Ask HN: Best way to dive into web development. - <AUTHOR>

So, a little background.  I got my computer science degree 3.5 years ago and have done a good amount of development.  At the time, I was not at all interested in web development but (in large part due to HN) I have been gaining interest.  Recently, I had an idea that I'm really excited to try out, but I have no idea how to get started.  Hence, I'm asking how to start learning.  I want to learn both the theory and practice.
Summary:
I know how code and have dealt with some fairly large projects in the past.
I am a complete web newbie.
Any suggestions on how I can get started?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> There are two main areas that you'd need to learn: front-end development and back-end development.

Front-end development knowledge points: HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Back-end development knowledge points: Server administration, databases and interpreted languages.

I'm biased towards open-source technologies, so I'd recommend you learn Django, Ruby on Rails or one of the PHP frameworks (personal preference is Symfony). Then tie that in with MySQL or PostgreSQL. Most of these technologies have great documentation, especially Django and Symfony, and shouldn't be too hard to get started with.

For learning front-end development the quickest way would be to go and buy a book rather than attempt to follow the myriad of tutorials out there. I'd recommend the standardistas book: <http://www.webstandardistas.com/book/> After learning the knowledge in the book, follow on to using javascript libraries such as jQuery and YUI to get some funky front-end interaction working.

Finally, tie all the knowledge in by attempting a few pet projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> If by any change you've programmed a lot in Java, you have a fair chance to be able to keep the language. Just stay away from anything that remotely sounds like enterprise or uses XML and you'll be fine. I also personally prefer Apache Velocity instead of JSP - easier to learn, too.

About client-side programming... good CSS takes a while to master. Many people will probably disagree, but if your goal is to make something relatively fast, you may want to KISS and use a table or two instead of just divs and CSS.

Also spend a bit of time with JavaScript. It'll bring a fair amount of benefits for a relatively modest investment.</comment>


Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe programming - <AUTHOR> https://insights.hpe.com/articles/4-lessons-for-modern-software-developers-from-1970s-mainframe-programming-1709.html <comment><USER2> The same goes for programmers who started with DOS, we had even fewer resources, 640k and some free mem you could use.</comment>


Enso OS: A simple operating system for everyone, able run on any machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.enso-os.site/ <comment><USER2> The future of Linux "distros" seems to be merely theme packs on top other existing distros. Include OS in the name and say it's meant for everyone. Just like Xubuntu, just like Enso OS, just like Ubuntu, just like Debian.

When I look at ElementryOS, PopOS, PureOS, Etc...OS they all seem to ignore the irony that someone savvy enough to discover an obscure distro might not need everything to be a user friendly macOS-esque experience. It's rehashed, conceited, and insignificant. I could take Ubuntu Mate and tweak it with conky, i3wm and call it whateverOS, but I wont because I know anyone who ever found it could easily do the same first themselves. That's the great thing about Linux that we keep ignoring. Most people dont care about your config setup, it's still Ubuntu at th end of the day.

I'd argue that community developed *nix systems without corporate funding will never be for the masses. If you want to make an impact on Linux, fix upstream instead of adding onto the heap with abandoned projects that attempt to make the lives easier for a consumer demographic that has other interests than the OS that runs their internet browser and word processor.

<comment><USER3> > they all seem to ignore the irony that someone savvy enough to discover an > obscure distro might not need everything to be a user friendly macOS-esque > experience.

Sure, I'm technically capable of doing all this myself. I don't need the macOS-esque user friendliness. But I also don't need takeaway food. But sometimes, home cooking is just a chore, yknow?

<comment><USER4> Yeah... This mindset is just part of the HN bubble.

Most people want to be productive with their computers quickly, including most skilled users. If you like configurability, there's a plethora of options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Built on top of Xubuntu for a solid and reliable base, we have re-themed > XFCE to our own liking, added some nice features to the environment and ship > it with some extra applications.

<comment><USER6> This is pretty much how elementaryOS started. If I remember correctly, Daniel Foré started an icon set, then Xubuntu was forked and reskinned. As more developers flocked to elementaryOS, the whole desktop stack was rebuild on GTK+ and Vala.

In fact, Enso OS is pretty much a mix of Xubuntu and elementaryOS:

> The window manager is a fork from gala [https://github.com/nick92/Enso- > OS/tree/master/galal](https://github.com/nick92/Enso-OS/tree/master/galal)

> The Greeter is a fork of pantheon-greeter [https://github.com/nick92/Enso- > OS/tree/master/greeter](https://github.com/nick92/Enso- > OS/tree/master/greeter)

> The application menu is a fork of slingshot-launcher > [https://github.com/nick92/Enso- > OS/tree/master/panther_launch...](https://github.com/nick92/Enso- > OS/tree/master/panther_launcher)

> It also uses elementaryOSs AppCenter (renamed to App Hive) > [https://github.com/nick92/apphive](https://github.com/nick92/apphive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a superficial GTK+ reskin with a derivative window manager and an icon pack. This is not an operating system, and it's not particularly helpful if what you're showing is the special sauce. If you have some ingenious installer which reduces the complications on that end for people, that'd be cool, but that doesn't seem to be what this is.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I don't get what his "team" of 1 dude's motivation is. The top line is about the environment too, with nothing concrete about how this OS is supposedly better for the world. What is this, are Instagram hipster influencers making Linux skins now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a confusing website. The main components are … a login screen! A desktop! A means to switch applications!

Well done, we've never had those on computers ever before.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's great that a single person is able to create a custom operating system.

Sure it's mostly just Xubuntu, a retheme/reskin of XFCE, with some personal touches in environment, bundled applications - but clearly there's been time and effort spent on configuring it well, to keep everything simple to use, with a feel-good presentation. I can see value in that.

The project also has wholesome and healthy goals, of being able to run on old computers/laptops, while respecting the users' privacy. There are certainly other "OSes" with similar goals, but I'd say, it's a positive contribution.

</comment><comment><USER11> Confused by the implication that using machines old enough to not be supported by macOS or Windows is in any way "Green".

Using older hardware almost assuredly means using more power than more modern systems.

<comment><USER12> Like crushing an old car and replacing it is more damaging to the climate/environment than keeping an old car going. Even if that older car is far less fuel efficient than the modern alternative. Same goes for all hardware... generally.

<comment><USER13> Except after you've used the older machine for long enough, it would have been less wasteful to crush it in the beginning and replace it earlier, skipping all the consumption later on.

<comment><USER11> Which is exactly why cash for clunkers was a program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> any machine? Does this include phones? I have been looking for a compatible OS for my old Galaxy Note Edge but its been pretty dang difficult.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, your best bet will be PostMarketOS[0]... It's nowhere near ready for everyday use though, I'm afraid.

[0][https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks cool, but the problem I keep coming back to everytime I switch to Linux is... Why? Windows works just fine for me. I use my computer for a browser, video games, .NET development, and web development.

I've spent many, many hours over the years using and configuring Linux, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.

Yes, Linux has much better privacy than Windows, but for many people, that's not a strong enough reason.

<comment><USER17> Linux does some things better.

If you want to use a non-mainstream programming language, chances are it won't support windows.

Package managers are nice.

Using it on the desktop will help you become more familiar with the the server variants (applicable to both windows and Linux).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> At the minimum, it needs to be compatible with Android's HAL

</comment><comment><USER19> If it runs on any machine, it's not for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER20> "We believe in freedome and privacy"

</comment><comment><USER21> -

<comment><USER22> Since Solaris and the BSD's, nay, since AT&T's UNIX® back in the '70's. Linux was the first to just ship the kernel without the userland.

<comment><USER23> And me thinking that there were already OSes being done in high level languages in 1961.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does the comment suppression on here work? - <AUTHOR> I can see that my comments are now automatically buried -- I'm curious how that works and what triggers it. I tested this on a brand new account by posting a 1-sentence comment in the same thread and it automatically showed up at the top, just like normal.<p>It seems like this penalty is manually (and arbitrarily) applied by the moderators with no warning or explanation. Is that correct? <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure they call it shadow banning. IMO it's a pretty elitist thing to do, but hey they run the place..

</comment><comment><USER3> Autokilled comments would still show to users with showdead enabled - I don't see any dead comments from you.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is different, the comments are simply pushed to the bottom of the page instead of hidden.

Usually, when you post a new comment it's boosted to the top for a short period of time. Now, the opposite is happening.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Book on organizing engineering team / process? - <AUTHOR> I understand it's a strange question for HN, but please bear with me.
We managed to get to profitability and VC funding with a very small team using somewhat free-form process. Everyone did everything, fires were put out all the time. Now we have resources to change that.
Problem is that none of the founders worked in the tech company before (we come from research / academia).
The product itself is very technical and we definitely see the technical debt accumulating.
Right now is the moment to get way more diligent about how we organize the process.
We don't expect to hire an experienced tech manager right away (it's a tough hire) and would have to deal with a growing team of engineers for at least a few months.
Are there good book(s) someone can read about the organizational / process side of leading tech team? Code reviews, pair programming, senior - junior roles and who should do what. Scheduled VS "when it's ready" releases. Milestones, standup meetings. The  kind of processes that were developed by the industry to help steer the tech ship?
Not asking about the books on general management and how to deal with people, mostly interested in the functional part of it. <comment><USER2> _Ship It_ , and all the other books in that series from Pragmatic Press. _Code Complete_ and _Rapid Code_ by McConnell. _The Deadline_ by DeMarco. _Agile Software Development with Scrum_ by Schwaber. _Peopleware_ by DeMarco. _Slack_ by DeMarco.

Anything by Ed Yourdon.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot</comment></comment>


Occupy was right: capitalism has failed the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/13/occupy-right-capitalism-failed-world-french-economist-thomas-piketty <comment><AUTHOR> I know the article title is kind of big and sensational'y, but I really encourage everyone to look into Piketty's book, it's really a behemoth. A lot of folks are calling it this age's 'Das Kapital". It's well-researched, and very data-backed. Piketty was a professor at MIT until 1995, when he went back to France. Here's Paul Krugman's review of the book (worth a submission of its own, really): [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas- piketty-new-gilded-age/)

<comment><USER2> That's a very good reading. Thanks for the hint!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The real question is: what's next?

If regulators cannot face up to established capital even while social temperature increases in response to well known global threats (environment, food, energy, population, etc.) then will a bottom-up re-organization of global economic paradigms through the adoption of new technologies for decentralized commerce eventually occur?

One thing's for sure: the centralized paradigm of old is clearly showing its warts. It also seems like most of the interesting changes are coming out of the remnants of academia, already disenfranchised communities (Greece, etc.) or the new possibilities offered by technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> _In other words, in global terms what he is saying is that those who have capital and assets that generate wealth (such as a Saudi prince) will always be richer than entrepreneurs who are trying to make capital._

Except if you look at "rich lists", you see plenty of self-made, first- generation wealth. Who are the richest men in the world? Gates, Buffett, Ellison, Slim... All businessmen.

More typical nonsense from the Graun (who by the way, are based offshore in the Cayman's for tax purposes).

<comment><USER5> _" She was the first female president of King County's United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way's executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Opel, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors. Mary's son Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft."_

Yeah, totally self-made, first-generation. And her connection to IBM didn't help with this MS-IBM contract at all. Anybody could get this contract with enough hard work and dedication.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that. Let's keep this going.

 _Howard was a businessman, investor, and four-term Republican United States Representative. He also served as the campaign manager for conservative Senator Robert Taft in Taft 's 1952 presidential campaign. Howard's son is Warren Buffet, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway._</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pong in 512 bytes (boot sector) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mat-sz/pongloader <comment><USER2> Strange choice of syntax to be seeing boot sector Asm in --- I didn't know GNU/AT&T assembler(?) could generate 16-bit binaries. Also looks to be a very beginner attempt since I immediately spotted lots of bytes that could be trimmed; if I was looking at disassembly and not the source, I might even mistake this for compiler output. A few more hints/suggestions:

        - mov ax, 13h | int 10h will enter mode 13 in 5 bytes instead of 6
        - this is x86, not a RISC. mov m16, imm16 exists.
        - put the variables in memory after the code and initialise them literally
        - use ALL the registers. I don't see a single bp or si
        - the use of a few 32-bit instructions (but not 32-bit registers) is odd

I would also recommend studying the entries of this old competition to learn some more sizecoding tricks: [http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm](http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm)

pouet.net's _many_ sub-1K demos are also worth inspecting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huge thanks for the tips, I will look into that and try to implement them. To be honest, I stopped optimizing after I got enough space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the Hugi-compo rounds was a Pong game [http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm#compo3](http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm#compo3) to be run under MS-DOS; the winner was 142 bytes. However, there were several smaller entries that were disqualified for some cosmetic or lifecycle problems that didn't affect playability, the smallest of which was 67 bytes. The rules specified things including the paddle width, the text mode, the color of the ball, the win text, and the keys used to control the paddles. It seems likely that a smaller playable Pong could be achieved by relaxing the rules further — for example, by using different keys to control the paddles, or using a different starting ball position.

A boot sector doesn't have the MS-DOS interrupt services; it has to use only the BIOS interrupt services. On the other hand, it doesn't have to worry about exiting cleanly and resetting the video mode either :)

The winning entry, by Guillermo Sais, was:

        0000000: b003 cd10 95fa bea2 00b3 a068 00b8 07bf  ...........h....
        0000010: 6401 8d70 028d 02f6 75a6 80fc 0477 03f6  d..p....u....w..
        0000020: 5db0 d419 7520 287d d795 cd10 b409 ba34  ]...u (}.......4
        0000030: 01cd 21c3 506c 6179 6572 2031 2068 6173  ..!.Player 1 has
        0000040: 2077 6f6e 2e24 e460 a881 7813 7501 afd4   won.$.`..x.u...
        0000050: 05b0 f674 02b0 0a02 053c 8c77 0288 05b8  ...t.....<.w....
        0000060: db0a 99b2 00bf 000f b114 ab87 d7e2 fb26  ...............&
        0000070: 8134 fc0e 487a 9826 3800 7602 f7db b14f  .4..Hz.&8.v....O
        0000080: bada 03ec 33c1 2408 7bf9 e2f7 ebd4       ....3.$.{.....

</comment><comment><USER4> looks like Oscar Toledo has kicked off a trend. :)

[https://github.com/nanochess/bootRogue](https://github.com/nanochess/bootRogue)

[https://github.com/Kharacternyk/dice-tower- os](https://github.com/Kharacternyk/dice-tower-os)

<comment><USER5> His book - "Programming Boot Sector Games" \- is really fantastic. One of my favorite bed-time reads ;) [http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/oscar-toledo- gutierrez/progra...](http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/oscar-toledo- gutierrez/programming-boot-sector-games/paperback/product-24188564.html)

And to the OP: this is fantastic - how are you doing the in-browser demo? [EDIT: never mind! The body is `overflow:hidden` on that page so I initially didn't see the credits!]

I've starred the repo and am planning to lose a few hours to it this weekend!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've copied the webpack template from my other project, sorry for the overflow:hidden and thank you for letting me know about the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The OverTheWire Advent Security CTF had one problem this year [0] which involved reverse engineering a (self-modifying) Master Boot Record binary similar to this which implemented AES-ECB-128, felt very rewarding to complete. I made heavy use of bochs [1] which seems to be the most common tool for emulating and debugging protected mode and bootloader code such as this. The creator of the CTF challenge talked about it on twitter as well [2].

[0]: [https://advent2019.overthewire.org/challenge- zero](https://advent2019.overthewire.org/challenge-zero) [1]: [https://wiki.osdev.org/Bochs](https://wiki.osdev.org/Bochs) [2]: [https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1210363683815272448](https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1210363683815272448)

<comment><USER7> The CTF page seems to have been taken down, unfortunately. The timing of the CTF seems to have been a bit unfortunate :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great, I'm reading the heavily commented linux kernel source code and I was wondering how much can be done in the boot sector (other than call a more sophisticated boot loader) kudos!

</comment><comment><USER9> It's really cool!

But the opponent does the same thing and you can win every time ;)

Return the first ball from the lowest possible position. Then move to the highest position, you win!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I didn't have any other ideas on implementing the AI, it's currently pretty predictable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the latency is any better then if it would be running in a framework/stack!?

</comment><comment><USER11> How was the web version created? Is it the same code compiled to WASM?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/mat-sz/pongloader-v86](https://github.com/mat- sz/pongloader-v86)

I use an existing x86 JS emulator. It runs the same exact binary.

<comment><USER11> Very cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping- Pong_virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping-Pong_virus)</comment>


Ask HN: Mobile devt or Web devt first? - <AUTHOR>

Wanted to have some views on which one to build first if a web app has both?
Feature wise it would be like a simple list type of app (you could think of it as something that looks like HN) which is neutral to the platform, i.e it doesnt really matter in terms of user experience whether usage on web or mobile.
I have read that some people advocate using web application versus mobile development because its much easier to identify and solve problems and bugs, easier to write codes and build up a more scalable system. Also, mobile has more updates and crashes. Ruby on Rails for example can allow for both web/mobile especially with CSS Bootstrap.
On the other hand, some say mobile is easier because you have things like html5 which allows for cross platform codes as well as being easier to build. One can just use JavaScript, CSS and Html to bash something from say PhoneGap while on SQLite.
I have not arrived at anything conclusive and Im quite new to programming. I did look up how guys on both platforms built (such as Instagram, not because they are famous but they reveal their stack publicly :) ) but again no great insights either.
Any thoughts on the pros and cons, suggestions and questions I need to ask myself? Help is much appreciated! Thanks!! <comment><USER2> The question seems to bit confusing to me. Its all depend on your product actually, if you are trying to build a product. Since you are building a product which need a Web back-end, I will be always prefer to start from the back-end first and then do mobile App.

In case if you are looking to learn, both are good, both good enormous opportunities. But it will be nice to have knowledge on both mobile and web.</comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for learning Haskell interactively? - <AUTHOR> I've been working through 'learn you a Haskell', but even playing around with each example a bit in ghci I feel as though the lack of an immediate need to apply what I'm learning is reducing my comprehension. I found the functional programming exercises on hackerrank, which were initially great but quickly got to the point where I needed to handle IO myself (which isn't covered for several more chapters in the tutorial I'm using). Exercism.io isn't an option because I'm mostly working on a locked-down company machine (filling free time on an internship) and the setup fails due to some restriction or another I can't identify, and Leetcode doesn't support Haskell.<p>Is there a different site that will give me relatively simple (initially) problems to work through that handles I/O itself and just asks me to write a function? <comment><USER2> I know of [https://code.world/](https://code.world/) and [https://www.codewars.com/?language=haskell](https://www.codewars.com/?language=haskell) and [https://liquid.kosmikus.org/01-intro.html](https://liquid.kosmikus.org/01-intro.html) but I've never actually tried them. (I don't have the stamina for exercises. I read LYAH and some of RWH and then started on some actual projects, which quickly showed me what knowledge I was missing and then I looked up stuff at RWH/blog posts/haddocks/freenode#haskell.)

You may get more relevant answers at [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Codewars looks great, thanks for the suggestion.</comment></comment>


Colin Kaepernick joins Medium board of directors - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/colin-kaepernick-joins-medium-board-of-directors-and-inks-partnership-publishing-deal/ <comment><USER2> Pardon my cynicism, but what strategic value does Kaepernick bring to Medium? On its surface, this looks like Medium broadcasting their social-moral stance by tapping a guy who aligns with theirs. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it's hard not to become cynical about companies making these kinds of moves in order to virtue-signal to who they think their customer is.

<comment><USER3> what strategic value is it customary for board members to bring?

<comment><USER2> Often times board members are strategic in the sense that they bring either domain expertise in the area of the business or they have connections inside the industry in which the company operates. Not always, but often...

<comment><USER3> how would you characterize the industry in which Medium operates?

how would you characterize Colin's domain expertise?

what sorts of connections do you imagine Colin might have?

according to what you've communicated, whether you see the value may depend precisely on your answers to the above, and fundamentally: the beliefs and assumptions that underlie your answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boggles my mind how that company is still going after making itself one of the worst reading experiences online with the barrage of sign up forms and nag banners when you try to read anything on it.

<comment><USER5> Can someone explain Medium to me? I find it makes for a minimalistic, pleasant user experience (later degraded by banners, paywalls), but apart from that? Editing options are borderline non-existent. The comments section, usability- wise, is a bad joke. What's its killer feature or core idea? Why is it everywhere?

<comment><USER6> Your question answers itself

<comment><USER5> I thought so after posting it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read the article. He's doing writing, interviewing and publishing for Medium in addition to his board seat. His board seat will allow him to make sure his publishing partnership isn't compromised by strategic changes at the executive level.

<comment><USER8> Is this meant to be a reply to another comment?

Also, where does it say anything about protecting his publishing partnership from executive changes?

<comment><USER7> I replied at the top level because so many people didn't read the article.

A board member normally has influence over the direction of the company. They did not need to spell it out.

<comment><USER8> Pretty big logical leap there. I don't think it's justified to conclude that his board seat is to allow him to protect his publishing partnership. If they wanted to do that, they could have just made the contract ironclad.

Also, one board seat out of five doesn't enable him to protect the partnership. Log-roll, maybe, but again this is drawing some pretty conclusions IMO.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you're correct about the limitations of the power of one board member on a board of five.

As for the rest, it might help you to think of a board relationship as providing several benefits to both the board member and the company. We've only discussed one. In addition to his partnership work, he'll conduct normal board member duties.

<comment><USER8> Sure, we've only discussed one aspect because it's the only one that you chose to describe (and IMO, invent).

<comment><USER7> It's unremarkably common for organizations and the key individuals to use a board seat to ensure an enduring partnership. I don't know what to suggest to you except to look at board seats of other companies to better understand the reasons for assignments. You'll typically find them assigned for financial, expertise, and partnership reasons.

<comment><USER8> I find your tone patronizing and substance lacking. I have never seen a board seat granted in order to allow the board member to protect a partnership. To induce the board member to create a partnership? That makes more sense. But it isn't what you claimed. You made a specific and unsubstantiated claim that it was to allow him to protect his partnership in the event of executive change.

Not sure why you keep digging in on this position. You strongly implied that the article said something that it absolutely did not. Good day!

<comment><USER7> Take care. :) I've enjoyed talking with you as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who else is on Medium's board?

EDIT: per Crunchbase, it's Ev, Ben Horowitz, Josh Elman, and Judith Estrin.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it somewhat ironic that the article is not on Medium. It's listed there as well [1], but the stories I've seen shared are published elsewhere.

[1]: [https://blog.medium.com/colin-kaepernick-to-join-medium- boar...](https://blog.medium.com/colin-kaepernick-to-join-medium-board-of- directors-7e5e8a28d7ee)

</comment><comment><USER10> oh boy here we go

</comment><comment><USER11> This could be very useful. Will he be writing? It could give us a chance for him to lead.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure he needs a chance to lead. While certainly interesting that he's joining the leadership for Medium. Seems like he's been leading for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's important to separate Kaepernick's politics from his behavior. If he believes that black people face discrimination and unfair challenges in America, he's probably right about that and certainly should speak up. But he is such a poor spokesman for that, or for anything, that one has to wonder about the judgment of the Medium board for inviting him to join.

<comment><USER14> Why do you think he's a poor spokesman for this?

<comment><USER13> Because he has a history of very poor decisions regarding his public statements. For example, I think that someone supporting civil liberties shouldn't be wearing Fidel Castro T-shirts. His opposition to the Betsy Ross flag, and using his leverage with Nike to cancel a shoe themed with it, was asinine.

There are actual, serious and thoughtful civil liberties activists in America, including those who are working to overcome the challenges faced by black Americans. They don't get nearly as much attention as Colin Kaepernick because they can't throw three touchdowns and rush for 100 yards in the same game.</comment></comment></comment>


Data Analytics for Marketing - <AUTHOR>

what are some of the good softwares out there? <comment><USER2> [https://www.kissmetrics.com/](https://www.kissmetrics.com/) [https://mixpanel.com/](https://mixpanel.com/)

These are my favorites. You could also go with something more like [http://www.hubspot.com/](http://www.hubspot.com/) if you're not very technical and have money to spend

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a new event-based analytics tool launching soon - [http://www.kilometer.io](http://www.kilometer.io)

</comment><comment><USER4> Google Analytics - definitely look in-depth at the amount of features available.

<comment><USER2> Downside to GA is that it doesn't store personally identifiable information, so if you want to track and interact with users at the individual level, you will have to create a unique identifier in GA and then export it and match it to your user database.</comment></comment>


Could machine learning mean the end of understanding in science? - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/could-machine-learning-mean-the-end-of-understanding-in-science-98995 <comment><USER2> It is a natural tendency for people to want thinking done by someone else. This explains demagogues and self driving cars. How much power will we give machines to do our thinking for us? I think "Colossus the Forbin project" has a good impression on where things like that lead to. The backstory to Dune, Butlerian Jihad etc was an interesting take also.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad)</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my Twitter search appendage - <AUTHOR>

URL: http://twhittler.com/
Summary: twhittler is an interface to Twitter search that helps you "whittle down" search results by hiding tweets from any user you want.
I whipped this up after being frustrated at all the spammy or irrelevant tweets surfaced when I was searching for tweets related to one of my projects.
My questions to you are:
* Is twhittler something that would be useful to you in your work?
* Are there features I could add that would make it better?
Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> I don't think it's all that useful. There are a ton of spammers out there and to have to block them 1 by 1..

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, a (belated) thanks for your reply!

That's a great point, and an annoyance I started to notice as I used it myself... if I have a free evening this week, I'll see if I can apply PG's Bayesian filtering method to Tweets.

The Twitter data hose is an immensely valuable resource, and I hate to see it muddied up with all that spam. I think it's worth working to improve that.

Please let me know if you have thoughts on how I can improve twhittler!</comment></comment>


What is so good about Google's Project Fi? #projectfi #travel - <AUTHOR> https://jnn.io/~2 <comment><USER2> Sadly it is not available everywhere. I was all ready to sign up but was told it was not available in my area (Northwest Montana).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's good for North American users who want their costs to be variable (to the extent possible).</comment>


The Recruiter Honeypot - <AUTHOR> http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/ <comment><USER2> >In addition to pings from too-familiar recruiters, there were two cases that left me especially uneasy. In the first case, a former recruiting agency tried to poach Pete London and then 15 minutes later, wrote to me offering recruiting services! I was being pulled on both ends!

What did you expect them to do? It's not even that scummy. It's their business model.

I also feel that no poaching agreements are also bullshit. You're just attempting (rationally, I might add) to depress the market for your existing talent.

First and for all, especially in the climate we're in, banning two or three recruiting agencies isn't really going to hurt the chances of an employee who could be persuaded to leave. Secondly, if your employee can be persuaded to leave in the first place that's on you, not the recruiter!

I haven't had to make my life depend on employees as of yet, but when the time comes I think I'll find it hard to hold it against them.

Edit: mandatory notice of: great article, would read again, A++!

<comment><USER3> No poaching agreements are not bullshit - you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) and in exchange you're expecting them to use that information only for the purpose directed.

It's similar to an NDA. Nothing bullshit about it.

<comment><USER2> > you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are)

Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat. You don't even need to know that in order to recruit people.

\--

I feel that NDAs are kind of bullshit too, but they're typically not as expressly oppressive. Unless they stretch into noncompetes, which are incredible bullshit.

<comment><USER4> "Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat"

I don't think that's true at all. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had very small online footprints (they're too busy building awesome things at their company to spend much time on Twitter etc). Now that I'm responsible for hiring, I consider knowledge of that kind of person to be incredibly important.

<comment><USER5> I understand using github/twitter a lot if you're a developer. When you work on something you might want to get some immediate feedback/testers on it.

Yet still, linkedin (even though useful) scares me away a little bit. Each single time I get back, I see more and more people inventing longer and more exotic job names and descriptions, pitching around with some void statements and uploading their pictures in suits.

<comment><USER6> My problem with LinkedIn is other people. People want me to say I know them when I don't (hey, networking!). People want me to recommend them when I have only seen them in the hallway and don't even know what they do.

I am very conservative about these things. Does LinkedIn's own model disagree? Does it push people towards larger networks, instead of smaller, higher-value ones?

Am I doing it wrong, or is (seemingly) everyone else?

<comment><USER5> There is quite a lot of recruiters/randoms just adding as many people as possible. Without any introductory message, I would just consider that as spam. However, if you know somebody in person but don't know him very well then I don't see a huge problem. I get quite a lot of invites from my former class mates that I had no real connection with. But hey, you never know where your life takes you. Those connections might accidentally come in very useful one day.

As for the recommendations - they've got nothing to loose really. In the worst case they won't get one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really really good. For my sins a few years back I made a similar profile on linkedin[1] but made it as obviously fake as possible while still pretending to be real, it's an open secret in the UK infosec industry and still gets emails from recruiters.

Incidentally the profile is entirely populated with content generated via Markov chains using logs from an irc channel I'm on as the corpus.

[1] - uk.linkedin.com/pub/markov-bambam/15/643/a56

<comment><USER8> I want to read his dissertation.

"Dissertation on dissassociative media reconstruction in information security: How hedgehogs and baby seals lead to infinite cybercrime opportunity (Russian)."

<comment><USER9> His other well known paper ( _Decoupling IPv7 from Replication in Link-Level Acknowledgements_ ) is available from MIT[1]

[1] [http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/867/scimakelatex.58686...](http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/867/scimakelatex.58686.Markov+Bambam.You+R.+Mom.html)

<comment><USER10> Haha, figure 1 is just awesome.

<comment><USER9> I liked "we deployed 00 Commodore 64s across the 10-node network, and tested our kernels accordingly"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really interesting. I'm a contractor so i deal with recruiters a hell of a lot. I've never come across a good recruiter to work with, 90% of them are an annoyance but harmless and 10% are outright scumbags.

Its really interesting to see this honeypot information. I think recruiting is an industry thats ripe for disruption, especially for tech contractors and i've got a theory on how to do it, one day i'll write a blog post on it but the basic premise is, instead of a sales strategy, i'd like to see a talent agent strategy.

<comment><USER12> I mentioned the exact same thing to someone a couple of weeks ago - I think her name was Stella, and she's been posting for a startup recently. I'm not a professional contractor like many, but I do like doing freelance gigs to supplement my day-job income. However, finding suitable gigs, dealing with negotiations and chasing down deadbeat clients make it really unpleasant given what I really want to do is make some extra cash after hours. I don't want to deal with all the overhead of running my own business atop managing my own career and family.

I would happily give up a percentage of my rate to someone who could get me ~15 hours a week worth of work at a market rate and insulate me from a lot of the overhead that I simply don't have time to deal with. Just like Hollywood stars focus on being Hollywood stars and leave the business of Hollywood to agents, I'd like to focus on my strengths and leave the business to someone else.

<comment><USER13> But Hollywood stars sit on set 12 hours a day, for a 16 week shoot, as does the rest of the crew.

If they only did 15 hours a week the film would not get made.

I would be interested In knowing what gigs you do take on and how the code integrates with the work being done elsewhere

if you are doing maintenace and bug fixes on a codebase you know I can see how it would work.

My apologies if this seems overly aggressive I am just interested in how this could work - we could alll fit in 10 hours a week for beer tokens

<comment><USER14> I'm a full time freelancer. I work on several projects at a time, from large companies to startups, and most of them I only give 10-15 hours a week to. You can get a lot done in 15 hours a week if you put your mind to it. The trick in this case would really be the scheduling, 15 hours a week all done after a normal job schedule (say after 6pm) would likely not jive as well, and your productivity would not be nearly as good.

<comment><USER13> My question and same to @bartonfink is still what is the work? If I am say design and build a rest backend for a company, and its say two months work at 45 hrs a week, doing 15 hrs a week telling them it will take six months cos I have other clients is a sure way not to get the gig

So I amwondering what the actual meat of the work you do is? How did you land the work - is it maintenance from past fulltime gigs, is it real consulting where you are training g the in house teams,

I am honestly interested because I am at a bit of a loss as to how to get such gigs myself

thank you

<comment><USER14> the work is designing and building web applications. almost all coding, a small amount of training/consulting. generally i come into projects that were already built at least part way by someone else and need to be fixed up and have features added. though i am also doing one right now from the ground up with a small team. most of my projects involve small remote teams as well.

right now i work with 2 startups and 1 large company, as well as do occasional consulting with another large company (this is usually less than 5 hours every month). i'm all about simplicity and breaking things down into small pieces, so on all projects i am able to deliver and launch features regularly with 10-20 hrs of work a week on each. my total billable hours for the week usually are in the 40ish range.

i've found all the work through referrals pretty much, so i can't say exactly how to find it for others. i will say put as much as you can out in open source, that is the best "sales" technique i've had (often "referrals" have come from someone i've only interacted with in the open source community). also, be consistent with your deliveries, and open and honest about scheduling, as well as when something is going to take longer than you estimated. surprisingly few contractors are good at communication it seems. often i come into projects for people who were abandoned by a developer and even when they were working together only got spotty communication from that dev.

<comment><USER13> Thank you

good points on the communications side - something I can easily let slide

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the contractual result for breaking a no-poach clause? Should companies inform their employees of no-poach agreements and request to be told when anyone is contacted by a recruiter from Company X? There is an on-going anti-trust lawsuit about no poach policies involving Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, and more. How does that play into things?

<comment><USER16> Actually "no poach" aka "non-compete" clauses are void in California:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- compete_clause#Exceptions_-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- compete_clause#Exceptions_-_valid_non-compete_agreements_in_California)

So she really had no grounds to demand and expect it.

<comment><USER15> Wait, it doesn't seem like a no poach contract with a recruiter would fall under the same laws. In California an employee is almost always free to quit and work for a direct competitor if that's what they want. However, if a recruiter signs a no poach contract stating they won't contact employees with other job opportunities for 18 months that's an entirely separate issue and doesn't seem like it would be covered by the same law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is a significant flaw in the logic here.

Create a fictitious individual where, prior to linkedin, the only place Pete London existed was his own personal website.

I used to be a recruiter and egotistical as it may sound, I considered myself one of the better ones. My previous history on HN should back that up. I never, ever used linkedin when searching for decent people yet even I wouldn't have found Pete London. The best developers I encountered over the years were people who came recommended by other developers or people I met face to face at meet-ups.

If no-one but the creator knew Pete London existed then the only thing this experiment proves is that most recruiters aren't very good at using search engines. That's all.

The one point I agreed with significantly is hiring internal recruitment specialists. I've given a talk on that exact issue in the past and I am in the process of writing a blog post on my updated perspective of that approach.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was intrigued reading this to see what my inbox would say about Meebo's recruiting.

In May 2010 a recruiter spammed the Hadoop mailing lists with a "Data Engineer (Analytics)" in MV. A month later I was blessed with an email from the same recruiter for the same job sent to my @apache address. Another month later he posted the job on LI's Hadoop group.

Fast-forward one year, a new recruiter spammed the mahout user mailing list saying he was looking for "Engineers with Machine Learning expertise".

Finally 2 months later I got an email sent to my @apache address from the second recruiter for a "Data Engineering Lead" position.

So it seems that they haven't used LI a lot and mostly rely on those "other channels" and direct emails. I personally find it disrespectful to send recruiting emails to user mailing lists but I guess recruiters don't know/care about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Though I averaged two interviews a day, we had only grown the team by three- four engineers each year."

Wait a second, he was interviewing 100X more people than he was hiring??? Does that seem a little extreme to anyone, or is it just me?

<comment><USER20> What he was doing was phone screening two people a day. Actual interviews were probably 1/20th that - so, approximately 400 Resumes = 100 Screens = 20 in person Interviews = 4 Hires. Which is a reasonable average over a year.

[edit] My strategy has always been for posted positions that I'm actually acting as the recruiter for, is to do the initial resume screen myself (I can triage a resume in 1 minute for a position that I know about), and then hand over the screening to a reasonably competent (but unemployed) person in that area, ideally with a set of standard questions that the two of us have come up with together.

I.E. Hire a Unix Sysadmin to screen systems administrators, and give them a list of questions like, "what is an inode, what is the difference between a process and thread, how would you sum up the total size of files in a directory, what's your favor unix based operating system and why, tell me about the unix systems you've worked on?" - This usually takes 30 minutes/person.

The interviews with around 5 people takes about 45 minutes per interviewer (30 minutes to 1 hour) - so, about 4 hours per candidates.

So - 400 Resumes (6 1/2 hours) = 100 Screens (50 Hours) = 20 interviews (80 hours) = 4 Hires.

Total investment per hire is about 136.5/4 = 35 hours. Only 7 hours/hire needing to be done by the hiring manager. The screening is the easiest stuff to be outsourced.

Of course, you can dodge 90% of this if you just get great internal references (removing the need for screening, filtering) - which is why internal references are so highly valued by companies. (That, and they don't have to pay $20K-$30K to an external recruiter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _> In addition to pings from too-familiar recruiters, there were two cases that left me especially uneasy. In the first case, a former recruiting agency tried to poach Pete London and then 15 minutes later, wrote to me offering recruiting services! I was being pulled on both ends!_

That is not at all unusual.

When we got rid of a useless lummox a year or two ago, he gave his recruiter (the same agency we got him from) all out contact details (if you are out there, thanks for that...). Within a week of him leaving that agency called three of us claiming to be looking for a reference but immediately asking if we could be called out of work ours to reduce disruption. One of us let that happen and it turns out they were trying to get us on their books (err, no thanks, we don't want to be associated with the other "quality" peopel on your books!). Similarly the company got several calls from them most of which involved lies ("I was talking to <person x> earlier today" when <person x> had been on holiday all week).

In summary:

1\. Recruiters _will_ hit you from both ends. They make money out of both ends so it suits their business model.

2\. Recruiters lie. Repeatedly. Constantly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Being a good external recruiter in Silicon Valley is a tricky balancing act. Everyone in the Valley wants the superstars, so competition is ridiculous. Additionally, cultural fit in small startups is of utmost importance, so you have to learn the culture of the company your engaged with. The culture is also highly insular and revolves around being a jedi master of code, so if you're a recruiter you're expected to have a deep understanding of the technical needs of the company in addition to the cultural ones. Plus most startups want people who have an active understanding of new languages/frameworks/methodologies, so you also have to have thorough knowledge of the bleeding edge of tech. Lastly, this person needs to have good in-person skills, network, and ability to sell a position against whatever the competition is offering.

Since each company is different, every time you get a new client you need to recalibrate and get up to speed on what they need. This is why it's rare to find a truly good external recruiter (and impossible to find a good contingency recruiter for a short term engagement). In my opinion the best arrangements are long-term engagements, giving the recruiting firm time to understand exactly what you're looking for and calibrate their searches against that. Of course these engagements are expensive and time-consuming, so it's also why I'm a big fan of internal recruiters since they a) absorb and presumably live your culture and b) can have a much deeper understanding of your technology and team dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wish there was a job search website where to actually advertise a position there were mandatory requirements like the company name and salary being displayed as part of the ad.

Whats the reasoning behind posting completely vague job descriptions (sometimes the location isn't even provided!).

I Would say 90% of the job postings I see online don't even give me enough information to want to contact them.

<comment><USER21> _> Whats the reasoning behind posting completely vague job descriptions (sometimes the location isn't even provided!)._

Usually that is because there is no job. The recruitment agency is trying to farm candidate details for two purposes: firstly so they can make claims to employers about how many people they have on their books with given skillsets and secondly so they have people to present to companies when they register a position as available.

<comment><USER24> It can also be political. Companies want to hire cheap foreign labor but are forbidden to if they can find native workers (various EU countries have this) so they'll advertise a job with bad conditions and low pay and then after not being able to fill it for some time they show it as evidence of skill shortage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> \---

 _<http://www.meebo.com/jobs/>

Meebo.com will be shutting down on July 11, 2012.

Meebo has been acquired by Google!_

\---

So Meebo was a recruiting operation for Google.

It puts that article in a new light.

<comment><USER26> It used to be a cool web based IM client. I used it on the fly when I wasn't at my computer but still wanted to talk online with friends.

<comment><USER25> Building IM client is an interesting approach to attract developers and train development team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This only emphazises how different the world for programmers is in the USA (especially in the SF area) compared to the rest of the world. I only get three or four emails a year on linkedin, of them one's from Facebook, the other from Google, and the others are from local companies.

This kind of make me envious and wanting to be there for a while., to experience how's it like to be valued and sought after.

<comment><USER28> If you envy our level of spam, change the address on your LinkedIn profile and/or make a new honeypot one. Like the original article, you can actually find out empirically!

Then write a blog post about it.

<comment><USER27> Only in how it shows the level of opportunities. But it's a good idea to experience it for myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We're attempting to fix the way freelancers are recruited at agencies / startups by changing the pricing model. At the moment with recruiters, the incentive is to place as many people as quickly as possible as you get a commission for each placement.

By changing the model to a subscription you can then open the market place up and make it very transparent. No more hiding peoples contact details from the employee, no more hiding the employers name from the job seeker.

We're only in Melbourne, Australia at the moment but if we get interest, we'll try and increase our reach. If you are in Melbourne and you're a freelancer / agency / startup, we'd love to talk: <http://www.dragonflylist.com>

<comment><USER12> Rodeo -

I'm currently planning a move down under (my wife just spooked me by wanting to push the timeframe up to next year instead of 2015). Mind if I reach out to you sometime to chat about the market there and whether what you're doing would make sense for someone in my position? I'd be much obliged.

<comment><USER30> You won't have any trouble getting a tech job here. Huge demand at the moment, not enough talent. Email firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to chat more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How many females were on the recruiting team? (i.e., how statistically significant was all of them getting pregnant in the same month...)?

<comment><USER32> Pregnancy is probably infectious.

Also having landed a job at a company that is doing well is a high risk factor for pregnancy.

<comment><USER31> I remember Google advertising themselves as family friendly in the mid 2000s as a recruiting strategy; I guess if people are coming back after even 6 months out, it could be a worthwhile strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "No poaching" requirement is a mistake.

Small subset of recruiters that she was working with represents only minor danger to her company anyway (considering how many recruiters are out there).

By dropping "no poaching" restriction Elaine would be able to hire better recruiters.

Other than that - the article was an insightful read.

</comment><comment><USER33> > We had standard 18-month no-poach restrictions with all of our contractors > that specified that those recruiters were not allowed to contact Meebo > employees within 18 months of our contract expiring

Whoa, wasn't there just a lawsuit where no-poach deals were determined highly illegal?

<comment><USER34> Much different circumstance (more collusion) if you are thinking of the Google/Apple/Intel lawsuit: "Apple, Google, Intel fail to dismiss staff- poaching lawsuit | Reuters" [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us- apple-poaching-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-apple- poaching-lawsuit-idUSBRE83I0VF20120419)

Or Google: [https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=1&source...](https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=google+settlement+apple+employee+poach)

<comment><USER35> Different circumstances, but still illegal in California because it restricts the freedom of employment of Meebo's employees.

No-poaching clauses are illegal in California, _but_ poaching clauses can contain "referral fees" under which the poaching company must pay the original employer a substantial amount of money (usually, a year's salary of the employee poached) if they hire one of its employees during or within a year after the end of the contract period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of the best things I did was take down my LinkedIn account. I've gone from numerous recruiters contacting me to very few. But the ones who do contact me find me through my github account, my stackoverflow account or my website. These recruiters are of much higher quality, have much more compelling job opportunities and job opportunities that match me much better. I also no longer have to politely decline recruiters constantly.

</comment><comment><USER37> The Kernel (UK) had a nice expose on recruiter tactics recently as well. [http://www.kernelmag.com/topic/the-kernel-recruitment- report...](http://www.kernelmag.com/topic/the-kernel-recruitment-report/)

</comment><comment><USER38> This raises the question of A/B testing fake LinkedIn profiles to optimize for the sort of leads you want.

</comment><comment><USER39> I remember doing something similar to this after I graduated from college ('09) but a bit backwards.

I was totally frustrated by the lack of responses to resumes that were flying from my outbox like cards from a blackjack shoe -- so I created a help-wanted ad on craigslist for a job that I thought I would qualify for and might have a chance of landing.

The resumes I got were from people with 3-5 years experience, masters degress, laundry list of skillsets, etc. Needless to say, the whole experience was disheartening -- but it taught me to be creative in my approach to the job market and that generally the "resume" based approach to finding a "match" (employer<->employee) is deeply flawed.

</comment><comment><USER40> I friended Pete London on linkedin, because having connections with fictional recruiter honeypots is awesome.

<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=60565153>

<comment><USER25> Here's what I got here:

 _You and this LinkedIn user don't know anyone in common You can only view the profiles of users within your network._

<comment><USER40> Try doing an advanced search for firstname: Pete lastname: London region: San Francisco Bay Area

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> _"Lesson 1: Recruiters rely exclusively upon LinkedIn". You might be thinking, "Really? This is obvious!"_

Uh... No, I wasn't thinking that, since there's a ton of places for recruiters to find candidates and LinkedIn is only one of them. Is this some kind of viral marketing piece for LinkedIn or something?

I have gotten maybe 6 recruiting messages on LinkedIn in my life. I finally deleted my account after the password debacle, it was so useless. Like a business contact sheet for people I already had contacts for. On the other hand, Monster.com is where most of the recruiters seem to come at me from. I get on average 8 positions sent to me a week when i'm not looking for work. My google voice gets less recruiter spam, but I had to set a separate GV line up just to catch all the recruitemarketer calls.

<comment><USER42> Then you must be in a tiny minority. I get an LinkedIn message every other day, pretty much. I closed my Monster account years ago after getting e-mails of insanely inaccurate matches in cities thousands of miles away.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, LinkedIn is awesome, it's the future of finding a job second only to your "connections".

<comment><USER42> I actually disagree. All I've ever gotten from LinkedIn is recruiter spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Recruiting is difficult, especially for initial hires. Often time founders are hiring for skilled positions that they themselves are not familiar with. Thus, they turn to recruiters. However, with the good that recruiters bring, the bad comes as well. That's why I am starting HireHand. We are different than traditional recruiters and will assist by screening candidates for skilled positions using screeners will matching skills. You get a filtered set of candidates and can interview for "fit" rather than skill. We charge a small fee based on the number of candidates you have us screen, and do not charge a percentage of salary. Check us out: <http://www.hirehand.com>

</comment><comment><USER45> >However, I also needed a recruiter who was smart enough not to poach a founder.

Could someone elaborate?

<comment><USER28> Anybody she was getting recruiting emails from was trying to poach her (a founder).

Silicon Valley is small, incestuous and political. If all your competitors, other portfolio companies, etc. are getting recruiting emails from you, including their founders, you are going to seem either tone-deaf with bad recruiters or like you're trying to offend people you shouldn't offend.

Also, founders basically never say "yes".

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Very interesting read full of good data and some interesting takeaways (especially about LinkedIn).

One thing I wonder about is given how boilerplate and sparse the honeypot's blog was, how little information there was to go on, and how uninspired the self-description was, I can't help but wonder if the good recruiters were the ones who didn't bother contacting him.

As a side note, I'm also confused as to why the metric for a good recruiter was figuring out that the profile was a fake (kind of in line with Peroni's comment above). Or was it considered good that he/she chose to use the phone as a recruiting tactic?

</comment><comment><USER47> If recruiters actually gave job seekers asserted information about what companies need, this recruiting business would be a desert.

</comment><comment><USER48> And here I was thinking I was special because I was getting two (sometimes 3) recruiting emails a day on Linkedin ... smh.

</comment><comment><USER49> the most idiotic move a recruiter does is sending emails to work email address. That's a big no no. It's easy to guess a work email address, but sending a job offer to it? that's stupid. Also same with calling the company switchboard and asking for my name and leaving job offer info in voice mail. crap!

</comment><comment><USER50> I am a co-founder of a startup. My takeaways from this article are:

1) Get a recruiter in-house.

2) Treasure the recruiter as much as the tech talent.

3) External Recruiters will violate non-poaching agreements.

4) It is still useful to have a non-poaching agreement, as it helps as a mild deterrent.

5) Dread thy fellow startup more than a large company.

</comment><comment><USER51> Great article.

I was however confused by "I also needed a recruiter who was smart enough not to poach a founder".

Was he saying this just because founders in SV are not a good fit to Meebo? Or are they bad employees? Or that it is considered bad to poach to hire a founder?

<comment><USER52> She. Did you really read the article and not notice it was written by a woman? On a blog titled "Elaine Wherry"?

<comment><USER51> Yes, I meant she. It really was a typo.

(I realized it not because of the name - I have seen very weird names before. I realized it because of her picture on the about page.)

Regardless, my question above is still open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Awesome post, but I'd like to see the backing data.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it only recruiters approaching people about work? I would have imagined many employers are directly approaching people in much the same manner as recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER55> "JavaScript engineer", really?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-front-end- developers-s...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-front-end-developers- so-high-in-demand-at-startups-if-front-end-development-is-relatively-easier- than-other-fields-of-engineering/answer/Simon-Willison)

<comment><USER56> The trend of calling someone an "engineer" for all sorts of things may puzzle people who live in places where the title of "engineer" is regulated.

Depending on how far you want to take it, the term can really lose its meaning. Is a supermarket stocker a "display engineer"? They do have to make considerations for aesthetics, space, and so forth...</comment></comment></comment>


Intel Storage Performance Development Kit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spdk/spdk <comment><USER2> "operating in a polled mode instead of relying on interrupts, which avoids kernel context switches and eliminates interrupt handling overhead"

Yeah, that's great if all you're running is a benchmark. As soon as you need to combine this with a network stack, also polling its own devices at fast as it can, it becomes a lot harder to avoid those context switches. If you're running an actual _application_ it becomes even harder. Likewise if you have more devices than you have cores to spin waiting for them.

In an extremely latency-sensitive and resource-rich environment this kind of thing can yield great results, but otherwise it's almost a form of cheating. Yes, that's what I was accused of when I wrote network drivers at Dolphin and again at SiCortex that some people felt polled too much. Oddly enough, users felt that their CPUs should be running their applications, and were more interested in maximum throughput _per cycle consumed_. Hardware designers don't build interrupt-based interfaces just for fun, and it's worth remembering that Intel makes most of its money from selling CPUs. Think about it.

<comment><USER3> It's certainly true that the polled-mode driver model doesn't interact well when the application needs to use other APIs that don't provide a polled mode. However, SPDK can be used in conjunction with a polled user-mode network stack so that a storage application can operate fully in user mode without any user- to-kernel context switches or hardware interrupts.

It's definitely not a drop-in replacement for a kernel storage stack in the general case, but rather an optimization for specific applications (e.g. storage appliances) that can be structured to take advantage of the polled/no- interrupts model.

<comment><USER2> Thank you. That's kind of the point I was trying to make. For a storage appliance - and that's the most common deployment model for the software I work on - it's great. I just don't want to see every "full stack" halfwit trying to use a specialized tool for general-purpose stuff. That often ends up wasting everyone's time - _especially_ that of the people providing the tool.

<comment><USER4> That said, there are cases where it would make sense in a multicore environment to pin one core to storage polling, and another to network polling.

You will then, of course, have contention in transitioning data between the two, but there are existing and useful models for eliding much of the locking load there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am an engineer working at Intel on SPDK, and I can answer any technical questions you might have.

Currently SPDK consists of a usermode NVMe (PCIe-attached SSD) driver. We will soon be releasing a usermode driver for the Intel I/OAT DMA engine (copy offload hardware) that is available on some server platforms.

<comment><USER5> Will combining SPDK with the usermode driver for the Intel I/OAT DMA engine provide the necessary building blocks for a complete solution (network+storage)?

And can this be combined with PCIe-attached accelerators (e.g. Xeon Phi or GPUs)?

<comment><USER3> The SPDK libraries are mostly storage-specific components (the I/OAT DMA engine can be used for generic copy offload, but it is particularly useful for copying between network and storage buffers). SPDK itself does not provide any network functionality.

I am not familiar enough with the Xeon Phi or GPU programming model to say for sure, but they could possibly be used to offload tasks like hashing/dedup or other storage-related functions.

<comment><USER5> > they could possibly be used to offload tasks like hashing/dedup or other > storage-related functions

Sorry, I was not referring to accelerating storage-related functions, I was wondering about efficient DMA copy from one PCIe device (Intel NVM storage) to another (Xeon Phi accelerator) which would be for useful many different functions, if the NVM storage device capacity is much larger than the accelerator device memory.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I see. The I/OAT DMA copy offload is essentially equivalent to an asynchronous memcpy(), so anything addressable on the memory bus could be a source or destination (with some caveats about alignment requirements and pinned pages if copying to/from RAM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a beautiful thing. I'm eagerly awaiting when NVM arrives in AWS to see if I can put this to work.

Intro here [https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to- th...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to-the-storage- performance-development-kit-spdk)

</comment><comment><USER7> Damn this is sweet. User-mode networking has been fairly widespread for a while but user-mode storage stacks have been pretty rare outside MirageOS and a few other places.

I wish I had an NVMe device to play with this.

<comment><USER8> The Intel consumer one, the SSD 750, is relatively cheap (around £300 or so).</comment></comment>


What is the shortest and generally most useful bit of wisdom you know? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-useful-shortest-and-most-generally-applicable-piece-of-wisdom-you-know <comment><USER2> My grandfather always said that "you cannot polish a turd". I really never understood it coming from him as he was a perfectionist and a very good engineer. It seemed like such a nihilistic statement from a man that could fix or design anything and always had a we can fix this attitude. It was not till I was older that I realized the true meaning of the statment. He was basically saying you do what you have to do to get something working. If it is bad then you patch it until you can replace it with something better. And that trying to start from bad to get to good was not the best path but rather make the bad passable until, it can be totally replaced with good. In my experience this has held true. Trying to make something that is poorly built good is far more time consuming than shoring it up and then replacing it with a better solution.

<comment><USER3> The Mythbusters guys did do that...

[http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a- turd...](http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html)

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much for that one. My grandfather and I laughed for hours.</comment></comment></comment>


How a Group of HN Users Rescued RestoreTheFourth.net - <AUTHOR> http://sina.is/helping-rtf/

<comment><USER2> I'm not in the US, but it's great that people are feeling passionate enough to get together and help each other out like this towards a worthy common cause.

I know I'm dreaming, but I like to think that activities like this may become more common and become so important, perhaps more important than street demonstrations, that the people in power must take notice. E.g. next target -> a "free market capitilism" that mainly works for the rich.

Another free take away from this story is: if you want/hope/expect your site to get lots of visitors, make sure beforehand that you can quickly enable services like CloudFlare should you need to.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you that it's commendable that hackers are helping out efforts like Restore the Fourth. I participated in my city's Restore the Fourth protests. (My family, with two participating adults and two participating minor children, made up about 3 percent of total attendance at the Minneapolis protest.)

But when you write

 _E.g. next target - > a "free market capitilism" that mainly works for the rich._

I have to respectfully disagree. You need to travel more if you think that the next issue that needs world attention is "free market capitilism" [sic]. If that becomes the agenda of activists associated with the Restore the Fourth movement (and there were some disturbing signs that that was the real agenda at the Minneapolis protests), then the movement will die a well deserved death. Free-enterprise economics is a force for human liberation all over the world, as the alternative is always economic control by the rulers, under whatever ideological name it uses from mercantilism to socialism to communism.

<comment><USER4> I agree that "free market capitalism" isn't the proper target, but I the _implementation_ of "free market capitalism" in the U.S. has not resulted in "human liberation," but instead has resulted in "economic control by the rulers", where rulers = "the ultra-rich".

<comment><USER5> _the _implementation_ of "free market capitalism"_

I.e. not actually free-market capitalism. So why refer to it as such?

I'm puzzled by the number of people who call the economic system of the US free-market capitalism. It's corporatism, or state capitalism, or a mixed economy, or something else. But not free-market capitalism.

Much like people point to the state of health care and health insurance in the US and say that it shows the failure of the free market.

It's anything but.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Huge thanks to Sina and the rest of the task force! We knew we would be getting a lot of traffic and weren't prepared for it, and they really saved the day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> HN mods: how come this got demoted? Made it up to #4, then dropped off the homepage altogether. Something similar happened yesterday when I tried to post it then.</comment>


Gmail spams emails with words skype and outlook - <AUTHOR>

Recently I noticed that a standard email that I send to people keeps getting marked consistently as spam on gmail while my other emails go through.
I tried to debug the issue and finally figured it out.
If I added the line: "My skype is : email@example.com" , gmail would consistently mark it as spam with the message that this email looks like spam detected before by gmail. As soon as I removed that line, the same email would go through.
I couldn't believe this so I started making test accounts on gmail and this kept happening.
Have anyone else experienced this before ? If so this sounds like a very crappy practice from Google, is it legal ? <comment><USER2> Funny, Gmail spammed all of the SCRYPTmail invites I sent too.

<comment><USER3> How long did you send them? We actually made some improvement on invitations. Now Gmail should be more loyal to us :) my contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> Around 3 weeks ago.</comment></comment></comment>