What If Cars Were Rented Like We Hire Programmers? - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/1/16/what-if-cars-were-rented-like-we-hire-programmers.html <comment><USER3> This analogy is backwards... Hiring a programmer is an exchange of company money (or equity, benefits, etc) for a service (programming skills). Renting a car is an exchange of one's own money for a service (use of the car).

In this case, the person renting the car would be "interviewing" the car rental company to determine if their service is worth their money.

<comment><USER4> >> In this case, the person renting the car would be "interviewing" the car rental company to determine if their service is worth their money.

It goes both ways... the rental car agency interviews the person to make sure she is trustworthy of driving the car. The author is asking you to think about the relationship a little more abstractly than simply who is giving money to whom.

Having said, that, I think this is a poor analogy because I don't find it particularly illuminating and the situations just don't seem very... analogous.

<comment><USER5> Something like "if interviewing carpenters was like interviewing programmers" would work, with various questions regarding trivia about the Mightyman Bansaw 3000, specific experience using square-faced carbon tipped reverse-threaded screws and comparisons between building red versus white cabinets.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/Default.aspx?blog=entry.7c334037...](http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/Default.aspx?blog=entry.7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac)

If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe it's because I just made the egregious mistake of getting drawn into a gun-control debate with a friend and his friends on Facebook, but hyperbolic arguments by analogy feel really silly, cheap, and disingenuous to me right now...

<comment><USER8> I find that analogies are a poor argumentation technique overall, even if they are not hyperbolic. It's always possible to find similarities between wildly different and even opposing ideas. The details matter.

<comment><USER9> I find analogies very good for explaining concepts (to make the details easier to understand), but absolutely horrible for debates. Analogies generally over simplify issues, and hackers are particularly bad at arguing the analogy to an absurd extent instead of arguing the main premise behind it. It happens here all the time.

<comment><USER10> It seems like this example helps highlight the absurdity of requiring experience in $Language for $Years (or other similar too-constrained metrics) when an Able Programmer can just learn that stuff. The general populace views what we do as magic, but understands being able to drive very well. This effectively says that programming is a general skill, and that a good programmer should be able to learn it if they already know something similar. So, your Visual Studio 2012-only shop can hire people w/ 15 years of embedded C experience, and probably get a pretty solid programmer.

We all seem to consider this as true about being a Good Programmer ("Sure, I can learn $language_that_you_use"), but are frustrated by HR departments who don't realize it.

<comment><USER11> For hiring Excellent Programmer, it is true. For hiring Average Programmer, experience matters a lot - average programmers become proficient slower than excellent ones, so it is better to hire somebody that has already passed most of the learning curve. OTOH, hiring by tool usually doesn't make any sense unless this tool has really steep learning curve (in which case why use it anyway? yes, I know there are exceptions, but generally it's true).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      Interviewer#3: How long you been driving your 2010 Escort?
      Applicant:     About 3 years.
      Interviewer#3: Sorry, but we are looking for someone with
                     experience of driving 2010 Escort for at
                     least 10 years.

<comment><USER13> Ha!

To add:

        Interviewer#3: We are looking for someone who knows how
        operate the navigation screen on the 2010 Escort.
        Applicant: My car does not have the navigation option
        installed.
        Interviewer: Then you do not qualify. Knowing how to
        work the navigation system is a priority.
        Applicant: I know how to work navigation systems in
        general. My car before this one had a navigation system
        and I learned it pretty quickly.
        Interviewer#3: No. We need people with 10 years of
        experience with the actual navigation system on the 2010
        Escort.

Note: Ford no longer sells the Escort in the USA. They sell the Focus and the Fiesta. Both terrific little cars.

<comment><USER14> Interviewer#3: We are willing to accept 8 years of education with a Master's or equivalent on the subject of 2010 Escort navigation systems in lieu of 10 years driving experience, for otherwise qualified candidates

Completely off-topic response to your note, but I loved my 2000 Focus and I was almost sad to sell it. It went through air intake hoses on the transmission about as fast as it did gasoline (hyperbole, but the Arizona heat was hell on that little rubber elbow. Fixing it took 5 minutes and cost $3 once a year, though, so as far as chronic car problems went it was pretty mild). It was still running strong after 12 years, and got my wife from Tucson to Seattle as safe as could be :3

<comment><USER15> > got my wife from Tucson to Seattle as safe as could be It's a lot safer, I > would have thought, per mile to do long highway drives than lots of short > urban journeys, particularly on the separated highways in the USA.

<comment><USER16> Yup, the per-mile risk is higher on short journeys.

(Also you might want to edit your comment, it's ended up all on one line)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My own personal, small sample size experience has shown that if I start questioning things early on in the interview, I can predict fairly well whether or not the company will be a good fit or not. I try not to jump to conclusions but even initial emails and phone calls can make for pretty strong clues.

If I sense during an interview that things aren't going to be a good fit, I still try and finish the interview graciously. There is no use burning any bridge, even if it's one you're 100% certain you'll never use. One trick I do to keep myself from seeming aloof or displeased is to start asking questions about the industry. At this point, I know I don't want the job and probably don't care about the culture, but learning something about an industry you may not know much about could be useful down the line.

</comment><comment><USER18> This part was golden:

Agency : How much did you pay for your last rental car?

Applicant : I don't see how that matters. What are you charging?

Agency : We like to know what you paid before so you get a fair rate.

Applicant : I paid market rates.

Agency : Sorry, we must know how much...

<comment><USER11> Well, if you buy instead of rent, especially used car, that's what 99.99% of salesmen would do. "How much is that car?" - "well, how much can you pay?" They have sometimes prices posted but everybody knows these have little meaning except generic signal of "we consider it an expensive car" or "this one is cheap".

<comment><USER19> True. Negotiation 101: the first person to say a number loses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've had a few interviews like this.

For future interviews, I've collected similar questions to ask of them (questions that I have conveniently worked out or looked up the answer to beforehand), my rationale being, "I want to make sure I would be working with competent peers." And I don't give a fuck if it rubs them the wrong way.

<comment><USER21> If your rationale is to find out if you're going to work with competent peers, why not asK a question that leads into a proper, deeper technical discussion?

<comment><USER22> He meant his stated rationale. I'm sure his actual rationale is to try and help the interviewer achieve enlightenment by turning his own pointless methods back on him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I became unreasonably angry while reading this. I guess it struck a nerve with me for some reason.

During my interviews, I was very charismatic, confident in my skills, was asked technical question that were things I would need day in day out. I landed the job on 100% of those interviews.

There was this one time were the guy kept asking me crap I would never EVER need while working for his company.

Binary tree's, linked lists, pointer arithmatic. "What the fuck?", I thought to myself. This was for a C# developer position for a small 20 person company. Anyways, I thanked him for his time and left. He called me with an offer two weeks later, and I declined. Not going to waste my time with that crap.

\---

99% of us will never work for Google, or Amazon, or Twitter - but for your run of the mill software shops. And that's ok.

<comment><USER24> Out of curiosity, why do you consider binary trees, linked lists, and pointer arithmetic to be so out of the bounds of possibility for work at a job? Those strike me as skills I might find invaluable in one of my software engineers depending on the job.

<comment><USER25> You probably won't be doing pointer arithmetic in C#. It's been about 5 years since I wrote any C#, but I don't _remember_ any... mostly I remember it as a Java clone, which would preclude pointer arithmetic.

<comment><USER26> C# has pointers (although you're rarely going to use them)

<comment><USER25> You're right on the rarely using them part, I don't think I used a single one. Thanks for the clarification!

<comment><USER26> The only time I've ever used them is to speed up drawing. Bitmap.SetPixel is super slow compared to taking a pointer to the raw image data and writing there directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a hiring manager, the thing I find most interesting on posts like this (ignoring that the analogy is TERRIBLE) are the comments of people used to being on the other side of the desk. I don't think we (as interviewers) do a good job of explaining why we ask the questions we ask. And I don't think we do a good job of communicating what our job is.

Our job is to stop you getting hired.

If we get 100 people applying for the job, then our job is to not employ at least 99. So we are looking for anything that identifies you as being one of the 99.

That you could go away and learn what color the middle wire is is great. But the guy next to you has been fixing wiring in distributor caps for years. And right now, I need people that know what color the middle wire is.

<comment><USER28> "That you could go away and learn what color the middle wire is is great. But the guy next to you has been fixing wiring in distributor caps for years. And right now, I need people that know what color the middle wire is."

If you're hiring a mechanic, yes. However, the analogy was pointing out that the person being asked the question was a potential car renter. _That_ specific knowledge is not relevant as a car renter.

<comment><USER27> Yes, the analogy is silly.

<comment><USER29> Actually, I think you misunderstand the analogy. The color of the middle wire on the distributor is something you'd like a prospective mechanic to know, so he isn't learning on your time. It isn't, however, something that is in any way relevant to driving a car. I think this is why your comment provoked such hostile responses.

The _programmer_ equivalent of the middle wire color question is something like, "Is the 3-phase power supply on XYZ mainframe wired in a delta or wye configuration? As a followup, what is the input frequency tolerance?" A sysadmin might need to know that, and an electrician certainly would, but it is far, far outside the purview of a programmer. [Edit: I'm assuming the programmer to be someone writing software running on the mainframe, not the firmware for a microcontroller in the power supply]

Maybe you're just a very good interviewer and haven't had to deal with the 90% that are crap? :+)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This makes no sense.

Just like having a drivers license is no guarantee you are a good driver, having many years of job experience programming is no guarantee you are a programmer.

On the other hand, you are liable for any damage you do to a car you rent, plus the company is fully insured in the case you do any damage and can't pay. Hiring and firing someone (which is the only real way to know if someone is a good developer) is very expensive.

Here's what it would be like if we hired programmers like we rent cars:

You walk in to a software company and are immediately hired under these conditions: "We'll take you on for 6 months, but if it doesn't work out you need to pay us back all of your salary, plus benefits and payroll tax"

<comment><USER31> Actually it does, and spot on to boot.

He's not saying "don't find a good programmer." He's saying that the questions they ask get them no closer to finding out whether he is a good programmer.

<comment><USER32> _He's saying that the questions they ask get them no closer to finding out whether he is a good programmer._

A lot of the time they're not meant to. They're meant to figure out whether he's a _bad_ programmer (or bad cultural fit, or something else bad).

The cost of hiring someone bad is _way_ higher than most people would guess. I've come to believe that in many cases the questions asked in an interview almost don't matter - they're just there to give you an opportunity to fail, or to say something incredibly dumb or ignorant or obnoxious so that the interviewer can quickly reject you and avoid an expensive mistake.

<comment><USER33> If you hire someone who is boring and has no obvious problem but isn't very productive, you have your ass covered. His lack of productivity is his fault. If you hire someone exceptionally useful with some notable problem, or even just some notable flavor someone doesn't like, it is something you should have noticed and you are liable. A lot of companies want an unblemished calf more than they want a Zed Shaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've given enough interviews to know it's all relative.

To cherry pick one example: "What color has the middle wire feeding into the distributer cap?" implies interviewers ask ridiculously specific questions that you could "look up if and when you needed to know."

The problem is for some applicants that question could be "how would you implement Google's PageRank" and for other applicants it can be something as simple as "what's the difference between an interface and an abstract class." Think what you want but if you don't think you need to be able to answer the latter, it's probably not going to work out between us.

To be honest, of the few interviews where I've been the applicant, the questions have always been fair and I've never been treated with the level of disrespect that was demonstrated in this scenario. That said, I'm completely willing to believe I've just been lucky so far.

<comment><USER35> The problem I perceive is that that question gets asked to people who will never need to know it. I too often see people interviewing for front end web or javascript positions asked questions about binary search trees or something that totally doesn't relate to front end development, instead of asking about closures or what they think about coffeescript. Honestly, I think at this point if you're asking about various search algorithm big o timings to find out if a programmer can build an iOS app or do Rails dev, you're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The poor interview process is one thing, but what irks me most is that almost nobody offers you a chance to meet the team, even when they make you an offer. That's been my general experience so far anyway. It sucks, because your only exposure to anyone was the hiring manager, and maybe a lead, and all they did was ask questions about what you memorized about whatever language(s).

<comment><USER28> My pet peeve is that you are interviewed as though you should be God, and you would be so _lucky_ and _privileged_ to work on this pristine, perfect codebase...only to find out that the codebase is not all that perfect, and the development processes are not scrum or agile or XP, but instead "run around like chicken with your head cut off, just get it done!"

Perhaps this is the queue for someone to suggest "that's why we try so hard to prevent bad people from getting hired". :-)

<comment><USER36> > you would be so lucky and privileged

I hate those interviews and interviewees that have that attitude too. Especially since the opposite is actually the case. It's so incredibly easy to find work as a developer right now, you need to tell me why I should come work for you. Remind me why I'm sitting here talking to you instead of somewhere else that could be more exciting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's very easy to decry company hiring procedures. That happens all the time here on HN, and for a very good reason--most company hiring procedures are not based on research and are demonstrably suboptimal for hiring the best people. We discuss this a lot on Hacker News because many of us have been looking for jobs or looking for people to hire some time in our adult lives. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.

[http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...](http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.

The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes.

Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24)

interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain- teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.)

The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi- deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes.

<http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full>

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false)

Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann:

"Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure."

[http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)."

Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing>

[http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1](http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1)

<http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF>

[http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...](http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html)

<comment><USER38> You post this every time, and I want to decry the astro turfing..

but it's good information, well referenced, and I don't have the background or time to refute anything you've said.

<comment><USER39> I don't think posting the same information again and again is welcome. The people who might be inspired to debate it simply can't have a discussion about it every time it appears - and it goes beyond wanting to engage with the community and share something and becomes an attempt to manipulate. I'd certainly encourage tokenadult to stop posting it.

<comment><USER40> I think the optimal solution might be to post a link to the comment on a previous version of the article, where the discussion's been had before?

<comment><USER41> I haven't seen this comment before and took something useful from it, so it seems ok to repost it. Your suggestion to link to the previous posting and it's discussion seems like the best approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Better analogy would be shipping company hiring a truck driver and asking him those questions. And also requiring experience piloting Formula One cars for at least three years, knowledge of how to operate large construction equipment and ability to replace the tire on a truck with bare hands.

</comment><comment><USER43> Evidently other people must have been through the same types of interviews as I have.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe applicants need insurance. If they don't work out, their insurance company refunds the employer their salary and the opportunity cost of their bad commits. This way, applicants get muscled out of the job market gradually by high insurance rates, rather than with a brick wall filter.

<comment><USER45> That's not a bad idea at all. But it's unlikely to be very useful for specialized work, unless the insurance is highly specialized, and in that case it is likely to be as expensive as malpractice insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> While this seems "spot on" at first glance, I can tell you that when I interviewed at Google and Amazon (two years ago), it wasn't anywhere near this bad. Both places asked what might seem like contrived technical questions, but the thing is, you have to pick something that can be tested in an hour (or less). That, and it's not the answer that matters, but more your process of working a problem. They didn't seem to care too much about experience with specific tools. I guess it depends on the organization, and I can see how many places would be much worse. My question is, if they care so much about experience with specific tools, why do they even get to an in-person interview with someone who doesn't have it on their resume?

<comment><USER47> My experience with Amazon was similar but at the end I was led to ask: "if the 1hr filter process isn't efficient at finding the best candidates, why do they do it?"

I think in the end its a balance of basic filtering vs. HR requirements. The process has to be objective and quantifiable so they're covered in the event of anyone calling foul play. Everyone gets the same treatment and there is a paper trail of reasons for why they turned you down.

<comment><USER33> The process only has to look objective and quantifiable. Everyone doesn't get the same treatment, but it's not actionable if the differences are all deniable and have rationalizations like 'culture fit'. People can and do still hire who they want for whatever reason, they just claim some objective reason for it.

<comment><USER47> Ah yes, I completely agree. I really should have clarified by the HR part in that it is meant for HR's use and not the actual hiring manager/interviewer. If they want to sabotage the interview or otherwise they still can; its just harder to prove-if at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I agree with parts of it, but I disagree with the basic premise that hiring programmers is like renting cars. When you hire a programmer, it is like hiring a car mechanic, not a car driver. Some of the questions do seem appropriate to ask to a car mechanic.

<comment><USER49> If you see a programming language as a tool like photoshop you certainly can see the renting car point.

I don't think every Java Coder would be able to tell how the internal mechanics of Java work. They aren't Java mechanics, they're just driving Java.

<comment><USER48> Car Mechanics dont build the car parts or research into how to build the most efficient engine, but do need to know how to apply the knowledge of those parts. The best car mechanics can apply the science but may not be the best car researchers. Thats why in my opinion, some questions do make sense for a car mechanic.

If you were using the photoshop analogy, then I think to interview someone, you need to ask them how different features of Photoshop work, not how Photoshop was built but also not how they draw in general, IMO. You may be a great artist, but if you can't understand Photoshop features and what they mean you will fail to create a great digital painting.

<comment><USER50> The car mechanic analogy is an interesting one that I came across while touring universities to find one that I liked. A parent at one of the Q&A sessions asked what the difference was between Computing and IT (in a UK education context). The degree director replied that an IT course is like learning to drive a car, whereas Computing is like learning to be a mechanic. (Context: IT classes pre-university used to consist of learning to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint.) So I suppose whether the analogy works depends whether you want your programmer to find and plug a hole in your exhaust pipe, or to work out how to make a more efficient catalytic converter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ah yes, another person describing their Google interview experience. They do leave a lot of solid candidates out but in their defense, when I was there, being able to survive the non-intuitive interview process was a good indicator you could survive the non-intuitive business dynamics.

If didn't really crush people when they didn't get called back it would make it funny. Sort of like the Monty Python sketch <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0sqRMzkwo>

</comment><comment><USER52> "E se me nona gavesse e rode sarìa na carioea", as they say here in the Veneto, which, literally translated, means "if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be be a wheelbarrow".

<comment><USER53> And what does it mean?

<comment><USER52> The literal translation is pretty clear, actually. If [something ridiculous/impossible] then [something else ridiculous/impossible]. In other words the comparison is a bit of a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I have had this interview. I didn't get the job.

<comment><USER55> I'm actually interested to know what kind of developer gets the job. And also, what was he/she thinking when accepting the job, was it out of necessity? because he/she liked the interview process? (I'm asking seriously)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> hehe, yeah, I've been through this several times.

I think it's funny when the recruiters try and lie at the beginning by saying a later interviewer may or may not be out sick and there is the possibility for some interviews to be cancelled and the day cut short. We all know they want to send you home if you screw up in the beginning. It's not a secret.

</comment><comment><USER57> Now, maybe I've gotten lucky, and I've only interviewed at a few companies (well-known ones include: Google, Amazon, Facebook), but I've never had an experience as bad as that painted by this analogy.

In general, the interview questions I've gotten are designed to test general CS knowledge and the ability to translate an algorithm into code. This is important, and as an interviewer myself, a lot of candidates fail at the translating to code step.

Design questions are (at a high level) maybe even closer to "how would you do your job?" than coding questions.

I have yet to see a company ask for specific experience with VB.net 2012 edition and exclude candidates like myself who are only familiar with C/Python/Java. If they do, I'd recommend straight out lying (for languages). You can pick languages up really quickly. For platforms, maybe you really should know it and it is actually relevant to your potential job.

<comment><USER58> If a company asks for specific experience with a technology and exclude candidates familiar with other technologies, I recommend getting out of there.

<comment><USER57> If the job you are applying for is to work on a rails site or develop a mobile app, I would argue that it is pretty important that you are already familiar with those technologies (and their pitfalls)…

I wouldn't exclude someone unfamiliar with a specific framework, but as an employer you understand that ramping them up to speed is going to take a significant amount of time.

<comment><USER58> Right and my point still stands. If you don't have the expertise that they require specifically, don't waste your time, or worse, lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The problem with this article (and nearly every attempt at analogous argumentation by anybody, ever) is that the writer cannot construct a homologous argument, which ultimately relegates the entire attempt to, at best, being mildly entertaining, but otherwise unhelpful. I've attempted many times to draw analogies in argument, but when your audience by and large shares the experience, they're useless. When attempting to dispute a point, or bring notice to something that you'd like to see changed, it's better to stick with homologous arguments and eschew analogies. Otherwise, you're just going to get mired down in quibbling over how the analogy doesn't hold, and completely sidetrack any attempts to discuss what you're really wanting to discuss.

</comment><comment><USER60> What I think candidates tend to miss is some of the potential ulterior motives that employers have when asking esoteric questions or certain task requests. The list of what candidates label as 'inappropriate' for interviews has become longer, or perhaps candidates have simply become more vocal about it. I wrote another article in response to this, in order to outline why certain lines of questioning (esoteric, riddle, impossible, inane) may be used to try and learn something deeper about the candidate. Candidates need to understand that it isn't always just about your ability to answer a question. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5073791>

</comment><comment><USER61> This is absolutely spot on.

</comment><comment><USER62> The only times I have been asked language specific questions are when I was selling myself as a language expert to fix some particular problem in some particular language.

I will however say that 90% of the interview questions I have been asked are heavily biased towards C type answers, although I did manage to use Scheme once!

Sure a linked list problems don't technically have to be written with pointers, but we all know what the interviewer is asking for.

Actually that brings up a good idea, I am going to come up with a bunch of contrived answers to the "find a loop in a linked list" problem, memorize them all, and next time someone asks me that question I'm going to give 5 weird answers in the course of 30 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've been through a lot of hiring processes, on both sides of the desk, and I don't know what the article is trying to satirize. The worst, most bizarre hiring process I've ever been involved with bore no resemblance to anything in this little drama, and the analogy is bad. (My immediate reaction to the title was that car rental is based on what's available and how spiffy the car is (fairly rational) whereas programmer hiring is abased on jumping through hoops (e.g. Dumb C trick questions or programming challenges or certifications), who's available, and some weird perception of value almost guaranteed to be out of whack with reality.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's funny in an absurd way. It is absurd because software technology grow significantly faster than car technology. Asking someone to write something with 1998 technology versus 2012 technology is different than asking someone to drive a 1998 model car and a 2012 model car.

It's true, if you have a solid foundation software, you _can_ catch up to the 2012 platform. It will take some time.

So I think it is less that software changed so fast that solid programmers are unable to catch up so much that software changed so fast that recruiters have been unable to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER65> I just had to interview people for a (non-tech) job who didn't even want it, and who we had no intention of hiring, because of our company's rules about how many people you have to interview before hiring. At least the hiring process described in the post has some sort of point, however badly executed.

</comment><comment><USER66> What's with this "only Subaru" analogy? What I've found is more along these lines:

"Are you sure I'm qualified? I don't feel like I'd be very useful. I've never done Java, only C++ and JS and lisp" "No, you'll be perfect. We don't hire people for specific languages"

<comment><USER67> I think you're lucky.

Of course, my experience is with Python, and trying to get hired by a Ruby shop (no matter my experience outside of work with Ruby or any other language, or my experience with the rest of the stack) is impossible.

Perhaps it's a different world the lower down the language abstraction level you look.

<comment><USER40> I've found a mixed bag, for sure, with extensive C and C++ experience. Of course, recruiters love sending things that don't even make sense - <USER2> me in as a permanent employee in a language I don't know well is probably fine; I'm smart, I learn well, I won't have bad habits. Bringing me in on a 3 month contract on a language I haven't touched, not so much...

Regarding your Ruby-outside-work experience, is it on publicly visible projects?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Question since I'm in the middle of interview sright now (I haven't experienced anything like this other than the last part of negotiations): how and what do you look for in terms of team and company for? for some reason in not sure myself.

</comment><comment><USER69> Car analogies are usually bad. This one is worse.

The underling problem is very true though.

</comment><comment><USER70> The author is confused.

1) While renting a car you are paying. 2) Interviews are for getting PAID.

It is buying versus selling.

The buyer will be cautious, try to get the best deal. The seller will be sweet, nice and somehow sell it.

So, we should ignore this post.

</comment><comment><USER71> A similar analogy but from a different angle: <http://blog.212labs.com/?p=53>

I argue recruiters should act MORE like car salesmen =)

</comment><comment><USER72> Related [http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired- li...](http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-like.html)

</comment><comment><USER59> Hiring feels broken in many businesses, typically because it is executed by people who do not understand the target position, especially with technology. And, like the author tried to focus on, it doesn't help when the focus is far too heavily on a specific piece of the tech puzzle, and not on the overall talent and aptitude of the candidate her/himself.

I've both participated in and executed hiring processes in a mid-size (~500 emps) corporation where just about everyone wears ties or biz-casual (gross).

I sat in on one department's hiring rounds with about six candidates. What the dept was _looking for_ was a programmer who had MS/.NET experience to develop on the MediaRoom platform (I managed the internal development team, hence my sitting in; responsibility for operating MediaRoom was under the other dept, however, so this candidate was not going to be able to be part of my team (stupid corporate organizational bullshit where dept mgrs squabble and scramble for stupid feelings of control and shit)). The questions the dept came up with and spent 1-2 hrs torturing the candidates with included _zero_ questions about programming experience and aptitude-gauging type of inquiries. No questions about past projects, current interests, or anything remotely helpful. All the questions that were technical revolved around sysadmin tasks or how many damn acronyms the candidate was familiar with from MS's alphabet soup of platforms & products--literally asking if the candidate knew what they meant, not if they understood purpose or anything else like that. For a fucking programming job. The position stayed open for a _year-and-a-half_ without being filled.

Biggest problem I saw? The interview was designed by a guy with zero programming experience trying to hire a programmer. Why the questions he chose? Best I can tell, servers and sysadmin tasks were something his dept had long done, and something he semi-understood (but didn't do himself).

In contrast, when I ran hiring for my dept, I requested explicit permission to direct the interviews myself, instead of having them led by HR (though an HR rep was still there). Before setting up an interview, my team and I would meet the candidate for lunch just to get to know them a bit. It was sort of our version of testing- or phone-based screening processes. We could figure out more in an hour lunch that we could _trust_ than automated tests or other devices.

After the first candidate's official interview, I heard HR was talking about it. By the second candidate's interview two days later, the SVP of HR sat in on the process with the other HR person who was always there. What was most interesting to HR, apparently, was that candidates didn't display any of the typical nervous behaviors that are so common. About 10 minutes in, we had them relaxed, talking and smiling and laughing like normal, discussing things they did in their free time to take a break from programming, talking about the projects they'd loved and hated the most--even talking about times they'd fucked up. That last bit was really fun to watch HR react to, as they hadn't ever experienced anyone talking about times they'd done something _wrong_ in an interview.

There were no bullshit how-would-you-resolve-a-stupid-conflict-with-a-coworker questions. We asked some general tech and programming questions, shot the shit about open source projects that impressed the candidate. The focus, though, was on collaborative tasks where the entire dev team went through a couple exercises with the candidate as if s/he was part of the team already, letting the candidate lead, but basically serving as a normal team would--asking questions, raising objections, saying what a good idea or novel approach something was. It was a great way to get a feel for what it'd be like to work through a problem together.

By the time we'd interviewed 4 people, we'd already hired 2 of them and I had to push pretty hard to get a very competitive offer out immediately before finishing all the rounds. I nagged the hell out of them till they were willing to break their own rules of waiting till all interviews were done. Our positions did not stay open even one month before we hired three new people. But making them successful required a lot of effort on my part to plead and nag and bargain to get processes bent so we could pull it off.

Hiring feels broken in many businesses. But it doesn't have to be.

 _Disclaimer:_ This was a mid-size company. I'm not saying that companies who receive hundreds or thousands of applicants can afford to take the time to do things this way. I can say that every interview that has ever meant a damn to me were the ones where the people interviewing actually took the time to be relaxed, get to know me a bit, and just make interviewing more like having a conversation. It's not coincidence that each one of those happened to be over coffee or lunch or somewhere away from a conference room and table as the first meeting.

</comment><comment><USER73> Right so to ace the interview all one needs is some white racing overalls and a white simpson Daimondback helemt accessorized with a vintage HP calculator and a set of steam tables.

Some say that his not only the man-in-the-middle, he's at both ends and has wiretaps on Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave. and that he once crashed a 10 way IBM sysplex by staring at at it all we know is hes the stigs nerdy cousin.

</comment><comment><USER74> This article rocked! Yes!! Todd should write movie scripts. I loved that.

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow. Sure sounds like the author had some bad hiring experiences.

</comment><comment><USER76> Terrible analogy...

</comment><comment><USER77> Why no one asks questions that show deep understanding of the work and not technical details that can be googled in a second.

Like - can you land Curiosity with off the shelf java and JVM? Why or why not?

<comment><USER78> "Land it? Yes. Successfully? Not so much..."

<comment><USER79> Welcome aboard!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I kind of agrees with the above.

</comment><comment><USER81> Why not type your problems flat out. Trying to "abstract" the problem by transferring it to a completely different and reverse analogy just makes the whole post artificial.

I was actually wondering if this was written by a programmer or a man that hires programmers at first...</comment>


Atlantis in the Mountains of Italy (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20100821225305/http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j36/damanhur.asp?page=1 <comment><USER2> Here's a link to the website of the organization itself: [http://www.damanhur.org/en/what-is-damanhur](http://www.damanhur.org/en/what- is-damanhur)

It provides a much more clearly laid out view of what is going on here, and somehow manages to be less of a sales document than the OP article.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reads more like a pamphlet you'd be handed at a bus station than compelling journalism.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting. Seems kind of odd to me - it costs 169 USD per day to visit. Thats more than any other full day activity I can think of.

<comment><USER5> cheaper than Bhutan [https://www.thisbatteredsuitcase.com/how-much-does-it- really...](https://www.thisbatteredsuitcase.com/how-much-does-it-really-cost- to-visit-bhutan/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite impressive temples: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temples_of_Humankind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temples_of_Humankind)</comment>


Show HN: Guess a Card - <AUTHOR> https://guessacard.com/ <comment><USER2> Works on Xiaomi and Firefox, nothing on Samsung J5 & chrome though..

demo: [https://i.imgur.com/RWGbEps.gif](https://i.imgur.com/RWGbEps.gif) (FF)

</comment><comment><USER3> Recommend scaling the card so it can be on the screen all at once (aka I shouldn't have to scroll)

<comment><USER4> One of the few times I've seen a site that is mobile-friendly yet desktop- unfriendly.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> source: [https://github.com/DTRx719/guessacard](https://github.com/DTRx719/guessacard)</comment>


Text-to-speech has a new soul - <AUTHOR> http://vocamedia.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/welcome-to-vocatalk-personal-podcast-blog

<comment><USER2> May want to look into these papers

<http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100096.pdf> <http://www.springerlink.com/index/P32774KN22650J42.pdf> [http://www.softsea.com/review/Pistonsoft-Text-to-Speech- Conv...](http://www.softsea.com/review/Pistonsoft-Text-to-Speech- Converter.html)

I've heard that adding breaths into the mix are not just for the speaker, but that the listener can take that moment to mentally index what the speaker has just said. I can't find the paper at the moment, but there's been some good research that simply adding breathing sounds and pauses at key points in the audio can make listening to long TTS passage more bearable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, VocaTalk uses all the installed voices on your system, and randomly changes the speaker for each paragraph. That's also great factor for reducing monotony. It also has other optional audio processing features like moving the voice location, echoes and dynamic voice pitch modulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not really a leap forward so much as a synthesis of stuff that already exists. Same technology we have heard in the last several years, with added music.

<comment><USER4> And significantly worse voice synthesis than I've heard elsewhere. Most of Apple's Macintalk 3 voices (which are over 15 years old now!) sounded better than this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The voices are ATT's. VocaTalk supports any SAPI 5.1/5.3 compatible voice. It combines music, binaural waves, and fx like positional audio to improve the experience. Those features create a unique experience that makes it possible to listen hours and hours of tts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Listen with stereo earphones or earbuds. You'll notice several interesting features like echoes, positional audio. VocaTalk also supports voice modulation feature. This is all for reducing the monotony of tts and making it more fun to listen for hours.</comment>


GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout - <AUTHOR> http://www.vierundsechzig.de/blog/?p=189

<comment><USER2> For a look at what we have done with GWT, check out TeamPostgreSQL (<http://www.teampostgresql.com>).

It is a fairly complex web application both in terms of UI and functionality, developed and maintained by essentially one guy, which IMHO speaks volumes about the power of GWT to produce and manage AJAX application code. All of the code base contains zero lines of Javascript - it is all regular Java classes.

<comment><USER3> It would be great if there was an online demo of your product - I clicked around for a bit looking for one before realising I would have to /download and install it/ in order to try it out! Just running an instance against a PostgreSQL database that gets wiped and reset once an hour by a cron job would be enough to give people a taster.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another one worth mentioning is qooxdoo, which I'm currently evaluating. I would probably go with Cappuccino if I had more experience with Cocoa/Objective-C. However, qooxdoo seems more approachable if you don't have the Cocoa background -- it's surprisingly well documented. Although it doesn't look as visually appealing out of the box, you can create a custom theme.

</comment><comment><USER4> On the note of cappuccino looking awesome (which it totally does) this kind of shows how GWT could look: <http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic> (haven't used it myself though).

<comment><USER5> GWT is just html. There are plenty of frameworks out there to make designer->programmer workflow work well.

It's like saying that rails doesn't look good. Taking cappaccinos style and porting it to gwt would only be a couple of days work, if that.

<comment><USER6> I think its more complicated than you make it sound. Though, Cappuccino is, as far as I know, the only open source web framework that has professionally designed graphics which are also open source in their PSD format for anyone to use and learn from.

<comment><USER5> I didn't realise styling a website is difficult? Are you saying you couldn't style a website to look like cappacinnos given firebug and a few hours?

<comment><USER7> Quite possibly not. We're not talking about styling the marketing website, but the UI of a web app. There probably won't be the right HTML hooks generated for starters, and then making it look like a cappuccino app in one state is well and good, but there are highlights, slides, toggles, and likely a subtly different style of interaction as well.

<comment><USER5> Sorry to reply again, but this bugs me. Go to 280slides.com and tell me: what would you say is the hardest part about replicating the style of that site? Keep it specific (e.g. dialog borders or listbox), I'd like to know.

I'm obviously missing something.

<comment><USER8> Take a look of Vaadin Reindeer theme: [http://dev.vaadin.com/svn/versions/6.0/WebContent/VAADIN/the...](http://dev.vaadin.com/svn/versions/6.0/WebContent/VAADIN/themes/reindeer/) You just can not write something line that in few hours...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple has one due to come out this year called Gianduia ... and that's about all I know about it. People I trust who know more are absolutely raving about it, but, typically, details are scarce on the ground. Am very interested to see what arrives, though.

<comment><USER10> First, Apple regularly spreads disinformation to its employees to find out leaks. Most of the company was shocked that the iPod came out.

Second, that's the most American-unfriendly name I've ever seen for a product. Sure, gianduia is the name of a chocolate with hazelnut paste, but I'd be interested to see what the public name of such a product would be.

<comment><USER9> It's not disinformation: it was announced at WOWODC in a demo given by Apple staff. It's just under NDA, so public details are very thin on the ground.

Wolf Rentzsch tweeted about it after a demo, though: _Blown away by gianduia. Cappuccino, SproutCore and JavascriptMVC have serious competition. Serious._ <http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060613851>

_Gianduia essestially is browser-side Cocoa (including CoreData) + WebObjects, written in JavaScript by non-js-haters. Jaw dropped_ <http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060717454>

As for the name: yeh, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be a codename.

<comment><USER6> I can tell you its not anything new, and it's been around at Apple for a while now. It's in use right now on several live Apple properties. When and if it will be released in any usable form has yet to be made clear though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cappuccino also has nib2cib now which allows you use inetrface builder which is great if you are coming from a mac background. Also there is Script# for people .net. Personally I prefer cappuccino.</comment>


Starbucks Economics: How to charge consumers what they really think your product is worth - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. In Japan, Starbucks does include "short" size in its menu, along usual tall/grande/venti. Did they think they couldn't fool Japanese, or simply tall is too large for Japanese?</comment>


How Getting High Made Me a Better Caregiver - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/how-getting-high-made-me-a-better-caregiver.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur <comment><USER2> The taboo's around changing one's consciousness are pretty strange. Why is it ok to blunt reality with whiskey, but not enliven it with a cannabis tea? Anyways, I've noticed how certain people become their better self when a little bit of weed is in them. I was happily surprised by the Carl Sagan article linked in this essay, [http://marijuana- uses.com/mr-x/](http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/) I had no idea Mr. Sagan!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised by Carl's toking habit too!</comment></comment>


Heroku Support Has a Redirect Loop - <AUTHOR>

Tried this myself on two different browsers this morning, and had a colleague try it on his. There is a redirect loop if you try to visit Heroku Support after logging into the new dashboard. I obviously can't submit a ticket to Heroku about this, so I figure I'd do the next best thing and hope a Heroku dev is reading HN right now.<p>Anybody else having this issue? Upvote. <comment><USER2> They said they are working on it - [https://twitter.com/CodyHenshaw/status/519826418281508865](https://twitter.com/CodyHenshaw/status/519826418281508865)

<comment><USER2> and now it's fixed.</comment></comment>


EU Files Additional Formal Charges Against Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-set-to-face-more-eu-antitrust-charges-1468479516 <comment><USER2> [http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=71967573](http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=71967573)

story without the adwall.

"do no evil" yeah whatever..</comment>


The World's Greatest Art Thief - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/secrets-of-the-worlds-greatest-art-thief <comment><USER2> Interesting to read that the value of the object stolen does not affect the sentence. His punishment was only 4 years in prison for stealing and leading to the destruction of millions of dollars worth of art.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of "White Collar" (TV series). It was probably based on this true story. I wonder if they really burned art.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if White Collar drew from this, especially for the art thievery, considering how liberally it drew from the life & career of Frank Abagnale as an FBI consultant.</comment></comment>


MongoDB remote command execution vulnerability: nightmare or eye opener? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sdelements.com/mongodb-remote-command-execution-vulnerability-nightmare-or-eye-opener

<comment><USER2> Having your DB server (regardless of type) exposed to the entire internet is a bad idea but that's not the real problem here (it just makes this _really_ scary for people running wide open MongoDB instances). This is a lack of validation of client inputs by the server itself and (in my opinion) a dangerous default choice of trusting your client.

Most DBs allow something similar to this though it's generally locked down by default.

For PostgreSQL you can do it via untrusted languages though by default only super users can use those: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plperl- trusted.htm...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plperl-trusted.html)

For Oracle here's a bunch of ways to accomplish the same thing though again, by default, all are blocked for non-DBA users: [http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTI...](http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:16212348050)

Note that there are some times when it's useful to be able to execute misc things like this. About 6 or 7 years back I wrote something on Oracle that would execute shell commands to get iostat/vmstat output and save it on regular intervals. Could have been done from outside in (data gets pushed from unix => DB) but having it initiated by the DB itself let us control when it runs based on DB actions (triggers, DBMS_JOBs, etc). To get that setup though we had to whitelist the executables we were calling as by default on Oracle everything is blocked. It's not a common thing to do and I think it's sensible that things like that should be locked down by default.

</comment><comment><USER3> This relies on javascript to be passed to $where. There is no excuse for not sanitizing your inputs.

<comment><USER4> The same thing could be said of SQL injection attacks, yet...

<comment><USER3> ... no one is pointing fingers at MySQL, like they are at MongoDB, as if this is some kind of security flaw in MongoDB.

It's a feature, not a bug. The docs make it clear that $where can run JavaScript, so if you know what you're doing, you're not going to allow JavaScript to flow through your software as if it's valid input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks to $elemMatch and automatic parameter parsing, this vulnerability is easier to exploit than it would seem.

In rails, both of these are usually considered safe:

        MysqlCollection.create(:name => params[:name])
        MysqlCollection.where(:name => params[:name]).all

        MongoCollection.create(:name => params[:name])
        MongoCollection.where(:name => params[:name]).all

However, the mongo version is vulnerable to this exploit.

        /create?name[0][whatever]=anything
        /get?name[$elemMatch][$where]=exploitcode

<comment><USER6> Per usual, even if you're using something that isn't Mongo, it's good practice to explicitly cast your untrusted params before passing them to a query.

        MongoCollection.where(:name => params[:name].to_s)

That'll result in the literal:

        db.collection.where({name: "{\"$elemMatch\"=>{\"$where\"=>\"exploit\"}}"})

rather than the more exploity:

        db.collection.where({name: {$elemMatch:{$where: "exploit"}}})

Failing to cast params to strings can result in "injection" attacks in Mongo, even outside of the context of this bug. For example:

       User.where(:id => params[:id])

You could pass id[$gt]=0, resulting in:

       User.where(:id => {:$gt => 0})

which would match all records in the database.

For completeness' sake, here's a similar exploit vector in ActiveRecord: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rubyonra...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rubyonrails- security/t1WFuuQyavI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a developer that uses MongoDB in production I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

<comment><USER8> And why are you shocked? Because you don't know what you are doing?

<comment><USER9> Totally unnecessary comment. I would down vote you if I could.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess this is only a real problem if you're exposing your MongoDB instance to the internet.

<comment><USER11> By default, I believe MongoDB listens on 0.0.0.0 which means that servers unprotected from a firewall will expose their MongoDB database to the Internet. Shodan confirms that there are at least 31,000 public instances of MongoDB on the Internet at the moment (source: <http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=port%3A28017>).

<comment><USER12> It sounds like they listen on localhost by default (<http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/mongod/#options>), though i'm not sure if that's always been the case. It's also possible installers change the default behaviour. (i.e. when you install via apt, yum, homebrew, etc.)

<comment><USER11> Good point, it might have changed recently and last I installed it on Ubuntu it listened on 0.0.0.0. It certainly would make a lot more sense to listen to localhost by default, which is what most daemons do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like Seriously Bad News for folks like MongoHQ. I'm hoping they're running 2.4.1, though?

<comment><USER13> It's less of a problem than you'd expect, most of our DBs run in isolated processes and an authenticated user (even with shell) can't really break out and run wild on the environment. We expected that the Mongo javascript engine would have vulnerabilities like this and started trying to get ahead of them about 18 months ago.

About 3% of our servers are either legacy, and the isolation hasn't been tested all that well, or sandbox environments where people share a process for tiny/test DBs. We've upgraded all of those to 2.4.1.

<comment><USER6> That's great to hear. Big respect to you guys for solving that problem before it was a problem!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't the MongoDB daemon run in a privilege-free sandboxed environment?

<comment><USER13> Depends who's running it. :)</comment></comment>


Taking over PayPal accounts with Flash - <AUTHOR> http://www.multibear.com/2014/12/taking-over-paypal-accounts-with-flash.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I might add that this is one reason it's a good idea to have flash disabled by default :)</comment>


Amazon beats Apple and Google to cloud music - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/28/amazon-beats-apple-and-google-to-cloud-music-service-debut/ <comment><USER2> Amazon seems to be quietly sniping markets from what are largely considered Apple/Google territory.

I've been very happy with buying TV episodes and renting movies on Amazon for a while now and it didn't strike me as odd until I read this post that Amazon might be emerge as the big media vendor as well, without trumpets of techcrunch posts to announce it.</comment>


ISO 3103: an international standard for brewing tea - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103 <comment><USER2> _The water must not be hard._

Well, you're going to get 2nd-rate tea then.

Here's the standard for brewing tea in American restaurants:

      Pour coffee water into the funny little tea carafe.
      Put a low-end (ex: Liptons) tea bag beside the carafe.
      Allow an indeterminate amount of time to pass while other items are being prepared.
      Carry everything to the customer.
      Allow customer to add bag to water.
      Charge him 1.25 for the experience.

Coffeehouse version:

      Pour coffee water directly into cup.
      Use TAZO instead of Lipton.
      Add bag to water for the customer.
      Charge him 1.75 for the benefit.

I was surprised that even San Francisco coffeehouses seemed to always use the above method.

<comment><USER3> Coffee drinkers/baristas have little sympathy or understanding for tea fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is surprisingly hard to get a properly brewed cup of tea in this country. This place <http://www.teavana.com/> is about the only I've found. I'm skeptical about their chance of success though, even though I like them.

<comment><USER4> I followed rec.food.drink.tea for a while and also teamail. I think the consensus was that the best two websites were specialteas.com and uptontea.com. Of those two I personally prefer specialteas, with the exception of their Pu Erh and black chai (their green chai is incredible when consumed fresh and brewed properly).

I'm sure you've probably already found teamap.com. (And obviously the Ito En stuff that comes in bottles.)

<comment><USER3> I mostly use adagio, but will check those out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So disappointing that the ISO number doesn't have 734 on it..</comment>


Study: Severe Covid-19 Cases Don't Respond to Hydroxychloroquine+Azithromycin - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X20300858 <comment><USER2> Nobody seems to be talking about the actual reason Chinese doctors found chloroquine (and HCQ) interesting and it has nothing to do with it's immunosuppressing effect:

1) Chloroquine (and HCQ) is a zinc ionophore: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/)

2) Zinc seems to inhibit RNA polymerase of Coronaviruses in vitro [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47794995_Zn_Inhibit...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47794995_Zn_Inhibits_Coronavirus_and_Arterivirus_RNA_Polymerase_Activity_In_Vitro_and_Zinc_Ionophores_Block_the_Replication_of_These_Viruses_in_Cell_Culture)

Their conclusion was that chloroquine could indeed allow zinc to enter the cell and then inhibit replication (and therefore that the treatment needed to be administered early).

Nobody seems to be talking about a very easy way to verify chloroquine (and HCQ) efficiency by just using the same method used in China:

Cross-check the list of patients infected with Lupus (lupus erythematosus) and with chronic HCQ treatment (they take it for years) with the list of known infected COVID19 patients.

In China (and specifically in Wuhan), this is how they (team of Dr Zhang Zhan) found out about the efficiency of HCQ. They noticed that there were no patients with chronic HCQ treatment for lupus (lupus erythematosus) infected with covid19. This was in peoples Hospital of Wuhan University (source: [https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pn...](https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pneumonia_has_short_term_curative_effect_on_the_treatment_of_new_crown_pneumonia.html))

This alone would be enough to prove some efficiency even as prophyalxis (as they are advocating officially in India). This should be quite trivial to check with the current amount of confirmed infection.

These details were all explained in this medcram vid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh054-Hx1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh054-Hx1U)

<comment><USER3> > Their conclusion was that chloroquine could indeed allow zinc to enter the > cell and then inhibit replication (and therefore that the treatment needed > to be administered early).

Where does the "if it inhibits replication it needs to be administered early" line come from? I've seen it elsewhere too, but why wouldn't inhibit replication lead to => continually declining amounts in the body => easier recovery at any stage?

<comment><USER2> Because they didn't intend to use chloroquine as a way to reduce the immune response to cytokine storms.

They intended to use it to prevent virus replication in the cells at the early stages of the immune response to allow the immune system to build up a response at a slower pace.

The amount of treatment proposed in Europe is around 5 days of HCQ with about 800mg on D1 and then 400mg on D2-5. This is an incredibly low dosage and will have very little immunosuppressant effect. It takes a very long time to act as an efficient immunosuppressant (1 to 3 months for Lupus).

Expecting HCQ to suppress the immune system for cytokine storms in a matter of hours seems very strange.

As that controversial French doctor said in multiple interviews. If you are already in need of a respirator then your issue is no longer the virus but your own immune system killing you (cytokine storm or added bacterial pneumonia). At that stage, HCQ is not very useful. Not in these dosages at least.

Most people are only focusing on the immunosuppressing effect of HCQ for some reason which is very strange to me.

It takes time for chloroquine to act as a zinc ionophore as well and for zinc to enter the cells (and it needs to be in the cells to inhibit RNA polymerase). As you can see in the studies I posted. Between 24 and 72 hours it seems.

If the virus cannot replicate correctly (with the zinc idea), it might give more time to "flatten the curve" for the immune system. To build up antibodies and respond to the disease without inducing a cytokine storm.

This at least is their hypothesis. And it has not been confirmed in any other way than by observing that those with chronic Lupus+HCQ treatment seemed to be "immune" to the disease. And this was only done in Wuhan as far as I know.

Unfortunately Dr Zhan Zhang has not yet published his full results except for this preliminary [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v2.full.pdf)

Which doesn't go into much detail about anything except that "it seems to work". Unfortunately ... Yet I do see logic in the idea.

I just wish people (with access to patient files in major hospital centers) would also look into this and they could maybe confirm this "once and for all" without even needing a full blown trial.

<comment><USER4> Do we know of any case of severe covid-19 that was taking immunosuppresors (post-transplant, so cyclosporine or tacrolimus?). Haven't heard of one and the doctors my wife talks to (who follow hundreds of those) haven't heard of one. Yet.

<comment><USER4> Correction, sorry, seems we have (in France) over a 100 adult hospitalized patients infected, that are post renal transplant (less than 5 years post transplant it seems). Not heard of liver transplant cases, or even child transplant cases (even more fragile).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nobody is going to point out that of the 11 patients, "8 had significant comorbidities associated with poor outcomes (obesity: 2; solid cancer: 3; hematological cancer: 2; HIV-infection: 1)"?

I don't even understand what the point of this study was except as a rebuttal to the prior study. I mean, if people thought the prior study was cherry picking results. I don't even know what I'd call this...

There's _some_ anecdotal evidence that it _may_ work if treated early. Hopefully there are some real studies that are being done on that.

</comment><comment><USER6> A really excellent review, published today, of the current state of knowledge on HCQ: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/06/hy...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/06/hydroxychloroquine- update-for-april-6)

Note this is by Derek Lowe of "Things I won't work with" fame, an extremely informative series about entertainingly dangerous chemicals.

And here's a new piece of candy for people who want to get their hopes up about a promising treatment: [https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/03/scitrans...](https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/03/scitranslmed.abb5883)

(h/t Helen Branswell of STAT news, who is very much worth following, who retweeted Timothy Sheahan)

<comment><USER7> > a promising treatment > [https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/03/scitrans...](https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/03/scitranslmed.abb5883)

That is frightening. Increasing the mutation rate must carry a large unknown risk. Also surely the first thing to mutate will be self-defeating resistance to that drug...

<comment><USER6> The thought occurred to me as well, I got a strong sense of "playing with fire." However, viruses have a very high mutation rate as it is [1], so I'm not sure how much difference it makes.

Btw, one of the best markers for overconfident but uninformed analysis is overinterpreting the fact that we have all these strains of SARS-CoV-2 as suggesting they have different degrees of infectiousness or health impacts. Certainly the different flu strains do, and, thanks to fine-grained sequencing efforts (Nextstrain in particular is doing awesome work) we can see lots of strains of this one, but Trevor Bedford has estimated that we have about a year or more before the variation in strains has an impact other than being able to "fingerprint" the chains of transmission.

[1]: [https://jvi.asm.org/content/92/14/e01031-17](https://jvi.asm.org/content/92/14/e01031-17)

<comment><USER7> Here is a paper which suggests they found a different strain: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987222v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987222v1.full.pdf)

"In this report we describe the first major evolutionary event of the SARS- CoV-2 virus following its emergence into the human population. Although the biological consequences of this deletion remain unknown, the alteration of the N gene transcription would suggest this may have an impact on virus phenotype."

However they don't speculate on whether that strain is more likely to spread (it clearly is a viable mutation).

<comment><USER7> And another: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have no medical expertise, but there's something that is confusing me. From what I read, typically, you get the virus, then an opportunistic bacterium gives you pneumonia, and that's what you die from. But this study seems to be saying "someone else found these meds reduced the virus and we didn't". But the meds are more or less antibiotics, aren't they? So could the explanation simply be that while the virus is the same, the bacteria are not, in the two tests?

<comment><USER9> My understanding is what you said is true for influenza and to a lesser extent colds. Those virus tend infect the upper respiratory system. COVID19 though can infect the lower lungs and directly causes pneumonia. And viral pneumonia is no joke even before COVID19.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> By the time it's severe, it's often too late: [https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1244717172871409666?s=20](https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1244717172871409666?s=20)

</comment><comment><USER11> I am not in any way qualified in the medical domain but these methods look similar to the other Study that was viewed as flawed that showed it did work. Seems there is no solid data either way.

<comment><USER12> Which, in itself, is probably a valuable take-away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the patients have a zinc deficient they can make all the zinc channels they want, it won't matter.

It is one thing to inhibit the virus, but zinc is needed to reduce the over active immune response,

</comment><comment><USER14> Wonder when the Indian Council of Medical Research will release more papers - there were a few patients who responded positively under their suggested treatment plan:

> _"We used a combo of Lopinavir and Ritonavir drugs which are usually given > as a second line of treatment for HIV with drugs meant for curing malaria > and swine flu. We administered this line of treatment to a 70-year-old > Italian woman, who had come as a tourist to Rajasthan, who tested positive > and was being treated by us, as well as another Italian, who is 69-year- > old,"_ said Dr Sudhir Bhandari.

> ... _"The team of doctors under the leadership of Dr Sudhir Bhandari, > Principal of SMS Medical College held consultations with the ICMR and tried > a combination medicines given for malaria, swine flu (Tamiflu) along with > drugs for HIV and it worked well. All three persons including the Italians > were cured this way,"_ said Rohit Kumar Singh, additional chief secretary, > health of Rajasthan government.

Source: [https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/three- coronavirus-...](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/three-coronavirus- afflicted-patients-recover-due-to-innovative-treatment-by-doctors-at-jaipur- govt-hospital)

> ... The three persons who tested positive were administered a combination of > 200mg Lopinavir and 50 mg of Ritonavir twice a day besides Oseltamivir and > Chloroquine that are given to the swine flu and malaria patients.

> However, the doctors at the SMS Hospital warned that this was only an > emergency treatment and the HIV medicines were used only as an emergency > measure that could help in regaining normalcy.

Source: [https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/covid-19-magic- med...](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/covid-19-magic-medicine-of- jaipurs-hospital-cures-3-patients-draws-attention-in-medical-world)

<comment><USER14> Update: The Indian Council of Medical Research has also given the go ahead to try out plasma therapy for the really serious, and some hospitals and institute are waiting for clearance of the same from the Drug Controller General of India:

> ... Blood for the plasma therapy will be collected from recovered patients > at SCTIMST and the medical colleges and donated to critical patients with > sanction from Blood Transfusion Council. Plasma would be separated from > blood and taken to other hospitals under refrigeration.

> ... When a person suffers from COVID-19, antibodies are created in his or > her body as defence. Such B lymphocytes would be present in plasma. After a > patient recovers from the disease, these antibodies remain in blood to > prevent another attack by the virus. The plasma collected from such people > and given to another patient would have antibodies which target the virus > and prevent the recipient from slipping into a more serious condition. > According to researches, plasma taken from one donor would have sufficient > doses for two patients.

Source: [https://english.manoramaonline.com/news/kerala/2020/04/09/ke...](https://english.manoramaonline.com/news/kerala/2020/04/09/kerala- plans-trials-in-convalescent-plasma-therapy-against-covid.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> COVID-19 attacks hemoglobin and that is how it damages the lungs. With your hemoglobin unable to exchange oxygen with blood in the lungs, it causes terrible damage.

[https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surf...](https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173)

Chloroquine prevents the virus from affecting hemoglobin, or reduces the effect. This is also how Chloroquine treats malaria.

The problem with a study on severe cases is that the damage is already done and the hemoglobin is already compromised.

It is best to start treatment with chloroquine prior to reaching the severe stage. By the time you are severe you've gotten permanent lung damage and the immune system is in a race condition unable to keep up with the virus.

If you want to detour into tinfoil hat territory, you could posit that these studies on severe patients were designed knowing it would show low or no efficacy, because it's too late to protect the patient's hemoglobin.

Azithromycin slows ribosonal RNA replication in bacteria. It is unclear how it helps with a Covid.

Antivirals are much more promising for severe cases, but even they can't heal ground glass in the lungs.

<comment><USER16> > Chloroquine prevents the virus from affecting hemoglobin

This virus attacks the cells that live in the throat and lungs. The "spike" as far as I'm aware does not attach to haemoglobin.

> damage is already done and the hemoglobin is already compromised.

Its the lungs that are damaged, not the blood. The reason why people die is because they drown in thier own fluids, as the cells walls of the lungs are broken down by the patient's immune system.

If Chloroquine was effective, it would stop the virus reproducing. This would lead to a detectable change in viral load.

Sure, it could already be to late by then, the damage is done. But, the viral load would have a measurable change. These studies don't really show anything conclusive.

This means that its unlikley to work as a prophylactic as its not actually stopping the virus from attaching or reproducing.

> Azithromycin

Thats there to stop any opportunistic bacteria from causing more damage. Typically when someone is admitted to ICU for covid they have a lower than expected white cell count.

> Antivirals are much more promising

yes because they actually disrupt the virus replicating. Chloroquine doesn't appear to do that. This is the problem with making drugs. Something that works in the petridish doesn't always work in the body. This is why Gilead's new wonder drug wasn't in production, because it was designed to target ebola, but didn't really work.

<comment><USER17> > as the cells walls of the lungs are broken down by the patient's immune > system

If there is actually a real statistical anomaly that Lupus and other immune comprised people are less susceptible to certain parts of the virus, perhaps it's not the medication they take at all. It could simply be that someone who is immune compromised would not have as strong as a reaction as a healthy person and then may actually survive as a result. Less fluid, etc. Also, I am in no way qualified medically, it's just a quarantine showerthought.

<comment><USER16> I have heard of two patients in london who were immuno compromised and recovered quicker than a "normal" person.

The real damage occurs when the immune system ramps up to attack the virus, but ends up attacking the cells they are living in as well. Now, most of the time this is fine an normal, but it can also trigger [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome) which is a nasty feedback loop.

There are experiments to give immuno-suppressants at key times to try and limit the damage. But its tricky and dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An in-vitro pre-print study ( [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.014407v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.014407v1) ) showed that administering Hydroxychloroquine only after Covid-19 infection is not helping much, while administering it both before the infection and after the infection gives great outcomes. They tried different administration modalities of HCQ to in-vitro infected cells: some cells got nothing (control), some got HCQ only before infection, some got HCQ only after infection, some got HCQ both before and after infection. THe cells that got HCQ only before or only after infection had just slightly better outcome than control (they appear as heavily infected), while cells that received HCQ both before and after contagion were in much healthier conditions. If that would be the same in vivo as in vitro, that would entail that it would be possible to use HCQ as prophylaxis, given that the patients never stop taking the drug. Of course the caveat is "IF that would be the same in vivo as in vitro", that they didn't (yet) tested.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://abc7news.com/amp/coronavirus-drug- covid-19-malaria-h...](https://abc7news.com/amp/coronavirus-drug- covid-19-malaria-hydroxychloroquine/6079864/)

Not a study but just another anecdote. Using zinc this time round rather than azithromycin.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I don't know what's the point of these studies that don't look at HCQ+zinc when the hypothesis is that HCQ promotes zinc absorption.

<comment><USER21> The hypothesis is that hydroxychloroquin interferes with glycosylation of cell surface proteins that are essential for entry of the virus into the cell. The zinc notion is total bunk, intracellular zinc concentration is tightly controlled. Random zinc excursions just don't happen, if they did they would result in death.

<comment><USER13> This is so wrong I do not know where to start.

ADAM17 is responsible for shedding of ACE2 from the cell which creates soluble ACE2. If ACE2 is not ON the cell the virus cannot infect the cell.

ADAM17, like ACE2 is a zinc finger protein and uses zinc as a cofactor.

Also, zinc is widely understood to lower the immune response by affecting interferon levels.

It is not only about intracellular zinc. But in a deficiency intracellular zinc has even less chance of being brought into the cell, right?

To say that zinc does not matter because hydroxychloroquin is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The lack of productive discussion around a potential treatment tells us more about our bad decision-making under anxiety conditions than it does about the efficacy or not of the medical proposal. Although I posted a preprint of the French micro-study to HN a few weeks ago when this first became a topic of discussion, I now regret doing so due to the subsequent public confusion and imho very irresponsible promotion of it as a harm-free prophylactic by Trump.

</comment><comment><USER23> n = 11?

<comment><USER24> Believe it or not, it's pretty hard to conduct a large-scale study in the middle of the largest pandemic in modern history.

<comment><USER25> I don't believe it. Studying how to effectively treat coronavirus patients is literally the most important problem in the world right now, and I'm sure a lot more than 11 severe cases are being treated with hydrochloroquine.

<comment><USER26> While your point is a good one, meaningful clinical research is hard enough under normal conditions. Forms, enrollment, protocols, data collection, statistical analysis plans, reporting, etc. It's an entire industry used to operating in scales that often span years for a single meaningful study.

<comment><USER25> And I agree with that as far as it goes, but I think it reflects the problem - clinical research contains a bunch of hurdles that have nothing to do with uncovering the truth. So in a sudden emergency, where clinical research starts to diverge from the treatment decisions of doctors and the drug supply actions of governments, I'm not going to put much weight on clinical research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not very surprising given the quality of the studies that this fad is based on:

[https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/03/zelenko-smith- aba...](https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/03/zelenko-smith-abandoning- evidence-based-medicine-for-covid-19/)

That's a long read, but it's pretty damning.

TL;DR: China says "hey, this stuff might work". French doctor conducts two very sketchy rapid-fire studies, then starts promoting himself on TV, including on Dr. Oz. No red flags there, right?

<comment><USER28> Pretty much every virologists I listened to said "this stuff might work", because it's entirely plausible that it might work.

> That's a long read, but it's pretty damning.

It actually isn't. All it says is that the evidence is poor and done by people with questionable reputation. It doesn't say "it doesn't work". What if it _does work_ , but only in the early stages, when symptoms aren't severe (yet)? You wouldn't know.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are somewhat dangerous drugs and are therefore far more likely to only be given as a "last resort" rather than as a "precautionary measure", given their unproven status.

What are the odds that a _reputable_ person is going to put their reputation on the line, doing such a dangerous trial on patients that aren't at high risk? Early on, a _disreputable_ person is way more likely to do it. There won't be any good evidence for a while, in the meantime it's all a gamble.

This study is important, but limited in its scope. It shouldn't poison the well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So a bunch of people who have medical conditions which actually respond to HCQ have lost access to it, for no benefit to anyone else.

Great.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, I'm one of those people. My last refill ran out last week, and my pharmacist doesn't think I can get a refill anytime soon :-(

Fortunately my condition is not life threatening or severe, but it's something I've been living with for many years, and the HCQ was just finally getting it under control, so it's a bummer that there is so much hoarding going on before we even know if it really works for Covid-19.

Also, it is not a risk free medication. While it's generally safe, my doctor makes me get frequent lab work & a vision test because the side effects can be pretty bad for a small minority of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe don't let them get that severe? One can still starve after eating.

<comment><USER32> Thank you, i'm sure they are incompetent idiots that could not prevent their patients to die, after all they have graduated from a third world country and are probably not capable doctors. /s

<comment><USER33> Some of the best medical minds with best education rejected evidence that washing hands before surgery saves lives for like 50 years.

Anyway X doesn't work on severe cases when there is compelling anecdotal evidence that X helps on medium cases to not progress to severe is, so give them X earlier is what I read in the OP word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [IANAD] hydroxychloroquine is an immunosuppressant and shouldn't be combined even with vaccines ( [https://www.medicinenet.com/hydroxychloroquine/article.htm#w...](https://www.medicinenet.com/hydroxychloroquine/article.htm#which_drugs_or_supplements_interact_with_hydroxychloroquine_plaquenil) ), so using it when immune system is really fighting an infection may happen to be very antiproductive unless it is a case of COVID triggered cytokine storm (hyperinflammation) when such immunosuppressant is probably what you'd really want. May be it is a reason why in come cases of COVID it works and in some doesn't.

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30628-0/fulltext)

"However, in hyperinflammation, immunosuppression is likely to be beneficial. Re-analysis of data from a phase 3 randomised controlled trial of IL-1 blockade (anakinra) in sepsis, showed significant survival benefit in patients with hyperinflammation, without increased adverse events.8 A multicentre, randomised controlled trial of tocilizumab (IL-6 receptor blockade, licensed for cytokine release syndrome), has been approved in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia and elevated IL-6 in China "

Notable fact is that majority of the deaths of the second wave (the deadliest, which in addition to children/weak/elderly was also strongly hitting healthy 25-35 years old) of Spanish flu was due to cytokine storm.

<comment><USER32> Yes, obviously in case of hyperinflammation doctor are giving immunosuppressing drugs, HCQ or other depending on the stocks (and of course the patient history and other drugs given prior). They are very capable people in most cases, urgentists are often very knowledgable, and reanimation doctors are probably the best at interfering/preventing coktail effect. They are not available in all cases, but they try to be there for the most important ones.

No one, no scientist is saying with certainty that HCQ does not work at all. However, the maxim is primum non nocere. Are HCQ effects important enough to use it in every case when you can do otherwise? Well, according to the last Raoult study on 80 mild cases, no. 3 hospitalisation, 1 death for 80 cases is around the same result as German/S.K. mild cases who are given no treatment at all (a bit superior, even, but n=80 is clearly not enough).

Maybe HCQ reduce contagiosity. In this case, is HCQ more efficient than interferon? I know that i would prefer interferon as my liver and kidneys can take more hit than my heart atm (i already have a medication that cause tachycardia when i overdose it a little + some minor heart issues). Is HCQ more efficient than rinovir? this particular article seems to say that it's not but why should i trust this article more than Raoult and some French articles? Should i take everything (interferon, rinovir, HCQ, CQ) and hope for the best? Or, since i can afford to as i live in a rich country, should i wait the different study results?</comment></comment>