Interesting that they upload to S3 first, only to pull it off soon after and process it.<p>I imagine this reduces complexity and lets them increase their throughput of uploads but I wonder if 500px toyed around with the idea of first uploading it to local (temp) storage, having the workers process it and then finally persist it. But I guess the cons are a) some point it needs to go to S3 in original form b) increases data loss
Thumbs up for VIPS, used it 4-5 years ago, for building a system which processed high resolution images. Its fast, lean and an amazing piece of software.
Are they somehow intercepting middle click on their site so that links do not open in a new tab? Control-click works fine for me, but middle click would just replace the article, which was inconvenient. (latest Chrome on Ubuntu)
I was getting excited about using 500px for the specific reason that it seems to load much faster than flickr. Then I loaded it up in a public space to get some inspiration by browsing other user's work - interspersed were various images of women in various states of undress. I quickly exited the site and never went back for fear of someone glancing over my shoulder and assuming I'm doing something other than getting artistic inspiration.<p>Not arguing that the images aren't art but I personally don't want them popping up on my screen when I'm just trying to get inspiration for landscape photography.