX, it's... a bit special (from a "western" perspective) ... But it works.

What about building a service, perhaps a web browser plugin, that overlays a trust-worthiness score + contextual information, over text (bonus for images) on the web?

If a user posts "I recommend product X", the overlay would say "Caution: This user also recommended the product Y,Z in the last 48 hours. 34/34 of the users post in the last month are product recommendations. Sentiment score for users posts: 100% positive. The following internet accounts are likely controlled by the same individual or organization: ..."

Is it feasible? Does it already exist?

Well, macOS 10.15 has a user-space network stack. 11.0 can run on ARM as well on x86. So there are a bunch of things going on under the hood