Show HN: OpenBSD Email Service – A free-email alternative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vedetta-com/caesonia <comment><USER2> I used to do this for a long time (with Ubuntu), but over the years there was always something popping up that required fixing, updating or other attention. Eventually I decided to let someone else worry about maintaining the mail services and spam filters and put my own focus on other things.

<comment><USER3> By way of a counter-anecdote: I've been running my own email for 8 years and spend almost no time on it. I can't recall having to do any maintenance at all in the last 3 years.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I do the same - I plugged in Postfix, Dovecot and SpamAssassin and haven't had to touch it other than occasionally confirming backup scripts and automatic security updates are working.

<comment><USER5> Does you email get marked as SPAM by gmail?

I do something similar, but when I send an email to a person for the first time, it always ends up in the spam folder by GMail.

<comment><USER6> Just relay it out via a trusted host, in addition to setting up DKIM, SPF, etc.; that solved all the problems for me. My email server is working excellent for many years now (OpenBSD, OpenSMTPD, dovecot) with Rainloop as web-based frontend.

<comment><USER5> I have DKIM, SPF, etc. but still gets caught by spam. What do you mean by "trusted host"?

<comment><USER6> An email provider that is not blacklisted and allows relay. I currently use my ISP for that.

Taken from my smtpd.conf:

      table secrets { mylogin = [email]@ziggo.nl:[pass] }
      accept tagged DKIM for any relay via tls+auth://firstname.lastname@example.com:587 auth <secrets>

<comment><USER5> Oh, I see, thanks!

It kind of defeats the purpose, since now the third-party will be able to read all my outgoing emails, and have control over them.

<comment><USER7> You're transiting over their network anyway -- the jig is already up even without relaying via their gateway.

<comment><USER8> Connecting directly to the remote (non-ISP) mailserver with TLS shouldn't reveal any message contents.

Relaying via the ISP's mail server though (even with TLS) seems like it would disclose the message contents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is also mail-in-a-box: [https://github.com/mail-in-a- box/mailinabox](https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox)

<comment><USER10> This. The hard part of hosting your own mail is emphatically dns and deliverability. Mail-in-a-box does all of the dns magic to ensure folks get your email. The rest is gravy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> LowEndTalk.com will help you find a super cheap VPS.

However I would advise using dedicated hardware for the server instead for improved privacy. There are two possible routes:

1) Rent a cheap dedicated server such as the Kimsufi line by OVH or the Personal line by Online.net. These cost below 10€ a month.

2) Run the email service on your box at home and use the cheapest VPS you can find just to tunnel a non-dialup IP address to that box using OpenVPN. The cheap VPS usually costs less than $10 per year.

<comment><AUTHOR> When renting a dedicated box, a VNC-like interface is required to enter disk encryption password, which could be intercepted by the host. Moreover, this has to be done on each restart. I look at dedicated box more as an upgrade from VPS.

For privacy, I think user encrypted email messages provide the best option.

At home self-hosting through VPN is a good idea. It would involve maintaining hardware, which I traded for low cost VPS. With a replica backup MX, I am not married to any hosting provider, and can hop without downtime.

<comment><USER12> " a VNC-like interface is required to enter disk encryption password, which could be intercepted by the host. "

There's a rule in security that anyone in physical possession of your device should be assumed to have access to it. The host has the server whether physical or virtual. You're not safe from them. Trusting them is the tradeoff made for the cheap, hosted server.

" I look at dedicated box more as an upgrade from VPS."

Multiple VPS's share a physical box. A malicious VPS can look for secrets in another VPS using side channels. This isn't possible on bare metal: they have to compromise an app or get a shell first. The next concern would be endpoint security. OpenBSD covers that well. Then, there's host or peripheral firmware which is almost always a risk if a 3rd party is hosting things. Your attack surface does go down, though, when you're not sharing a box with an attacker. There's also the performance benefits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Privacy from host is not possible, and you make a very good point about hardware access.

Virtual machine are secured by the shared host. I don't really expect top security from this end. A replica backup MX enables me to safely change hosts, if they behave badly.

OpenBSD defaults are what I base my endpoint security on, and keeping this updated is super easy.

<comment><USER12> "Virtual machine are secured by the shared host. "

Virtual machines are not secure in mainstream implementations. The tech they use has had a lot of vulnerabilities in the past. Google and Amazon even have their own custom versions for improving security. There's also no covert/side channel analysis done on those to even know what information leaks will be found in the future. Finally, hardware-level attacks are possible if you have malicious code running that bypass VM protection. Most popular recently is Meltdown/Spectre.

There's only been a few VMM's designed for security (two examples below). Most of them probably cost five to six digits to license. The FOSS ones are alpha or beta quality without the tools a big host would want for management. The VMM's focused on rapid development of features in unsafe languages don't look anything like the ones that passed pentesting. They also have highest marketshare due to those features. So, your host serving cheap VPS's is almost certainly not using a secure VMM: they're saving money using an insecure one on insecure hardware that they're patching as vulnerabilities are publicized. Like almost everyone does with their OS's for their beneficial features. ;)

[http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/papers/ieee-sp- vaxvmm.pdf](http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/papers/ieee-sp-vaxvmm.pdf)

[https://ghs.com/products/safety_critical/integrity- do-178b.h...](https://ghs.com/products/safety_critical/integrity-do-178b.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The hardest part to me is to get an IP address that's clean so your outgoing emails won't be marked as junks. Also, then you'll have to get help from ISP to update PTR records for your IP address, it's not worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I was lucky because I haven't encountered a "dirty" IP yet, but I only tested 6 VPS providers so far.

PTR records are updated from the VPS provider web interface, it takes a few seconds to activate.

<comment><USER11> The last time i rented a new server I checked the IP in the various blacklists. There was one blacklist that had listed the entire subnet the server was in. I asked them to whitelist my IP address in that subnet which they did. It took only a few minutes to write an email.

<comment><USER14> It took quite a lot of knowledge what blacklists are out there and time to check them all. It's hardly "just a few minutes to write an e-mail".

<comment><USER15> There have been sites that check an IP against the vast majority of blacklists for well over a decade, and they've been free as well.

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how%20to%20check...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how%20to%20check%20my%20ip%20for%20a%20mail%20blacklist)

<comment><USER16> I run RBL checks a few times a day in Nagios, so I don't get surprised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And for 12.50 I get exchange+office all hosted and I don't do a thing. Thanks best part is that clients get my emails, and I'm not wasting days trying to fight the brick wall that is Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft,and every other isp that blocks by default.

<comment><USER18> I don't really think the downvotes are warranted on this one - given that the post title calls out the expense, I think a discussion on what you gain (and/or give up) for an additional $10/mo is well within bounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So basically, step 1: install SMTP and IMAP servers, step 2: configure them to run your domain, step 3: configure your DNS?

<comment><USER19> Step 4: wonder why the hell people aren't replying to your mails. Step 5: realize you've been blackholed by gmail and hotmail with no bounces and no explanation. Step 6: frustration. Step 7: tell people to add your e-mail address to their address book (wtf) and watch as things magically work for a while. Step 8: repeat.

<comment><USER20> My mail server routes via Amazon's SES, which provides an SMTP smarthost my instance of postfix can relay mail to. You authenticate each sending domain using DNS, and it even supports DKIM signing.

Until I did this, my deliverability, especially to GMail, was awful.

<comment><USER19> Assuming you're running your own mailserver because you like the idea of a decentralized web; isn't it kind of odd to then rely on Amazon?

<comment><USER20> Maybe, but in my case it would not be a valid assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've always wanted to host my own mail but every time I look it up they always recommend like 2GB of ram. I've thought about whether one in D / Rust would be easier to host, but are there any decent libs out there or someone know what mail setup I could have on a simple $5 a month digitalocean VPS?

<comment><USER22> OP recommendation is minimum 512 MB RAM. Giving it 1 GB for headroom still lets you run on the AWS EC2 Free Tier (i.e. t2.micro instance). Would that work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a nice writeup but my own personal modification of this model is to host an MDA at home where I've got plenty of space and it costs nothing. But then forward all mail to a proxy on a VPS that only does spam filtering and never saves mails on disk.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm always amazed at the negative comments on HN when the topic of self- hosting your email comes up - I saw many of the same replies when my mail server guide [1] got linked here a few weeks ago. Most people suggest to give all your email to some corporation.

If people want to create their own mail service, more power to them - this is supposed to be HACKER news!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16238937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16238937)

<comment><USER25> If you have a lot of time to kill and don't need reliable email, self-hosting is fine. But it's a bit like building your own car. Fun hobby: not reliable.

<comment><USER26> If you follow the guide in this post, you will have reliable email delivery without involving a possibly untrustworthy 3rd party. What part of it seemed overly time-consuming or difficult?

If you're worried about monitoring it for operation, make sure there is at least one automated email that passes in each direction once daily. Use pingdom free to check for basic up/down. That should suffice for a personal email system. Email senders will retry for days before giving up.

I say this as someone who has been hosting his own email on his own hardware on his own ISP connection (on OpenBSD no less!) for over a decade, and have never had a delivery issue

<comment><USER27> > you will have reliable email delivery without involving a possibly > untrustworthy 3rd party

Only if you limit your email messages to parties that also use your personal email service.

<comment><USER25> Seriously. Who are these people who don't seem to know what DNSRBLs are, who don't know about IP blackholing, who don't know about spammers stealing private addresses and getting your domain blacklisted, or sending out too many mails at once and getting tagged as a spammer, or sharing your IP space, or not getting accepted from various domains for not having a high enough "reputation", etc?

I mean, I must not know what I'm talking about, having run personal and corporate mail systems for 15 years. Must be pretty easy to get the DNS extensions which aren't used uniformly across major mail carriers right. And hey, if your ISP gets blackholed it should be pretty easy to fix, right? And you just have to set up a separate system with automated tests to alert you when your service is down so you can get it back up in a few days before the bounces start going out. And certainly maintaining your own spam filters has never been difficult, to say nothing of software upgrades, maintenance outages, security patches, offsite backups, certificate renewals, and moving hosting providers.

But, yeah. Easy.

<comment><USER26> I've been running half a dozen domains since OpenBSD 2.5, over multiple hardware platforms and ISPs, and I have never felt any of the pain you're talking about.

I've never had a reputation problem, but I've been sure to test for open relay on my servers as step zero. Maybe I've been lucky over the 4 ISPs I've had, but I've always ended up with clean IPs. In any case, that would be something you'd catch during initial setup and have to deal with before sending out your first email. This may be super painful to deal with, but I don't have any experience (fortunately).

I update my server OS (openbsd) once every 6 months and use long-lived self- signed certs for STARTTLS mail delivery. Combined with DNSSEC and DANE it makes for a trustworthy setup. Certbot for any certs that are more important to have a chain of trust for.

I set up DNSSEC/DANE/DKIM/SPF once over a couple of days and have never had a problem. I don't even have any spam to filter out after having domains for decades and lots of friends and family members using it. Google sends regular reports verifying that no one is using my domains for spam campaigns (at least to gmail addresses).

There are free online services to help generate configs for, and test for the correct configuration of each part of these setups.

Removable hard drives and fsarchiver make for simple offsite backups (just store them at work). But if you don't have a good backup plan, whether you're running your own email system or not, you've got bigger problems.

I'm sure you're dealing with bigger and more sophisticated setups than my vanity domains, but I'm not talking about those. I sometimes don't touch the email side of my system for years. Once set up it just works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wouldn't entrust my email to an operating system that lacks mandatory access control.

OpenBSD is a fascinating project, but it is _decades_ behind the state of the art in security.

<comment><USER29> Seriously? I'd recommend doing some more research before making that claim. Your example in a later comment speaks to the area of Privilege Separation, discussed (and implemented) ad nauseam throughout nearly every application that is maintained by the OpenBSD project.

[http://niels.xtdnet.nl/papers/privsep.pdf](http://niels.xtdnet.nl/papers/privsep.pdf)

[http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/ssh/privsep.html](http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/ssh/privsep.html)

[https://www.openbsd.org/papers/ven05-deraadt/index.html](https://www.openbsd.org/papers/ven05-deraadt/index.html)

[https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html](https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html)

<comment><USER28> Privilege separation is also a nice feature, but it is not the same as MAC.

I would have much greater confidence in an OpenBSD project that included lomac or capsicum.</comment></comment></comment>


Rooted Nook now has a web browser, some Android apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/17/nook-hacked-with-web-browser-facebook-and-twitter-for-starters/

<comment><USER2> Coolest thing about this is there's a popular Android app for rooted devices known simply as "Wireless Tether" that bridges your cellular data connection with your wifi connection, to create a simple wifi hotspot powered by your 3G connection. So you buy a nook, root it, now you have a personal little 3G router everywhere you go!

<comment><USER3> Don't tell T-mobile but I use this on my g1 constantly; at airports, hotels, moving cars, in the backard. I consider it the "killer app" of a rooted g1.</comment></comment>


Operation Gunman – how the Soviets bugged IBM typewriters (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/index.htm <comment><USER2> > The bug was fairly large and consisted of state-of-the-art integrated > circuits and single-bit core memory. It was completely hidden inside a > hollow support bracket at the bottom of the keyboard mechanism, and was > invisible to the naked eye, but also to the detection equipment of the era. > Only an X-ray scan could reveal the presence of the device, which is shown > in the image below. It contains special components to hide its presence even > from non-linear junction detectors (NLJD).

Holy cow. I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the mid-1970s.

Also the article says that the NSA didn't trust the CIA or State Department to handle the investigation properly, which was very interesting to read. Had the NSA already been established as a "we do tech better" agency?

<comment><USER3> You need to check out the electronics that the Soviets had on board the spacecraft after Sputnik. The kit they had to get to the moon, Venus and Mars was quite special in those analogue days, if you only know digital electronics then it is even more impressive.

Hence bugging a few American typewriters the Soviet way results in such a cool solution. The task was probably relatively easy compared to space.

The space race story we tell ourselves is not entirely true, the Russians didn't have 'better Germans than what the Americans had', actually their rocket science was far ahead of the amateur German efforts and they didn't need help from the Nazis. Meanwhile, in America they pushed their guys to one side and insisted that the Nazi work be what was the basis of the ICBM/space program. It was the American rockets that were relatively crude, not the Soviet ones. So cut them some slack, bespoke electronics with clever radio wave stuff was something that the Soviets were extremely good at, mass production a different story.

<comment><USER4> > actually their rocket science was far ahead of the amateur German efforts

That's not really what happened. At the end of the war, Germany had the absolute lead in the rocket development, except maybe the rocket artillery. Ever heard of V-2 rocket? It was the most advanced thing at the time. It's true though that USSR didn't use the German talent as much as Americans did, immediately after the war, but I think it's mostly due to the security concerns and ideological reasons. Why have Germans building rockets when you can use brilliant Korolev instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic technology for the 1970s. Well done Soviets!

One of the best programmers I've ever worked with is a guy that got his Master's under the USSR before the collapse. Great guy (H1b).

<comment><USER6> I would assume the NSA/CIA had even more sophisticated tech; maybe the soviets did too. We only find out about the ones that got discovered or leaked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone) , invented by Léon "Theremin" Theremin for Soviet espionage.

</comment><comment><USER8> > At the embassy, all equipment had to be carried up to the attic by hand, as > the Russians had shut down the elevator after the first day of the arrival > of the equipment, for 'preventive maintenance'.

I'm really curious about the elevator part. Did the US lease the space from the soviets or something? I would have assumed we owned the building.

<comment><USER9> I assume they had a building inspector paid off to do it

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214)

</comment><comment><USER11> One must wonder what Russia might have become if it had combined its engineering prowess with an economic system that encouraged and supported innovation.

<comment><USER12> Actually they really supported innovations, maybe not the way like it supposed to be when you pursuing to receive economican benefit from R&D, but it's because political interests occupied first, second and third places, economy questions was on fourth place in good days.

There were no arms conversion, so economy didn't take any benefit from beautiful minds behind the scenes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What lovely engineering! A shame it was wasted on this spy-vs-spy stuff.</comment>


Tax the Comfortable - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/tax_the_comfortable

<comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042981>

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know if there is a mechanism in the US government that would allow people (like Warren Buffet) who want to pay more in taxes to do exactly that?

Seems like it could be written into the tax code pretty easily - that is, if the current tax code were even remotely efficient.</comment>


Logo on Steroids: video game 'Kodu' teaches programming, is fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2222546/pagenum/all/

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the best computing/educational games I played as a child was called "Rocky's Boots", where you used real AND/OR/NOT gates, with sensors and delays, to 'kick' the right objects out of a parade.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky%27s_Boots></comment>


Fully interactive shopping mall map directories and community your iPhone. - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fastmall/id340656157?mt=8

<comment><USER2> IF people still shopped at malls this would be an amazing application.

However, with Amazon and Zappos destroying retail year after year it's clear that shopping malls will be reborn as universities/school or office parks.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuoohgp4ecc> <http://www.deadmalls.com/></comment>


Google Next Victim Of Creative Destruction?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/google-next-victim-of-creative-destruction-goog <comment><USER2> This is beyond ridiculous. Real time search is something you care about a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of the time. And when you do, Twitter is still pretty near worthless. You heard a plane crashed in the river, so you search Twitter, and see a bunch of posts like "OMG a plane crashed in a river, now I'm going to the gym." and maybe a picture of a submerged plane. Who cares?

You won't destroy Google by building a search service that does nothing but break news 5 minutes before CNN does.

<comment><USER3> The killer app for real time search seems to be in figuring out whether this week's Heroes episode is worth watching.

<comment><USER4> I think

washeroesgoodthisweek.com

is still open. Sadly, I think you can get the job done with one static HTML page these days, and it does not include
YES
 in it.

Edit: My little brother remarked to me, regarding "What GPS tracking unit?": "It seems like there is only one good writer on Heroes, and his contract dictates that he only be told to work on scenes between Hiro and Ando."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Dear Google: Please buy Twitter. Signed, a Twitter investor."

The idea that real-time search will be big is still interesting.

However, seeking a twitch-timescale update on everything is ultimately a bad habit, except among certain kinds of professional investors. Considering the author's example of a mysterious rumble in Fall's Church, Virginia: people don't benefit from the distraction of twitter-scale updates; the wiser strategy is to get one authoritative report when the story is settled. (The few genuine "holy crap do I need to do something?" situations are too rare to build a giant search business on.)

<comment><USER6> Although using Twitter for real-time emergency response at a governmental or NGO level sounds quite interesting.

<comment><USER7> If by interesting you mean the twitter 'Fail Whale' + FEMA, then yes, that would be...interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If real time information was such a big damn deal, Wikipedia wouldn't be the top hit for every other Google search. Honestly, CNN TV/.com/etc still wins for breaking news (they had more viewers than any of the OTA networks). So Twitter wins by five minutes. Seriously, who gives a damn? Just media navel- gazers.

</comment><comment><USER9> While normal ads won't work on twitter, viral marketing will. So now, advertisers win by creating content people'll twit about. Perhaps even paying people to advertise to their friends. Shouldn't be hard to introduce with so many people looking for a source of income. Not sure I like where this'll go...

<comment><USER10> One of the ways I wouldn't mind advertising in Twitter is if I could get a compendium of Tweets emailed to me by Twitter every X hours - they could just put traditional banner advertising in each email as a sponsor link.

One of the things I like about twitter is the short form blogging. One of the things I don't like is having a twitter client distract me every few minutes (so I don't use one) or if I use the site instead, having to flip through a couple of pages of noise to find the little gems contained within.

I think a compendium of tweets would compile these two aspects of twitter, yet also give twitter the ability to make revenue off my attention.

my 2 cents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The closing of the article says it all... shame I read it all before getting to it:

"Disclosure. I am CEO of betaworks. betaworks is a Twitter shareholder. We are also a Tweetdeck shareholder. betaworks companies are listed on our web site."

</comment><comment><USER12> Just posted this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473209>.

Its funny how Fred Wilson and others linked to the original post without commenting on the fundamental flaws in the twitter-Google discussion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Google has not really cracked realtime search yet. Could this be the kink in their armor?

<comment><USER14> How haven't they? You can search Google News which searches all of the top stories from top news sites. Use Google Blog Search to do the same. Sure they can't search Facebook(unless allowed) or some of twitter but that isn't a kink in their armor.

Maybe our definitions of realtime search are different; what is yours?</comment></comment>


This is what every modern Cease & Desist should look like - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/saberma/shopqi/pull/409

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am a Shopify employee.

Backstory: Shopify.com was recently ripped off as Shopqi.com – the job was pretty impressive! They copied our brochure, wiki, theme store, and from the look of their Rails app, a good chunk of our domain models too. Nice to see the Chinese version of Active Merchant as well.

The author of the ripoff posted the source on <http://github.com> as open source: <https://github.com/saberma/shopqi>

Tobi, Shopify CEO, decided to make a pull request in response.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: Shopqi's author is an acquaintance.

        Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Seriously though, the backend can't possibly infringe on your intellectual property right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you explain what is going on here? With no backstory, the page you've linked is completely incomprehensible.

<comment><USER5> TLDR: Chinese clone Shopify and put it on Github. CEO writes pull request to delete the entire project instead of a Cease & Desist.

<comment><USER4> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm thinking that shopqi developer's blog really isn't sponsored by EngineYard or RailsKits either.

<http://saberma.me/></comment>


Uncanny Portraits Visualize The Power of Genetics - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673052/uncanny-portraits-visualize-the-power-of-genetics

<comment><USER2> I really appreciate the art, but my training makes me say: did Ulrich do the 'control experiment'? Did he take unrelated people and juxtapose their faces, matching up the points that he normally does, and the blending and try and see if he could match them up just as well?</comment>


Preliminary Injunction Sought to Release Hydroxychloroquine to the Public - <AUTHOR> https://aapsonline.org/preliminary-injunction-sought-to-release-hydroxychloroquine-to-the-public/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23720548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23720548)</comment>


Major Open Source Project Revokes Access to Companies That Work with ICE - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xbynx/major-open-source-project-revokes-access-to-companies-that-work-with-ice <comment><USER2> Behind on schedule.

You see, the Lerna contributors already retracted the license change and kicked the culprit out of the project due to Code of Conduct violations.

[https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633](https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633)

<comment><USER3> > Despite his numerous (and appreciated) contributions in the past, it has > been very clear for quite some time now that he has decided to cease making > constructive contributions to the Lerna codebase as well as actively and > willfully disregarding the code of conduct that he himself added to the > project.

I really wonder what happened here. Being removed from a project based on the code of conduct you added yourself suggests someone either became seriously bitter along the way or a lack of self awareness to begin with.</comment></comment>


International Space Station HD Livestream - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/17074538

<comment><USER2> If you see a blank screen it's night. You can see the current location and day/night status here: [http://iss.astroviewer.net/](http://iss.astroviewer.net/)

<comment><USER3> Umm any decent camera would pick up at least something, black means they turn off the feed

\+ like someone else said 480p is not hd

<comment><USER4> the stream is gray when they turn off the feed, black is night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are some snapshots I made (selected images from letting the stream run for few hours, from about 4 orbits):

[http://imgur.com/a/99fS8](http://imgur.com/a/99fS8)

<comment><USER6> In some of the images I could see some lens info. At least one camera uses a Dicomar lens and the camera used might be[1]. NASA's site[2] on the project doesn't say which exact camera is used. Anyone know more about the camera setup?

[1][http://business.panasonic.co.uk/professional- camera/avcam/ag...](http://business.panasonic.co.uk/professional- camera/avcam/ag-hmc151) [2][http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experimen...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/917.html)

<comment><USER7> From a NASA project presentation[0], there's a Panasonic AGHMC150, a Toshiba IK-HR1s, a Hitachi HV-HD30, and a Sony FCB-EH4300 in the HDEV. Video routing is done by a Extron SW4 3G HD-SDI and encoded by a Visionary Solutions AVN443.

[0] [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2011001...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110019797.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Thank you, good find!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We have to understand that is a live streaming from 230 miles up in the sky. It might not work 100% of the time, but if you're patience enough, you can enjoy images like the one I just saw:

[http://cl.ly/image/2D0G0m0P2R3D](http://cl.ly/image/2D0G0m0P2R3D)

</comment><comment><USER6> A (very) quick and dirty hack to see ISS Tracker (www.isstracker.com) and the video side by side: [http://ri.io/iss.html](http://ri.io/iss.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> There are 18239 people currently watching a black screen. Goodnight moon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Pretty phenomenal when you think about the speed it's going at... I just watched it cross the Atlantic ocean and it's nearly over Europe now...

</comment><comment><USER11> 480p is not HD (is it?) (edit: this is still awesome, was just expecting 720 or 1080)

<comment><USER4> there is no standardized definition of HD. HDTV is 720 or 1080, but HD is simply a generic term meaning better than standard definition.

<comment><USER12> The only exception I've ever seen to the "HD >= 720 lines" rule is that of ignorant video uploaders.

<comment><USER4> do you have any official sources? I would love to update the related wikipedia page but can't exactly cite a hacker news comment.

<comment><USER12> The best I can find is this:

[http://www.ce.org/CorporateSite/media/Standards- Media/DTV_De...](http://www.ce.org/CorporateSite/media/Standards- Media/DTV_Definitions.pdf)

But it's consistent with your previous comment, in that it only defines HDTV, not "High Definition" as a generic term.

But given that HDTV is what caused "HD" to enter the vernacular, you'd have to be pretty dense to call something HD Video when it doesn't meet the HDTV standard. That would be like burning an .avi to a CD-R, and calling it a Digital Video Disc because it's a disc with digital video on it.

Interestingly, the PDF above suggests that you could have a 960x720 4:3 display that shows letterboxed 16:9 at 540p, and still call it an "HDTV".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would love to use this as a desktop background :)

<comment><USER14> I'm thinking D3.js powered simulator.

<comment><USER15> I don't know why you would want to use javascript... have a look at this cinder space simulator, it supports oculus and should be easy to convert the cinder app to a screensaver - not to sure about a moving desktop background. [http://roberthodgin.com/oculus-rift-gravity/](http://roberthodgin.com/oculus- rift-gravity/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NASA's page that combines the stream with an overview of where the ISS is over the earth at any given time: [http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/](http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/)

(Hint: if it is over an area of daylight you're more likely to see video. Use the white line to see where it will be in 1.5 hours.)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been waiting for UrtheCast ([http://www.urthecast.com/](http://www.urthecast.com/)) to start live streaming the camera they had the Russians mount on the ISS awhile back.

Is this the same camera?

</comment><comment><USER18> Third time I've been linked to this. Third time it doesn't seem to be working. No luck for me, it seems.

<comment><USER19> It's back up now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling that my work day is going to revolve around watching this (no pun intended).

</comment><comment><USER21> Do we know approximately what the delay is?

</comment><comment><USER22> How much does that vacation cost?

</comment><comment><USER23> eyeporn

</comment><comment><USER24> Has it always been a black screen? Could just be a fake test from someone like Urthecast to see what kind of demand a live stream would generate on launch

<comment><USER25> it clearly states:

"Black Image = International Space Station (ISS) is on the night side of the Earth. "

<comment><USER26> Is something explicitly setting it to black, or is total blackness what the camera is capturing?

<comment><USER27> My reading of their comment is that there just isn't any light since it's on the night-side of the Earth, and the Sun isn't providing any light over there. If it were over a part of the planet with light pollution, that's probably not strong enough to break through the atmosphere.

<comment><USER28> Artificial lighting can be seen from space (the only man made thing that can be seen from space), but I guess the camera isn't good enough to pick it up.

<comment><USER29> Actually that is incorrect. You can see the Great Pyramids from space.

Link: [http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2012...](http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/pyramids-from-space.jpg)

Supporting Article: [http://www.universetoday.com/93398/can-you-see-the- pyramids-...](http://www.universetoday.com/93398/can-you-see-the-pyramids- from-space/)

<comment><USER30> Well, this really depends on what you mean by 'see' (and I suppose what you mean by 'space' as well, but let's just assume the ISS is the benchmark). Pictures like that, afaik, are taken with camera lenses that look roughly like [1]. You definitely can't make out city blocks with just your eyes from the ISS.

[1] [http://media.the-digital-picture.com/Images/Other/Canon- EF-8...](http://media.the-digital-picture.com/Images/Other/Canon- EF-800mm-f-5.6-L-IS-USM-Lens/Canon-EF-800mm-f-5.6-L-IS-USM-Lens.jpg)

<comment><USER31> NASA actually has a very long history of using Nikon equipment.

Here are a couple references to (still) photography from the ISS:

[http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/07/nikon-gear-at-the- iss.aspx...](http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/07/nikon-gear-at-the-iss.aspx/)

[http://nikonrumors.com/2013/11/12/low-light- astrophotography...](http://nikonrumors.com/2013/11/12/low-light- astrophotography-from-the-iss.aspx/)

[http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/22/astronaut-chris- hadfield-h...](http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/22/astronaut-chris-hadfield-how- to-take-photos-from-the-iss.aspx/)

[http://nikonrumors.com/2012/04/08/nikon-in-space-new- nightpo...](http://nikonrumors.com/2012/04/08/nikon-in-space-new-nightpod- intelligent-tripod-compensates-for-motion-when-taking-images-from-space.aspx/)

And to study quantum entanglement: [http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/09/400mm- nikon-lens-to-be-mod...](http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/09/400mm-nikon-lens- to-be-modified-at-the-iss-to-capture-photons-sent-from-earth.aspx/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> THIS IS AMAZING

[https://twitter.com/TheKaranGoel/status/463920252615548928/p...](https://twitter.com/TheKaranGoel/status/463920252615548928/photo/1)</comment>


New Azerty Keyboard Makes It Easier to Type in French - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/standards/merveilleux-new-algorithmpowered-azerty-keyboard-standard-makes-it-easier-to-type-in-french <comment><USER2> "the benchmark French body for voluntary standards, used a predictive algorithm to design a keyboard that is more intuitive and ergonomic for French speakers than the current AZERTY keyboard."

Shouldn't we change the design of the keyboard, in general, if we want it to be more ergonomic? A split keyboard, for example.</comment>


How to build a lead capture page with Meteor and MongoDB in minutes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongolab.com/2013/05/build-your-own-lead-capture-page-with-meteor-and-mongolab-in-minutes/ <comment><USER2> Same thing, but for AppEngine: [https://github.com/stochastic- technologies/static-appengine-...](https://github.com/stochastic- technologies/static-appengine-hoster)

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this specifically different than just throwing up a quick and dirty sinatra or php app on heroku?

<comment><USER4> Because it uses Meteor and MongoDB instead.

Joking aside, to me this post seems clearly much more about demonstrating the use if specific technologies than actually accomplishing a set task.

<comment><USER5> A lead capture form is actually a great practical example for demonstrating new tech, now that you mention it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> am i wrong in thinking that if they are controlling the switch to an admin display by only showing a link to admins then you should be able to fake what that link does and so see the data?

i am completely new to this, so i can't work out what to do, but it seems insecure to me... :o(</comment>


Ask HN: What's Going on with Resealable Packaging? - <AUTHOR> It seems like easily 50% of resealable packaging that I buy now is breaking.  Usually it's that the area where the mechanism is glued to the bag separates from the bag so in an instant it ceases to be resealable.  As more and more products comes in packaging like this (which would otherwise be convenient) it becomes increasingly frustrating.  So much so that I personally have started returning the product to the grocery store regardless of what it is.<p>Does anybody know what has changed recently?  Have they started using some kind of cheaper glue or less amounts of glue? <comment><USER2> > Does anybody know what has changed recently?

Most likely the ever-present pull to find an ever cheaper way to create the item.

The packaging for the product is a direct cost that is not explicitly what the customer is paying for. So saving a few pennies in an ever cheaper "zip-lock" style strip when multiplied by millions of items shipped amounts to a substantial cost savings.

And as most do not likely return the item for a broken resealable package, the makers receive little feedback as to the problems with their cost savings in this area.

<comment><AUTHOR> > most do not likely return the item for a broken resealable package

I am and I encourage everyone else to do the same. I bought a package of matcha tea from Costco that has this problem and the quality of matcha degrades quickly when exposed to air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pressure resealable packaging is becoming more popular. It's annoying but the technology itself isn't actually getting worse, so I'm not sure why you're suddenly having that issue. If you're consistently seeing it from one store (you mentioned Costco), let them know because there may be an issue with a particular production series.</comment>


Open Source Is Broken - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/degoodmanwilson/open-source-is-broken-g60 <comment><USER2> Hogwash.

Source code is as moral or immoral as a box of nails. You can use it for good and you can use it for evil.

The reason why we've had such a massive boost in productivity in tech is precisely because of all this unpaid labor. Does it suck that the builders of said code didn't receive much (or any) compensation for their work? Sure, but then again, that was never the point. You don't volunteer at the local SPCA and then complain that you weren't rewarded enough.

Open source has eaten the world. Most of the closed protocols, closed formats, closed systems, closed specifications, etc have died over the past decade, precisely because we have freely available interoperable software and specifications.

This "ethical code" movement will only gum up the works by mixing in a whole bunch of incompatible licenses: This npm component requires that you not use it in nuclear tech. That component requires that you not eat meat. This one requires that you not have dealings with China. It'll be chaos because nobody could ever satisfy them all, which means that no legal department would ever authorize its use, until a few sane people managing these software collections/repositories finally wake up and say "No crazy licensing allowed."

Leave politics out of the tools you build. Politics don't belong there.

<comment><USER3> > Leave politics out of the tools you build. Politics don't belong there.

Why not? I understand the argument that it will be problematic for consumers to intermingle licenses; that's fine, if it's cheaper for you to rebuild a library than it is to audit licenses then that's fine.

Beyond that, I don't understand why it's undesirable for you to specify that your creations are not used in ways that you find morally reprehensible. It's functionally the same as an embargo; we, as a nation, ban trade of items with nations whom we have found guilty of violating some moral principle.

I would counter that by allowing your work to be used in potentially immoral acts, you are complicit in those acts. If you create an image recognition algorithm that ends up being used in drones, you have helped the resulting drone strikes be launched just as if you had worked for the army. You are effectively working for the army, but for free.

> This "ethical code" movement will only gum up the works by mixing in a whole > bunch of incompatible licenses

Which we literally already have. Have you looked up the compatibility chart for the GPL? Almost nothing widely used is compatible with it: [http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Compatible_licenses](http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Compatible_licenses)

Not to mention that none of your examples are incompatible. Sure, one could potentially have a license that says "you must use it in nuclear tech", but that seems odd, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Maybe we're valuing the wrong thing. What if we look at Open Source values > through the lens of moral philosophy, by applying Scanlon's contractualist > theory of morality?

Someone is trying far too hard to make their philosophy studies relevant.

Everyone is aware the model isn't perfect. Making a long list of things you view as issues is a bit meaningless unless you can suggest something better. There are some vague suggestions at the very bottom, but nothing concrete.

</comment><comment><USER5> Despite what seems like quite a lot of political overlap with the author I have to disagree with basically the entire article.

It approaches the problem from entirely the wrong end. Code is code and we shouldn't be adding ever more licenses and conditions to it.

Besides the definition of 'evil' is a purely political one. While ICE is a good example, what about Cuba? Many people would claim Cuba is a despotic terrible regime (I wouldn't agree) and US sanctions already stop certain goods and services being provided to Cuba. What about a research department in Iran using code to predict earthquakes? What about here in the UK, the department of work and pensions (DWP) is undergoing a huge IT overhaul, my belief is their current incarnation is borderline fascist and anyone working with them is committing social murder, but it's not clear cut.

But these aren't code's problems to solve. They're ours,they're for politics to solve and that's a messy process that shouldn't interfere with a movement to build a commons of knowledge in the form of code. The same with Amazon or whoever profiting without giving back. I believe, as do many others, that the wealth of people like Jeff Bezos is obscene and unjustifiable (many others, especially here feel opposite). But trying to thrash out these issues through code licenses is just absurd.

While I'm all for things like codes of conduct to improve conditions on open source projects the reasons given here for putting up fences around the 'commons' of open source just seem wrongheaded.

As a final example take decentralised technologies. A lot of actual usage is by people who don't want to be monitored for more nefarious reasons (human trafficking, csa etc) (alongside/counter-to genuinely positive usages like whistle blowing, evading censorship, etc) but that's not a flaw with the technology, we have social structures to deal with that sort of thing.

<comment><USER6> > But these aren't code's problems to solve.

Why not, call it Code of Conduct part 2, place it right after Diversity Statement and the definition Feelings then ban everyone who disagrees with your view on what evil is. And soon no one will be able to use EVIL mode on Emacs anymore /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The central conceit of the entire essay is that the goal of being an open source provider is to make something that everyone wants to use and in doing so are allowed no choice in how the code is provided and licensed.

That's all demonstrably false so the entire essay beyond that is a pointless thought exercise which appears to be becoming common with the rise of Internet intellectuals.

Most code is not opened with that goal and everyone is free to share on whatever terms they like. Moreover the 'corporate pillaging' of open source is rarely if ever unrewarded; it often comes with sponsorship, senior positions with good pay or similar benefits.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought I'm just doing what I love, but turned out I'm literally hitler.

</comment><comment><USER9> > They privilege the consumer of Open Source code over the producer, by > requiring that the producer give up certain rights.

If you cherry pick rights you can argue this either way. By using proprietary software, the consumer of the software gives up some of their rights to freely use their computing devices, in order for the producer of the software to enjoy a monopoly on deciding how the software is used.</comment>


Ask HN: Development involve for secure SaaS product? - <AUTHOR>

My first time building a SaaS product for enterprise. Is there a Box-like database that you can hook up to ensure secure data storage?<p>Currently using PHP - Ajax, whats the most secure way to do a login/signup? (session + cookies + ip) <comment><USER2> If you are talking about storing things like files etc then you could have a look at Amazon S3. If you are referring to user records etc, then use a good MVC framework (with ORM as makerops suggested).

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure about PHP (I develop on Ruby), but I'd definitely use an open source library to do the authentication and authorization. Too many places to be able to mess up if you do it on your own.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are semi-new to this stuff, which it seems like you are, stick to pre- baked, well tested libraries, and ORMs.</comment>


Mastering the Brain-Computer Interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr08/6181 <comment><USER2> Using mu bands that have direct correlation to thinking about the action in question is a great way to go here.

I love this concept. Much better than the gaming BCI's that are coming out that rely on non-corollary telemetry (Inducing the user to say, artificially raise their beta wave amplitude in order to walk forward for example)

These sorts of BCI's are dangerous in my opinion because choosing an arbitrary brainwave to map to a particular function in a game is a horrible idea when those waves are medically proven to be indicative of certain brain states.

ADD for instance is known to present elevated theta waves in the patient, and ADHD is correlated with high beta wave activity.

Imagine the havoc that a game BCI which asks the user to manipulate those levels in some arbitrary manner to play a game. No thank you.</comment>


Covid-19 Is Bankrupting American Companies at a Relentless Pace - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-us-bankruptcies-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> I fear things are going to get worse soon. By ignoring the pandemic and encouraging the economy to reopen we are seeing a resurgence of the virus and squandering all of the very real capital we spent on the initial shutdown. We are going to alienate and reduce our foreign trade as Americans are going to be banned from travelling to nations where the virus is under control. We have no proof yet of gained immunity once one has had the virus so people could very well get sick again. Compounding this is a massive culture war where one side is deriding science and expertise.

Unemployment is going to continue at a massive pace and soon state level governments will start running into funding issues if they have not already. The federal government has shown a reluctance to help out there. Now the federal government is calling for schools to reopen with no plan to do so and is very soon going to force both people and teachers to make awful choices.

The plan of ignore the virus, its going to disappear very soon and lets move on with our lives is very clearly not working. The rest of the world realized this, why haven't we?

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of these companies had an incredible amount of debt. Turns out that it can be bad for business just as much as individuals.</comment>


Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/state-by-state-coronavirus-hospitalizations-04da87ed-476e-4dad-84ec-bd5db7a7bce7.html <comment><USER2> Isn't "percentage of occupied beds w/ covid" a terrible metric? As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will inevitably increase and this will appear to go down regardless of any positive change. What is wrong with the much simpler metric of "number of beds used by covid patients"?

<comment><USER3> > Isn't "percentage of occupied beds w/ covid" a terrible metric?

It's not perfect, but in terms of the readily available data, it's not terrible.

> As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the > denominator will inevitably increase

OTOH, there's a credible argument that that is a kind of positive progress itself. And, no, it's _not_ inevitable that the denominator will go up if COVID already has hospitals at capacity.

> What is wrong with the much simpler metric of "number of beds used by covid > patients"?

That's a good measure for any state, but bad for comparing conditions among states. Share of _available_ hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients might be better, but "available" is not always clear since physical capacity and staffing and other support may not yield the same maximum. Because of required staffing ratios, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the many covid websites out there its surprisingly difficult to find the information you want. [https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus- ny/](https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/) is quite good in that it shows the total number of people in hostpital over time, and change in intubations. NY State only.

</comment><comment> Munky-Necan I'm wondering how good fo a marker this is. We've already had people with significant heart attack symptoms refuse to go to the hospital, so is a similar trend happening here with COVID?

One thing I find a little suspect about this article, although I do respect Axios, is that hospital usage in Texas has not peaked yet and is currently rising ([https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of- america/texa...](https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of- america/texas)).

<comment><USER5> just to further complicate things and show how stats are all over the place, the Texas Tribune has hospitalizations flat (even slightly decreasing on average) since about May 1

[https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas- coronaviru...](https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus- cases-map/?_ga=2.10297781.1282549010.1589667988-730639434.1588979647)

<comment><USER6> Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. The incubation period is 2 weeks, people grow sick enough to be hospitalized in week 3, and death occurs in week 4 or 5. That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge deaths.

<comment><USER7> I know someone who was recently hospitalized(Texas, US) but was not counted as a coronavirus patient because the test were negative(they didn't test for anti bodies). The illness resembles almost everything I have read about people with complications from the virus. Doctors & nurses when asked, they all say that for the anti bodies test, the patient would have to go some place else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ... within the USA

</comment><comment><USER5> only 44 states are shown (if I counted correctly) and GA is missing which opened the earliest. anyone know why some states, especially GA, were omitted?

EDIT: i must have missed it, from a comment below, "It says 'Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data'"

<comment><USER9> It says "Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data" (and, indeed, I count 40, not 44; missing are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee).

<comment><USER10> Florida and Georgia seem really important since they opened up far enough back that we should be able to get a sense of how their shutdowns impacted infection rates.

<comment><USER11> This is just bananas: [https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we- count-...](https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-cases- in-georgia)

"A number of friends and visitors to the site have noticed a discrepancy in how we count "new" cases and how the state of Georgia is counting new cases.

For example, on April 21st, Covid Mapping Project reports 934 "new" cases. Covid Tracking, a companion site run by a team from The Atlantic, doesn't report differentials but they do report a day by day tracking of cases. On April 20, they report Georgia had 18,947 positive cases and on April 21st they reported 19,881 cases. A differential of 934. Same as us.

However, if you got the GA DPH website (where most of us source our data), you'll see 10 "new" cases. That was later revised to 84. And then 138. It's a moving number that will likely change every day for at least a week. Quite different than the 934 we're reporting."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Notably missing is Georgia, which opened up weeks ago, and where both the new cases and deaths continued to fall. In fact GA is missing from the news in general, unlike 2 weeks ago, when everyone was predicting a massive explosion in new cases.

<comment><USER13> Not sure I understand

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's staggering to me how much people in the US have an normalized this level of death and injury, driven by a failed state response, when counter examples like South Korea and Taiwan exist.

The U.S. has 86,541 coronavirus deaths. South Korea has 260. Even if we adjust for population, we expect the US to have 1700, were we following South Korea's example.

How is it that people have just swung fully into embracing our having 50 times as many deaths as we could have prevented? How is it that people believe the rush to "reopen," without implementing measures at the level of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, won't result in an even worse outcome?

<comment><USER15> I think it is because even with the current measures, we still have the 86,000 deaths. And at this point, people think the South Korea style measures won't work (too high of a case load, the cat is already out of the bag), and people are getting lock down fatigue.

So one way of looking at it -- no matter what we do, some large percentage (say 70%) of the population will get infected, and a percentage of them will die. By continuing the lock downs, those infections get pushed down the road a bit but they won't be prevented. The only thing that lock downs are good for is to keep the health system from being overwhelmed (where a larger percentage of those infected will die due to lack of resources).

Now my question, is the above a reasonable set of assumptions? I don't see it spelled out like that anywhere, but reading between the lines that seems like what the pro reopening people are saying.

Now, what I'd personally like to see, is instead of a full re-opening, is an order that says any job that can be done remotely, the employer must allow the employees to do remote. Because there are a number of cases I've seen reported here where people were forced into the office just because management wanted to see butts in seats.

<comment><USER16> Many parts of the world used lockdowns to get cases under control, and plan to use test-trace-isolate (and hopefully any better treatments that are discovered) to manage the epidemic. The claim that "all those infections [and presumably deaths] can't be prevented" seems to be at very best unjustified, at worst -- demonstrably untrue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "No more than 25% of hospital beds in any state are occupied by coronavirus patients."

There seem to be two camps on this topic. One says that this is great, and we should continue every effort possible to stop the spread, presumably for an unlimited number of months or even years. That means staying locked down with minimal economic activity and somehow dealing with the consequences as they come. This is the "wait for the vaccine" camp, which I find hard to join because even _if_ a safe vaccine can be created, it could be a year or two before it is sufficiently tested and deployed. California seems to be leading this camp in the US.

The second camp says that excess healthcare capacity means we should begin reopening the economy until capacity becomes strained. This is the "let the virus spread" camp, and implicit in the argument is that we should allow more people to die from the virus. This camp is winning. Most states and Western nations have started to ease restrictions knowing full well that it means the virus will spread. The hope is that less stringent restrictions can still allow the rate of transmission to be controlled enough to avoid catastrophe.

(There is also a third, fringe camp in the US of right-wingers, and while it is easy to dismiss them, they are actually winning in states like Georgia and Texas)

My understanding at the start of lockdowns was that these were intended to "bend the curve" so we could get control of the situation and then allow the virus to spread at a rate that would not overwhelm healthcare capacity. But more and more people I know seem to be in the "wait for a vaccine" camp. Personally, my imagination struggles to comprehend what another 12+ months of lockdowns would mean for civilization. The loss of life from disease, though obviously abhorrent, is actually a concept my brain can manage (which is not to imply it has more merit, just an honest observation).

<comment><USER18> I don't think this framing is correct. No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place. California's reopen plan is gated by test and trace. It's What every other developed country in the world is doing to allow them to reopen. We see this framed by right wingers as "stay closed" vs "open up" because they understand that this administration isn't capable of launching an effective spread prevention program and are now solely focusing on shifting the blame.

<comment><USER19> > _No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it > to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place._

I wouldn't say "no one":

> _Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that the city will "never be > completely open until we have a cure,"_

This is also a mentality I've seen numerous times on the web, including this site.

<comment><USER5> yes, I don't understand it, but there seems to be a large group who want the lockdowns to remain no matter what. A commenter in a thread last week even went so far as to say the lockdowns were, overall, good for society. I have no explanation except maybe the national election. I hope that's not it because the wholesale destruction of livelihoods just to stick it to the other side is a very depressing thought.

<comment><USER20> There are a variety of reasons IMO:

\-- Many of those making these comments are probably WFH with some level of normalcy so they don't really see how and why a lot of people are anxious to open things back up.

\-- In the same general vein, they see a push to reopen as part of an agenda that puts "the economy" over people for the benefit of Big Business/The Rich.

\-- They think there must be a near-term technological/policy fix if only the bad politicians would stop messing things up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BEYOND CONTROL: MATHS OF a CONTROL SYSTEM - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/12/24/beyond-control-maths-of-a-control-system/ <comment><USER2> cool.. but really a bit difficult to get these things without having a good understanding of calculus. So, this is sort of an incomplete hack, but yeah it does qualify to call as a hack.

</comment><comment><USER3> BUT WHY ARE we SHOUTING?</comment>


Ask HN: Cyber Monday Deals - <AUTHOR>

A place to post any great Cyber Monday deals you find or that you are offering for any of your products. <comment><USER2> OReilly has their Cyber Monday Sale today "Save 50% on all ebooks and video training " "discount code: CYBERDY. Deal expires December 2, 2014 at 5:00am PT,"</comment>


Why I picked Clojure? - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/why-clojure-seriously-why-9f5e6f24dc29 <comment><USER2> The actual title is "Why Clojure? I'll tell you why...", not the ungrammatical "Why I picked Clojure?"</comment>


Google now knows your Parental Status? Creepy much? - <AUTHOR> https://jimmydata.com/parental-status-google-display-network/ Google apparently knows your Parental Status. Think that is creepy.. think about what they have in store! <comment><USER2> This isn't anything new but an event such as a pregnancy causes a big change in someone's behaviour, off and online. Target has already done it. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how- targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target- figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)</comment>


Questions to ask at the end of a technical interview (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://smalldata.tech/blog/2017/03/27/questions-to-ask-at-the-end-of-a-technical-interview <comment><USER2> There's one important question I haven't seen on here that's saved me on more than one occasion.

"Are there any concerns you may have that I can address that may lead you to believe I'm not the right candidate?"

I've been able to address: lack of previous experience, lack of a degree, time in between jobs, time spent at the last job, all thanks to this question.

<comment><USER3> Personally I agree with the other reply that advises against asking this.

Everything in a job interview should be to frame you in a positive light.

I see way too many candidates try and play the humble route, and all it does is sell them short. There's a fine line between too humble and too full of yourself , and neither side is good to find yourself on. This particular question seems to me to be too humble.

Questions like this may seem like it makes the candidate seem humble and open to feedback, but in actuality whenever someone has asked something like this it has made them appear insecure and planted more seeds of doubt in the interviewers mind since they now have to think about their shortcomings.

Maybe phrasing it a better way would help:

"What qualities are you looking for, for this role?" "Are there things you think i should brush up on , assuming I get this role?" "Where do you see me best being able to contribute in this role?"

Those questions give you the same data points, leaving you to infer where you may be lacking. It leaves the interviewer with a sense of your confidence without seeming too full of yourself, and generally the wording makes them consider you as if you're in the role, versus not in it.

Again, a job interview is a sales pitch. People should be honest while balancing keeping the tone positive.

You wouldn't sell a car by pointing out its flaws. Don't sell yourself the same way.

<comment><USER4> I don't agree that asking this question _is_ taking the humble route. Asking if they have any concerns doesn't mean you think that they should. In fact there's an obvious subtext that if they do have concerns then you can address them, so they're not really valid. That's almost the opposite of being humble!

Personally I don't think it sounds either arrogant or humble overall, plus it shows a willingness to discuss difficult things in a polite manner (at least the question as stated above was polite) which is also a plus for a candidate.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. It's also engaging well with the meta game.

Related - Once viewing a house to buy I asked the seller, is there anything you think I should know about this house that I haven't asked about. Their reply turned out to be a deal breaker (at the time - maybe it would have been fine but the point is we got a lot more information! )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in doing a mock technical interview, please reach out, email in profile. I have interviewed developers since 2015. I'm currently a software development manager for an enterprise with a team of 4 that I personally hired, and 4 more contractors that I also interviewed and validated.

I really enjoy the process of interviewing, especially junior candidates, but companies understandably limit the feedback that is able to be provided to candidates after the fact. With a mock interview, I can go through an interview much the way I would conduct it for a real business, but I can provide as detailed of feedback as you would like and we can have a conversation after the fact about how the interview went, strengths, weaknesses, etc.

I will provide this service in 2 different ways - if you would like to keep it private, we can do it on a paid basis. If you are willing to share it with everyone else, it is completely free to you and it will be posted online. I'm hoping most people take the second approach as I feel that this could be a valuable contribution to the community. I'll provide more details on either option if you're interested.

Disclaimer: this is offered by me on a personal basis, and does not reflect the opinions, thoughts, beliefs, or anything else from any employer I currently work for or have in the past. This is offered purely for educational purposes with a fictitious base company, and there is no job or result from this interview other than some additional experience and knowledge.

<comment><USER7> Around 2008 the company I worked for was bought by a huge company so it worked out, but if it hadn't we fully had a plan to get a group together to review resumes and give mock interviews. Every blip since I've threatened to do so and never have.

That was also the first company I ever _gave_ interviews for, and we grew a lot so I did quite a few. To this day, one of the most surprising things I've learned about interviewing on either side was how _terrifying_ being the responsible party for a hiring decision was.

I was confident about digging myself out of any technical problem I got myself into (or at least, I knew my strength, and to refuse situations I couldn't clever my way out of). But somehow the spectre of being the person who said we should hire the new terrible coworker was daunting.

Fixing a crashing bug? No problem. Fixing _someone_ who writes crashing bugs? Oh boy.

For quite a few years I recalled that feeling when I interviewed and it kept me relaxed. I suspect it worked better than the advice to picture the audience naked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been exclusively in leadership positions since about 2005. I usually ask potential peers and ICs interviewing me: "if I were to get this job, what is the first thing you would ask me to do to help you."

This question often helps uncover aspects of the real (vs. stated) culture, helps me build a view of the problems and opportunities facing the organization, and gives me a good chance to position myself as the kind of person who can help them with their specific problems.

<comment><USER9> This is one of the things that really turned me off about interviewing at Google. When I asked a question like that, they basically said, "Oh you won't be working with me." To which I asked, "What team will I be working on?" Their reply was, "Nobody knows. Once you're hired, you can figure out what team you want to work on and what you want to do."

So, uh, what are you interviewing for, then? How do I know the team I want to work on will accept me? Or if they even have openings? Can I speak with anyone I'd be working with? I just gave up asking questions at that point because I knew I would never be able to work in an environment like that.

<comment><USER10> Google tries to "remove bias" by not having you interview with anyone you might work with or even people in your area. During my onsites for a VR role none of my interviewers were VR people. It's "in case you want to switch teams". Right, because I'll suddenly decide my passion isn't the interactive stuff that I have the terminal degree in my field in, I'm going to want to do backend Go stuff all of a sudden /s

Spoke with a recruiter a month or two ago about a Developer Relations role and when I asked about the total length of process (because previous Google interviews were 6 months), I was told that they actually don't even have any of the Developer Relations roles that I was interviewing for available. If you do get through the interviews, you just sit in stasis until they get a 'quota' of more jobs to fill. There's no such thing as "figure out what team you're going to work on". Talk about making you feel like a cog.

FB recruiter on the other hand recently said they interview and hire you, then you'd have a rotational program for a while and you pick which team. Seems more reasonable. But who knows what the truth of it is.

Recruiters will say anything.

<comment><USER11> (Full disclosure: FB Engineer, not in HR) - last I checked the standard thing for engineers was to be hired for a very generic role (eg "software engineer"); being interviewed by people with the same role. No aiming for (or trying to avoid) any specific team (of the ~20 people who I've interviewed who ended up getting hired, I think 3 of them ended up choosing to join my team?)

Once hired, there's 6 weeks of training on all the internal tools / architecture / how things fit together. During the final two weeks of training (and a week after if you're still trying to decide), you'd pick a few teams who look like they match your interests and skills, spend a few days with each, then decide which to join.

> Right, because I'll suddenly decide my passion isn't the interactive stuff > that I have the terminal degree in my field in, I'm going to want to do > backend Go stuff all of a sudden /s

I mean, that can (and does) happen… I've had teammates decide they'd had enough of fighting buggy closed-source BIOS firmware so they go spend a year working on live video streaming, then get into AI to learn something completely new. I've no idea what percentage of people make large switches like that, but it's common enough that the process is well known and supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A question I like to ask is: "You've seen my resume', what new things do you think I can learn here?"

I genuinely want to know this but I discovered a side benefit: the interviewer often starts trying to sell you on the company, flipping the dynamic i.e. you're not chasing them, they're chasing you.

<comment><USER7> I kinda miss the Wild West days, when nobody had much idea how to interview and we were all winging it. I got to interview myself a few times. People like it when they get to talk about themselves, but you also get to run through your values in question form and the clever will pick up on this. Oh this guy cares about <practice that is interesting but not ubiquitous>.

The reverse does not work out. Just because they ask you a bunch of questions about a topic doesn't mean they are good at caring about that topic. Found that out with testing a couple times, and I one memorable case not until well after I accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I usually let myself ask whatever I genuinely want to know about the company, without sounding tacky. Some general quetions I ask is team structure, how many team members will I work with, what will be my job in particular etc.

Some questions I ask the interviewer: "What is currently your greatest challenge here at work?" "How long have you been working here?" "What do you like about this job?" "Is there a programming language/technology you enjoy working with and why?"

Some interviewers really like these questions and I think it's a nice way of learning stuff along the way even if you don't get the job. The "favorite programming language" questions gave me some pretty cool insights.

Also, I think it's better to ask specific questions. Rather than asking "how's your tipical day?", ask "how was yesterday at the office?" People tend to approximate, forget or just skip the details when answering generic questions. Of course, they can always lie, but a specific question might just be a better shot at getting the information you want. Also, questions about product development workflow can say a lot about the company. I once got the same answer to every single question about the company's internal processes and communication: "It depends". They had no clue what they were doing.

</comment><comment><USER14> "What would a typical day for me in my role look like from a high-level overview?"

Hopefully it's not "well there's morning standup then another 3 meetings and then another meeting and then you have 2 hours in the afternoon to do pair programming in a lively open office environment"

</comment><comment><USER15> When interviewed for engineering position at Google 6-7 years ago I asked:

"How is the weather at OfficeWhereIAppliedTo?"

It was a really honest question because sunny weather is something that I really care for as I am from mediterian.

The reaction was really positive - everyone was laughing and interview ended in a very positive and relaxed tone.

At the end I didn't get the offer - but that's because I was too slow at solving algorithmic problems.

<comment><USER16> If I was interviewing someone and they asked what the weather was like at the office, I would just think they'd wasted a question on something they could easily Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do you get so much time to ask these questions during an interview ? The standard white board kind of interview goes on for an hour and you are supposed to finish the coding questions in 45-50 minutes. That hardly leaves any time for counter questions.

<comment><USER7> I have vowed to someone I get advice from that the next interview cycle I will force the issue. We even worked out that I might interview a few "practice" places to get my patter down.

Thing is, I'm tired of talking myself into being excited about a vague opportunity. It doesn't matter if they love me if I know nothing about them. And honestly, I've seen myself sabotage an interview that was making me uncomfortable because I don't want to be someone's anecdote about the guy who walked out mid interview.

So you might learn something more about me that changes your mind in the next ten minutes but if I don't know more about _you_ then it's all for nothing.

The thing nobody wants to talk about is that psychologically, you already made up your mind 20 minutes in, now you're just trying to justify your decision. I've seen people flunk a candidate for answering a question correctly and recommend another for getting the same question wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "How many people have quit your team in the last 6 month? Last year?" Turnover is a major red flag. Every hiring manager thinks their team is great, so asking subjective questions like "how's the on-call?" Probably won't yield useful answers.

<comment><USER19> That's something I always (have to) ask because otherwise nobody will tell you. At my current job it was particularly interesting because they started explaining me why they were looking for someone ("had to" fire the difficult person before) and why they were kind of afraid of getting someone as difficult as the person before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Three questions I like to ask:

1\. What's your favorite part of working here?

2\. What's your least favorite part of working here?

3\. What question did I not ask that I should have?

</comment><comment><USER21> I recently had a phone interview and while trying to figure out what I would want from an ideal job, I was surprised to discover I had not _ever_ seen anyone recommend some of the questions I came up with:

\- What is [your parent company] and/or [you, the subsidiary] doing to fight the climate crisis?

\- What about diversity, how is your male-to-female ratio and are there many colleagues of non-European heritage? Potential follow-up: Are there any efforts to improve that?

(Of course, replace "European" with the region where most privileged people are typically from in your area.)

There were obviously more things I cared about, but I realized that this is one of the things I would want and should be looking for. I hope it may inspire others to do the same, as it has come up in my current company that nobody noticed that candidates are even looking for this sort of thing (and so, "from a business perspective, why should we even try if it makes no financial sense?").

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing I haven't seen listed yet that is important to personal happiness:

"What does your change process look like?"

Do they have boards and paperwork? Pull requests and code? Engineer just executes? Do they make technical decisions at the team level or require further meetings / boards, etc.

Tells you a lot about the company both in terms of maturity but also in terms of culture.

</comment><comment><USER23> After series of interviews I compiled questions to employer, maybe that would help others: [https://github.com/WojciechMula/interview- questions](https://github.com/WojciechMula/interview-questions)

</comment><comment><USER24> These questions do matter, but the answers are not as important as "Why?" Answers to such question will change as a product and company evolves. But how did they get to those answers? What strategy drives their decisions? In short, why do they use what they use, and do what they do. You should ask how they evolved to this point, what struggles they are having, and where they may be headed in the future.

Those answers will be far more insightful into who you are working with, and whether you want to work in their environment.

<comment><USER25> As a candidate, be very careful asking interviewers 'why' the company does something in a particular way.

'Why?' Is an aggressive question.

When you hit your interviewer with a 'why?' Question, you put them on the defensive. They have to justify that their company isn't dumb, that there are good reasons for doing it that way, that there even is a rational reason why - when they may not know the reasons, they personally might even disagree, and the fact is _there may not be_ a good reason.

And while you might think 'I really want to know that sort of thing if I'm going to be working there', the downside is that to get that answer, you have leave your interviewer with a bad taste in their mouth - 'that candidate seemed to be judging us for how we picked our front-end stack, and I felt slightly embarrassed defending that we still use angular even though I personally have been fighting a running battle to move to a new stack for a year now'

And honestly, those are definitely not red flags right there. If your requirements for joining a tech org are that you expect them to have made all the same decisions you would have made if you were in their shoes, without error, then a) your bar might be a _little_ high and b) what the hell do they need you for, they've already got a team that can do everything you could bring to the table.

<comment><USER26> > what the hell do they need you for, they've already got a team that can do > everything you could bring to the table.

If that's the case, then why are they conducting an interview in the first place?

I guess an argument can be made that it's counterproductive to ask "aggressive" questions if you want to be hired. But then again, candidates will likely be asked "why" they did something dozens of times in a whiteboard interview. If someone can't take 10% of the pressure they expose their candidates to, maybe they shouldn't be doing interviews in the first place.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to answer any "why" question that I'm in a position to answer, and I always have, whenever a candidate has asked me one. I'm wary about taking the mere act of asking a question as a good sign (or a bad one) in the age of "Cracking to Coding Interview" and whatnot but it's the kind of question that leads to useful discussion.

Sure, we weren't right about a lot of choices we made, and sometimes, in hindsight, they were flat out indefensible, and we had to deal with the consequences. That's part of software development everywhere.

If they ask that because their bar is too high and they don't want to join a team that makes more than N wrong choices a year, fine, it's _their_ bar, they get to set it wherever they like.

If they ask that just because they think questioning accepted practice is a good idea, that's actually great. Lots of companies end up making one bad mistake after another just because no one stops to ask why. And lots of narcissistic team leads and managers don't want that kind of _attitude_ on their teams -- if that leads to not being hired, that's a bullet dodged, not a wasted opportunity.

On the other hand a question like this is a great opportunity to show them that we're good at both leveraging our assets _and_ at owning up to our mistakes. That's definitely a quality I'd be looking for in a prospective team.

Edit: oh yeah, maybe some more general context is appropriate here.

One thing that took me a while to learn is that not every interview you don't ace is a failure. I don't mean that in some personal development hoodoo way, like the way to success is riddled with failures or whatever. I mean, literally, that there are interviews which you don't ace, and that's a good thing, because if you'd aced it, you would have hated working there, or it would have been really bad for your career, or both.

It's one thing if you don't get hired because you lack the knowledge and skills -- okay, you can work on that and try again later. But if you get passed because you asked the wrong question (and that question wasn't offensive or anything, _obviously_ ), or because you did not know that _specific_ thing that a lead dev is _really_ proud about knowing, that's a blessing in disguise.

<comment><USER25> Oh, to be clear asking 'why' questions of candidates is also an interviewing mistake. Adversarial questions are not good for communication in general.

I am literally saying that the mistake here is asking questions that use the word 'why?' (Or, yes, weasel-wordy synonyms like 'how come' or 'what's the thinking behind' or 'help me understand what led to..')

These are all fundamentally cross-examination type questions, that ask someone to justify their judgement. Most people believe they have good judgement. When you question it, they close up. Or they second guess themselves, which means you've undermined them and that changes the dynamic between you.

To learn something from an person the shortest path is not always to just come right out and ask them about it.

So someone tells you they chose to use redux to solve a problem. Your first thought might be 'aha! I could learn a lot about what they value and prioritize if I knew why they chose redux!' And that's a reasonable thing to want to know. But if you ask 'why did you pick redux?' you throw down a gauntlet that might stop you from really finding out. Instead, try coming in from the other side: 'tell me more about the context for that project. What constraints were you under, in terms of time, preexisting code, dependencies, team size? What did you know about the problem space going in? Was this when you were learning react or already familiar?' And take the conversation from _there_.

<comment><USER26> Nine times out of ten, when someone asks "why did you pick redux?" they really do mean some, or all of those things. Sure, they could phrase it better, but their immediate professional future is literally being decided right then and there, can you blame them for blurting out something silly, or misjudging how much professional terseness is appropriate?

They don't necessarily do it out of terseness, either. Practically every prospective intern out there has asked my "why" something (why Yocto? Why C? Why no C++? Why Python? Why CherryPy? Why _shudders_ ClearCase?). These are people who've never worked in a company before, expecting them to ask me what contraints we were under, in terms of time, preexisting code, dependencies and team size would be completely unrealistic.

Plus there's an endless list of reasons for any of these questions. Without an open-ended question you can dance around the real reason for a particular decision for way more than it's appropriate in an interview.

People aren't machines. Just because a (pop?) psychology book out there says "why" is a cross-examining question doesn't mean everyone who asks you that is subconsciously playing cop games or being a jerk. Accidentally adversarial, or poorly-phrased questions, or questions that sound good in one's head and then come off as rude as soon as they utter them are a reality of everyday communication. Being able to deal with them is something that ought to be expected (from both parties, of course).

Sure, sometimes people will ask "why" in an adversarial manner but it's not the "why" that gives it away -- it's usually the arrogance, the condescension, the adversarial conversation that _follows_ and so on.

<comment><USER25> Right. People are bad as communicating. Stipulated. But this entire thread is in the context of 'here are some smart questions to ask at the end of an interview'. And I am saying that adding 'why?' questions to that list as follow ups is _not good advice_. The fact that people ask 'why?' questions when they don't know better is not a good argument for telling people that 'why?' questions are good questions to ask.

You can get to that information by expressing empathy and curiosity and without challenging anyone's judgement.

<comment><USER26> Why would it be challenging anyone's judgement? Just because it includes the word "why"?

If the mere fact of asking an open-ended question, in an interview setting, offends the interviewer, or makes them uncomfortable, to the point that they don't want to hire you, I think that's a good outcome.

Yes, sure, unless your objective is to be hired at absolutely all cost, anywhere, no matter how terrible. I know how that feels and I've been through that. But if that's the case, and you really don't care where you work, there are companies out there that will hire anyone who's even been in the same room with a computer for more than five minutes. You don't need to ask clever questions in those interviews.

And if, thank God, you're not in that situation, do you really want to work in a place where people make hiring decisions over things like these? Suppose they hire you -- sooner or later you're going to let a "why?" slip. If it's okay to do that when you're colleagues, why wouldn't it be okay to do it in an interview?

I definitely don't disagree that you _should_ be able to come up with something more specific than "why", if only because it's likely to be more useful. But being empathetic towards someone who will otherwise feel they're being challenged because you asked them "Why are you using Yocto?" instead of "What are the constraints that made you choose Yocto, and in what context?" is unlikely to be useful IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can agree that most, if not all, questions in the linked blog post are good questions to ask any interviewer. I also feel that simply asking questions, no matter what they are, is good as that shows interest and curiosity.

On the occasions where I have interviewed people that have applied for mid to senior level positions I expect at least a handful of questions from the candidate. Someone interviewing for a senior position but not asking any questions comes off as a bit odd.

<comment><USER28> Asking questions also signals "I can afford to walk away", which is a desirable quality (if somebody else would hire them, they can't be terrible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's important to ask any questions at all, because sometimes it can be revealing. In the last place I worked in, when I asked the second question the boss told me we can talk on the way to the elevator because he had another canditate soon. I took it at a face value, and it was a mistake. There were no crowds applying for the company, later he even offered us a monetary bonus for bringing a new employee. He was highly manipulative in various ways.

<comment><USER21> > he even offered us a monetary bonus for bringing a new employee

As far as I know, that is very common, at least in the places I worked. If someone mentions in the interview that you tipped them about this company and they are hired, a bonus of 500-1000 for each of you is what I would typically expect the policy to be in medium to large companies. Their thinking is probably that talent is hard enough to come by already and that recruiters are way more expensive than that. (One company I interned at, I remember the boss complaining how big a cut external recruiters get, though I don't know the actual percentage it sounded like in the order of 10% of a year's wages just for getting you in touch.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like to ask questions that reveal behavioral and personality traits, and by analyzing them can indicate competency as a coworker and cultural fit. I find the attributes of my peers within the company to make a much larger impact on my happiness than the attributes of management or the organization.

</comment><comment><USER31> Related: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel- test-12-s...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel- test-12-steps-to-better-code/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14037313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14037313)

</comment><comment><USER33> Another really good thing to ask is about culture. And not in the blunt "what is your culture like?", but rather frame it as dichotomies.

Do you default to action, or default to inaction?

How do you value quality of code vs. speed of delivery?

Do you prefer your engineer to do pure engineering, or prefer to get involved with the business side?

If you had a short production outage, and a root cause cannot be found easily, how much time would the team spend searching for it (before giving up)? Would that change if the same error occurred twice? Three times?

Questions like this that don't have an obvious, universal answer (IMHO) are a really good way to get a glimpse into the culture.

<comment><USER34> > Do you default to action, or default to inaction?

This is the reverse "Where do you see yourself in 5 years". Don't ask ridiculous questions like that, you know what answer you're gonna get.

<comment><USER33> I beg to differ. Startups tend to default to action. Lots of big / conservative companies default to inaction. When you cannot judge from the outside, you could get interesting results.

<comment><USER35> Is anyone really going to admit that they default to inaction though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> how come you have to ask this stuff at the end? wouldn't it make more sense for this information to be provided up front? what does it matter if i'm technically qualified for your job if your team size, structure, tech stack, required availability, etc. isn't a fit? why would you wait until after a tech screen for this? seems like a waste of everyone's time.

</comment><comment><USER36> I know one question to ask at the beginning of a technical interview: what is the point? Tech interview gives no information about a candidate, his knowledge or skills. Its a horrible horrible idea to do it.</comment>


FlatEarthSingles: Where Flat-Earthers Find Love - <AUTHOR> https://flatearthsingles.com/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping this would be a parody site. I wonder how many of these accounts are fake. It seems like a cat-fisher's dream: easy access to many people who are evidently lacking in the critical thinking department.</comment>