Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources? - scalar-moose Hello,
Context: - Dev with 10+ years of experience - Last 2 years in an architect role with technical leadership responsibilities - Planning to apply for senior roles at FAANMG
Question:
I am fairly good at solving system design and scenario based questions, but I am  confused about what resources to use to prepare for whiteboard/programming questions (not 100% sure if these are relevant at senior level?). Below is the list of resources I was suggested:
1. Cracking the Coding Interview 2. Elements of Programming Interviews 3. Online Judge - LeetCode, HackerRank etc.
I have used cracking the coding interview for my interviews right out of school, but I was told that it is not relevant anymore and I should focus on Elements of Programing Interviews.
Same with Online Judge, I was told to use an online judge (LeetCode, HackerRank) over books. <comment><AUTHOR> There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems. There are other options, and we should be aware of them. You'll still need to prove you can code, but the questions we ask have practical application to our codebases: we use recursion and trees, for example, so we ask questions about those.

Other companies will treat you as more of a human, and less as a cog. In my current job, I asked to see production code when interviewing. I flipped over every stone I could, to know what I was getting into. I saw the good and the bad. FANGs? You must prove yourself to gatekeepers before even knowing if there are teams with personalities you will agree with. You have no guarantee there's something on the other side of the gatekeepers, that you're even remotely interested in.

Money is important, but for a small haircut you can have better WLB, less competitive peers (though still be growing in your career: you can challenge yourself, without being surrounded by hyper-competitive personality types), amazing culture, and a greater level of transparency.

<comment><USER2> levels.fyi is currently showing $466k median offer total comp for L6 (staff SWE) at google. Who is paying $395k-$420k to IC hires without FAANG style interviews? The only other companies paying that to IC hires that I know of are in the financial industry and that interview process is even worse.

<comment><USER3> What is a L6 in real world terms? where would they fit on the GS scale (I may or may not) be applying for a GS15 equivalent in the UK Grade 7 or maybe 6

It would be interesting to see where that fits in a FANG context

<comment><USER4> Salary wise GS-15 would be around L3 (junior).

Responsibility wise GS-15 looks to be around L5 based on how many engineers have achieved it (I assume those earning $140k+ are GS-15):

[https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/computer- sc...](https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/computer-science)

[https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/general- eng...](https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/general-engineering)

<comment><USER3> Interesting I was thinking in terms of responsibility / social status not purely salary :-) GS 15 is a full colonel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are on the right track in terms of preparing for a FAANMG-level interview. But it pains me to say that this just only meets the bare-minimum that they are looking for as in to prove that you can 'program' as the other thousands more candidates will be applying too.

What you need to differentiate yourself is to learn the undocumented dark arts for whiteboard interviews that the FAANMG are really looking for in a technical interview.

Firstly, [0] explains where these data structures are used in Computer Science and should be a start on implementing them and understanding their complexities and use-cases. The rest from [1 - 4] goes straight into the advanced details of areas like competitive-programming which will give you explanations and clever solutions which are better than the typical DS and algorithm answers that even the interviewers will suggest.

Some of these resources might even give a walkthrough of a proof of these complexities if you really need to convince the interviewer who wants to rigorously test your understanding.

[0] - [https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/19759/core- algo...](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/19759/core-algorithms- deployed/19773#19773)

[1] - [http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.851/](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.851/)

[2] - [http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/](http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/)

[3] - [http://cp-algorithms.com/](http://cp-algorithms.com/)

[4] - [https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Exotic%20Data%20Structur...](https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Exotic%20Data%20Structures)

If you really don't know where to start, you can search and pick a specific topic here to study it in depth: [https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview- university](https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university)

Personally, If I were preparing for a FAANMG interview, I would contribute to widely known open-source projects that utilise these concepts such as compilers like LLVM, Rust or V8 and operating systems.

<comment><USER6> You can't be serious. It's not that hard.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's definitely not that hard, and contributing to LLVM/Rust/V8 is not a requirement either (I would still recommend it, but mostly because it sounds interesting and you would likely learn a lot).

Source: interviewed with 3 FANGs a few months ago without any significant open-source contributions, got L6 or equivalent offers from all 3. I also don't have a CS degree, for anyone who would feel discouraged by that.

Edit: I don't want to minimize the effort involved, though—I did spend a lot of time learning algorithms and data structures over the years, but I enjoy learning this stuff and find it far more relevant in practice than most people here appear to think.

<comment><USER8> When I interviewed at Google they told me to come back when I had more open source contributions. I already had hundreds of thousands of lines in a prominent open source systems project at the time, so they must really want a lot.

The hiring bar at these places is pretty astronomical. Realistically it's going to be well out of reach for a majority of even the very best programmers in the world.

<comment><USER4> In my experience the resume screen is a lot tougher if you want to work for them outside the US due to very low supply per demand.

<comment><USER9> It also depends on the level you're interviewing for. If you're shooting for a mid-level or even semi-senior role, that's very different than if you're shooting for a "has industry-wide impact" kind of role. In the latter case claims of prior impact will be carefully scrutinized to weed out poseurs and liars.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it was only a new-grad, entry-level position, and they still wanted a huge volume of open source contributions. I don't know how most people would achieve it - mine were from internships and they still weren't enough.

<comment><USER7> Sounds insane. Based on our two experiences it seems like the requirements can change a lot. Hopefully if you apply again in a few years they won't require that anymore, but it's hard to say without knowing what are the factors that pushed them to require that in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For background, I work currently at one of the FAANMGs and I have spent around 20 years in the industry. I actively interview candidates and I have had offers from 4 of the FAANMGs not too long ago. My experience is that the preparation required varies. It depends whether you are interviewing as a general SWE or pre-slotted. If you are pre-slotted, one or more interviews tend to be specific to your domain and skills. You do need to know Big-Oh notation, trees, BFS/DFS and such standard stuff at most of the places; but how much the interviewer go to basic CS theory tend to vary based on your domain and years of experience.

For example, as an interviewer I often ask computer architecture/operating system questions as that's what someone coming in, slotted into my team, needs.

In general, a lot of coding questions tend to be pattern matching and how fast you recognize the algorithm/data structure required to solve it. Before going in as a candidate, I did 50-60 leetcode puzzles and a bit of Elements of Programming Interviews. I also interviewed at many places for FAANMG readiness.

All said and done, the biggest factor in interviews is luck - from getting a good interviewer to getting a problem that you can easily identify/enjoy solving. All the preparation stuff is just to hone your skills. More you've seen going in, the better.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> Leetcode premium -> do all the problems for the company you are targeting, sorted by most frequently seen in the last 6 months. Then, you will know what your weak points are (mine were minimax and disjoint set problems), and you can go through questions tagged with those topics. Aim to complete at least 60 problems, you should feel fairly comfortable with any Leetcode medium grades, and DFS implementation. Leetcode hard questions are good challenges which could expand the way you approach problems, but in my experience, did not show up much during onsite interviews.

Also, "completing" one problem in the context of the above does not mean being able to solve it the first time without checking the solution. It means possibly struggling with the problem for 20 minutes, checking the answer, and making sure you can do it the next day without looking at the answer. YMMV.

<comment><USER12> > Also, "completing" one problem in the context of the above does not mean > being able to solve it the first time without checking the solution. It > means possibly struggling with the problem for 20 minutes, checking the > answer, and making sure you can do it the next day without looking at the > answer.

Thanks for saying this. I tried leetcode last time I was looking for work and was thoroughly discouraged. This approach makes a lot of sense for someone who's been coding for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know you said you are good at system design, but I'd still recommend you read Designing Data Intensive Applications book and read through [https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design- primer](https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer).

If you do those and cracking the coding interview you should be good to go.

<comment><USER14> Really cool link. It's satisfying to look at this diagram and it all looks familiar to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You'd likely be geared for L5 (Senior Engineer) with your described experience. At that level, there would be expectations that:

\- You have built and can continue to build real software. You should know how to code fluidly in at least one language, as well as idioms and pitfalls. I don't think this is something you can cram for - you build up from experience.

\- Able to describe performance or other tradeoffs. This can be in system architecture down to data structures and small optimizations. If you are rusty on algorithms, this can be studied for.

\- Be able to do large-scale systems design from a fairly ambiguous problem statement. Sounds like you've had this experience.

\- Potentially do a deep dive in a technical specialty of yours (ML, compilers, databases, etc.).

[Note: I haven't been at Google for over a year so this may be rusty, but did interview lots of candidates while there.]

</comment><comment><USER16> As a lead engineer at a non-tech company as least as big as many of the FAANG companies I am responsible for things that make 8 and 9 figures annually (mobile), but I never had an interview anything like this here at all, because I was hired based on personal reputation at a previous employer. I bet I would fail miserably at these kinds of interviews because I would not prepare in any way; I know what it takes to ship things in all sorts of ridiculous circumstances, with too few people and enormous continuous changes under challenges that you would never see in a big tech company. I am not sure there is fair way to tell from an interview what I am capable of but my present org knows what I can do and counts on me doing it every time.

I wonder how many people are missed in interviews who would make a big contribution to an employer but are lost in the interview process. Often skills needed for shipping quality applications are likely not visible if people only focus on raw programming ability. Maybe it's simply too hard to identify in interview form so everyone just looks at how you write code.

<comment><USER17> I am in the same boat. Got my current job just by reference by people that know me and I didn't have an interview at all.

On regular basis I am faced with challenging technical problems related to things that I haven't done before and then with careful research, planning and execution I solve them and our product is going forward and the company is growing so I assume we are doing the correct things most of the time.

And then when I hear from friends stories from their interviews I really get scared that if I apply today I would fail...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In addition to the resources others have suggested here I recommend going through this list of problems that I put together for the coding portion of FAANG interviews: [https://theinterviewlist.com](https://theinterviewlist.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> If I can suggest something - don't neglect physical training. You will need a lot of endurance (both physical and mental) to go through some of those onsite interviews. Also take breaks if possible.

As to resources - as many have said earlier - leetcode.com this is basically the place to go for problems to practice and there is also really great community. When practicing problems and analyzing answers in the beginning you will find what kind of topics are important and from there you can find more details in the textbooks (it's worth doing that). There is some good content also on Youtube but not all of it is good (despite high number of views and positive comments).

<comment><USER20> > You will need a lot of endurance (both physical and mental) to go through > some of those onsite interviews.

I have gone through some interviews where it is really grueling and mentally taxing. What do you suggest to improve endurance especially mental. It becomes very hard to concentrate on coding after almost 4 hours of interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Glassdoor often has good hints.

Whiteboard sessions focused on algorithms and data structures will probably resemble CS20X college courses.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm interested in the opposite actually. There seems to be a ton of resources online for algorithms but what are some good resources for System Design and scenario based questions? I know of Grok the System Design interview and that's pretty much it.

</comment><comment><USER23> And what would be the prep resources for "system design and scenario based questions"?

<comment><USER24> Mostly experience

<comment><USER23> The same is declared for algo riddles but that's not the case, similarly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are mock interview sites, like Pramp.com, Gianlo.co, PracticeCodingInterview.com that all have staff+ FANG interviewers on rotation. They aren't cheap, but they're there.

</comment><comment><USER26> Leetcode, interviewing.io</comment>


Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-protests-firing/facebook-fires-employee-who-protested-its-inaction-on-trump-tweets-idUSKBN23J35Y <comment><USER2> I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague's silence".

In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opinions, you deserve to be fired.

<comment><USER3> Indeed -- here is some additional context that the article doesn't provide:

The fired employee Tweeted today:

>In the interest of transparency, I was let go for calling out an employee's inaction here on Twitter. I stand by what I said. They didn't give me the chance to quit [0]

He then specifically cited [1] the Tweet in question that was the cause:

>I asked @Vjeux to follow @reactjs's lead and add a statement of support to Recoil's docs and he privately refused, claiming open source shouldn't be political.

>Intentionally not making a statement is already political. Consider that next time you think of Recoil. [2]

This is specifically targeting an individual front-end engineer at FB, which in my own estimation crosses the line from criticism of executives or general policy, to specifically trying to instigate public outrage against a co- worker. If such actions were directed at me, I would definitely consider it as contributing to a hostile work environment. It all strikes me as a modern-day example of "Havel's greengrocer" [3].

[0] [https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680](https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680)

[1] [https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271531477209976832](https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271531477209976832)

[2] [https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057](https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Havel's_greengrocer)

<comment><USER4> Politics should be kept out of the workplace.

<comment><USER5> Normally sure, but when politicians are using your platform (paying you) to further their own narratives, it's fair game.

<comment><USER6> That depends on if you are a platform or a publisher.

<comment><USER5> "I disagree with what this platform I'm working on allows," is a valid statement an employee can bring up and unavoidably political when in reference to political speech or something that is being used to some political end. A section of some arbitrary law from the 90's doesn't define what an employee can be concerned about.

<comment><USER7> That seems like a fine way to state your political stance on the platform. But as has been brought up in other comments and the article, it is not the manner in which the dismissed employee did it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: 'The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that's enough."

"Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, 'Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.'"

"That's not activism. That's not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far. That's easy to do."

\- Barack Obama

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke- ca...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel- culture.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM)

<comment><USER9> There's an important conversation to be had over how activism should operate, in which areas, about what's effective, what turns people off and leaves them hostile, and what measures are justified on what issues, versus what measures are completely disproportionate.

That said, this person stood up for their principles (rightly or wrongly) and lost their job because of it. Your quotation about people "casting stones" in a cavalier way, just to feel good about themselves without it actually risking them anything probably describes a lot of online "woke" flamewars but (to me) doesn't very well characterize what happened here.

<comment><USER10> "He stood up for his principles" is an incorrect abstraction of what happened.

Huge difference between "I'm waving the BLM flag because I believe in it." vs "Hey look everyone, Pryce refused wave the same flag as I do, get the pitchforks!"

The other developer, for all we know, could be in total agreement with BLM!

<comment><USER9> > "He stood up for his principles" is an incorrect abstraction of what > happened.

Absolutely, my phrasing here actually reductive to the point where it doesn't tell us whether he had moral standing to do so - (and that's by design; I actually don't know enough from this article, or others to know whether I agree with his behaviour or not, so I haven't weighed in on that). I'd agree that "standing up for their principles" describes segregationists too- i don't think it tells us who has the right side of an issue.

Whether Dail is right or wrong here is actually irrelevant to my critique above: my intended point was supposed to be:

that the comparison between this person (whose activism at their workplace cost them their job), versus Obama's critique (of people issuing issuing barely-thought-through rebukes online that they aren't invested in), is a pretty unhelpful comparison.

People asserting changes to what is or isn't acceptable in their workplace are absolutely risking blowback for it, and I maintain that's not remotely the same thing as the online brigading / mob justice / cancel-culture conducted by people who can often be trigger-happy as they stand to face no adverse consequences if their critiques are rejected.

I apologise if my phrasing above made this less than clear. It looks to have been interpreted as clearly siding with Dail's position on matters.

\---

EDIT: Your choice of example is also interesting though: "Hey look everyone, Pryce refused wave the same flag as I do, get the pitchforks!" is a clever choice on a BLM-related issue; as regardless of what happens in Dails case, it actually quite well characterizes the President's position (and his support bases position) on kneeling in the NFL -and now other sports-, to the point where he has called for the firing of people who refuse to stand for the anthem (and/or) flag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't expect to agree with Facebook corporate but here I am. It's one thing to privately disagree with a coworker about their action or lack thereof with respect to a contemporary event. But to drag it into a public setting is a severe violation of boundaries and borderline harassment. It's a huge liability risk to FB -- to scold your colleagues in public for their desire to separate the political from the professional is workplace harassment and something that would probably get you fired anywhere.

With that said, I get the sense there is a large part of a story that is not being told here. Where was the manager? Has this employee had a history of maintaining appropriate professional boundaries with respect to communication? If Facebook doesn't have the appropriate paper trail, they could easily be sued for retaliation.

<comment><USER12> > borderline harassment

Possibly personal opinion here, but given the current charged (understatement) political environment and twitter's propensity for "scarlet lettering" people via mob harassment, I don't think this was borderline. This seems like a deliberate attempt to get a large group of people to harass a co-worker because of differing opinions about how and when to communicate political opinions.

<comment><USER11> It would be a personal opinion I share. But there are a lot of details I don't know. A whole range of possibilities I can imagine, from least like to most likely:

\- The former employee may have genuinely thought that a public "conversation" could result in a positive outcome (perhaps believing "sunlight is the best disinfectant")

\- The two may know each other previously - perhaps the former employee may have felt they had more of a mutual level of trust/familiarity than they actually had?

\- The former employee may have been wanting to leave Facebook anyways and (cynically speaking) wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and resign in a high profile manner

\- The former employee may be neurodivergent in some way and have difficulty navigating the subtle boundaries of spaces of privacy that exist along the spectrum of 1:1 to effectively "in public"

\- The former employee, frustrated and angry and activated by the heat of the moment, willfully decided to sic the mob on the other person

Honestly, I don't know this person so it's hard to say. And I do know it is often the case the hindsight is 20/20\. But, I wonder, in this former employee's entire time at Facebook, did their manager ever notice any of these kinds of aspects in that employee's interpersonal interactions or collaboration style? In my experience, hints of these things surface fairly quickly in the workplace, especially during the ramp-up phase or the first time some sort of an adverse situation is encountered, whether it be subpar code, a deadline that doesn't make sense and is hard to change, or a stakeholder that isn't exactly aligned with reality and isn't very easy to get there. If this former employee (consciously or unconsciously) takes such an adversarial approach to conflict resolution with a colleague, one wonders if this was the first time they have ever done that, or merely the first time they ever did this to such a degree.

But who knows. The past few weeks and months have been insane. Many people are seeing more psychological stress and social unrest now than they've seen in their entire lives. A lot of them are not prepared to handle these kinds of situations in a manner they won't regret. It's unfortunate that it has to turn out this way, but on the other hand, this kind of behavior really can't be condoned. It's emotional blackmail.

I really hope this former employee takes to heart a valuable lesson from this, but I have a feeling that the exact opposite will happen; to be fired so publicly, with the humiliation that comes with that, is the perfect accelerant to a radicalization that might already be in progress. I don't know where we go from here.

<comment><USER10> More people should do what you do when judging others.

On your last point: This is what I fear most as well, a permanent radicalization of this individual.

One important principle in management is that you must be extremely careful NEVER to humiliate someone in even the slightest way in front of audience (any meeting >3 people by my book). The mere suggestion that "something didn't go well" can trigger extremely hurt feelings, defensiveness, and antipathy depending on the size of the audience.

Well on the internet, everything occurs in front of potentially infinitely large audience. To admit that you are wrong is to endure humiliation before the whole world. To deal with this, people dig in their heals, and claim that "I was always right, and those who disagree with me are not only wrong and stupid, but evil to the highest degree."

It's heartbreaking watching watching the far left stab their nearest ideological neighbors and most important allies.

<comment><USER12> I will admit that the original comment came off as more judgey than I would have liked. And I completely agree that the firing being so public was not a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Intentionally not making a statement is already political," Dale wrote in > the tweet

No it's not. And this reminds me of the Dictatorship of the small minority [0] from NN Taleb. There are small intolerant minorities who are extremely vocal on certain matters to the point their opinions resemble a dictatorship

[0] [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the- dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship- of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

<comment><USER14> Assuming no mitigating circumstances for not speaking out, it literally is acceptance and tacit perpetuation of the status quo which is most certainly political.

I'm not saying there were no mitigating circumstances nor condoning the person's behavior but they are clearly correct on that specific point.

"It's not the violence of the few that scares me, it's the silence of the many." Martin Luther King, Jr.

<comment><USER15> The mitigating circumstances are the un-nessicary stress and responsibilities of dealing with anyone who doesn't 100% agree with what you're saying. Unfortunately these are pervasive on pretty much any platform you are on, so there's no good way around it.

<comment><USER14> It's pretty necessary to deal with racism. It's life and death, in fact. The fewer who speak out, the more stress for everyone who abrogates their responsibility.

<comment><USER15> You completly ignored everything that I said

<comment><USER14> That's a baseless accusation. I specifically refuted what you said with an argument that even used the words of your own response. To be even more clear, there are no known mitigating circumstances here and your excuses are not mitigating circumstances. See previous comment for argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Disclaimer: I have no opinion whatsoever about what this guy did or didn 't tweet, or whatever the reason may be that he's no longer at Facebook._

That being said, WOW that's some crap reporting: the only source mentioned in the article is what the guy himself wrote on Twitter. From the bottom: "Facebook and Dail did not immediately respond to requests for comment."

Reuters chose to spin that into "Facebook fires employee who..." Come on, a Journalism 101 teacher would go nuts over a student who wrote that headline with no credible sources.

<comment><USER17> i read articles bottom-up for this reason – you'll find whatever shred of facts to be found there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bullying for a good cause is still bullying. It feels like a lot of righteous bullies out there don't want to put in the real effort of changing minds, so they take up their pitchforks in public forums. It's hard work influencing people for the better, it takes a lot of empathy and a lot of patience.

<comment><USER10> I'm starting to wonder whether "for a good cause" is exactly the reason why this is happening. People are mistakenly believing that as long as the ends are just, the means couldn't possibly be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm so over this political posturing. I can't wait for ~2 weeks when everyone's going to go back to their lives like nothing happened (remember #OccupyWallStreet?).

People that actually change the world don't need to advertise it on Twitter. I have friends that volunteer in Watts and Compton every other weekend (and have done so for _years_ ) that don't need to share it on social media. I can't help but think that this current Twitter slacktivism really diminishes their genuine mission.

<comment><USER20> My friend, you may not be aware that there is an election in a few months. This chaos will continue to escalate all summer and into the fall. Then once Trump wins re-election your really gonna see some slacktavism.

<comment><USER21> sky_rw has a good point and the post does not deserve the downvotes.

There very well might be a direct connection between the upcoming election and the protests.

<comment><USER20> :shrug: people are mad because they don't want to admit that that Trump still has a real shot. Or they just assume that anybody who even tables the idea is racissss. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why would this open source project add something specific to the US even if just a banner?

People keep saying slogans like "injustice anywhere..." or silence is complicit ... but they mean just on this US/Western issue?

It seems like brigading people.

<comment><USER23> I think the advocates would agree that it's brigading. They're trying to create a climate where it's simply impossible to be neutral on their issue of choice, since they feel it's wrong to be neutral.

<comment><USER24> They don't have the numbers to impose the authoritarianism they seek (to fully remake things in the way they see fit), so the rampant threats and intimidation are meant to force joining. The best way to accomplish that, is to threaten a person's livelihood, which threatens their ability to exist. They started by just doing social ostracising, social threats of exclusion, and now they've moved on to targeting livelihoods.

Cancel culture is part of this livelihood targeting shift. Behave exactly the way we say, or you're "problematic" and we'll kill your life. And we'll cheer and dance like soulless monsters in the tweet threads while you suffer. It's going to get a lot more aggressive yet, until a line gets drawn by the companies that comply too easily with the cancel demands.

The malignant dictatorship of social media rage in the US is becoming insufferable. It's probably going to require government regulation to stop it.

<comment><USER25> > "The malignant dictatorship of social media rage in the US is becoming > insufferable. It's probably going to require government regulation to stop > it."

you know you can just not tune in, right? it's not coercive in any way, unlike said dictatorship or government regulation. amplification of voice is not a civil right.

<comment><USER21> You can easily find yourself dragged into situation where activists at your workplace demand you sign a letter, or else you will be branded <all kinds of crap>. If you depend on these people in any way, you will be in trouble. And it's the social media that turned your coworkers that way.

These days you don't have to go to social media to find trouble - the social media comes to you.

<comment><USER25> folks just gotta learn how to say no gracefully. it's a useful workplace skill anyway.

as for the branding, you can say no without conceding either side. the target of this twitterer seems to have done it successfully, keeping their job and not conceding either way.

note that i'm not taking sides here either. just making a point about having the fortitude to put social media in its proper place.

further, if you can't take a principled stand under pressure (another useful skill), it might be an indication that the stand isn't principled, or at the very least, you need to find the foundational principles on which to stand.

<comment><USER21> You missed the point. I don't want to take any principled stands. That's not why I came to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The best thing about running your own business is never having to deal with people like this. It's vastly under appreciated equity.

<comment><USER21> Depends on who are your customers, and how easily are they swayed with a twitstorm.

<comment><USER26> Quite. Plenty of people who've had their small businesses targeted by various social media bandwagons for non-business reasons in the past few years.

<comment><USER20> Sadly a valid point. However, I would submit that as a business you are less susceptible to the "silence is violence" attack than an individual would be. But who knows, the times they are a-changin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Open source shouldn't be political

The more times you can bring people of different opinions and beliefs together, the more good can be done in the world.

The activists of today just divide people, and cause more net pain in the world than the moderates.

Deep down I think these kinds of divisive activists are actually just fighting their own personal deamons and need a way to vent their anger, because their real personal problems in life are unchangeable.

</comment><comment><USER28> The actual tweet for anyone who tried to go to the source material and found it protected.

[http://archive.is/QBw9h](http://archive.is/QBw9h)

He publicly criticized a co-worker and when that co-worker tried to discuss it privately, he publicly criticized him again.

<comment><USER29> Open Source should not be politicized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would have fired the guy as well. He was harassing colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well world has not really changed in thousand years. is it? If one can't sign letter to believe in one true God/Kind, they deserve to die.

</comment><comment><USER32> The workplace is not a soapbox for personal political opinion. I'm surprised Facebook hasn't taken a harsher stance on employees publicly criticizing their leadership. It takes a special level of entitlement to be able to expect to represent oneself publicly as an employee of a company and criticize it…and not face disciplining by the company. It's a clear fireable offense. If I were leadership, I would make that clear and take the necessary steps to terminate each employee who violates that policy,

</comment><comment><USER33> In general this is such a mess. Every four years these topics are framed in a such a divisive manner that the end result is that it rips friends, families and communities apart. I really loathe these times and it's becoming harder to avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, talk about being a dick. "Intentionally not making a statement is already political." I am really curious, are these types of persons not able to see their own hypocrisy?

</comment><comment><USER35> There isn't a lot of information, for what it's worth I would be interested in how "public" his confrontation was, depending on that this could be more of a knee-jerk "this person is yikes" vs. sinister "don't stray from the party line"

<comment><USER36> Extremely public: [https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057](https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057) \- so public in fact, he brought the private messages out publicly as well.

<comment><USER35> As much as I want to be sympathetic, if I was his co-worker I would feel very publicly harassed especially when the co-worker explicitly was conferring to him privately.

Sure shame the monolith that is FB, I would even say shame Zuckerberg he controls the place. But don't shame a fellow engineer who you work with, he didn't have any say in what FB was doing.

Also long term ineffective, if you promote a culture of shaming private conversations, then nothing happens because no one talks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Setting all the drama aside he was fired for harassing a coworker. The news article's headline is misleading.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm a bit disappointed at articles like this, that IMO really don't reflect what I'm seeing...

What I'm seeing is a lot of internal discussions, a lot of people challenging execs, a lot of people changing their profile pictures, etc.

Politics are always going to be a dividing subject, and I find it quite remarkable that we are all able to debate about these topics, and are even encouraged to do so. Sure, not everyone agree with some of the decisions the company is taking, but you gotta respect the transparency and the willingness to explain and discuss these decisions.

I don't think many companies would allow people to do this, and they would also probably get rid of people sharing too much.

</comment><comment><USER39> He probably did more than that in which he was doing a lot more to show his displeasure, not that I'm disagreeing but you don't just raise your hand and they fire you

</comment><comment><USER40> >Dail said the tweet that prompted his firing, which he sent the day after that walkout, scolded a fellow engineer for declining to add a statement of support to developer documents he was publishing.

>"Intentionally not making a statement is already political," Dail wrote in the tweet.

Yeah good riddance, imagine FORCING someone to say _anything_. And you twitter clowns are the good guys? Hardly.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have no problem with this. If Facebook is a private company that could use its monopoly power to censor people and ban them arbitrarily, certainly it is a private company with the power to end relationships with employees who disrespect and harass their colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Trump's posts included the racially charged phrase "when the looting starts, > the shooting starts"

How is that racially charged?

<comment><USER43> It's a quote said in 1967 by Miami police Chief Walter Headley who was talking about how he will respond to protests against the police. For context, he also said he was against "young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality"

The Chief got the phrase from the guy who used firehoses and dogs against children during the Birmingham, AL protests.

<comment><USER44> If you read "young hoodlums" and think of certain race maybe it's your own bias shining through. Where I grew up on Ohio the kids I considered "young hoodlums" didn't happen to be any specific race

<comment><USER45> From context, it's pretty clear who he is talking about.

<comment><USER46> Oh I see. Well if it's "pretty clear" then I guess that's it then, discussion over.

<comment><USER43> No, no, I'm sure you have a valid point here. In addition, the people that talk about the (((globalists))) could really be talking about absolutely ANY ethnic group at all and making inferences based on the speaker's past language and behavior and overt, documented, racism would be entirely silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How could Facebook have action on Trump tweets? I don't understand the title.

</comment><comment><USER48> > Facebook fires employee who protested its inaction on Trump tweets

Why should _facebook_ act on Trump _tweets_?

<comment><USER49> Twitter de-emphasized one because it violated their policy by advocating violence, and added a fact check to another that was blatantly and verifiably false. Neither was removed completely. Zuckerberg specifically said Facebook would do nothing of the sort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Maybe the title should be "...employee who was a jerk" [but also protested Facebook's inaction on Trump tweets]

</comment><comment><USER51> Not a single comment in this thread supports the employee.

<comment><USER52> Sorry, too busy writing down everyone who doesn't think "silence is complicity" just in case their resume comes by my desk someday.

<comment><USER51> HN crowd has lost my respect. Not from this instance alone. But as a culmination of years of inaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> CA Labor Code section 1102 seems to prohibit firing employees for political activity:

"No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."

Perhaps publicly criticizing the company you work for does not qualify as a political activity? But expressing support for or opposition to a candidate, law, or public policy presumably would. A company would presumably not be able to fire you for attending or expressing support for a protest or political rally.

<comment><USER53> Harassing a coworker on Twitter is not political activity.

<comment><USER54> Completely disagree, you're spinning a narrative by leaving out context, and the original tweeter labeled it as political too.. so they disagree as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> So here's a nuanced view I'm sure will get downvoted into the ground: both FB and the employee were right, but along different dimensions, and this outcome was not only inevitable, but desirable.

The employee, as a white male in tech, is absolutely morally right to use his privilege to call out other powerful white males for their silence.

And make no mistake, silence is complicity. Many smart philosophers have written about this, see MLK Jr. or Maya Angelou for more.

This is the core of being an ally. Use your privilege to make the hard ask from your peers that a less privileged person, who is decidedly not a peer, cannot.

FB, on the other hand, is also right in a different sense, to maintain internal expectations that singling out colleagues with your political opinion in public is ineffective at best and toxic harassment at worst. FB are signalling to the rest of their employees what behavior they will not tolerate.

In the end, this employee leveraged awareness several orders of magnitude more than had he not been fired (and will likely easily find a new job) and FB protected whatever they believe their culture to be (and whatever other HR lawsuits they believed themselves to be at risk for).

<comment><USER56> I want to push against this silence is complicity mindset.

Looking at your profile, I can point out countless atrocities that you don't explicitly denounce. Do I see you upset about how Israel has amped up its program of settler colonialism in Palestine in the past few weeks? How the PRC is running literal concentration camps in Xinjiang? Or, moving along to the USA, how men have extraordinarily high suicide rates? Or how the elderly are being sacrificed at the altar of economic growth in the midst of COVID-19? Or, thinking long term, the tens of millions of people who will die because of climate change?

I don't. And, for what it's worth, I wouldn't be surprised if you have "correct" points of view on all of those. But you're still being complicit in deprioritizing those things and prioritizing your own set of causes, at the expense of human lives. And if you're indeed complicit in a conspiracy of silence on them, you've got blood on your hands.

Brandon Dail was demanding someone add some kind of explicit support for BLM to a Github repo. Where does that stop? I can think of hundreds of very worthy causes that need more publicizing. Is what we ultimately need some long list of evils that every open source project needs to denounce before right- thinking people can choose to use them? And, if you choose to use e.g. Linux, can I denounce you for choosing to use software that is complicit in a conspiracy to terminate black men's lives?

People can prioritize and take action on different causes in whatever way they want to. It's fine to ask individuals to reprioritize, but you're not entitled to anything. And, tactically speaking, ever-increasing stridency of tone and denunciation of imagined enemies is not an effective way to gather support for a cause.

<comment><USER55> I don't have a platform the size that the recoil author has.

That's the difference.

<comment><USER57> So where it does it start and where does it end?

What threshold must you cross (in terms of platform size) for silence to equal complicity? Since it apparently doesn't apply to you, but it does apply to a GitHub repo.

Once you've made up your imaginary platform size threshold, which movements must people not be silent on, lest they find themselves complicit through silence? Is it ALL political movements? Those READMEs are gonna get pretty long if so. Is it only the "most important political issue at the moment" that needs to be voiced? Who decides what the most pressing issue is? Is there some sort of vote going on that I don't know about? When is it OK to start being silent again? If he puts up a BLM message in his repo and then takes it down the next day, is that OK? Or does he need to keep it in there forever (because presumably Black Lives always Matter, so he should keep it in there indefinitely, right?)

There are way, way too many things going on for silence to mean complicity.

Take any other humanitarian crisis, and ask yourself if anyone silent must be complicit. Think about it for a second. It's just not true. If someone in Germany were to not speak out against the Nazis rounding up Jews, but at the same time was hiding Jews in their basement, would that person be "complicit" in the Nazis crimes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Facebook: hardcore about unlimited freedom of speech, unless you want to unionize.

Then you can fuck right the fuck off.

[https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace- union...](https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-unionize/)

<comment><USER59> This is misleading as well. They aren't autoblocking word "unionize" in their Facebook Workplace product. They give customers (employers who purchase this product) the ability to block any arbitrary word they want. And as an example, they brought up word "unionize".

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> He shouldn't have been fired I think, but he also shouldn't be a tattle-tale against his co-workers. We need solidarity with our co-workers + an end to at- will employment.

Relatedly (but not specific to this situation), if we had stronger employment guarantees people probably wouldn't taddle to try to get people fired as much. Win-win-win all around.

<comment><USER61> Solidarity is important but how can you get there if coworkers harass each other publicly?</comment></comment>


Jwz ports Dali Clock to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/javascript/

<comment><USER2> If you're wondering why the "Orientation" control doesn't work, it seems it's using WebKit-specific CSS.

I'd always wondered where DaliClock got its fonts from, but apparently it's just got a hard-coded list of character segments.

A few years ago I figured out how DaliClock's might work in a shower-epiphany, and bundled together an experimental implementation in Python with the PyGame graphics library:

        http://zork.net/~st/pydalitext.py

...there's a bunch of stuff I could have done to make the morphing even more smooth, or to more intelligently decide how to add and remove segments to a character's scanline during a morph, but I'm satisfied with the effect I got.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is his extraction of the JavaScript code from his Dali Clock port to the Palm Pre, which uses WebKit.

jwz writes about the Palm port here: <http://jwz.livejournal.com/1057786.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=676000>)</comment>


If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/05/if-the-message-is-important-it-will-find-me.html

<comment><USER2> I'm all for managing "message overload" and there are plenty of ways to do it.

However, the door swings both ways ... if you're gonna ignore people you no longer have a right to expect replies to your emails/msgs

<comment><USER3> > if you're gonna ignore people you no longer have a right to expect replies > to your emails/msgs

Wilson asked me (personally) to tell him the product of one of his portfolio companies would work for an application that I was designing. I spent a fair amount of time looking at said product after it became clear that I wasn't going to use it so I could write up a reasonably comprehensive discussion. Yup, I spent more time.

I sent this writeup to him by e-mail and he never bothered to respond.

<comment><USER4> I introduced some of my friends doing a company to Fred, and had one of the CEOs of a current Union Square investment (that is doing well) also recommend them by email. He said to me he would meet with them, and never emailed them back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've tried taking this attitude in the past, but it only works if you have a well developed social circle with friends and colleagues who have a good estimate of what you think is important. Otherwise, you suffer from two disadvantages from the philosophy...

1) Information that gets to you will be filtered by an "importance guesstimate." Some information will not reach you, because your social circle will regard the info as useless, irrelevant, or "impolite." This last one is dangerous, because such information is the kind this disproves the axiom "What you don't know can't hurt you."

2) People in your social circle may have a higher view of their own judgment that they do of yours, even if they correctly know what's important to you. Therefore, you will sometimes get information you DON'T want and waste your time because your friends and associates will have their own agendas to push in providing extra info to you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Marketers have been dealing with increasingly-"deaf" audience for ages now. This is just a high profile example of it, but it's not new nor revolutionary: it's part of the trend.

</comment><comment><USER7> loudness != importance</comment>


AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities - <AUTHOR> http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/angelhack-accelerator <comment><USER2> I don't care that the founder is spamming social media to get this bumped up. I care about them taking an equity stake in your company.

I would give a warning to anybody who reads this thread in the future and is seriously considering giving these guys shares. In a word: don't.

Their team has no history of successful exits and no members with technical talent that can be taken seriously; they are not going to help you build a company. Their "connections" are limited to the B-list of Silicon Valley. It's not clear that their founder can even write code.

Contrast this with the team at Y-Combinator.

Quality of accelerators are a power law that skews so far in the direction of YC that even attending the incubator in second place is a signal that you didn't get YC; Peter Thiel mentioned this in one of his lectures. It's not to say that you won't be successful if you don't do YC, it's to say that it's difficult to the value added by their "Accelerator" is greater than what you give up in exchange.

Once again, make your own decision by talking to them. They may change in the future, but you may also find them equally unimpressive.

<comment><USER3> The founder of AngelHack can't code. Technical founders should avoid AngelHack on this basis alone.

<comment><USER4> Hi SCC!

You are correct, I can't code (yet!). But all my best friends are coders and I think on the same wave-length. Starting this year we'll be building out a network of code schools, which I hope to participate in. In the meantime, I'm happy adding value to your community wherever I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I participated in AngelHack 2012, placing in the top two in my city, and competing in SF. Although it wasn't terrible, and I did have a lot of fun (turns out I love SF!), I found the competition to be disorganized and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I won't be competing again. A few things that stick out:

* Inconsistent WiFi for duration of competition (in our home city)

* Aggressive event staff (also in our home city)

* No write-ups about our team, or mention of us anywhere at all, even though we were finalists -- remember that this competition is for us too guys! We wanted some recognition.

* Slowness in getting paid back for plane tickets (required reminders)

* A "mentor" who forgot about meetings (completely stood us up), and was difficult to set up meetings with in the first place

* The overall feeling that we were being taken advantage of...just a feeling mind you, but if I felt this way in a contest, I wouldn't be surprised to feel that way if I took their money

Take it with a grain of salt. One man's experience. They could be great for all I know.

<comment><USER4> Hi Thrown,

This is Greg from AngelHack. Everything you said is valid and I thank you for your feedback. We'll organize over 100 hackathons this year and while we work with venues for 8 weeks to ensure they're up to speed, train organizers on weekly calls, and oversee that everything is A-grade, we still have some problems. We've scaled fast, re-placed organizers that weren't top notch, and cut ties with venues that couldn't handle Wi-Fi caps that they promised us they could. We're a startup, and like any startup, we move fast and cut the shit out of the way as soon as it forms.

What you went through last summer was the first iteration of our pre- accelerator. We knew there would be holes and we knew the only way to truly understand it was to do it. We took no equity from your class because we wanted to make sure we added enough value first. At this point we're confident that we are.

We've built a new system for identifying good mentors, following up with them, and have hired 2 new members to oversee things for you. Sorry you had to be a guinea pig, but you lost nothing in the process and got a free trip out to Silicon Valley and the chance to show top VC's your work...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't really looked into AngelHack and they may have nothing to do with this, but all these shill accounts really casts them in a negative light.

<comment><USER4> Hi Error,

This is Greg from AngelHack. We have nothing to do with said "shell" accounts, nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts. We offered our community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes (our definition of a successful product launch).

There was no incentive to vote more than once. But like with any community, we have our more passionate users that go above and beyond to try and help us succeed. It looks like that is what's happening here.

<comment><USER7> "nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts" vs "We offered our community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes"

Cognitive dissonance much?

<comment><USER4> Salsa, the offer was to receive a free ticket with your upvote. There was no incentive to vote more than once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not to be the pessimist out of this batch of comments, but the accelerator sounds less promising than I would have expected from AngelHack. I have to imagine they have enough money to at least provide housing and living expenses for the teams they choose so the teams can be in one centralized location. The mentorship will probably have less value when the teams cannot meet in person and there is of course the lost networking aspect as well.

Although they do provide a chance for the startups to pitch in the final two weeks in SF, it seems that this accelerator, even if not formed with this intention, will be more of a feeder to the bigger and more established ones like YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, etc.

<comment><USER4> Hi aashay, you are completely correct, we are designed to be a feeder system into other accelerators! We're not trying to re-invent the wheel here, only help great teams prepare for getting into them. We should have branded this more as a pre-accelerator to be honest (any PR people out there looking for a job?)

For 12 weeks of mentorship, 2 weeks in SF, all our connections, help getting into "legit" programs, tickets to Disrupt, and potentially a booth at Disrupt, we take 2%. That makes us sustainable, which is all we're trying to do. We pay for everything out of our own pocket. AngelHack is a bootstrapped company that has scrappily built out our communities around the world without the help of organizations like Kauffman, that could give us the funding to allow us to pay for everyone to stay longer.

No doubt, there is a better way things can be done. But with our current resources, our goals are to do what we can to provide the most value to the community in a sustainable way.

<comment><USER8> Sounds good, thanks for the clarification! And yep, only suggestion is to brand your accelerator as a 'warmup'...this way, it will appeal to college students such as myself; we don't necessarily have to leave school but we can still work on it and have a better idea of what we want to do at the end of the 14 weeks. Thanks again, though, and all the best!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AngelHack is the right thing to do and the tasty way to do it!

A+++ Accelerator, would accelerate again!

AngelHack is a totally legit thing and would never stoop to astroturfing Hacker News!

<comment><USER4> Hi this is Greg from AngelHack. I'm not sure if someone posted that or if that's just your personal comment. If you're interested, we act more as a pre- accelerator, designed to get people ready for incubators like Y-Combinator, TechStars, or AngelPad. We've helped teams make connections before and we've built this out so we can continue to help teams. We're doing our part in the larger eco-system, should you ever need our help we'll be there for you to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went to the AngelHack 2012 London and it was good fun.

Contrary to other people's experiences, the logistics were pretty awesome - for example, despite the fact there were more people at a hackathon than I'd ever seen before, the WiFi held up.

It's worth commenting that I'm not a startup/business guy - I went along to play with cool technology and we ended up building an augmented reality app. Out of 50+ teams, we got an honorable mention (after the 3 top teams).

Probably due to the startup focus, it generally felt as though the teams were more looking at solving business problems with creative uses of existing technology than building new technology.

The only disappointing part of the weekend for me was that the presentations went on WAY too long. There was supposed to be a 2 minute limit, but some people spoke for 10+! Multiply that by 50+ teams and I was almost falling asleep by the end (having not slept the rest of the weekend).

But I'd definitely recommend it, and will go again.

<comment><USER4> Hi Maffy, glad you had a great time. We're working on the 2 minute limit rule and some creative ways to speed up demos. We hate ushering people off-stage when they've worked so hard and yammer about on the demo... alas it is something we need to do though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've participated in many hackathons, AngelHack has been one of the better ones, that said don't be surprised if there is disorganization and confusion. They have been getting better and providing better food.

Primary reason to attend, working with sponsors. In the past AngleHack has been good at bringing good sponsors/api vendors so its a good opportunity to engage with SAAS, PAAS and APIs.

Its about hacking in a short period of time, so overall a fun environment. Also a good opportunity to connect with others, but don't expect to build a team for your idea, bring a team with developers if you expect to get something done.

Too early to say about their just launched accelerator.

(Their "Upvote us..." is lame, and not in the spirit of quality comments)

</comment><comment><USER12> I participated in AngelHack 2012 DC. It was at the Microsoft building. It was a fun time. The projects were mostly complete crap, but it was fun.

Here is hoping they are not lying about giving free tickets to the first 200 upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was one of the 4 finalists from AngelHack Silicon Valley in fall 2012 and I just gotta say, it was awesome! The AngelHack hackathon had a great focus on building (not as much biz/dev/designer)

It's an opportunity that keeps giving. I don't think I would have been able to get a tour at Facebook and network with a lot of people had it not been for winning/attending AngelHack.

Being from the bay area it's easy to forget how much opportunities there are here in respect to other cities. I can't really think of many opportunities that enable builders from around the world to come to the bay area and pitch their ideas to VCs and see what life is like here (they get flown out here for free if they win their city hackathon).

AngelHack++

</comment><comment><USER14> I did 2nd on AngelHack Paris on last december, really great and inspirational event! The best hackathon for sure.

</comment><comment><USER15> Angelhacks events are often better-organized than most.

</comment><comment><USER16> AngelHack London Nov 2012 was so inspirational that even if it hadn't produced two WW Finals Winners (Osper & Testlio)it would still have been the most important hackathon in London last year

</comment><comment><USER17> I participated last year on AngelHack in Silicon Valley and it was just a great experience. There were crazy and amazing ideas, and the startup energy during the whole event is just inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER18> AngelHack is in such a great position to do this. Can't wait to see the startups that they churn out!

</comment><comment><USER19> AngelHack was one of the best tech events of the year! Looking forward to the next one :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Very excited about this .... AngelHack is awesome :-)

Greg and everyone on his team are great people

Ash

</comment><comment><USER21> Go angelhack team!

<comment><USER22> Jay, come the the one in Atlanta this year! You can crash in my spare bedroom. AngelHack Atlanta is going to be awesome (although I'm a bit biased...)

<comment><USER21> Cannot describe how tempted I am to do this.

<comment><USER18> do it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> we worked with greg + team on the la version of angelhack and greatly support his new endeavor! really impressive team whos bound to do great things in the startup space.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know the promo code for the free ticket to NYC?

</comment><comment><USER25> Attended Angel Hack last year and had a great time!

</comment><comment><USER26> Incredibly awesome. I have been waiting for this!

</comment><comment><USER24> Great concept. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great job

</comment><comment><USER28> Awesome, can't wait for it!

</comment><comment><USER29> Really Nice!

</comment><comment><USER30> looking forward to it!

</comment><comment><USER31> go go

</comment><comment><USER32> Protip to whoever is making these sock-puppet accounts and posting on this thread: the username appears green for 'newbie' accounts.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419344>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419584>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419949>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419882>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419948>

<comment><USER28> Protip? One of the posts was mine. Actually, might have been two because of a messed up registration attempt. I don't know what's a sock-puppet account, but I was going for the angelhack tickets.

<comment><USER9> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)>

      but I was going for the angelhack tickets

Then you were basically acting as AngelHack's sock puppet.

Even if you don't work for them and had positive intentions, their ticket giveaway promise is (IMO) a pretty cheap stunty way to turk sock puppets on sites that would otherwise automatically detect sock-puppeting based on IPs or similar.

Pro-Tip for AngelHack -- not really a good call on this one. Next time you should just approach a Hacker News poster used to the ins and outs of the site to craft a quality astroturf post for you. Quantity over quality doesn't really fly here. If tptacek isn't available, I can be bought at very discounted rates.

<comment><USER28> "Then you were basically acting as AngelHack's sock puppet."

So then, if I didn't have a green color on my account name, I'm not a sock- puppet?

Or are you saying that you disapprove of upvoting for a ticket?

Just asking, since I don't know the ins and outs of this site. I just read the headlines and jump to the articles. I don't read the comments or make posts.

<comment><USER9> The fact that you have a green name as an individual means nothing, just that you have a new account. But a bunch of green name posts to a single thread here creates a pattern that looks like a single user or group of users creating throw away accounts in order to spark fake conversation about something.

In this case, things weren't quite so clear cut, it seems like it was actually a bunch of individual users all trying to take advantage of a lottery that a third party had slyly set up so they didn't have to do their own sock puppeting, but the end result is basically the same -- a bunch of useless fluff posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Follow Team – Great Teams to Follow on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://followteam.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built Follow Team because the idea kept nagging me because I wanted to use it, but it didn't exist.

As a big fan of Twitter I'm always looking out for great people to follow. When I come across a new product or startup I often think it would be great to follow the team behind it. Unfortunately this is harder todo than it should be.

</comment><comment><USER2> I love this idea! I'm always trying to follow all the people that create a great product, and this makes it so much easier. Awesome job once again Mubs!

</comment><comment><USER3> this is awesome great work Mubs!</comment>


Did we accidentally allow tardigrades to colonize the Moon? - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/61881-tardigrades-spilled-on-moon <comment><USER2> No way, unless we flood it. Colonize implies a sustain and grow mode. Tardigrades tossed into a vacuum would dessicate and dry because they did not have the time needed to form their survival state. Tardigrades gradually immersed in a vacuum (days) would have time to shut down all processes and dry out. In the dried out state in a vacuum they would survive for a while ? They resist heat and UV to a degree. How long? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade)</comment>


Half-Life Alyx Announcement Trailer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W0N3uKXmo <comment><AUTHOR> If the gaming experience is similar to what the trailer shows, this would be the closest to what a VR killer app should be</comment>


How to stop Apple spying on your Yosemite searches - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-10/21/apple-spies-on-yosemite-searches <comment><USER2> This headline annoys me no end. Does wired think that there's an Apple employee scrolling through your searches and making a note of anything interesting?</comment>


You have the power to put the Jetpacks on Firefox; Extensions 2.0? - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/jetpack-extensions <comment><USER2> It seems like their time would have been better spent forking and improving Greasemonkey, if they thought it wasn't user-friendly enough or whatever, instead of re-doing everything.

As I recall, there were significant problems with Greasemonkey's original approach of leaving privileged user scripts in the global namespace while untrusted scripts from the web execute, since it could wrap objects user scripts would later call, potentially turning any normal function call into a state-stealing XMLHttpReq. From a quick read of the jetpack site, it appears that user code does indeed remain accessible while untrusted code executes (since the jetpack.tabs object is noted to be "live"). I wonder how they deal with that problem of hostile-wrapped objects? [Edited for detail and clarity]

<comment><USER2> I see a mention of what differentiates Jetpack:

 _No, that's not correct. Jetpack has access to the browser chrome - that is, the stuff surrounding the page you're viewing - with simplifying APIs wrapping the more complex native APIs add-on developers usually deal with._

 _This is about more easily authoring Firefox add-ons, not just tweaking page content._ [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/strap-in-mozillas- jetpa...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/strap-in-mozillas-jetpack-may- be-the-next-step-in-browser-extensions/#comment-2758706) [Edit: citation]

I still think adding that to Greasemonkey would have been more productive. It sounds like Jetpack users run Firebug just like Greasemonkey users do, so I don't see the added value.</comment></comment>


Comcast tries to censor pro-net neutrality website calling for investigation - <AUTHOR> https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2017-05-23-comcast-tries-to-censor-pro-net-neutrality-website/ <comment><USER2> The headline is a lie. They did not try to censor this website. They sent a cease and desist order to someone who registered a domain with the word "Comcast" in it. They're protecting their trademark. Anybody registering a domain such as this, regardless of content, would receive a similar letter.

The author is clearly trying to manufacture a controversy to promote their political beliefs.

<comment><USER3> Substring inclusion doesn't equate to infringement. I think you are a bit off base with your accusations against the author.

<comment><USER2> Go and register CocaColarky.com, put up a site about how much Coca Cola sucks, and tell me how that works out for you in court.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for a perfect example.

Do you propose that everyone should behave as if they fear being taken to court for frivolous suits? Coca Cola has a specific bar to meet if their claims will succeed. They're entitled to exclusive use of the term as trade dress (they own trademarks around it) but they do not control every use of the word, especially in reference or outside their market.

So I'll ask: What do you think should happen in court?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: MBP to Surface Book experiences? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering making this transition and wondering what you experience was like. Pros and cons. <comment><USER2> The touchpad on the Surface Book is nowhere near as good as the Macbook's, especially the newer models. It will occasionally register my single finger left click as right click while I never had that issue on OS X which is a bit aggravating.

The dev environment on Windows still isn't as good as OS X + homebrew, but it's getting better. I'm tempted just to run a virtual machine or SSH into a a DigitalOcean box as my dev environment, however most Windows terminals are a little disappointing (looking for suggestions!).

On the plus side, the touchscreen and being able to pop out the top into tablet mode is pretty amazing. I also really enjoy the pen for drawing, taking notes, or e-signing PDFs.

It's definitely the best Windows laptop I've used, but I'm still not sure if Windows can compete with OS X for development. Maybe when Ubuntu on Windows gets better...</comment>


Labrepl: Follow along with the Clojure Studio from Hickey and Halloway - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/relevance/labrepl

<comment><USER2> What is labrepl? The project page talks about when it will be released but does not mention what it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Labrepl is a suite of exploratory Clojure test projects designed to be used in a classroom setting, specifically the $1800 3 day Clojure Studio. Clojure Studio was taught last week by language creator Rich Hickey and _Programming Clojure_ author Stuart Halloway. [1]

Downloading and building labrepl will get you a guided tour of Clojure examples that you can read through your browser and test on your local machine.

[1] <http://pragmaticstudio.com/clojure></comment></comment>


Deep-CAPTCHA: a deep learning based CAPTCHA solver for vulnerability assessment - <AUTHOR> https://paperswithcode.com/paper/deep-captcha-a-deep-learning-based-captcha <comment><AUTHOR> I reached out to Dr. Rezaei, and the PhD (candidate?) he is advisor to, Zahra Noury, wrote the code. His GitHub is linked, but hers is not, so I have included both, for your convenience.

[https://github.com/zaraanry/CAPTCHA- Solver](https://github.com/zaraanry/CAPTCHA-Solver)

[https://github.com/DrMahdiRezaei/Deep- CAPTCHA](https://github.com/DrMahdiRezaei/Deep-CAPTCHA)</comment>


Facebook Video Launches: YouTube Beware! - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/05/24/facebook-video-launches/ <comment><AUTHOR> Poor vimeo, this could be troublesome for them.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do with my geektrail.com domain? - <AUTHOR>

Not sure why, but for some reason I bought geektrail.com years ago and never used it for anything.
So my options are:
1. sell it.
2. cancel it.
3. come up with something cool, that would fit the domainname.
I really like option 3, so what kind of website would you hope to see when visiting geektrail.com? <comment><USER2> My first thought was a 4square like site with "geeky categories" for check- ins. You get more points the geekier your check-in is. A large national museum gets you some points, a local museum gets you more. Same with big city vs small rural book stores or comic shops.

Tech stores get you a few points, locally ran places, the type with computers lying open everywhere get you more.

Also worth points, corporate headquarters, conventions, and libraries.

Or, go deeper. Do this with a browser plug-in, and count websites people visit, and length of time spent there. Yes, game analytics. Sell the data anonymously. Spending time reading Wikipedia is one thing, spending it logged into GitHub is another. Rack up geek points for the above mentioned categories too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it, but my first concern with this would be privacy.

On the other hand, something like this seems to exist already: <http://social.wakoopa.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A travel deals site for people wanting to tour silicon valley historical sites? hook it up with tours of companies hq's combined with lecture series and exclusive resort packages.

<comment><USER2> I like this idea. Maybe even things like Jonothan Coulton's cruises and conventions. A full fledged travel agent for the like minded. Or hire one and you just do the site and take a cut. Also have a kids section where you list youth tech summer camps or space camps, etc. The premier geek getaway site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Healthy trail mix delivery service for geeks to keep them energized for late night coding sessions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I want to see the street view of all the geekiest places on the planet in one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is what you're looking for: <http://www.geek-maps.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The path of the True Geek" comes to mind. You can be serious or tongue in cheek, your choice (though my spiritual views and my sense of humor are intimately intertwined).

</comment><comment><USER7> tours for startups/founders</comment>


Ask HN: Once you open source, can you take it back? - <AUTHOR>

My question is whether or not it is legal to un-open-source a project after others have contributed to it.  Can the 'owner' of an open-source project (the individual who holds copyright, and set the license) take the code after years of open source development and start a company with it?  The company does not follow the previous license (GPL) of the code that it is clearly building upon and only sells the project with expensive licenses.
At first I thought that it's his project, if he wants to un-open-source it, I guess he can.  But then I considered the contributions that others have made to the project.  Can he un-open-source those?  Don't the contributors have some level of expectation that the code they contribute will remain under the license they contribute it with?  I don't want someone else profiting off my contributions 3 years from now.
Thoughts?
--asked during a recent open source software class <comment><USER2> I am not a lawyer.

But my understanding is that the copyright holders have the right to change the license.

Once people contribute to the project, they, too, are copyright holders. If a contributor does not approve of the change to the license, he or she should have the ability to remove his contributions from the product (or otherwise relinquish copyright) before it is forked.

In addition, anyone is free to fork from the last "free" version, which could cause its own problems for you. The free software community could decide that they much prefer the free version, significantly enhance that fork, and leave your commercial product looking dull and not worth the money.

<comment><USER3> _But my understanding is that the copyright holders have the right to change the license._

To clarify, the copyright holders have the right to _relicense their work under a new license_. This does not mean that old versions cease to be licensed under the old license -- works can be simultaneously available under several licenses, in which case people can decide which license to take advantage of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes and no.

Let's say I put something under the GPL and you download the source. Later, I regret that and don't allow more people to download the source. You (as someone who has downloaded it) can still forever use, transmit, etc. it under the GPL. So, people that want a copy of the source can get it from you even if they can't get it from me - and there is absolutely nothing that mandates I continue to give out the source if it's mine. I then add to it and make a cool Project 2.0 that's closed only and based off that old GPL code. That's perfectly fine.

However, let's say that I took some GPL code, modified it and distributed it. Now the codebase isn't all my code - it's also partly one or many other people's code. I can stop distributing it all together, but I can't distribute it and not the source code. BUT, what if part of my 2.0 closed source version development was eliminating all the GPL code from it! Then I can make it closed.

Basically, if the copyright is _your_ copyright, you have free range. You can't take away the rights of someone who already has the code under the GPL, but you can stop the GPL thing from going forward (unless the community builds a better fork off your old GPL code). However, if you're using other people's code in your program, you're stuck with the GPL unless you can get the authors of the other code to exempt you.

So, he can't un-open-source the contributions of the other people, but he could replace them. One of the flaws in the GPL is that you have to wait for one of the author's whose copyright is infringed to sue. Courts have sometimes held that intended third party beneficiaries have standing, but that's a lot more murky since you're then claiming that the original author created something for your benefit that an intermediary is stopping you from using.

<comment><USER5> IANAL, but even if you eliminated all of the GPL'd code from your codebase, there's a possibility that some of your code could be a derivative work of the eliminated code, setting you up for copyright issues.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design> might be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _At first I thought that it's his project, if he wants to un-open-source it, I guess he can. But then I considered the contributions that others have made to the project. Can he un-open-source those?_

No, but many companies (and the FSF) demand that contributors assign copyright to any open source contributions they make. Sometimes they make excuses about how owning copyright in all the code makes it easier for them to go after license infringers, but that's just an excuse; what they really want is the ability to relicense contributors' work in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't believe un-open source is a concept that can exist under past versions of the GPL. If you read the GPL, it has no time limit on the license. And the contract also has no termination conditions except for one (which the people downloading/modifying the program control).

Therefore, it appears an old version GPL license is a neverending license without a way for the original person to end it. So no, he cannot open-source any of it, even his own original work. He can stop distributing it, but since he gave a license to others to distribute it, they can just distribute the original. And unless they break the one term of the license, he cannot stop that.

Clearly, this is where you run into the concept of the GPL. It was meant to ensure that original works of software would always be available to use and modify. "Always available" are the key words. He is out of luck.

The new GPL (v.3) appears to grant a license for the term of copyright. Not sure what that means. But, it also gives a license to someone you distribute the work to from the orignal copyright holder. To me, this means if you try to distribute a project with someone else's modifications, the person receiving the project gets a GPL license on those modifications, not your expensive license. Since the original work can also be distributed, essentially this means the whole thing can't be un-open-sourced.

Basically, the only thing I think he can do it make his own modifications, and release those for a fee. He cannot stop anyone from releasing the original or the original with others modifications.

</comment><comment><USER7> you would have to fork it, or build something on top of it the OS version.

there are a lot of companies that have an OS version of something, and then a premium version, which consists basically of proprietary scripts and upgrades that hook into the OS version and improve it. they're not touching the actual OS package itself, but selling something on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you own the copyright to the whole project (because all the other contributors assigned copyright in their contributions to you) you can presumably distribute it under any licence you want. But you can't prevent other people continuing to distribute it under the GPL.

If (as seems more likely) the other contributors still hold the copyright to their own contributions, your only rights to their code are those granted under the GPL, so you couldn't distribute it under any other terms.

At any rate, those are my thoughts, but IANAL.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, Jive Software did this. I was working for another company at the time and a colleague and I provided several enhancements to their codebase. However, before they would accept them we needed to get our boss to sign a document assigning all our work on their code back to them.

A few months later, they announced they were taking their code in-house and leaving the open-source stuff for anyone to fork.

BTW, above colleague also left to work for Jive - I believe he's still with them several years later.</comment>


Are modern DIYers just play acting? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/01/the_foxfire_books_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html

<comment><USER2> Know why the percentage of farmers in the USA is only 2%? Sure, we got better tech and techniques etc. but the reality is that farming _sucks_. It's probably the second most over-romanticized profession, right behind warrior.</comment>


E-Ink wallet – The next generation wallet - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/e-ink-wallet-the-next-generation-wallet-gadget-gadgets <comment><USER2> how much can it bend in the pocket? is there a video/example? i do usually brake cards, so wondering how a screen can survive me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a flexible E-ink screen, just like a paper. See more details ok official E-ink display website. [http://www.eink.com/flexible.html](http://www.eink.com/flexible.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like the idea. It has a very short timeframe, four months - is that doable?

Not much information about the person or company behind it. $150 is a lot to give without knowing more about who's behind it. I'm tempted to fund it anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are into this one year, we can manufacture it quickly once campaign is fully funded. You can see about section regarding team info.

<comment><USER3> > You can see about section regarding team info.

Am I looking at the right place? I see one member of the team, and email- verified. But no information about the experience ("we've brought n products to the market before" even if n is 0), or software expertise for the app or wallet, or...

Good crowdsourcing products have enough info you can feel the team is reliable. I'm not saying you're not, just that I would like to know more about the credentials of those involved first. If they are "this is our first project", that's fine, but be open about it. If not, boast about what you've already done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I mean, it's cool. I like the GPS tracking and Audio alerts but It's bad enough I need to charge my watch, never mind having to charge my Wallet as well.</comment>


JEP 357: Migrate the JDK from Mercurial to Git - <AUTHOR> https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/357 <comment><USER2> This seems like a disruptive way to save 1GB of space. It's not like we're talking about an upgrade from RC or something, mercurial is a perfectly serviceable DVCS used by everyone from facebook to google.</comment>


HN Tokyo meetup this Thursday (April 17th) - <AUTHOR> http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/events/9991

<comment><USER2> Hey guys, I'm also a partner at YC and happen to be in Tokyo as well. I think Garry and I are going to go!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi all. I'm a partner with Y Combinator and will be there! Through random chance I am in Tokyo this week.

<comment><USER4> Very cool - looking forward to welcoming you and Kevin.

<comment><USER5> Hey Jason, hope it goes well (and put in a good word for me!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr:

* Thursday 17th April 18:30-23:00

* 2,500 yen entry, includes 2 drinks

* Super Deluxe in Roppongi - [https://www.super-deluxe.com/map/](https://www.super-deluxe.com/map/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am in Tokyo for the week. Signed up and should be there at least for the first couple of hours.</comment>


Facebook ad campaign helped Donald Trump win election - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51034641 <comment><USER2> The narrative that ads, more than actual voters, were what got the president elected is missing the bigger picture. Did ads help? Sure, but in the end, a person with a pulse and their best interest in mind made the decision in the booth, not russians or facebook. If you think there is a problem, and I would agree, start with the people. This open assumption that anyone who voted in a manner contrary to your view is "under informed" only widens the devide between people who all want nearly the same outcome. No matter who you voted for, or will vote for, you are already doing the right thing by voting. Everyone who takes part in the process deserves our love and respect, no matter how contrary it may seem.

<comment><USER3> I think we're all under-informed, to be honest. Or more precisely, I think we voters are generally better informed than is rationally appropriate, based on the amount of a difference we can individually make. And I think we're under- informed based on the amount of knowledge and consideration the questions deserve if we're to have a good chance of picking the best answer. I think this magnifies the influence of advertising, dishonesty, and the superficial.</comment></comment>